Second Amendmnent Remedies

In 2010, Sharron Angle, the Tea Party candidate who won the Republican primary that year in Nevada,  broached the idea, during a radio interview, that the public had the right to bring down an out-of-control Congress with Second Amendment remedies.

Statements like that have contributed to the ever-more-frequent and ever-more horrific mass murders we've lived through since 2010.  Too many people misunderstand the Second Amendment.  They read it as Go out and get the biggest, most bad-ass gun you can find, and feel free to use it to blow away anyone whom you can't convince to agree with you.  That's not what the Framers had in mind.

As a student of language, I pay attention even to small details like punctuation.  In many cases, like The Second Amendment, punctuation can be considered the analog in rhetoric to rhythm or cadence in music. And the Second Amendment is replete with commas.

Its author James Madison, in Federalist 46, explained those marks:  During the ratification debate, many Americans feared that the federal government would become too powerful and too similar to the monarchy in Great Britain. Madison calculated while writing Federalist 46 that the standing military, controlled by the federal government, should be kept under a maximum of 30,000 troop.  Then, the people themselves, working through state governments, could extend efforts to to protect themselves from the the threat that might be posed by a standing arm.  Federalist 46 suggests an aggregate total militia of 500,000.

Here's how Madison described it.

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.

Bold and italics mine.  Madison's concern was the ability of the public to contribute to its own defense and freedom.  He went so far as to say that if  European monarchies / tyrannies had to operate under the conditions prescribed in and for the Second Amendment, they would be speedily overturned.

Sorry, Sharon (and those who agree with her).  The Second Amendment protects the ability of governments. local, state, and federal, to protect the public.  Nothing more.