> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator
This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".
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This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".
The argument is not that a rebellious citizenry will necessarily win a war, it's that it will draw out a bloody civil war so long and so expensive as to be a form of mutually assured destruction, the risk of which acts as a check in and of itself.
The 2nd amendment made a lot of sense when weaponry consisted of horses and rifles, not computer-guided missiles. If there was ever a true US dictator, the 2nd amendment would mostly be used by the oppressed to rob, attack, and oppress one another.
Let me make sure I understand your basic premise: the ability to defend yourself against a tyrannical dictatorship made sense until the government developed better technology, now it's pointless so just give up your guns?
Aside from being completely contrary to the American spirit of defending yourself from tyranny, it's based on the bogus premise that the advanced military technology can be used effectively against its own people. Where is the military going to fire those "computer guided missiles?" Into every rural home and every urban apartment window of everyone they suspect has guns, with thousands of civilian collateral casualties? Are tanks and fighter jets going to roll in and level entire economic hubs like cities? Are they going to destroy their own infrastructure? Are you envisioning "the rebellion" would set up a nice neat base in some remote location for the military to aim its tech at? Do you think the real men and women of the military would follow orders to destroy its own hometowns and families? How long before regional coups? How big do you think the US military is, relative to the armed civilian population? You are also aware that soldiers and police wear recognizable uniforms, while "the rebellion" doesn't?
I don't think you've thought this through.
War is not rational. People will destroy all sorts of stuff if something close to their identity is under threat.
In 1924 in the Soviet Union all firearms were banned except for smoothbore shotguns which pose minimal In the danger outside of close range. [2] This was greatly expanded with increased penalties and also eventually applied to knives as well. The culling of opponents and directed starvations began around 1929 leading to the deaths of millions of Soviets.
In 1966 China laid out the foundation of their now famously strict gun laws. That was the same year that Mao began the "Cultural Revolution" leading to the deaths of millions of Chinese.
Ultimately their civilians, by the time the worst came, had no way to pose any resistance. And so they died.
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As for our situation, I think we can appeal to the declaration of independence: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
You're comparing a transient discomfort for a relatively tiny number of people entering the country illegally, to events where millions of citizens were systematically and intentionally killed or starved to death by their governments.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmament_of_the_German_Jews
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
Curious how you think that would alter the conclusion? If anything organized resistance would be more effective then, because you already had state militias and rough technological parity with the military.
I feel like you're treating all guns as equal, when that wasn't true in the civil war and is completely not true now.
>The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of the country's population. It is preposterous to argue that the possession of firearms would have enabled them to mount resistance against a systematic program of persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced by a well-armed police state, and either supported or tolerated by the majority of the German population. Mr. Carson's suggestion that ordinary Germans, had they had guns, would have risked their lives in armed resistance against the regime simply does not comport with the regrettable historical reality of a regime that was quite popular at home. Inside Germany, only the army possessed the physical force necessary for defying or overthrowing the Nazis, but the generals had thrown in their lot with Hitler early on.
You could even argue that armed push back from the Jews would have resulted in more popular support for their extermination and would have hastened and worsened the Holocaust.
>As for our situation, I think we can appeal to the declaration of independence...
The Declaration of Independence is irrelevant here. We aren't talking about any legal, moral, or ethical reason for opposing despots. We are talking about it from a practical perspective. It is wildly less practical today than it was in the 18th century because the growth in military might of today's government has far outpaced the firepower available to the citizenry.
>You're comparing a transient discomfort for a relatively tiny number of people entering the country illegally, to events where millions of citizens were systematically and intentionally killed or starved to death by their governments.
And just like with the earlier examples, things start slow. The temperate of the political water in the US is rising and like a frog, no one has yet jumped out of the pot. That doesn't spell doom yet, but it also doesn't forecast great things if the political environment continues to worsen.
Wiki provides numerous examples of early commentary here. [1] I find the most compelling and clear to be that of Judge Thomas M. Cooley, which I'll include at the bottom due to its length. In brief form: he posits that if the law were constrained only to the militia, and not the masses of people that may comprise it, then it would be quite a pointless amendment as the very government it seeks to protect individuals from could undermine it by inaction or neglect in regards to the formation of that militia.
What happened in 2008 was DC vs Heller. [2] After DC banned guns in 1975, a police officer found himself in a situation where he was able to have a gun during his line of duty but was left unarmed in the increasingly dangerous and deteriorating neighborhood that he lived in. He petitioned the NRA for help fighting the law. They refused, so he went to the Cato Institute. They (Heller along with 5 other citizens) filed suit, it made its way to the supreme court, and the supreme court unambiguously affirmed that it's indeed an individual right.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
Full quote of Judge Cooley:
"It might be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia, as has been elsewhere explained, consists of those persons who, under the law, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon. But the law may make provision for the enrolment of all who are fit to perform military duty, or of a small number only, or it may wholly omit to make any provision at all; and if the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action or neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms; and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose. But this enables the government to have a well-regulated militia; for to bear arms implies something more than the mere keeping; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary discipline in arms, observing in doing so the laws of public order."
It should be noted that the Bill of Rights was originally interpreted to only limit the actions of the federal government, not the state governments. It should also be noted that one of the major events on the road to the American Revolution was the British government's attempts to disarm the militias in Massachusetts, which resulted in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, so the theory that the government might permit the militia but outlaw its arms was not mere theory but an actual historic act well-known to the drafters.
The modern controversy is whether or not the right in the Second Amendment is a right to keep arms is inherently a military right [1] or if it protects personal arms entirely separate from military contexts. The text isn't particularly helpful, and I suspect in large part because for the people who wrote it, there wasn't a separation between the right to personal use versus the right to military use--if you could use them, you were a member of the militia.
[1] I'm using military as a catch-all term here, which would include militia, civil defense, police, and other similar occupations. In the 18th century, these duties would have been performed by the military or the militia, as dedicated police forces had yet to be invented.
One of the few things we can say for certain is that tyrants don't like having their targets armed. Would having arms have saved the Jews, the Soviets, the Chinese, etc? That's impossible to answer. But it'd certainly have given them more options and opportunities, rather than fewer.
Whatever rights they wanted to give the states in the Constitution, they gave to "the states". The right to bear arms was specifically given to "the people", to prevent disarmament.
The militia is always in its construction open to everyone, whereas the gun community is seen as a kind of subculture today.
The militia brings people together in a context where the underlying story about arms is not one of power, violence or even self-defence but rather one of duty, personal discipline, safety and cooperation.
The militia provides a way for people to learn a lot about firearms and firearms safety before buying a gun, as opposed to the situation in the US we have today where often the requirements for an intro course include one's own gun.
As a social institution, militia would not necessarily have to be government funded.
Possibly says a lot about what the government does or does not consider a threat.
In short, until the 14th Amendment (and even for some time afterwards), it was generally held that the Bill of Rights only bound Congress. The 1st Amendment starts with "Congress shall make no law," explicitly limiting it to the federal government. While the other amendments don't explicitly mention Congress or states, the original proposals did explicitly include mention of states in some of them, which were struck out before being accepted by Congress.
Trying to warp this specific Amendment written 220+ years ago to serve as guidance for modern times is a farce, and has been manipulated by special interests into causing the murder of hundreds of thousands of people.
Thomas M. Cooley recognized that, but didn't draw the better conclusion; that the Second Amendment needs to be revoked.
2008 was a substantial setback, but it isn't the end of the conversation. The Second Amendment will be the thing our grandkids shame us most about.
The militia wouldn't have been mentioned if it wasn't relevant, and it's only relevant if it's a limitation to the individual right to bear arms.
The militia certainly are relevant but how they are relevant is the question, not the answer. There are a lot of ways to argue about that, but the right of keeping and bearing arms is literally called the right “of the people” — it isn’t assigned to any other body and the founders certainly had the language to do so if they wanted to.
How we keep and bear the arms is a great question. To my own mind, it would be better if training were more front-loaded. Right now, you buy a gun to be able to get training — seems backwards. It could also be much better if more people held guns through equitable ownership of trusts with firearms homed at a range or other secure location. The net effect would be fewer, more varied and better maintained firearms. The trust also provides a locus for training standards, liability insurance and cooperation with law enforcement.
This isn't the scholarly debate people make it out to be; there is a clear meaning, and it's been muddled over the past 30 years by special interests who have corrupted the original intent of the law.
The problems the second amendment was written to solve don't exist anymore, so the second amendment shouldn't exist anymore.
There isn’t anything scholarly or muddled about reading the “the right of the people” to reference a right held by people and not by states or the federal government.
Once you've done that you will realize that it was VERY specifically written to deal with a problem going on at the time. Hell, there are even comments in this very submission that also describe.
Google this. Get a factual basis under your feet and our conversation can continue. Figure out what Britain was trying to do at the time to the then-colonies, what laws it was passing. Go read federalist paper #46, understand Madison's contemporary writings of the time to get a better view of the mindset of the author of the Second Amendment. Read other contemporary writings, read opinions on the various Supreme Court decisions.
Do some homework, then ask the question again because while I could give you this lesson with my viewpoint already embedded, you need to arrive there on your own if your mind is actually going to be changed.
Where you say, “The problems the second amendment was written to solve don't exist anymore, so the second amendment shouldn't exist anymore.”, you present a claim in a vague way, difficult to argue for or against, because you don’t say what the problems were or how you know they were solved.
This is not about me doing my homework or lacking necessary knowledge — my unwillingness to fill in the gaps in your argument is not indicator of some insufficiency on my part. Telling me to “Google this” and get a “factual basis under my feet” is simple rudeness, and besides the point.
The only reason you perceive what I've written as rudeness is because you're bringing your ego to bear on this conversation, not your intellect.
Further, what you are attempting to do is akin to a zip bomb. "Spend hours crafting a response for me so I don't have to do any research or provide any understanding of my own, please!"
Gladly, but my rates are ~$500/hr. Let me know how you'd like to proceed!
If you do nothing else, please watch.