Posted on 05/03/2007 9:28:22 AM PDT by kiriath_jearim
When events like the Virginia Tech massacre occur, The Times and other newspapers quickly become forums for people who favor stronger gun-control laws and those who oppose such measures, or who think that we have already gone too far in the direction.
The division is so wide that the only common ground you can find is probably in the O.K. Corral. Different folks have incredibly strong opinions both ways.
I don't expect this issue to be resolved in my lifetime. Nothing I can contribute to the general discussion will change anyone's mind one way or the other. I hereby - well, at least for the moment - remove myself from the overall debate.
Except for one side matter.
That's one that occasionally creeps into the letters of some who fervently interpret the Second Amendment as an absolute, unbridled guarantee that you can own all the firearms you want and any kind that's manufactured.
This argument says that keeping firearms is necessary to ensure that the public can resist government oppression should such arise. In other words, unless you can shoot back at the feds, you can't be free.
That's a nice, John Wayne-type view of the world. But it's wrong. It's not just debatably wrong. It's factually wrong.
And the reason it is wrong is this: The government has and will always have more firepower than you, you and your neighbors, you and your like-minded friends or you and anybody you can conscript to your way of thinking.
You simply can't arm yourself adequately against a government that is rotten and needs to be overturned. Your best defense is the ballot box, not a pillbox.
That is why it is so scary to see events occur like the one in Collinsville last week. In case you missed it, six folks were charged with caching an alarming amount of weapons. These included scores of grenades, thousands of rounds of ammunition, 70 improvised explosive devices, two silencers and a submachine gun. Oh, and 100 marijuana plants. Go figure.
These people have been arrested, not convicted, so let's allow the courts to decide whether they are guilty.
But it strikes me that you have these kinds of weapons for one of two reasons:
You plan to use them to harm people.
You plan to use them to defend yourself.
Undoubtedly, you can harm a great many people with this kind of firepower. And if your aim is to use it against the government, well, that in itself is against the law.
What you can't do with these weapons is defend yourself successfully, in the long run, against the government. It has tanks. It has bombs (see Philadelphia on May 14, 1985, when the city bombed an entire block occupied by a group that didn't like the government). It has airplanes. It has nuclear weapons, for goodness sake.
You can't beat 'em.
You'd be foolish to try.
So let's take that argument off the table. I don't presume to say that by doing so we will be able to reach a consensus or a compromise or whatever about how we should or shouldn't control firearms in modern society.
I'm just saying that shooting it out with the government is like the exhibition team versus the Harlem Globetrotters as far as who is going to win.
Only a lot more bloody.
Nice link! Thanks!
No big final conflict more or less a general decline into second rate status with some family members of the elites letting the Vandals in the gate to sack Washington DC...... a Kennedy, a Clinton, a Cuomo, a Ferraro, heck it could be a "Bush" for all we know.
Look at what a category 3 Hurricane did to New Orleans. Can you imagine what this country would be like if we had a nation wide disaster or multiple disasters? Oh well.
And the reason it is wrong is this: The government has and will always have more firepower than you, you and your neighbors, you and your like-minded friends or you and anybody you can conscript to your way of thinking.
The Governments (local, State, and Federal) had oodles of firepower ... and deployed hundreds, perhaps thousands of law enforcement personnel to try to find the snipers ... yet two guys with one rifle literally shut down the DC area for weeks. All that firepower was ineffective for quite a long time. Extrapolate that situation to tens or even hundreds of snipers who would independently strike when gun confiscation was initiated.
Two more words: Unintended Consequences
If the Government declared war on its armed citizens by attempting to confiscate all of their firearms by force, it would only be fair to return the favor ... and target first the Government enforcement arms (IRS, FBI, BATF, EPA,...), then its elected officials (including legislators who passed the laws), then mid-level managers who coordinate the enforcement of those laws. It would be only fair that the people who pass gun confiscation laws as well as those who attempt to enforce them share equally in the resulting misery. And the first time that familes of gunowners became casualties, the gun owners would return the favor. It would get very very messy very quickly.
The author obviously does not understand that passing confiscation laws would end the “awkward phase”.
I asked my own brother, an Army Ranger about this too. He said if they got the order to shoot civilians, they would do it in a heartbeat.
IF there was an uprising, a good many people would be killed by friends and family.
Being a single guy with nothing and no-one in this world to lose, I would kill and die for the Constitution. BUT I don’t know what I would do if I had the responsibility of a family. Hopefully, I would make a patriotic decision, but I just have never been in that position.
You might ask him what he would do if he got an order to shoot you.
Ask him also if he would fight to the death to avoid capture by those same civilians if things started going bad for "his side".
Silly little leftist. He almost had it right.
It’s exactly why the leftists are so upset about further gun control. The leftists took a poll and realized the conservatives are half the government, the military, police and gun owners. That leaves the other half of the government, some idiots in the media and some folks in the NorthEast.
If there’s a war, it would be over in a couple of hours and then it’s Miller Time.
We’re a fat and happy people. The vast majority will go along with anything the Feds want. The few who dare to fight will be marginalized, hunted down, and Gitmo’d.
Incorrect. The Constitution was drafted at the Convention in 1787. The Bill of Rights consists of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, which were proposed by Madison in 1789 at the insistence of anti-Federalists due to trepidation on the part of the states that these issues had not been addressed in the Constitution itself.
Madison actually proposed 12 amendments, of which 10 were ratified in 1789. In 1992, in a very delayed ratification, one of Madison's Twelve made it into the Constitution as the 27th Amendment.
A science fiction book written years ago, "WASP", did exactly that. It showed how one man, with the right technology and gadgets, could bring a country to its knees.
During the time of the Revolutionary War private citizens owned relatively large weapons, including battleships.
This whole column is an argument FOR private ownership of machine guns, tanks, and even fighter jets and bombers.
With over 300 million people living in the U.s., looks like we got a real problem growing here.......... yea, its sarcasm.
Moron should refresh his memory of the history of the French Resistance in WW II. He should also be made aware of the fact that our U.s. Military is made up of Americans who might not be so willing to toe the line in favor of a government turned rogue........
Good point... I was thinking about The DoI more than a battle:
“...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government,...”
jw
My point was that the weapons protected by the 2nd amendment are not useful in creating IEDs.
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