For those who are ignorant about the Second Amendment

According to some, the primary purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure that citizens have enough firepower to overthrow the federal government, should it become necessary to do so. If the government ever loses its fear of such a revolt, the theory goes, our liberty ends and tyranny begins.

Let me be blunt: That is mythological claptrap. But like a lot of mythological claptrap, it can push weak-minded people — the Timothy McVeighs of the world — to do stupid and dangerous things.

It is certainly true that when the Second Amendment was drafted back in the 18th century, it was plausible to believe that an armed citizenry could be a check on overweening government power. Back then, there wasn’t much difference in the weapons available to private citizens and the weapons available to the military. It could have been, and sometimes was, a more or less even fight.

Today, that is no longer the case, and it hasn’t been the case for a century or longer. Around the world, governments have access to a range of weaponry that private citizens have no hope of matching or withstanding. There is simply no comparison between the brute, deadly force that a government can wield and that wielded by private citizens, individually or collectively. Technology has rendered that aspect of the Second Amendment a dead letter.

If you want to rejuvate that aspect of the Second Amendment, you have to be willing to grant private citizens access to fully automatic weapons, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, grenade launchers, etc. And it’s not going to happen.

That’s not just my opinion. It is also the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, as expressed by one of its most conservative members, Justice Antonin Scalia, in the most important Second Amendment opinion the court ever issued.

In District of Columbia v. Heller, issued in 2008, Scalia and the court made it clear for the first time that the Second Amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” But in that same opinion, Scalia brushed aside claims that the Second Amendment guarantees citizens the means to armed revolution. He concluded that technology has rendered that part of the amendment an archaic artifact, because “a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large” and that “no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks.”

For that reason, Scalia made it clear that the Second Amendment “does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” and that the government is fully within its rights to ban military-style weaponry.

In Iraq, for example, gun ownership is extremely widespread, with many if not most households owning fully automatic weapons that would be banned in this country. Yet Saddam Hussein had little trouble imposing and maintaining a brutal dictatorship in that country for decades. He did not confiscate guns, because he understood that such guns posed no real threat to his tyranny.

And as Joshua Keating notes at ForeignPolicy.com, look at Tunisia and Egypt, where private gun ownership is very low but citizens have nonetheless managed to overthrow brutal military dictatorships. If government now has a massive advantage in terms of brute force, innovations such as Twitter, Facebook, cellphones and satellite TV have more than offset it in the cause of freedom.

Guns don’t overthrow tyranny or guarantee liberty. People do.

– Jay Bookman

WRONG

Yesterday Obama announced his anti-gun measures in front of a theatrical backdrop of children who sent him letters ( cherry picked letters ) or else there would be more than just four.

The majority of the other letters sent to the President probably said : Mr. President Obama,can you help our family. Iam scared not because of guns,but because my Daddy lost his job along time ago and can't find work.Can you please sign a paper,that can get him a new one.

President Obama's Executive Orders on guns is misdirected. Not one of Obama's 23 " Gun Violence Reduction Executive Actions" would have stopped what happened at Sandy Nook.

The idea that the Feds could control all of their current military assets, both the weaponry as well as the technology, and use them in an effective manner against even 20 million dissenters is a pipedream.  Controlling 20 million....5% of the population....individually armed citizens is a logistical nightmare.   

I would say that in the event of the government turning against its people, the most likely scenario is that each state would do an inventory of the military assets it houses....WMD's, fighter jets, soldiers, etc.  The next step would be the forming of alliances with like-minded, geographically-convenient states. This would pose a major problem for the Feds, because the western half of united states is home to immense military capabilities as well as being an enormous land mass.  Couple that with an armed citizenry, and you have a pretty staunch deterrent.

The example of the post cold war fracturing of the USSR is a good illustration of this type of scenario....the union crumbled and tribalism ensued.  That is no different than the effect the US Federal Government becoming moot would create domestically in the US.  Different regions would look to become their own countries.

Don't get confused...if this scenario were to come down the pike, no one would win.  The government instability would initially cause panic, then chaos, and finally violence.  Odds are that you would need firearms to protect yourself and family against fellow citizens that are trying to immediately secure rare resources for themselves....not the U.S. military.

Is this scenario possible? Yes.  If history has taught us anything over the passed 2000 years, it is that governments crumble and societies change. 

Will it happen here in the US? I doubt it very highly.  Civil war in the US is a nightmare scenario for all involved. 

Is it wise to give yourself a chance for survival?  Absolutely.  Anyone whom doesn't think so is naive and domesticated.

The Second Amendment was an effort by the founders to give the individual american citizen of the future a chance at survival if things were to turn bad. That is all. A chance to protect yourself in times of chaos and unrest by "bearing arms". 

Tyranny exists around the world.  Freedom is the exception......the leading cause of violent death in the world for the last 100 years is GOVERNMENT.

Men run governments......man is prone to corruption...therefore government is very likely to a major source of corruption.  And guess what...violence is used to protect the corrupt.

I grow weary of this arguement.  The two sides will never see eye to eye...that is why the Federal Government is going to great lengths to castrate the pro-gun movement.

The real question is this:

Do you trust the Federal Government with your life and lives of your family?  I do not.  Often times what is good for them is not good for me; there lies the conflict.