17 Jan 2013 11:31 am
Right, but that's all we had, because we had no standing army at the time that the Bill of Rights was adopted. Most of the Continental Army was disbanded in 1783 and the Legion of the United States which was the foundation of the United States Army wasn't established until 1792, a year after the Bill of Rights was adopted. So we had to have private armed citizens to provide defense and defend public safety. I found the part about the Shay's Rebellion very interesting. I remember learning about it (what seems like 100 years ago) but I couldn't have told you what it was about until I read that article, and did a little research on it. A lot of people say that the Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms in case we have to rebel against a tyrannical government, yet the article says that the Founders framed the Constitution in part as a response to the danger posed by the Shay's Rebellion, which was a revolt against what was considered by some to be harsh government policies. Another good point was that if the Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms in case we have to rebel against a tyrannical government, they would have repealed the Constitution's treason clause, which defines treason as taking up arms against the government. There's a section on the Shay's Rebellion Wikipedia page about the impact it had on the framing of the Constitution.http://en.wikipedia....hays'_Rebellion You may be better served reading the actual words of our founders rather than a progressive blog....just sayin'.