I'm no US constitutional law expert by any stretch but I'm pretty sure your jumping to conclusions that it's about states having militias to protect themselves against the federal government is incorrect. Insofar as I'm aware even the NRA would disagree with that - and they're the ones who spent the past couple of decades promoting the misconception that it's being about citizens needing to be able to defend themselves against the federal government.

@DenisdeBernardy: Whatever you believe the second amendment means, it shouldn't change the purpose of the the National Guard and state militias in general, which I understand was to defend the states against the federal government (and other states I guess).

That strikes me as a misunderstanding too. Your notion that the purpose of the state militias is to defend states against the federal government doesn't seem to pass a sniff test. If anything that question was settled on the battlefield during the Civil War and the argument didn't go so well for those who thought they were.

@DenisdeBernardy - funny how the same "misconception" was fully shared by many of the Founding Fathers. Somehow, I trust their opinion of what the Amendment was meant to mean far more than some random progressive person.

Uhm ... when reading that text you had better keep in mind the conditions and technology of the time. How big was the standing federal army (or was it intended to be)? Where was it? How long would it take to get to Maine? To the Carolinas? Where were the threats to the people of the states? How fast could those threats go from potential to actually killing people? The militias may have been intended as a bulwark against federal over-reach, but that was only one part of their purpose.

2nd Amendement pre-dates National Guard by almost 100 years....

For an example of a "state militia", see the Texas State Guard.

Protect themselves from what? Given the horrid condition of most state budgets, I'd say the states need to be protected from their own legislatures and governors. Don't need troops to do that, just voters who pay attention.

@user4012: However funny it may be that some shared that thinking, the source you quote in your linked answer strikes me as an NRA affiliated site, bringing me straight back to it being a misconception. Besides my not being enthusiastic to trust such a source to report anything correctly, I can't help but note it's probably cherry picking quotes - to say nothing about who it quotes.

@DenisdeBernardy - ah. So... any fact that proves you wrong is ignored (hint: you didn't question the quotes. You questioned the site that collected them, without expending a single effort proving that that site had ever had a single misattributed quote in general, never mind the ones I listed). Discussing anything rationally with a lefties seems useless, as usual. Logical fallacy upon logical fallacy.

@user4012: No, I take it the quotes are technically correct and fact checked. I'm merely questioning - and indeed doubting - that they're representative to begin with, or put in the right context. At any rate I've no stake in this, I'm merely eating popcorn watching the lunacy of US democracy slowly disintegrating before my eyes from across the pond. Which I find, as your president reportedly writes all too often, sad.

I don't know where you get the idea that the 2nd amendment is to protect citizens from tyranny. It's to protect the federal government from insurrection because there was no intent to keep a standing army. Many countries in the 1700s did not keep a standing army.

@corsiKa: Per the comment thread above, it's because the NRA has been doing a great job in the past couple of decades. In other news, gun ownership has become a political statement to a degree that Remington recently went bankrupt. (Because sales plunged after Trump replaced Obama.)

@corsiKa: If you genuinely have "no idea" where I could be getting this from, see e.g. here: "the Amendment was easily accepted because of widespread agreement that the federal government should not have the power to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms, any more than it should have the power to abridge the freedom of speech or prohibit the free exercise of religion." How you interpret this to mean the amendment "is to protect the federal government from insurrection" is quite intriguing.

@corsiKa: Also note that you utterly misrepresented what I said; I said it's to protect states from tyranny by the federal government, not "protect citizens from tyranny" like you wrote. And if you still have no idea where this idea comes from, read the second amendment. It literally says A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." How you interpret this to mean the 2nd amendment is there to "protect the federal government from insurrection" is also quite intriguing.

@Mehrdad State in that context does not mean "one of the united states" it means "nation" ala city-state or nation-state.

@corsiKa: I don't know where you're pulling this random stuff from but you're definitely gonna need a citation for that. I've provided you enough on my end already (though you apparently just completely ignored it). That's not how I see the word "State" used in the constitution. "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States....", etc.

There is no authoritative law providing that the Second Amendment may actually be used to protect people or a state from federal government tyranny. Indeed, the case law where people have purported to do this is decisively against such an interpretation.

@ohwilleke - was there a precedent that ruled that the government in that precedent was a "tyranny"? (I'll leave aside the more important political point that 2d am isn't meant for legal arena, but when legal arena fails)

Please understand that the U.S. Civil War put an end to the idea that a state has the right to seceed from the union, and any reason that could possibly justify using military power to defend a state from the federal government would require secession. Even those states like Texas who theoretically preserve the right of secession in their state constitution can no longer seceed for any practical purpose. Besides, the question is moot. No state save (maybe...) Texas and California could sustain state militias that could stand against the U.S. military.

Where did you get the idea idea that the purpose of the National Guard was to defend against the federal government?

@user4012 You are confusing the purpose of the second amendment with the purpose of the National Guard. The question you linked to is about the 2nd amendment.

@ohwilleke - might want to read up on the Battle of Athens, Tenn. and Wounded Knee ...

@Mehrdad corsiKa is correct. see volokh.com/posts/1181941233.shtml

statehood in the 18th century pretty much exclusively referred to entire nation states

the notion of a state concept like Alabama-as-a-state or New York-as-a-state within a country was novel. The founders borrowed from the already common method for localized rule of provinces or counties, and modified that to fit their desire for a nation with a federal government that would not descend so easily into tyranny or despotism

@JBH it depends on if California retains ownership of all the military resources within its borders when it secedes...

@TylerH Not quite. California may believe or claim that it retains ownership, but it's assuming a LOT that the military personnel on the grounds would agree with California. In fact, the military today moves soldiers to not-hometown-states for this very reason. A policy that's been in place since the Civil War, if I recall correctly.

@TylerH Further, while it's true on a world-basis that statehood was seen from a nation-state point of view, the U.S. states at that time honestly believed they could seceed whenever they wanted to. It's one of the many reasons the Civil War was fought. The historian Shelby Foote noted a truism about this: before the Civil War we said, "the United States are...," after the Civil War we say "the United States is...," that's what the war did for/to us, it changed us from an "are" to an "is."