• Aganim@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I’m not American, so I could be wrong, but wasn’t it something about a well-regulated militia?

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It was, those three words aren’t there by mistake.

      Standing domestic armies were controversial at the time. They needed a way if a state was a facing a crisis it could grab a bunch of armed citizens, declare it a militia, and deal with the issue. Most of the signers were lawyers and they knew that there had to be a legally established procedure for this.

      This is me being nice to them btw the issue was slavery and the fear of slave revolts.

      And a few decades ago it got reimagined as a civil liberty. Which is clear from the text that it is not and is clear from the debates around the amendment at the time.