An Armed Populace Does Not Guarantee Liberty.

The Second Amendment protects an individual's right to bear arms. It's one of the freedoms guaranteed to Americans in the Bill of Rights. Taken together the first 10 Amendments help to define the liberties we enjoy here in America and to delimit the powers of the government.

One of the claims of Second Amendment supporters is that an armed populace is a check on the government's ability to become a dictatorship. In that view the Second Amendment is an essential protector of the other liberties. Until 2003, Iraq's government was as repressive a dictatorship as any. Yet its population was armed. (Here.)

Clearly something more than an armed population is needed to protect liberty and to keep a government from becoming a dictatorship.

-tdr