Salon Mocks Idea Founding Fathers Intended Armed Citizenry as a Check on Government

From Breitbart's Big Journalism:

On September 14, Salon ran a column attempting to discredit numerous aspects of America’s gun heritage, especially the contention that our Founding Fathers intended an armed citizenry to be a check against a tyrannical government.
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What Salon failed to do was deal with numerous other statements on gun ownership set forth by other Founding Fathers, and none more clearly than James Madison–the author of the Constitution.

In Federalist 46, Madison described “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.” He showed that an armed society was part of an enlightened one, and that it was so because the citizens thereof had the ability to defend themselves against government tyranny and overreach.

Madison explained that in instances where a central government became tyrannical, an armed citizenry–together with “subordinate governments to which the people are attached”–provided a framework in which the people could rally to defend their lives and liberty. The people wound band together in “militias”–officers being “appointed” by those local, “subordinate governments,”and their banding together would be meaningful because the people were armed.

Note: it is the private possession of firearms that makes banding together forceful. This is why Madison lauded Americans’ “advantage of being armed.”

Wow, I'm shocked that a liberal rag would put out such false information.