Quote Originally Posted by Xei View Post

As a side note: can the US really be said to have a 'well regulated militia' in the first place..?
Yes we can say that, in fact the Minutemen are a famous example. In the early days of the revolution there wasn't much of an army, the vast majority were militiamen and most of them only had the equipment they brought them self. The basic idea of that time was that if everyone had guns they could all join up into a militia to fight. If individuals didn't have guns they couldn't create a militia because they wouldn't have any guns at all, since all the equipment is what the individuals brought.

The realistic scenario of what would happen is if the government became evil is that everyone would join up with their firearms to create an army. Hopefully some of the military would join them, and even in the revolutionary war they did eventually raise an actual army. So you would have the normal military plus the irregulars formed by every day citizens with their firearms.

Now a militia vs the US government would be a one side fight and the militia wouldn't stand that much of a chance. However if you have faction of the US army backed by militiamen fighting another faction of the US army, then the militia may have a real impact on deciding the outcome of the war. Which is what the militia did back during the revolutionary wary, they played a critical role in prolonging the war long enough for us to organize a real army, without the support of civilians with firearms we would of lost the war.

The founding fathers recognized that, and so put that into the bill of rights. The reason they mentioned militia is so that people remember how critical they were to winning the war, and would thus remember why it is so important to be armed.