Strange example Timothy McVeigh, I don’t see the connection with the Second Amendment. But how as a supporter of the amendment do I feel about mass shooters? About the same as I feel about drunk drivers who kill people (and there are far more deaths from that than by mass killings). I detest them and regret the deaths they caused but I’m not going to want to deprive everybody of their cars because of it.
And no, drunk driving deaths aren’t accidents, There’s nothing accidental about being drunk and getting behind a wheel.
Hard to say, but Saddam Hussein held power in Iraq for a long time despite a well armed society. The Nazis still killed people in the Warsaw ghetto despite armed resistance.
But my question to you is this: Allowing that McVeigh was perhaps crazy or just wrong about the current government being a tyranny, was he acting out his constitutional right to resist?
Almost certainly? Because nobody knew what was going on, they were facing off against the most powerful military that existed at the time, and by the time they could formulate a concerted resistance, it would have been far too little too late. Oh, and did you know that in the cases where the Jews did put up armed resistance, it was met with extreme prejudice?
This political meme is incredibly stupid. It needs to die. It is a terrible argument, that completely ignores the historical background of, well, everything relating to the situation leading up to the holocaust. The fact that the jews were disarmed was barely of relevance.
I mean, just to be clear. The Germans pretty much just rolled over France and Poland. They were leading an extremely successful war on three different fronts against numerous enemies for many years. A bunch of unorganized jewish citizens with hunting rifles, pistols, and shotguns were supposed to be a major turning point? What?!
No, I’m sorry, that’s just wrong on almost every conceivable level. Even if they could organize swiftly, even if they would be willing to wage all-out war against the threat of merely being deported (remember, people didn’t know about the death camps at first), even if they were armed to the teeth, they were screwed no matter what. At best, we can hypothesize about what the effects of this minor setback in terms of troops and times would mean for the Nazis further into the war. What we can’t do is make absurd arguments like this.
Timothy McVeigh is a pretty lousy example. Here, let me offer another one.
I refuse to pay my taxes because I believe that the current government is illegitimate and tyrannical. When the cops come to arrest me, I complain that the government is illegitimate, and threaten to defend myself. Then, when they try to force me to comply, I shoot them.
If the purpose of the second amendment is to defend us from tyranny, why am I not justified? What was wrong with my behavior? After all, the government is, in my eyes, illegitimate. I am protecting myself and my family from tyranny. Why is this wrong?
Seriously, the “second amendment remedies” variant of the second amendment is fucking insane. It’s a legal interpretation I cannot believe exists in a modern democracy.
The only real difference between a legit or not legit “second amendment” solution applied towards the evil gubment is how many people feel that way and feel compelled to join in the fight.
You would be incorrect to assert that the German military was directly involved in the Holocaust. It was a handful of police types who would not have been able to roam the various countries rounding up huge amounts of people had those people the power to resist.
Remember that the hardcore killings began after the invasion of the USSR. The Germans would never have been able to spare the manpower.
You might not like the example and it might be an extreme one. Or substitute Armenians, Rwandans or Cambodians. Its preferable to allow the sane section if the population to be armed.
You’re correct that the "right to resist " isn’t in the Constitution. The Second Amendment is often described and lauded as a line of defense against tyranny, like you sort of just did. So you can just sub in “basic human” wherever I put “constitutional”.
According to my history teacher in high school (in Munich no less), and more importantly the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this is not true. The Wehrmacht stood behind the SS. Second link. Money quote:
“After the war, many generals tried to argue that the army was not involved, that it was all the work of the SS. That was a lie.”
Okay, so now we’re down to speculating that if the jews had been armed, there might have been some noteworthy resistance. But again, there was. There were armed uprisings, powered by resistance forces. They failed. Every single one was crushed, usually quite brutally, and the German army took a constant hard line against any sort of partisan resistance. As previously pointed out:
“As reported in the Jewish Virtual Library, “If a Nazi soldier was murdered by a Jew, not only was that Jew executed, but also his family and perhaps a hundred others.” As a result, many Jews were discouraged from active rebellion for fear of huge reprisals.”
Would you care to actually make an argument? Maybe get into the history behind those places? Examine the geopolitical situation? Talk about how relaxed gun laws would have affected things? You do realize that in Cambodia, it wasn’t just a hodgepodge militia of disarmed citizens fighting the Khmer Rouge, but rather the national army, right?
Because so far, you haven’t done that. You’ve just made the blanket assertion that more gun control is good at stopping massacres. No evidence to support this, beyond the spurious correlation. Your argument really is as simple as this picture - bland statements with nothing to back them up, completely without any substance.
The simple fact of course is that the Jews of occupied Europe were far too small a proportion of the population to put up effective resistance especially once the massive military and security apparatus of the Third Reich was established. A better example (although not very attractive for many conservatives) would be that when Hitler first assumed power there were plans for the republican and social democratic Reichsbanner and Communist Rotfrontkampferbund to put up armed resistance although that never happened in reality. Had these two rival organizations somehow been able to work together to put up concerted resistance in the first confused days after Hitler assumed power with a fairly minimal police and Reichswehr apparatus (and indeed with many anti-Nazis in both organizations) it is not inconceivable something useful may have come of it.
None of your arguments actually address mine. The Holocaust could not have happened in Poland and the USSR had the Jews the means to defend themselves. There were several million. The situational costs would have been too high for the Germans. And, no, the German Army wasnt helping the killing apparatus. It had to be kept as secret as possible. Were the Jews armed like the Yugoslavs then Jews would have been harassed and starved but not executed by the hundreds of thousands by the Einsatzgruppen or marched into gas chambers.
Areas where the local populations were well armed had thriving partisan activity. And. After the war, Stalin did all he could to disarm them and crush further resistance.
Dude, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you have not made an argument. You’ve made assertions - lots of them, in fact, at least one of which you are repeating with absolutely no evidence to back you up despite it being directly contradicted by the citations I’ve offered from legitimate sources. When you say:
You’re just completely wrong, and I’ve demonstrated this at length. I’m sorry, but you have no citations and are directly contradicted by the USHMM. The army may not have been directly involved in the camps themselves, but at that point, no amount of second amendment rights would have helped the victims.
Exactly. Had we (the US) lost to the British, our leaders could have and may have been hung as traitors to The Crown. Rebellion, ultimately, gains its legitimacy from victory. It would be a strange constitution indeed wherein the people were given the “right” to overthrow the government for any and every reason whatsoever.
No. Because even though there is corruption and maleficence at all levels of government, there is enough responsiveness to the populace that we can still claim to be a representative government. Therefore armed rebellion is, at this point, unjustified and also counterproductive.
Plus this tired argument forgets that the military aren’t robots. They don’t all share the same sentiment otherwise civil wars would never be plausible and if you own a history book or a tv you’ll know that with all the past and present civil wars that they are far from implausible.
But yes, if the makeup of the rebellion is Billy Bob and his Confederate Flag™ then that army of one won’t accomplish much.
