What did the Founders mean...

[MedusaX]

7. History is filled with examples of people oppressed by Leaders who abuse their power

IMO......

This Democracy and Bill of Rights was considered an experiment...
As with any experiment, there is always risk of failure.

History suggests that it is not uncommon for a ruling figure to use the might and force of the soldiers under his control to carry out acts of oppression & violence against the people.

A right to bear arms was expressly given to the American people in order to accomplish 2 things:
1. Serve as a deterrent for those Presidents who might consider abusing their powers to oppress the citizens they were elected to serve....

2. Empower the American people with the means necessary to defend themselves & their Constitutional rights from being oppressed (or eliminated) by a corrupt power abusing government.

Hence, the military exists to defend our "experiment" from foreign attackers and the 2nd amendment exists so that, should the need arise, an ad hoc citizens' group can defend our "experiment" from a corrupt Administration.


>snip<
Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion,
that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession,
than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors.
Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it."
By James Madison in New York Packet, Tuesday, January 29, 1788 (excerpted from Federalist #46)