As seen on the Twitter:
Democrats are Communists, while real Americans seek to emulate the Viet Cong. https://t.co/nDIBb8VWfB
— Seth Masket (@smotus) June 16, 2021
The most insidious misreading of the 2nd is the idea the Founders meant to have an armed citizenry so they could overthrow the “free State” the 2nd aims to protect. What’s the point of the Constitution if you provided an out for violent revolution when voting doesn’t go your way?
— Greg Tinkle (@jgt1960) June 17, 2021
This is a point I have made before and I will make it again.
This is the text of the Second Amendemnt:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
It is the only place in the Constitution does the phrase “free state” appears.
Everywhere else in the Constitution, the Constitution refers to the United States as the United States.
The United States and “a free state” are fundamentally not the same thing. They are two different concepts. The United States is a country. A free state is the idea of a free nation.
They can and should, and arguably are right now (though seemingly less every day), be the same thing.
The Second Amendment doesn’t exist to protect the United States. It exists to protect a free state. It exists not as a defense of our nation under all conditions but to protect the idea of a free state in the event that the United States stops being a free state.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that Trump was truly the despotic second coming of Hitler that the Left said he was. Would a Hitlerian Trump America be a free state?
No, of course not.
In such as case, in which Reichsführer Pence is having Blacks, Mexicans, and Gays sent to concentration camps, would the right to keep and bear arms be more beneficial in the hands of citizens to protect the United States Government or in the hands of citizens to fight Pence’s Protection Squadron?
And that is exactly the point.
To give the American citizenry the ability to engage in violent revolution when the United States stops being a free state and to reinstitute a free state.
The reason guys like Greg don’t ever see it this way is that when it’s Reichsführer Harris having General Honore and Director Chipman put every Trump voter with an AR on a cattle car headed east, that’s not tyranny according to him so the 2nd Amendment Veto doesn’t apply.
He says “What’s the point of the Constitution if you provided an out for violent revolution when voting doesn’t go your way?”
So let me ask this specifically.
How about this hypothecial?
Let’s say that the Republicans won the 2020 election, taking both the Executive and Legislative branched entirely through abject fraud.
The bureaucrats who run Federal Law Enforcement and the Military are loyal to the Trump.
First, our Constitution has no prevision for what to do in this event, and even if the Supreme Court tried to come up with some remedy, who would enforce the Judicial ruling?
So going into 2022 the message is: “We cheated and won, and since we’re in power, we’re going to do it again and again and there is nothing you can do to stop us. America now has the same sort of elections as Iran, Cuba, China, Venezuela, etc.”
Would that be sufficient justification or “violent revolution when voting doesn’t go your way?”
Again, this is the reason Greg doesn’t like this argument.
One, just about everything the Left says was a Trump conspiracy turned out to be true.
Two, just about everything the Left says the Right does that is bad, is what they actually do, which in this case was the accusation that Trump stole the 2016 election with cheating.
So if we find out that the aforementioned hypothetical actually happened and the Democrats were the beneficiaries, Greg’s answer is “no, it’s not justified” because it’s his side that arms are turned against.
Our Founding Fathers were brilliant and principled men that gave Americans the ability to resist tyranny regardless of party.
Modern political bifurcations means that principle is gone and only one side suports the Second Amendment as a bulwark against tyranny because the other side wants tyranny and sees the Second Amendment as a threat to itself.
So here is a simple rule of thumb:
To quote the same people who wrote 2A:
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”
When the People revoke those powers from a Government that is destructive of those rights, how can they carry out that revocation without access to arms?
Beat me to it. Yes the Second Amendment must be taken in context with the Declaration. The people who approved the Declaration of Independence were also involved in approving the Second, that experience was prominent in their minds.
Neil Smith covered this well, in his essay collection “Down with Power”:
Ask yourself this question: if you were one of America’s Founders and you’d just surprised the world (and yourself) by winning a war of secession against the most powerful, heavy-handed government on the planet, and the last thing you wanted for yourself, for your children, or for your grandchildren was to fall beneath the heels of its jackboots ever again, what would you want the Bill of Rights to mean?
And if the first act, under martial law, of that powerful, heavy- handed government had been to try to take your guns away at Lexington and Concord (yes, that’s what those battles were all about), would you have written a Second Amendment to guarantee government’s exclusive “right” to own and carry weapons? Would you have written a Second Amendment that was subject to whatever the whims of government claimed was a reasonable regulation? Or would you have written it strictly to forbid government from having anything to do with your guns, ever again?
I was going to say the same thing. “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”.
When government becomes tyrannical, it doesn’t say “vote harder”.
By the way, funny seeing you here. I love the ocho. 🙂
To quote Founding Father Benjamin Franklin: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
Is it really that surprising that the metaphorical wolves despise the 2nd Amendment?
I forgot which gun writer reported this particular tidbit — could have been John Lott but I don’t think so. Way back when there was a rash of robberies of tourists in Florida. The perps were caught at some point, and an enterprising local reporter (back when reporters still existed) went to interview one of them in jail. Asked him “why pick on tourists?” Answer: “because they are likely to be unarmed.”