Campus Massacre..........

[Benton D Struckcheon]

I've been thinking about this post and think the founders were obviously very smart and social minded characters to limit power of any government perhaps foreseeing the dangers that could come about from the trappings of power - much like a dictatorship in kind.

In contrast I came across this clip which isn't too far from the truth really.

No quarrel with you on that. But the gun guys take this whole thing way way out of context, as if the only amendment that counts is the 2nd. It was just one in a whole fabric meant to limit, more than anything else, Presidential power to make war unilaterally.
The idea that a President would have, at all times, a large standing army at his disposal with a permanent budget was what they were trying to prevent, because they knew we'd end up with what we've had post WWII, the time from which we've had a large and permanent standing army, at first because of the Cold War: none of the wars we've been in since then has had to go through a formal declaration from Congress. Closest we ever got was Iraq, but that was a fait accompli because that overlarge, permanent standing army was already in motion when the Congress voted, making it a political impossibility to turn it back.
Not something that tends to come up at NRA meetings.
No one even knows about the Constitutional requirement that Congress has to vote on an appropriation for an Army once every two years, which also means no one knows the background to it either. But everyone complains the Constitution is going down the tubes. Ignorance on what is really in it and why is what's truly to blame, and that goes for everyone across the political spectrum.
Dictatorship in kind is indeed what we have. We can complain about it here, but we can't stop the NSA (National Security Agency) from snooping on us, to take just one out of a thousand examples of what happens all the time now.
Of course, the NSA does lead the nation in recycling ceiling tiles. That's something.