Trigger finger in the dike

A few of my friends on Facebook have decided that they want to post, almost exclusively, on 2nd Amendment issues.  They are the few percentage points of the NRA membership that seem to be absolutists about guns in America, but there are just a few things that they are trying pass off as obvious that are really not.  One friend recently posted a picture with the words "The purpose of the Constitution is to limit the power of federal government not the American People." 

This just stuck me as absurd.  That's not to say there weren't a lot of concerns over the size and power of the federal government as it related to the states own governments, but the purpose of the Constitution was spelled out pretty clearly in the preamble.  And nowhere in that preamble does it say "We the people, wish to limit the power of federal government."  The actual limits to federal government were drawn up and included in the document as a compromise to allow states to have their rights without falling back into the crippling and ineffective Articles of Confederation. 

It seems to me that the 2nd amendment absolutists have thoroughly missed the point.  The main concern of the Democratic-Republicans of the mid to late 1700s was the possibility that the federal government would either a) not have enough power to hold the union together and defend it or b) create standing armies that would be able to defend it but which could be used to oppress the citizens of the states. 

We have gone so far beyond what Jefferson and his bunch would have approved of (at least before he was elected President) that the 2nd Amendment seems like a little boy sticking his finger in the one of the holes of a crumbling dike.  For instance, one of Jefferson's biggest fears was that the US would create and maintain a standing army of professional soldiers.  Nobody arguing for gun rights and claiming that everyone is a member of a militia agrees with Jefferson anymore about not needing a standing army.  Jefferson himself was the first to use that standing army in a foreign conflict, vastly expanding the power of the federal government and doing something as President Jefferson that he very likely would have howled bloody murder about had it been Adams who had done it.  (Not that I think he shouldn't have gone after the Barbary Pirates, but then again, nobody asked me.) 

The point is, the purpose that Jefferson advocated the second amendment for is already outdated.  When a state militia, regulated by the states as a counter to federal power, was something that every man was expected to be part of, the act of banning weapons from them would have been tantamount to disenfranchising the states of their check on the federal government.  Sure they got to select the Senate and that gave them some sway on federal policy, but now even that is gone.  We have been chipping away at the state's sovereignty from day 1.  And we have been doing so because it was all based on a very justified paranoia.  But these days, unless you are planning on letting the states buy their own aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons, as well as all other forms of modern warfare, we the people have no chance of being able to stand up against our own military with the few semi-automatic weapons we can buy or the banana clips we think we need.  But also, we are no longer paranoid.  We have decided that we can trust our federal government.  Don't believe that we trust the feds?  Try taking away our Medicare.  

"You'll keep your gubmint hands of my Medicare if ya know what's good fer ya!"