The only semi-believable way I can see the individual gun owners in this country actually uniting against a tyrannical government would be if a foreign power occupied the United States.
Uniting against a foreign tyranny? That I could see happening.
This is a distinction that is lost on people. For some reason when people join the military they are seen as something else. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are citizens. Why would we attack our families and friends? Our loyalties lie to defending the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Since what constitutes an enemy is a matter of debate, the armed forces would fracture much the same way that the citizenry would.
If anything, when the chips are down most of us will recognize something worth fighting for and we’ll join the citizens in opposition of “tyranny”, which, while it cannot be appropriately be defined, can be encompassed in a famous statement by Justice Potter Stewart who said (admittedly about obscenity, but nevertheless relevant here) “I know it when I see it”.
It is relevant, but not in the way you think. You might find that tyranny, like obscenity, is in the eye of the beholder.
I addressed that in the first part of the post.
I might buy that our soldiers would not fire on American citizens, if it were as simple as that. Would they fire on terrorists? Insurrectionists? Foreign sympathizers? These are probably just a few of the labels that will be applied to your family and friends if they try to oppose the government, but you won’t have to worry about attacking them. You’ll probably be assigned to attack someone else’s family and friends who have been labeled as enemies of the state. Discontents in the service can always be separated and reassigned, something you might have heard about, or even know about personally.
We had to settle this point once (actually more than once), and what is more, those folks needed shooting.
Actually, my great-something uncle only got read out of town. (Shay’s Rebellion.)
Is it the general consensus, then, that the tyranny the 2nd Amendment is designed to combat will most likely be of a local nature, not a national one? I’m having trouble thinking of a violent overthrow of a local government that wouldn’t result in a state’s troops, or even national troops, being brought in for support of the local government.
Unless all the local instances of tyranny happen at once?
e.g. natural disasters, where there may be no nationally coordinated programme of tyranny, but more the total collapse of functioning systems allowing abuses to take place separately but at the same time.
And what would be the reaction of state and national government to localized insurrection? Do you believe they would stand back and let it happen or do you believe, as I do, that national troops would step in? “Well, doing something is better than doing nothing at all!”-is this always true?
The two parts of the OP are:
- Action-Is a successful armed rebellion against tyranny in this country possible, and
- Consequence-What happens afterwards. Is it more, or less, stable? What is put in it’s place, and who exactly gets to decide? If the country is sectioned off, and thus weakened, was the armed rebellion(versus a voter’s rebellion) a good idea in the first place?
Czarcasm, I gave you an example that you seemed to just breeze over.
Tyranny can take many forms, but it is undeniably true that the tyranny of the mob is also to be feared. What is more, the Founders foresaw this, and put into place certain measures to forestall this.
One of them was the Second Amendment, which would enable a homeowner in the event of a natural disaster to protect his home against looters.
Now, you talk about people uniting - well, I’ve never seen the gun rights movement (which squabbles as much as any other movement) unite in anger like they did over the New Orleans disarmament situation - and I’ve never seen gun owners support a measure with more enthusiasm than they did the Vitter Amendment. Whatever people feel about guns as moderates or conservatives, I think there is general agreement that if there is a right to own guns, there is a right to have them available in an emergency when police and other first responders may be overwhelmed or completely absent.
I’d like to know your feeling on that particular subject, You said in the other thread that you don’t want guns to disappear - I take you at your word on that. But you haven’t been clear in spelling out what you do favor, apart from, it seems, elimination of state gun laws in favor of federal ones.
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Yes.
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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” - JFK
You keep coming back to “What replaces the system?” The simple answer is “The System.” I few armed rebelliob as an angioplasty, which restores the heart to working order. You view armed rebellion as a transplant. The answer to all of your questions is “It depends.” Since the situation has never gotten that far, all speculation is bullshit. Garbage in, garbage out. No parameters to work from. When the situation gets to that point, ask me again.
Pertaining to #2: The situation has gotten that far-in other countries. Can we not use them as examples?
I would second that question and ask another one: the situation has once gotten that far in your own country (that is, the US), and local militias did not suffice to prevent “tyranny” (whatever that is; some people here seem to take a rather expansive view of the term): in the very Revolution that made it possible to write your constitution, the well-constituted militias (and compared to what exists today, this was a well-constituted militia, training regularly) alone were patently insufficient to defeat the British. It took foreign support and extensive military training – and that in a situation were the arms on both sides were essentially equal, without the British military having the kind of firepower edge that today’s armies would have.
This is Czarcasm’s thread, so I hesitate to open different lines of approaching the problem, but to apply the 2nd Amendment to “mob tyranny” seems off-base. The amendment specifies three things: a) a militia is necessary b) it’s necessary to the security of a free state and c) the right to bear arms shall not be infringed; but note that it’s the free state’s security that is the matter here, not the individual’s security within that state.
That is what the whole debate is about. A lot of us have a differing opinion.
Were any of those countries the United States, with our unique background, makeup and history? Then no, not really. Any conclusions reached would be iffy at best, from either side of the argument.
Now that’s really helpful. You’ve probably not exactly understood what I was saying, since you claim that this was already what the debate was about (although Czarcasm has already admitted that this reading of the amendment would be one he could see as being valid). What you’ve been discussing here is the question of armed rebellion against the government of the nation, or the state, as the founders formulated it. The security of the state, however, is not threatened by a tyrannical government. I would suggest that you are reading “being necessary for the liberty of citizens thereof” into the amendment – but that’s not in there. How do you reconcile your reading of the amendment with the words of the amendment, without torturing the meanings of “state” and “security”, and even of “of”?
Edit: I saw too late the follow-up on Czarcasm’s question about examples. Note the example of the pre-Revolutionary militias and their success in dealing with tyranny. Please, because I’d hate to have it typed up without even getting a casual dismissal.
The USA already overthrew a tyrannical government and established a true republic. We did it once; we could do it again.
A better plan would be not to let it get that far. If they come after our rights and can’t be persuaded, we shoot them. That’s why we need guns; that’s why we need the Second Amendment.
Or something like that.
Regards,
Shodan
What part of “free” are you missing?
As for your example of the Revolutionary War…so what? Yes, it took outside help to effect a revolution that broke us free from another nation, whose rulers were far from our shores. Exactly how does that apply here? In any case, as was noted earlier in this thread