The Second Amendment does not Protect Against Oppressive Government

With regards to your opening statement for R2, how else could the Second Amendment protect against oppressive government if revolution was not on the agenda? In your counterargument, could you please explain how else it could protect against oppressive government short of either a revolution, insurrection or the threat of one. Rebuttals '...back in the early 1800s an armed American populace would be very much be able to defend themselves against their national government.' That is only because the US Army was virtually non-existent. Of course a revolution could have taken place at that time, especially given the enormous upheavals going on in Europe. But the government was still rather revolutionary at that point. Monroe's presidency caused the US to mature considerably as a country, undertaking the change from a virtually provisional revolutionary government into a proper nation state. After the fiasco that was the War of 1812, the government underwent a vigorous reorganisation, centralising power in the government, buying unneeded weapons from the French Army, which under the 1815 Treaty of Paris was now severely limited in terms of number, and basing the military doctrine on the Prussian Army. The Federal Government at the time of President Jackson was far more streamlined and dominant than it was under any of his predecessors, and the USA could function as a state independent of French and Spanish assistance. By this time, the army was much better organised, and could easily suppress any revolutionary sentiments left among the population. In the early 1800s, the US people were still drunk on the victories of the revolution, and the War of 1812 made the government realise that it could not remain a libertarian revolutionary state forever, as a libertarian state is a weak state, open to foreign interference, such as monopolising trade into and out of North America, introducing trade embargoes on US traffic to and from Europe, or sacking Washington DC and burning the White House. The introduction of Big Government reforms, which you say the Bill of Rights was introduced to stop, actually saved the USA from a repeat of the War of 1812, only this time by a Britain that wasn't preoccupied with Napoleon. 'This complete argument is not valid because you are not relating these events in a chronological order in which they occurred in history. For example, the British began colonizing America in the early 1700s.' Colonisation of the Americas by Britain officially started with the founding of the Virginia Company in 1606, though a small colony had been established in 1586. Colonization by the French started as early as 1524, when the explorers da Verrazano and Cartier were sent to find passages to the Pacific through the Americas. Admittedly, most colonies established by the French failed when they were either cut off from supplies, suffered an outbreak of a disease or were attacked by natives (see a trend developing?). It begins even earlier than that if you count Spanish colonisation, which began almost immediately after Columbus landed at Guanahani in 1492, where he established a colony, and serious territorial expansion was evident with both the conquest of Cuba in 1511 and the conquest of the Aztec Empire, which was essentially the area between Nevada and Columbia, in 1518. Colonial expansion had been a prevalent theme in European countries since Columbus' expedition was authorised by the Spanish crown, in late C15, by the French in early C16 and the British in late C16, not early C18. The eighteenth century was the period which saw the balance of power in the New World shift from France and Spain to Britain, which is why there is much more documentation of it in that century. ' The Manifest Dynasty occurred in 1844.... Thus these, among other inadequate parallels don't seem to prove that the American intentions since the start of the war was to move west.' The Manifest Destiny was a final push initiated by the US government to justify expanding all the way to the Pacific, as well as annexing Mexican territories in the South West by claiming that it was the will of God to dispossess Native Americans of their ancestors' land, and to control areas that were not de jure part of the USA's patrimony. As evidenced earlier by the map, two thirds of North America were already colonised by the time of the American Revolution. Admittedly, this was mostly virgin land, inhabited by a few sparse tribes and frontiersmen, but considered colonised nonetheless. The Manifest Destiny was to capture the remaining third, as well as invade northern Mexico, and the Second Amendment was part of the operation to consolidate American possessions in the land that was, in all but practice, theirs. 'Also, the French started their colonization at a very similar time that the British started theirs and once these European nations had established their colonies, the biggest disputes were between boundary lines.' The disputes in Europe were over boundary lines, due to the fact that land was relatively sparse, and monarchs needed somewhere to place their new romanesque palaces and go hunting, but the colonial reason for the Seven Years' War was the fact that France was constricting British expansion west. Not only did France have a line of fortifications stretching from New Orleans to Quebec City, but the tribes in the area preferred French rule, which preserved their autonomy and lands, to British rule, which industrially seized their lands and evicted the residence. This did not present an immediate problem to the British, but the French were thinking long term, and fifty to a hundred years later, the resources of the Thirteen Colonies would dry up due to the influx of immigrants and the growing birth rates, and according to the Malthusian doctrine, the land would lose its appeal, and the immigrants would enter at the French ports and settle in French lands, allowing them to impose whatever conditions upon the Thirteen Colonies they wished. The British wanted to be free to expand as far as nature would permit them, so they simply took over all of the forts and subjected the tribes allied to the French to barbaric atrocities, and either stole their lands and displaced the people, or forced them to become protectorates of the British Crown, and pay taxes to them in exchange for protection. Boundary disputes are for small, valuable areas of land, such as Silesia, Flanders and West Prussia, not for huge swathes of wilderness, as boundary disputes largely arise either from ancient settlements, or from inaccurate map drawing. Neither of these were applicable to the New World, therefore they could not be applied. The casus belli for the French and Indian War, and every other war fought in the New World for that matter, was simply colonial expansion. Argument An instance of the arming of a populace for colonial expansion is the British colonisation of Australia and New Zealand. Australia and New Zealand were British penal colonies at first, and huge ships full of prisoners were brought into the ports, and when they had finished their sentences, they were given weapons and equipment and then sent out into the wilderness. Ex-convicts are the last people a responsible government would give weapons to, as they would no doubt use them irresponsibly, much to the chagrin of the local population. This was employed because the local population were Aboriginal Australians and Maori, and were resistant to the British attempts at colonising their lands. When the natives resisted, they were brutally defeated by the colonists, and their lands confiscated. In New Zealand, the Maori were too fierce for the colonists alone, so they formed 'well regulated militias' to subjugate them, leading to the Maori Wars and the eventual conquest of New Zealand. The motive for the colonists to have guns and form militias was hardly to protect against oppressive government, as at that time, there was very little in the way of government in Australia and New Zealand, just colonial authorities and tax collectors, and it actually led to more oppression, as the population with guns and militia oppressed the locals. Another example is the Force Publique in the Belgian Congo Free State from 1885 until 1960. This was a 'well-regulated militia' that consisted of armed natives led by Europeans that had the aim of maintaining order and enforcing quotas on rubber production. They took members of all tribes of the areas, and trained them in the style of European light infantry and police, forming a paramilitary group that committed incredibly harsh atrocities in the region, such as mutilation, summary execution, mass rape, cannibalism and destroying food stores, which caused the population of the Congo to be reduced by roughly seven million people, or fifteen percent, between 1885 and 1924. It also caused tribes that contributed more men to the FP to be loathed by the other tribes, such as the Tutsi and the Hutu, which eventually led to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, due to the vitriol the Tutsi contributions to the FP caused among the Hutu. Other examples can be found in the British and French 'Askari' soldiers, which fulfilled similar roles in their respective empires in Africa. Therefore, the 'well-regulated militia' has had a history of siding with the oppressors, even against their own tribespeople, with members of the FP burning their own villages for refusing to slave on the rubber plantations and killing and maiming the people who used to be their family and friends on orders of the commanders of the 'well-regulated militia'. This is evidence that not only does the establishment of a 'well-regulated militia' not protect the people against oppression, it also tends to side with the oppressors, thus leading to more oppression.