Obviously, that would be a gross violation of established democratic process.
This does not follow at all. Of course you can.
Legality and morality are separate.
No it isnt. How many political assassinations have there been in the US in the past half century?
My god…why do I even look at these threads when it is the same people with the same arguments who can’t even bother to google what the historical implications of the right were.
The Bill of rights codified a ton of stuff from British Common law, particularly the Bill of Rights 1689
As commented on here…
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendIIs4.html
The original intent was not to give protestant the power overthrow the government, but to protect themselves against the violence of the Catholic church if parliament was unwilling or unable to protect them through “the sanctions of society and laws”
While I am not making an argument on the suitability or practicality of this protection both sides are debating from the weeds here.
As a practical modern example consider the Rwanda genocide.
When the Hutu came to power in 1962 they oppressed the Tutsi, many fled the country. When the exiled Tutsis attacked Rwanda in 1990 the fighting escalated to the point where the Hutu committed huge numbers of mass killings. The majority of this genocide was committed via machete and club.
While I am not claiming that a British style right to arms would have prevented this atrocity it is a very concrete example of the type of tyranny that this idea targeted.
Note that a broader protection against the governments tyranny was suppose to be kept in check by restrictions against keeping a standing army but obviously that “right” died a long time ago.
I know this will be ignored and both sides will go back to arguing with the same unwavering stances that they have held for years but hopefully the peanut gallery at least gets to hear a part of “the rest of the story”
Of course that depends on what you mean by resist and what you mean by state. Replace the word state with tyrant and if some goodly portion of the military is on our side against the tyrant (as I am almost sure they would be), then the addition of 300 million firearms in the hands of oppressed civilians would make a huge difference. That chances we are going to need those 300 million guns is so remote it approaches zero but theoretically, I bet it would make a difference.
In fact now that I think about it. If 10% of gun owners took up arms against a tyranny, they would outnumber the military so badly that they would have to travel in tanks and live in bunkers unless they tyrants were ready to carpet bomb large portions of the United States. For fuck’s sake, we probably have more than 100 million gun owners in America with an average of three guns apeice. How do you stop that without carpet bombing civilians (assuming that some decent percentage of those gun owners are willing to fight against tyranny, heck I bet if it came down to it, you might pick up a gun to fight against tyranny here)?
Unless democracy has fallen, second amendment solutions are really just people pissed off that elections didn’t go their way.
25 successful ones starting with Kennedy. Add two for MLK and Malcolm X I suppose. Then there are those that survive the attempts, they count too. Gabby Giffords springs to mind.
Most of these are personal grudges, and not politically motivated. Do you think a handful of deaths among a hundred thousand people is enough to serious subvert democracy?
Not so far as a quick count tells me. It’s hard to say, since there’s a lot of straight unknowns, and some where there are “speculated” political motives, but even being as harsh as possible in judgment I count 24 political assassinations, 17 assassinations for reasons almost certainly not political, and 11 assassinations of unknown motive. Plus a few I’m not sure how to categorise.
How would such a tyrant come to power? Constitutionally? If so, my guess the military would be on the side of the tyrant. Unconstitutionally? Then how would the tyrant get anyone in government to follow?
You can try. But who’s better armed, you or the Army?
We do try to keep the law aligned with morality, but there’s always a divergence.
It’s pure fantasy. Yet we keep hearing the “possibility” as a reason strong enough to rationalize tens of thousands of deaths of real people every year.
And it would really help yours and your colleagues’ credibility to drop the fantasy altogether. Do you understand why?
If your point is that people spouting that stuff really are just spouting, and would never actually do what they say would be necessary, then they don’t need guns to do it, do they?
It’s enough to affect our entire discourse, yes. It’s enough to keep some public servants from taking action, or limits how they do it, or it deters them from public service altogether. Yes, it has an effect.
Interesting. So Blackstone takes the position that the people have the right to weapons appropriate to protect themselves if the government can’t or won’t. By that standard, I would say that being able to repel a rampaging mob from burning and looting your home or store is appropriate, while being able to blow up buildings or shoot down airliners is not.
Do you have any evidence for that? Are there politicians in the US who have substantial, actual fear of violence that prevents them from performing their duties?
Why do you constantly say this? You are either implying that someone desires a violent revolution, a sentiment I have never seen expressed on this board (the first definition of fantasy) or that the US is so exceptional that it is not susceptible to the pitfalls other nations have gone through (the second definition).
Do you really think the constitution is followed that directly? It is currently being circumvented, and it is not out of the question that it gradually becomes ignored more and more.
Well not so much politicians in fear but there were those BLM and other agencies’ public officials who were actually prevented from performing their duties by armed accomplices of Cliven Bundy.
Of course that was one incident AND they exercised the better part of valor and did not escalate but waited for the right time. But still those lawbreakers do tend to encourage others to do likewise.
Do you have a specific way that it is being circumvented that doesn’t involve gun control? A way that hasn’t passed Supreme Court review?
How does any tyrant? Like I said, I don’t think tyranny comes to power in a democracy. I’m just saying that a bunch of civilians with rifles are not meaningless in the face of a modern army if that modern army can’t carpet bomb its own civilians.
Not from me you don’t. I have much better reasons to want to respect the second amendment.
I don’t support the defense against tyranny rationale. just pointing out that the folks saying that civilians with guns can’t make a difference are probably wrong.
No, not for that they don’t. Doesn’t mean they don’t need guns.
How about certain elected officials saying that the sitting president should not be the one to fill a supreme court vacancy?
That and civil forfeiture come to mind immediately.
Well, I agree with this.
It would be a tyrant, remember? Why wouldn’t they carpet bomb its own civilians?
Gun ownership CAN be protection from tyranny, but there’s a lot of factors involved. For one, you need a professional, non-political army. If the army is under the thumb of your new dictator, you’ve already lost. But if an idiot President tried to declare himself President for life without the support of the generals, he might find an armed mob marching on the White House with nothing but the Secret Service to protect him.
If a President did have the military loyal to him, a nation of 300 million people could very easily support a pretty effective insurgency.
A country where the military are loyal to the Prez, but the people aren’t? How do you pull that off? The military watch the same news, go on the same internet, have the same personal problems as the rest of us-if the President has created such a loyalty in the American military, chances are the same loyalty lies within the majority of American civilians.
Sorry, but the Secret Service is not going to protect a President that says “Ha! I’m President for Life now!” They would just escort him/her out of the White House when his term is up.
The military takes an oath to the constitution, not to the President.
Adolph Hitler was democratically elected, which is something I pointed out in one of the other gun threads. Guns don’t protect you against tyranny in a democracy. What protects you against tyranny is voting for people who have democratic ideals and who support democracy. I pointed out that the tendency of republicans in recent years to enact voter ID laws based on some phony threat of voter fraud is something that might be a prime example of this. It’s not a non-sequitir – it’s very much germane to this discussion. Democracies die not because of a lack of firepower but because voters support ideas that aren’t democratic. Guns are great and all, but they’re not necessarily going to promote democracy and liberty. They’re no match for someone who has the full command and control of the military. They could make armed resistance possible, but wouldn’t it be easier just to vote for democratic-minded people in the first place?