It’s not hyperbole to say that this is exactly why the 2nd Amendment exists. It’s been bastardized and misrepresented for a long time now but this is explicitly the kind of tyranny the founding fathers envisioned we would need protection from. In their time the people with the power to extract wealth at the cost of human suffering were mostly monarchs and other governmental bodies and in our time massive corporations have joined those ranks but that doesn’t change what’s happening at a fundamental level.
It’s not hyperbole to say that this is exactly why the 2nd Amendment exists. It’s been bastardized and misrepresented for a long time now but this is explicitly the kind of tyranny the founding fathers envisioned we would need protection from. In their time the people with the power to extract wealth at the cost of human suffering were mostly monarchs and other governmental bodies and in our time massive corporations have joined those ranks but that doesn’t change what’s happening at a fundamental level.
The Second Amendment was based partially on the right to keep and bear arms in English common law and was influenced by the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Sir William Blackstone described this right as an auxiliary right, supporting the natural rights of self-defense and resistance to oppression, and the civic duty to act in concert in defense of the state.[12] While both James Monroe and John Adams supported the Constitution being ratified, its most influential framer was James Madison. In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by the militia, “a standing army … would be opposed [by] militia.” He argued that State governments “would be able to repel the danger” of a federal army, “It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.” He contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as “afraid to trust the people with arms”, and assured that “the existence of subordinate governments … forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition”.