Here is the 2nd Amendment, it’s pretty short.

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.

Most gun owners I have talked to usually leave off the first part and invoke the 2nd Amendment as a “right to defend oneself” which is not the case. But that is understandable. Who wants to put in the work of joining a militia these days… all those meetings.

But the well researched and educated gun owners I talk to also are missing the point. Taking it one step back, the intent of the 2nd Amendment is to allow the citizenry to be a check on the other branches of government. In 1791, that check meant arming the citizens with rifles and muskets. Those were the effective tools of the revolution back then. But since we started rolling tanks, bombers, and aircraft carries off the assembly lines, the citizens ability to match power with our potentially “tyrannical” government is nil. With a literal reading of the 2nd Amendment, it’s clear it has lost it’s teeth.

But “arms” can mean many things. Today, in 2012 we have much more effective weapons against our government. The internet. In 2012 our government tried to pass some “tyrannical” legislation in SOPA and PIPA. Did the government listen to us because we have fully loaded assault rifles? No. It was because the citizenry used the internet to lobby and shame the government, and it worked.

The internet is the greatest “arms” we US citizens have and should the Founding Fathers be around today, I think they would recognize this an opt to protect a free internet over guns, which haven’t been effective tools against our government since the Civil War. And in a twisted irony, gun owners are currently using the internet as their most effective weapon in defending their right to own guns. Think of the power our populace would have if these patriots embraced their greatest weapon and we refused to give up our internet until you pry it from our cold, dead hands.