Right-wing “comedian” Steven Crowder interviewed Religious Right pseudo-historian David Barton for a “masterclass” on the meaning of the Second Amendment, during which Barton insisted that the Second Amendment grants average citizens the right to own tanks or any other weapon of war.
Barton has repeatedly insisted that the Founding Fathers intended for there to be no limits whatsoever on the Second Amendment and that citizens are therefore entitled to own any weapon they might need to fight off a foreign invasion or even their own government, including fighter jets, and he repeated this claim to Crowder.
“The deal was you have a right to defend yourself,” Barton said. “So, the biggest weapon in that day would have been a cannon—hand’s down, a cannon. You’re allowed, as a citizen, to own cannons.”
“Whatever the government had, you could have,” he added, “because we might have to take on the government some day. We hope that never happens, but in case it does, we defend ourselves from anything that comes after us; whether it’s from foreign or domestic, whether it’s a gang, whether it’s a government, whether it’s a crazy uncle, we don’t care. So, for them, there was no limitation on what you could use or how you could defend yourself.”
“They were OK with cannons and that would be our equivalent of high-capacity magazines or machine guns,” Barton insisted, “or it could be equivalent to a tank.”
