Those people aren't the lowest except in pay. Those people are the engineers, the teachers, and the administrators. They execute actual functions that directly benefit society. These are the people that prevent crime through their support of the community. It's like calling the foundation of a building the lowest function of a building. That may be true on the surface, but the metaphor quickly breaks down.

There is another lowest of the low in government that does little in the way of support, unless you're one of the elite. The lowest rung of the government ladder are the people whose job it is to punitively punish people for breaking the laws. They do not prevent any crimes, and the courts have ruled that they are shielded from any responsibility in that regard. They protect inequity between the rich and the poor. They are trained to discriminate and profile. Their very fraternity is rooted in tribal exclusion, us vs. them. They even desecrate the national flag as a symbol of that fraternity. Sometimes that insult even gets worn as part of their official uniform. They restrict and opress rights granted by the law at the whim of politics and oligarchs. They are licensed to murder, with immunity from responsibility. They are encouraged to remain ignorant of the laws that they are tasked with enforcing and they wear that ignorance as a legal shield against consequence and accountability. And yet these gangs of murderous thugs are routinely paid better than any of the others. They are called heroes when they do the bare minimum. They are applauded for showing the bare minimum of humanity.

If this government were a family with the state and federal administration as the parents, then the teachers/engineers/administrators would be the older siblings, aunts, and uncles. The police would rule that house through fear like a toddler on a sugar high with a gun. Occasionally that toddler may shit itself, steal from the cookie jar, or murder a loved one. But all is quickly forgiven because after all they are a only toddler.

they're not officials

or if they are willing to insist that they thought so, and testify to it in court.

I am an American "person of color" who owns firearms (at home; I live in the Netherlands currently).

Here's the exact verbiage of the 2nd Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Interpret that as thou wilt; we've been arguing about it since about 1791.

For what it's worth, I'd amend the amendment to include this snippet from Marx, just to confuse us all even more:

Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

Nope. That’s not what it meant and that’s not what the courts have determined that it meant.

What’s more, my state constitution explicitly grants gun ownership for self defense while simultaneously and explicitly banning membership in any private militia.

So no militia for me. Nice try though.

Yes, that's correct. A standing army in peacetime was not only something that the founders feared, they explicitly put a two year cap on the appropriations needed to fund it. Obviously that's been ignored since before the ink dried.

The second amendment was written because Patrick Henry was scared of slave rebellions. He was trying to drrail the ratification of the constitution. The argument was that if the federal army was away then nobody would be around to save the slave owners from their deserved fate. Thus Madison creates the second amendment to ensure states have the right to have local militias. The whole idea is for state militias to be in addition to the federal army.

I think it was more that if both the populace and the military have muskets it’d be hard to oppress the populace through force. Doesn’t really hold up though when the populace has small arms and the military can press a button and delete your city block.

"swear off" vs "wanting the most basic of testing so mentally unstable people don't get to browse their local shops like a kid in a candy store"

You: "they are the same picture"

😑