The Real Threat to Second Amendment Values Isn't the Assault Weapon Ban:

[struggle4progress]

It's Rumsfeld's Standing Army
By MICHAEL C. DORF
Wednesday, May. 14, 2003

<snip> The real danger comes from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's efforts to build a military that is largely disconnected from the ordinary citizenry. For whether or not the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess firearms, there is little doubt that its main original purpose was to counter the rise of just such a "standing army"--armed forces that would operate largely on their own, independent of the American public's will. <snip>

A "standing" army, as the term suggests, consists of full-time soldiers--whether volunteers, conscripts or foreign mercenaries. Late eighteenth century Americans feared standing armies because they thought such bodies corrosive of republican government. A ruler backed by a standing army, they feared, could act tyrannically, as his power would not depend on the consent of the governed.

Militias drawn from the ordinary citizenry at a moment's notice--think of the Minutemen summoned by Paul Revere--were different. Unlike standing armies, militias did not owe their livelihood to the central government, and they typically fought at or near their homes. Militias, it was believed, would defend rather than oppress the people. <snip>

The Second Amendment partly addressed this concern by prohibiting Congressional abolition of the state militias. Continued existence of state militias would mean both that Congress would have less need to rely upon the standing army and that, should the standing army be used as an agent of domestic oppression, the people could resist militarily through their state militias. <snip>

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20030514.html