You gotta wonder about the gun-grabbers:
However, in recent years, the belief in widespread gun ownership as a defense against tyrannical government has become an alluring idea, gaining traction with members of Congress as well as fringe conspiracy theorists. As Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma put it just last week, “The Second Amendment wasn’t written so you can go hunting, it was to create a force to balance a tyrannical force here.” And if this is insufficiently incendiary, one only need look to the doctrine of the “Three Percenters,” with its ominous warning that “all politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war.”
It is easy to ridicule such rhetoric as just overindulgence in Red Dawn fantasies about resourceful and brave citizens resisting a modern army with nothing more than small arms and their wits. Even individual Americans armed with military-style assault rifles could hardly pose any serious resistance to any future tyrannical central government supported by overwhelmingly powerful military capabilities.
There are two primary pillars to this shaky intellectual edifice. The first is a cottage industry of academics and lawyers who have scoured ancient political tracts and common law to establish that in the distant English past that there was a constitutional right to bear arms as a defense against tyranny. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has given some credence to this view: In his majority opinion for Heller, he asserted that “the Stuart Kings Charles II and James II succeeded in using select militias loyal to them to suppress political dissidents, in part by disarming their opponents.” This line of reasoning ignores the fact that, in 21st century America, the prospect of monarchs and their select militias oppressing the populace is reasonably remote. It also ignores the fact that the common law evolves and is subordinate to acts of the legislature. Other nations built on English common law have all enacted strict regulation of gun ownership, with no perceptible diminution of political liberties.
Odd, I think Red Dawn is nothing but a fun movie to watch, meanwhile this person seems to be fantasizing about being the Russians and the Cubans in that film. He seems pretty excited about the “no perceptible diminution of political liberties” of the English…a nation blanketed by closed-circuit cameras, a police force that doesn’t need to give cause to search your person or your effects, and a nation that essentially has eroded to zero use of self-defense against violence.
And of course that’s “no perceptible diminution of political liberties” from the days when we overthrew the tyrannical English Government! Its not like the upper house of Parliament has any recourse to their voters, and further the nobility aspect of the House of Lords, means that many ethnic and religious groups will NEVER get representation within the government.
The second pillar has fewer scholarly pretensions, but it employs even more historically dubious arguments. It suggests, for example, that the Holocaust could have been avoided if Germany’s miniscule Jewish population had been better armed. It also argues that Ukrainian peasants could have defeated the Stalinist regime, backed by the NKVD and the Red Army, if they had possessed individual firearms. But these counterfactual interpretations of history are wildly speculative — and downright implausible.
Just do some reading on the Warsaw Ghetto, I’ll give you a hint, the uprising was significant, otherwise you wouldn’t have read anything about it. And these were starving people with some of the crudest of weapons. Further they were in an isolated location with no opportunity to retreat and regroup, or ambush.
Also about the Ukrane…well let me ask you, how long was Finland part of the Soviet Union? Further, there are plenty of nations who have had genocidal dictators. Which of those nations who were crushed under the heel of tyranny were allowed access to modern defensive arms?
The article goes on with dubious bits of American history, and crass glorification of government oppression of the people. I don’t think all people who support the current gun control measures as future Pol Pots dreaming of their rein, but I do think that the majority of the people at the tip of the anti-rights spear have that defective mindset. Case and point:
The history of the postbellum South offers another cautionary story of unregulated and extra-legal political violence. The founders of the Ku Klux Klan purported to be defending the rights of the white community against the tyranny of illegitimate Reconstruction governments, black enfranchisement, and federal military occupation. And for several years, the Klan used this rationale to carry out a gruesome campaign of systematic violence, murder, and political intimidation.
And the governments of the southern states were trying so hard to stamp out the Klan, right? Hell the Northern Reconstructions were still so bitter about the events of the Southern Succession they really didn’t much care if the South were killing their own people. Its not like Blacks had the respect in the northern states after emancipation. They were still only allowed to haul our garbage and clean our floors in the north. The Civil Rights Movement in the US was in all the states, not just in the Jim Crow south. We were just find with not OWNING them, it was still taboo to have a dark-skinned family living on your block, or having a black man date your white daughter.
Further people who write crap like this seem to think that the South is some sort of haven for gun ownership. Its only in recent years that many of the Jim Crow gun laws (enforced by the Klan) were repealed. The Anti-Rights movement is really just the modern iteration of the KKK.
War, particularly civil war, is by its nature violent. Official state armies are not immune from the tendency to inflict unjustified violence on civilians. But in America today, this prospect is far more remote, and far less terrifying, than the notion of armed citizens striking out against a perceived enemy, answering to no authority other than their own individual prejudices and passions.
I agree, so quit pushing bullshit, and you have nothing to fear. The LAST thing I want is the nation to be plunged into civil war, but if its the choice between that, and letting statist megalomaniacs have their way with us, which do you think I’d choose?
You can claim that somehow the people support you, but its hard to envision that if you’ve recently attempted to apply for a carry permit, or attempted to buy a gun or ammunition. Further I’m always amazed at people who don’t serve in the military claiming that somehow our government will get loyal troops who without question will follow orders to stomp out people who are simply requesting our government follow their oath to the US Constitution. We’ve already seen multiple police and state governments saying they will not comply with any oppressive federal laws. These aren’t bubba’s acting alone with simple semi-auto guns, but Police and National guard troops with armored vehicles and full-auto weaponry. A new civil war would be even bloodier than the previous one, but the losses will not be one-sided, and I question how many would be willing to fight for the Government against their own friends and neighbors.
Tread with caution!
