Arms against the government

**With every mass shooting we learn that the shooters have arsenals of weapons that they acquired under the Second Amendment:

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. - See more at: http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment2.html#sthash.0SbjNXB5.dpuf

How anyone could read that amendment and justify the accumulation of many weapons requires such an extensive stretch of interpretation that's it's ludicrous. That justification is often cloaked in the assertion that if ordinary citizens aren't allowed to have guns then the "State" would exert oppressive power and eliminate the freedom of citizens. So granting people the right to bear arms would allow them to band together and form "militias," presumably to engage in military combat against an invader. At first glance, it might seem reasonable, especially considering the times during which those words were drafted into law. "Militias," groups of citizens who banded together for defense, were common, especially during the time of the American Revolution against the occupying British. But the world has changed so radically since then that every concept stated in that amendment is obsolete.

Lawyers and scholars may argue the parsing of that brief statement but what strikes me is that the technology of weaponry has developed so much that the idea of defending against an encroaching government through military force is completely unrealistic. How many guns would it take to keep an army, any modern army, from completely overrunning a "people's militia?" More than could be procured from all the gun shows and stores in the country. Witness the ridiculous show of force in Ferguson,

where a few pieces of surplus military equipment were brought out to intimidate the citizenry. It's clear that if a government wanted to attack any group of citizens, it could do it almost instantly. A citizen "militia" is a fantasy that lives only in the imaginations of paranoid people who use it to rationalize the comfort they receive from their collections of weapons.

We have had misguided amendments in the past, most recently the Eighteenth Amendment, or "Prohibition." Thirteen years after its enactment, when wiser heads prevailed, the Twenty First amendment repealed it. Now it's long past time for the antiquated Second Amendment to be repealed, perhaps with a new amendment that specifies exactly who can possess appropriate weapons for personal self defense if they so choose. However such an amendment is phrased it needs to recognize the speciousness of militias in today's world. Perhaps then meaningful legislation to limit the proliferation of guns will ensue and America will join the rest of the world in reducing and eliminating the plague of mass shootings.

Heres a good statement of the issue: http://crooksandliars.com/2015/10/what-if-second-amendment-didnt-exist