Is the Second Amendment obsolete?

Many anti gun people are saying that the Second Amendment IS obsolete and should be abolished. They see the Second Amendment as a relic guarantee for ancient Americans of the 1700's to maintain the ability to take up arms against their new fledgling government if it were to breakdown and become tyrannical. But now, in the age of tanks and fighter aircraft, taking up arms against the government is impossible. They would also argue that in this day and age there would never be a need to take up arms against the government anyway.

Would the founding fathers think that we have achieved a civilization threshold where the citizens no long "need" to retain the right to bear arms? Would they think that the Second Amendment has served its purpose and was now a right that does more harm than good? Would they believe that since we no longer live in fear of a tyrannical government we should abolish the right to bear arms?

I doubt it. Our forefathers had forethought. They did not think in JUST the present. Sure, we don't have to fear a dictatorship, but just because we elect our officials and therefore can wage revolutionary war via the ballot box does not mean that our government can’t be tyrannical. We have traded our 1 tyrant dictatorship under the rule of King George of England in 1776 for a 537 member elected republic that we live in today. But it is not impossible for that to turn into a government of 537 tyrants. Maybe its impossible to happen overnight, but not over time.

Just because we live in a America with lots of freedoms NOW does NOT mean that will be true in the future. It SEEMS impossible that America could be anything but free. But what if, over time, our liberties are eroded bit by bit, year by year, so minutely that we don't even notice it? What if our liberties are slowly eroded over GENERATIONS of time? What if we allow freedoms that we may not think are necessary now to be taken away by the government and those freedoms become VITAL in the future? We should not be so hasty to throw away freedoms we have no matter how we feel about them now because once we give up a freedom, it’s gone forever. A freedom perceived as unnecessary and given up today could be a VITAL freedom STOLEN from our generations' children of the future.

Besides all this, the anti-gun people are wrong to assume that the right to bear arms was solely to take up arms against the government. Sure, it was A reason, but not the ONLY reason. Self protection was also a concern for the drafters of the Constitution. The forefathers knew that the people of this nation cannot rely on the government to protect them from the criminal element. So, in this respect alone the Second Amendment is definitely NOT obsolete.