What are you referring to by 1934? The National Firearm Act? Because that's not exactly comparable, being an act of Congress rather than a judgement. As far as I know (but then, I'm no scholar, so I might very well be missing a decision somewhere), it's not like the Supreme Court really ruled one way or another before Heller.
That should actually be 1939, which is my mistake. I was referring to the
United States v. Miller case mentioned in the Cornell link (
for your convenience), which is the oldest court decision I know of that affirms what they call a
collective right to bear arms - that is, in the context of maintaining a "militia" rather than as an individual right without further internal qualification in the same way the 1st amendment is interpreted. But that's putting the cart before the horse. As the guy in the first link argues (
again, for your convenience) such a restrictive interpretation of the amendment is contrary to its obviously intended meaning.
Moving back towards original intentions might not be inherently good though, which is why I wonder if the intention of having a well-armed citizenry has been made obsolete with the defence of the US free state falling to its military, and not its militia. For what it's worth I agree with you, I just think the role of the police and armed forces is neglected in these discussions, especially with the controversial standards of US police dealing with unarmed citizenry vs armed citizenry, while the intention of US militia holding the state to account is somewhat outclassed by all the US soldiers and veterans who wouldn't take kindly to a tyrannical US gov - does the presence of these institutions, which didn't exist to the sheer scale as they did under the revolutionary American gov, not alter this dynamic between citizen and state?
It shouldn't, and if anything an increasingly militarized government and police force shows the foresight of including the 2nd amendment and the importance of protecting it. The US constitution is very much founded on Enlightenment philosophical principles. Central to understanding it are the concepts of the social contract and of checks and balances and the separation of powers. The government as outlined in the constitution is the instrument of the people, which the people surrender some freedoms to in order to allow it to do its job. To maintain the balance, and by extension the social contract, checks against the government's power are created, and authority is distributed between offices in order to prevent the centralization of power - congress passes laws, and controls the executive through power of impeachment and control over appointment of lower executive offices, and the judiciary through approval of appointed judges. The executive is the commander in chief but has no power to declare war (at least in theory, legal fictions have been brewed up since then to
de facto allow it in a limited sense), and has checks on the legislature through veto power, and the judiciary through selection of judges. The judiciary has the power to interpret laws, and has checks against both the legislature and executive through that power (I'm aware of the history behind this, but it's not really relevant here.)
All of these checks are internal to the government though. The Anti-Federalists of the time who opposed the new constitution rightfully recognized this. They also had concerns that the executive was too powerful and would be able to gradually centralize power under itself, and that the judiciary would have too much influence over the legislature. They were actually right about both of those things, the first more than the second, but further amendments to the constitution have helped. Anyway to address Anti-Federalist objections the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, two years after the constitution itself. The purpose of these was, philosophically, much the same as the checks in the original constitution, but this time were intended to define the relationship between the government and the people, rather than the different branches of government. The 1st guarantees a right to free exercise of religion, free press and speech, and free assembly and petition. The second guarantees the right to bear arms. The third prevents congress from passing something like the tyrannical and deeply unpopular Quartering Act imposed just before the Revolution. Amendments 4-8 mainly serve to establish the relationship between the people and the judiciary, protecting against unreasonable search and seizure, ensuring due process, and the like. The 9th declares that there are fundamental rights which are not enumerated in the constitution. The 10th states that powers not explicitly granted to the Federal government are reserved by the people, or the states.
All of these were included because the Anti-Federalists considered them necessary checks against the power of the federal government
by the people, and more importantly they were all
explicitly framed as such when the Bill of Rights was proposed and later ratified. The first half of the second amendment, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," is the reasoning behind the second amendment's inclusion, with "militia" being understood as "the whole of the male citizenry." Framed as a check against the government as all of the others are, it is natural to interpret this as being a check of the people against the government, as indeed it was for nearly 150 years after its adoption, rather than a statement about military strategy and the efficacy of an armed militia against an outside enemy. So "all the US soldiers and veterans who wouldn't take kindly to a tyrannical US gov" you refer to
are the well-regulated militia (or at least its crunchy core) the second amendment exists to ensure the existence and credibility of. If the citizenry are disarmed, they cannot pose a credible threat to a tyrannical government except in the case of a military coup which they may incidentally support, but in which case the people still probably lose out because the people holding the reins after a military coup is successful are professional military officers who don't have any more need to listen to the people than the previous tyrannical government did. And so through the availability of arms the strength of the people is, in theory, assured so that they cannot be governed without their consent.
So yes, the dynamic has changed, but not in a manner that abrogates the value of maintaining a balance of power this way.
Explain to me, again, why we gave up in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Because there wasn't an end goal. We spent a decade (or two) doing peacekeeping, democracy-building silliness that amounted to basically nothing useful.
Hell, if all we did was firebomb it from orbit with drones and just left, that would have been some sort of end goal, disagreeable or otherwise.
Can the end of a civil war that's brought about by turning the entirety of the country outside of the capitol to soot and possibly radioactive ash really said to be a victory? Infrastructure and the means of production need to survive, mostly, for the state to continue to exist, and they need to retain the support of the majority of people to keep that infrastructure running even if an insurrection is put down. That plus the fact that doing stuff like that will invite Bad Stuff from abroad even more than a hypothetical civil war or even insurgency in America would invite by default means that they will need to use discretion. And jet fighters can't stand on a street corner, or man a checkpoint, or conduct no-knock raids to search for contraband, or arrest smugglers. To maintain a police state, you need soldiers and police. And if the military/police must face the reality of bullets coming back at them while enforcing the tyrannical government's wishes, what will that do to their resolve? How will the dynamic of the situation compare to a hypothetical scenario in which all the citizenry has in hand is sticks and harsh language?
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