The 2nd Amendment is NOT about hunting

"I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms. And we recognize the traditions of gun ownership that passed on from generation to generation—that hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage." -Barack Obama

One of the main misconceptions in the ongoing gun debate is that the 2nd Amendment was installed to protect the rights of hunters and marksmen. It is not surprising that Democrats make that mistake, as they seemingly believe police are capable of protecting you minutes after a crime happens and that if we give big government another try, surely it will be benevolent.

In the wake of the American Revolution and in the early years of the Republic, such things were hardly on the Founders' radar.

The 2nd Amendment was put in place place primarily for one reason, and that was to protect "the people" from tyrannical governments.

The British marches on Lexington and Concord were ordered in order to destroy munitions the colonists were storing in preparation for war. The Founders knew very well that a tyrannical government would not fight a war if it didn't have to, and that their preferred route is to make their targets of oppression helpless by disarming them.

While having the 2nd Amendment protects our right to defend ourselves physically from tyranny, it also serves as a buffer to prevent such things from ever taking place.

One wonders that if more Jews were armed during the Second World War, such as those during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (yesterday marked it's 70th anniversary), perhaps the Holocaust would have been diminished.

The last episode in U.S. history of the people successfully warding off tyranny with the 2nd Amendment was the so-called Battle of Athens in 1946, in which returning veterans put a halt to a grossly corrupt county government overstepping its boundaries.

Here is an excellent, 13 minute short movie of the event: