Bearing arms on someone else’s land for the purpose of making it more difficult to be removed from that land is an implicit threat of force against the landowner and his agents.
Like the gun folks say, you don’t take out a gun unless you are willing to use it. I’m not a gun type myself, so I have to take them at their word.
At the risk of re-inciting the gun debate, I’d say Black Panthers marching on the California state capitol with weapons slung is exerting 2nd amendment rights. Ronald Reagan promptly enacted laws outlawing guns in public. Suspicious, to say the least.
In this instance? Not so much. I see intimidation and outright intent to instigate armed violence and at first glance, I’d say the intimidation won, which shouldn’t be tolerated. The arm of the law is long and patient though.
You can do a whole lot of property damage without crossing the all-important line into violence against persons.
Please distinguish between simply having a gun on your person, and “taking it out” as if to use it.
Having a firearm is not a threat. Brandishing or pointing it at someone is. The former is not wrong, the latter is except in cases of self-defense, where someone else threatened you first.
I maintain that the protesters who simply brought weapons to a protest (weapons there is a good chance they carry every day, like a pocket knife), weren’t threatening anyone.
Asshole on the overpass in the prone position with body armor, however, was provoking the government, and put himself, the Bundy family, the innocent protesters, and the BLM agents in significant danger by that act alone.
No one’s disputing that; but if it had come down to shooting, the protesters, and not the feds, would have deserved everything they got.
Yup. One is all it takes (referencing the Kent State incident that someone - possibly you - made reference to earlier, I believe that the person shot in that famous photo was shot by a member of the National Guard who had not been given permission to shoot).
So you should have no problem with law enforcement officers bearing arms as part of their duties then. Or if 5,000 people who supported the BLM also just happened to show up bearing arms.
Exactly. Like standing in the way of a dump truck. The Kent State protesters didn’t deserve to die, and neither did the Bundy protestors, with the possible exception of Mr. Soldier of Fortune on the overpass.
Exactly. This is my point. Law enforcement should carry arms to defend themselves. And civilians who want to should have that same right. Neither side was threatening anyone simply by being armed. Just like neither side was threatening to kick anyone simply by wearing boots. It takes something more than simply possessing the means to hurt someone to be a threat.
If any gun-totin’ redneck tried anything like that I can assure you that it would turn ugly, fast. (I saw footage last summer from Arkansas of the member of some group - I forget what they call themselves - that apparently despises law enforcement. The cop’s “dash cam” showed someone being pulled over for a relatively innocuous offense. After what seemed to be a relatively civil exchange between the two parties the cop went off-camera [thankfully] at which point the automobile driver’s teenage son whipped out a rifle of some kind and shot the cop dead. The man [not surprisingly] quickly drove off. Cut to footage of the vehicle - not moving - in a mall parking lot with LOTS [and I do mean LOTS] of law enforcement around and an aerial shot of the teenage boy dead in the passenger seat [along with, I can only assume, his father]. I envision a similar outcome if any of those gun-totin’ rednecks in Nevada try anything so stupid as to shoot at a federal agent unprovoked)
I agree. I also believe that if the feds shot first that the 2nd amendment and natural law say the civilians can protect themselves from an unlawful federal action.
Precisely. I don’t buy the “it’s not against the law to exercise your right to bear arms” argument. Those people could’ve gone there by themselves with no firearms and still made their feelings known. They chose not to which was escalating matters in my mind.
Perhaps. But those gun-totin’ rednecks would’ve gotten the worst of it, though. I can almost 100% guarantee you that.
Probably not in the first engagement. No one can beat the law if the law is determined, but it’s not unusual, as in Waco, for the law to come with too little at first.
But the winner of the battle aside, the war would be lost by the government. RIght now, an ever expanding federal government is troublesome in theory. Start gunning down citizens over grazing fees, and it becomes a lot more real. We’ve already got a constitutional convention about to become a reality. Imagine what kind of amendments limiting the power of the governmnet would rise in the face of a federal massacre over a regulatory dispute.
I didn’t fuck it, and it sure wasn’t great!
Strawman so big there’s no grass left to graze on.
Cite from a cite that doesn’t drool, please.
Imagine having an imagination this unfettered by reality.
The 2nd Amendment neither says nor implies anything of the kind by the broadest conceivable interpretation, and natural law does not exist.
I don’t want to hear about it. People who complain about “expanding government” are lying frauds. “Big guvmint” seems to work just fine for them when it suits what they feel are their needs. For evidence I present the Terri Schiavo case. Seems to me that the people who often call for “small government” sure didn’t want it to be “small” in that case!
We were talking about a theortical situation in which the feds fired first and the protesters fired back. If you’re saying that the idea of the feds firing first is extremely ridiculous, that makes me happy.
Fox drools, but their logic is sound: two thirds of the states have called for a convention:
I think the argument is that most of us don’t think the demonstrators were there simply to practice their first and second amendment rights.
They were there to prevent government employees from doing their jobs. The BLM was there to remove 900+ cattle from government land, pursuant to a valid court order, and the Bundy supporters were there to prevent them from doing so. Where’s the first amendment right to stop lawful government actions?