In my latest reading of To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine,
Newt Gingrich affirms that the Second Amendment protects the individual
right to keep and bear arms, for that enables people to defend
themselves against tyranny. Newt appeals to Federalist Number 46, in
which James Madison presents an armed populace as a bulwark against
tyranny.
I remember a Republican congressional candidate going to a
high school and making that argument about the Second Amendment. The
students then cross-examined him on this. If the people find themselves
in a position where they need to fight their government because it's
become tyrannical, they asked, shouldn't their weaponry be equal to what the
government has, for them to stand a chance? Wouldn't they need aircraft
carriers, or nuclear weapons? The candidate did not know how to answer
these questions.
I suppose that, if the people needed to defend
themselves against a tyrannical government, the government would have
the advantage, for the government has bombs, aircraft, and nuclear
weapons. But I doubt that the government would want to wipe
out everyone in America, were it to become tyrannical. Who would it
then control? Who would support the economy, which sustains the
government? Maybe the government would bomb a few areas, but suppose an
armed populace did not give up but kept resisting? Could the
government suppress that?