Many of the gun rights advocates I come across in my readings make a claim that an armed citizenry places a check on oppressive government.  Public officials, they say, including the police, should fear the population, and worry that armed insurrection is possible.  They especially like the Hitler Used Gun Control to Keep Power myth, though the 1938 Waffengesetz arguably loosened gun laws in Germany and facilitated gun ownership.  Government, they suggest, is not an agent of a citizenry acting as a principal and controlling it through participatory democracy.  It instead has its own agency, independent of the will of the people, with interests opposing that of the people.  In this formulation, the purpose of the Second Amendment, is to ensure that citizens have the tools needed to perpetuate this threat, and to carry it out in the event government becomes oppressive, since citizen participation in democratic institutions is not sufficient to direct government action. Read the rest of this entry »

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