Do any of you that think you’re protecting the constitution honestly think that you want your guns in order to fight off the government in case they try to do things to you that you dont want them to?
You’re in a real malitia?
You think you have a chance?
First person to reply with a real answer gets a free ham.
On a purely hypothetical level, I think the Army would have trouble. The US is HUGE. The troops would be too spread out to be effective. Look at how the war in Iraq is going. The question is; are there enough delusional paranoids who would be willing to fight and what is the government trying to do that brought the situation to that point.
On a personal level, the only reason I have guns in the house is in case of a break-in. Very unlikely where we live, less so where we lived when we first bought the guns.
I’d like a Smithfield, please.
This question conflates several issues.
I could as well ask, “Do any of you that think you’re protecting the constitution honestly think that you want a free press because you personally will uncover government corruption? Don’t you really just want to look at porn?”
The idea that people have an individual right to keep and bear arms is clearly and explicitly a part of the constitution. Defending that idea is, then, protecting the constitution, regardless of what particular use those arms might be put to.
Bricker: HoneyBaked or Smithfield?
Hint Go with the honeybaked, spiral cut. 
Do you honestly think that if it came to armed conflict, every enlistee, veteran, Reservist, and National Guardsman would all side with the ‘government’?
…implies strongly that they expected the fledgling Constitution, and the government it created, to be tested by fire (power) on a regular basis.
In other news, I think the OP is coyly self-identifying as a ham. No, I don’t want one. Got any bacon?
I think Wisconsin hunters could hold back the Canadian military all by themselves, of course the Canadian military is about as scary as Bob Hope.
Guerrilla warfare is all about small arms, Al-Qaeda doesn’t have tanks.
So, am I the only one who heard the OP title in the voice of Ian McCellan as Magneto?
You know, the day after rememberence day is not a good time to write something like that. In fact no time is a good time to write something like that. You know we have few troops in Afghanistan doing some exemplary work on behalf of the United Nations.
Yeah, I get a bit fed up with the big US dumping heaps of scorn on the Canadian military. 65,000 of those inept, laughable toy soldiers died in The Great War, mostly before the Yanks shouldered their way into the mess and showed how it should be done. Canadians were fighting and dying in 1939 while Americans were dithering about whether Hitler was really as nasty as he seemed.
Canadians are fighting and dying in Afghanistan, silly buggers. Now the big, strapping US military is going to be arriving there in greater numbers. They’ve won the war in Iraq and have time now to show those Taliban guys a thing or two. While there are those who disagree with me, I think it’s time the Canucks came home. They won’t be needed now, obviously.
I never understand these threads. They start off demanding some sort of justification for gun ownership when none is necessary and they devolve from there.
I own guns because I am allowed to, I am exercising a right, and that is all that needs to be said.
I’m Leaffan, and I endorse this post.
A large part of the rhetoric surrounding gun ownership is exactly as the OP described it. Throughout the election, for example, you’d find people on conservative forums arguing that the Second Amendment is the key to all the others because without it the government would take away all the other rights. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen similar arguments in this very message board from the likes of Weirddave et al. A large part of the discourse on gun ownership is centered around this notion that widespread private ownership of guns defends the Constitution in a very literal way.
I’m not arguing about the truth or falsity of that notion, but you cannot brush away the OP like that. He is asking a legitimate question about one of the core defenses of widespread private gun ownership. There are people who own guns and embrace the Second Amendment without buying that justification, but you cannot pretend it isn’t a big part of the discourse.
Honestly I don’t think private gun owners would stand a chance against the Armed Forces in full on battle.
Where’d they be useful is sniping. Even then there’s counter measures to that, but take out a key general or rogue president and it’s chaos. Convince soldiers to defect to your side (which most of them prolly would if the government deteriorated that much) and bring equipment and you might have a shot, if the rogue government doesn’t nuke you, carpet bomb you, or in any way use air power, and you can procure fuel and ammunition.
Tanks are gas hogs!
In other words they’d have a slim chance but it’d mostly come from soldiers defecting and captured equipment (including jets). Not private arms (although those would be quite helpful jump starting the revolt, but standard hunting gear (including bows and arrows) would work just as well for that. Maybe more so. The trick would be using them and to win defectors to your side with bravery and perceived righteousness not win battles).
Historically that was the case with the American Revolution. The American army of the time was very poorly equipped. It was only by winning a few battles that we gained supplies from France and Spain. It was by our treatment of a captured British army (treating them without abuse and releasing them back to England with the promise the POWs wouldn’t be used in another North American war) that we convinced the British folk we weren’t so bad and deserved our freedom. That eroded British public support for the war so bad the British government had to let us be or face a revolt at home. The choices for the elected parliament insured the government complied.
I highly recommend reading Those Damned Rebels: The American Revolution as Seen Through British Eyes by Michael Pearson. Your local library may have a copy (if you’re American). It really puts the Revolutionary war in a different perspective.
tl;dr private arms may help but what won the last successful revolt wasn’t the force of the rebel army so much but it’s image and how it built on it.
As for this:
There’s a false premise. I’m protecting the Constitution in peacetime by my respect of the Bill of Rights. This means as I support the right to say things I find abhorrent, because that’s their right and it’d be truly abhorrent to not let someone speak their mind how ever vile it may be. Also the right of the people to bear arms even though it may make my life unsafer.
To a none American the thing you should understand about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is we have a strong belief in it. It’s just a crumbling old shred of 200 year old paper, but it’s our belief in it that protects our freedoms. It’s our belief in the liberties it outlines and other unwritten ones like privacy that allow our government to work, that limit what the government can do. The government could seize all arms and throw people in jail on a whim if it wanted to. It doesn’t because it follows our democrat republic practices outlined in the Constitution.
Take away the Constitution and what guarantees are there? Respect for that document is why I support the 2nd amendment.
Fix my ignorance, because I can’t find it. Is there not a constitutional protection against the standing army firing on U.S. citizens?
Also - the 1st amendment cannot exist without the 2nd.
That is an excellent reason. It makes more sense than any other I’ve ever heard for supporting the 2nd amendment.
Thanks.
I wonder, apart from probably your family, what do you hold so dearly that you would put your life on the line.
What is your line in the sand, where you tell the govt, procede at your peril.
You have not really commented on the right to bear arms one way or the other, but your tone is suggestive.
Since its been reaffirmed as recently as the heller decision, I would conclude that the issue is dead, but you are free to take up revolution and armed insurection and debate the matter in trial by combat.
declan
I’m having a hard time imagining a scenario where The Government has decided to steamroll over Americans’ rights to the point where citizens resort to deadly force to stop it.
For starters, would it be Democrats or Republicans?
So the bullet is mightier than that ballot after all?
Are there no countries in the world that have free speech in the absence of a heavily armend population?