The moment he said it I had to do a double take, because the loose frame of that argument (2nd amendment is about militias and not a check on government power, because why no private sector nukes or F-15s?) is literally what was being argued by liberals on Digg circa 2007.

It's an old canard. They're trying to make the other side look silly by throwing down an outrageous form of the argument when they don't even understand what they're arguing about. More than anything I think Joe was just trying to soothe his supporters and was giving them something 'easy' to chew on to make them happy. No thought behind it, just a reflex fallback to something he heard before that he thought sounded good.

I was regularly debating the left on Digg back then and it was tedious as hell. Someone making that sort of argument tends to want to fall back on moral superiority - 'your position is so ridiculous, obviously mine is the right one.'

The moment he said it I had to do a double take, because the loose frame of that argument (2nd amendment is about militias and not a check on government power, because why no private sector nukes or F-15s?) is literally what was being argued by liberals on Digg circa 2007.

It's an old canard. They're trying to make the other side look silly by throwing down an outrageous form of the argument when they don't even understand what they're arguing about. More than anything I think Joe was just trying to soothe his supporters and was giving them something 'easy' to chew on to make them happy. No thought behind it, just a reflex fallback to something he heard before that he thought sounded good.

I was regularly debating the left on Digg back then and it was tedious as hell.