🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BzG8CM.1rH@exnet.co.uk>, s0rah@exnet.co.uk (R A Hollands) writes:
> You'd know this better than me but doesn't the amendment that grants the 
> right to bear arms say something about a local militis being seen as a 
> necessity "so the right to bear arms shall not be infringed"?  Would you 
> use your crypto-susyem to support your local militia. 

Yes, indeed.  I'm sure you can find people on talk.politics.guns who can 
describe the second amendment and its implications in detail, but briefly 
put, the term "militia" in the second amendment does not refer to the 
military, but to armed individuals--what is now generally called a 
"paramilitary organization".

Remember that at the time, the U.S. had just finished fighting a war of 
rebellion, and the people who wrote the Bill of Rights were intent on making 
sure that the people of the newly-formed USA would be able to counter any 
excesses that their new government might accumulate, including by armed 
rebellion if necessary.  This is why control of weapons is placed into the 
hands of private citizens--it keeps the government from going overboard.
Using crytposystems at a local level to ensure that citizens' lives and 
rights are protected is quite parallel to using firearms to do so.

Now, this right has admittedly been eroded to a great degree in this country, 
as have many of the rest of the Bill of Rights, but the theory is to 
specifically limit the power that the government has over individuals.



Amanda Walker
InterCon Systems Corporation