[MT2008]

One thing that I will say in closing: I struggle at times with the thought that not all societies or all peoples deserve the right to bear arms, or indeed, to live in a free society. To cite the obvious example that Nyles mentioned earlier: Afghanistan is a very good example of a country that, frankly, is incapable of achieving a cohesive nation-state, let alone a free society (and I do not regard a failed state as synonymous with a "free" society). Individual Afghans might be worthy of such freedoms, but collectively, Afghans have demonstrated that they are not committed to the principles that are required to live in a free and open society - they value tribalism and theocracy over individual liberty and human rights. A society like that doesn't benefit from having an armed population - on the contrary, firearms only become a tool to enforce tyranny at the individual and societal level. So, I don't agree with the ostensible sentiments of America's 2A community that an "armed society is a polite society" - or even a free one as we conceptualize it. In order for the right to bear arms to serve as a means to preserve a free society, a population must have a shared commitment to the values of a liberal democratic republic - without that, there's no free society to defend. Even then, the right to bear arms must be seen as a means of last resort to preserve that society.

What keeps me up at night is that I'm no longer so sure that a sizeable plurality of Americans on either the left or right are committed to the values on which this country was founded, and I think that an argument could be made that if we slide too far into radicalism, we are no longer deserving of a right to bear arms because we're no longer committed to the general concept of a free society. Sadly, I think that our federal government now feels the same way, which is why it sees its role as protecting Americans from themselves and is thus more willing to infringe on the 2nd Amendment. I don't exactly support this (quite the contrary), but I have some empathy for the notion that in a democracy, we get the government we deserve.