Second Amendment is About Self-Defense...against tyranny or foreign invaders.

What the Second Amendment really is about is insurance.  It is the most valuable insurance clause on the planet. It says that if you attempt to invade us, you will you have a big problem with an armed citizenry.  Take a look at the historical example with Japan and their likely fears of what would happen if they invaded the mainland of the United States (assuming they could ever had overcome the logistical and troop number problems).

Our troops in Okinawa, Japan on the eve of a main island invasion had to worry too but about a different armed citizenry.  The emperor was telling his subjects that they would be killed by the American invaders and to use pitchforks, shovels or whatever they had to defend themselves. Previously, before they were backed into the corner of what was remaining of their empire, the Japanese military knew better than to invade the west coast.  They would have had to worry about firearms hidden behind every door. America’s love, obsession, respect, or fetishism with firearms is a great warning sign to any potential invaders: Have gun, will travel….so you shouldn’t.

The self-defense concept within the Second Amendment also applies to our own government. It is an insurance policy making martial law or tyranny very unlikely. Of course, an armed militia of citizens can also lead to tyranny of the majority or mob rule, so we have a very delicate balance.  

Could “Self-Defense” Be Banned by a Legislature? (Second Amendment is Not Self Defense Right or the Right to Bear Sporting Goods)

The second amendment is not about a right to self-defense and is not a right to keep and bear sporting goods, i.e., guns for hunting.  With that as a premise, could a state ban “self-defense. The right to self-defense isn’t in the constitution. It is a creature of statute.  In the Oregon Revised Statutes a person has the right to use the reasonable degree of force they reasonably believe necessary to stop or prevent imminent unlawful force of another.  So, what if that statute was removed from the books?  Absent jury nullification, could a person be successfully prosecuted for assaulting her attacker in self-defense?   Or does a person have an inalienable right to self-defense in certain circumstances?

Self-Defense not in Constitution because it’s a natural right

If a legislature chose to remove that defense from the statutes, would we still have that right? Is that “right” included under the "penumbra" of rights that liberal judicial activists have created or is it something that transcends the “penumbra” and is an innate human right?  Or is that what judicial activists were actually saying regarding the “penumbra”--  that there are certain things the government can’t outlaw due to natural rights, i.e., a women’s right over her body (abortion), and, in this hypothetical, the right to self-defense.

What’s on your mind?

Some prosecutors mislead jurors into concluding that how a defendant feels emotionally at the time of the assault/self-defense claim is also a factor to their “state of mind” for self-defense. For instance, I have heard them argue to jurors that if someone is angry or acting out of anger that means they weren’t truly afraid and trying to defend themselves.  That simply is not true.  Anger and fear are not mutually exclusive and many anthropologists, psychologists, or evolutionary biologists will tell you that both emotions probably evolved from common stimuli.