If you pay attention to the debate over gun control for more than about 45 seconds, you’ll hear all kinds of rights that the 2nd Amendment was designed to protect. The right to self defense. The right to hunt. A “well regulated militia.” The right to be free from tyranny. Historically, I believe that it’s fairly obvious that the predominant motivation behind passage of the 2nd Amendment was to protect the rights of the people to defend themselves against tyranny. But I believe the deeper reason that the public insisted upon the right to keep and bear arms when the Constitution was first ratified was that the people understood the importance of a diffusion of power.

Consider the structure of the government established by the Constitution. Three branches of government. One branch (legislative) was divided into two parts. Neither chamber can pass a law without a majority of the other. Even then, the President (executive branch) can shoot it down with a veto. But it doesn’t end there: the legislature can shoot down the shoot down with a 2/3 majority.

But neither the legislature nor the President was empowered to interpret the laws they passed and signed. That was given to the courts (judicial branch).

Consider further the legislative branch. The nation as a whole cannot elect any member of the House or Senate. For the House, not even a single state can, as a whole, elect a member of the House (except in those states having such small populations that they only get one House member).

The judiciary, intended to be the weakest branch, was guaranteed life appointments without any pay decreases simply to prevent the other branches from abusing their power by threatening judges.

And even the federal government established by the Constitution shared power with the States.

It’s like the Framers went around saying, “A wee bit of power here. A wee bit of power there. One more wee bit over there. Nope, that’s too much. Give me 1/2 of that back…” (I think that’s probably how Madison and Jefferson talked.) Every decision seems based on the premise that power must be diffused and not consolidated.

And that’s all in the body of the Constitution–not the amendments. When the general public saw how the new government would be structured, they demanded the Bill of Rights (admittedly, I’m abbreviating the history here). They wanted these 10 amendments because the body of the original Constitution did not sufficiently prohibit the exercise of certain powers. If you look at most of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights, they are mostly statements of things that the federal government can NOT do. The whole Constitution, and the story of how it came to be the preeminent law of the land, is obsessed with the diffusion of power.

Power corrupts. No one is immune. Not Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, Bush, or Obama. At the time of the original ratification of the Constitution, the people recognized the value in giving some power to a centralized government. But the 2nd Amendment is their way of saying, “Be careful with that power, Jack, ’cause I got a gun with some power, too.”

Thomas Jefferson famously said, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing…” Reading this statement in its context (a letter to Madison, with the conspicuous omission of any use of the phrase “wee bit”), Jefferson even advocated that unsuccessful rebels should be punished mildly, “as not to discourage them too much.”

So, what is the 2nd Amendment really about? It’s about the diffusion of power. Reserving the power to the people to defend themselves against a government that falls prey to the corruption of power.

Of course, while we aren’t using our guns to fight tyranny, we can be busy hunting and defending ourselves from crooks.

A final point: I am not advocating violent rebellion, even against the obvious corruption in our government (and I’m not just saying that to avoid the wrath of Janet Napolitano). The problem–which should be painfully obvious to anyone but Piers Morgan–is that if we surrender our guns while we don’t see the need to resort to violent rebellion, it’s unlikely that a future tyrant will respond favorably to, “Excuse me, Mr. Tyrant, may I, umm, please have my gun back? I, umm, well, I’m not sure how to say this. [nervous laugh] Um, well, I guess I need to ummm [clear throat], well, okay, I guess I should just say it: [long pause for courage] I need to shoot you.”

A final point (sorry, I typed this in pen, so I can’t just erase the prior “final point”): one of the terrible things we are witnessing now is the consolidation of vast power in non-governmental places, i.e., corporations. I’m not a vicious anti-corporation zealot. Not all corporations are evil (actually, no corporation is evil. Some people who run corporations are evil). But some of them have acquired such massive power that they could not help but to be corrupted. Corporate powers and governmental powers (both parties) often forge unholy alliances. If that’s not power run amok, for which we all need some capacity to enforce our own rights, I don’t know what is.

Tell me where I’m wrong. Seriously, I mean that. Talk to me.