Guns vs. Tyranny

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of talk lately about guns being necessary as a defense against tyranny, complete with comparisons to Stalin and Hitler and such. The "Right to revolution" is also mentioned sometimes. But in a democracy, how is this actually supposed to work?

We see situations (such as the Middle East) where fledgling democracies aren't working because the response to your candidate losing an election is violence. Clearly some people on the right-wing fringe in the US are convinced that Obama is destroying the nation, etc. etc. So what does the "right to revolution" mean for them?

There's also mention of resisting authority. Someone on my FB wall just posted something that showed the WW2 internment of Japanese-Americans as an example of why the populace needs guns, but didn't really elaborate on that. Does any citizen who disagrees with a law have the right to use guns against authority figures trying to enforce the law?

Even the founders, who had lived through and participated (and led) a revolution, were still fairly decisive in putting down rebellions and civil unrest early in the US' existence. When the Whiskey Rebellion happened, the founders didn't think "Well hey, they've got a right to revolution."

(Not to mention that we clearly don't recognize a right for the Taliban to revolt in Afghanistan.)

So what does it all mean? An actual codified, lawful right to revolution makes no sense in a democracy, but I'm unclear about what else it can mean.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The distinction between a well-regulated militia and a standing army is fairly clear. The former involves the civilian population as the defense, police, and emergency services forces, whereas the latter is a professional and specialist group designed for aggressive invasion (or, in the case of police, an internal invasion of last resort).

Militia are good for defense, not invasion (as the War of 1813 illustrated). They are made up of local people. So if there is a reactionary revolution in the Boondocks it will remain local unless the ideas are sufficiently convincing to spread elsewhere.

In a democracy a civilian militia is supposed to be part of the democratic process (unlike self-selecting militia).

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Compared to professional soldiers they're actually not that good at defense either. Military has become a science and a lot of the machinery of warfare very sophisticated.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually we've seen modern states trying to use the militia concept in the modern era, but it was in the 1940s in the form of the Opolochenie and the Volksturm, both of which were convincing arguments against repeating the experience. Untrained civilians in the age of modern mass firepower will be butchered in short order for no gain. In Tallyrand's words it's worse than a crime, it's a mistake.

[vitsli.livejournal.com]

>>the founders didn't think "Well hey, they've got a right to revolution."
Did any government think otherwise?

Possible scenario 1:
Any government (including a voting mob) may decide something totally unacceptable to you (and, maybe, your neighbors): Invade India, kill all kittens, ban toilet paper, close Walmart, etc.
Something that may make you to break up with the government like "so long, I don't like what you do and I don't want to participate".
So when a government comes to take what they need - you have a chance to protect yourself.

Possible scenario 2 (Texas Revolution):
A group of, let's say, gibberish-speaking people legally acquires a plot of empty badlands in some country, and these people (because of various reasons - pick yours) decide to form a new state and rule by themselves.
The host country may not tolerate it, and so on.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And when in the case of the Texas 'Revolution' they do so because they were invited in promising to follow the laws of the country they immigrated to but refused to do so, when said laws involved becoming Mexican citizens, following Catholicism, and keeping slavery out of Texas.......

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Someone on my FB wall just posted something that showed the WW2 internment of Japanese-Americans as an example of why the populace needs guns, but didn't really elaborate on that.

One of the arguments that I have seen during gun control debates is that Hitler disarmed citizens in Germany before WWII. Therefore the same thing could happen here if the citizens of the US were subject to gun control.

I read an article in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/germany-initiates-new-gun-registry/2013/01/19/86bb29f2-60da-11e2-b05a-605528f6b712_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage) that described how Germany is implementing national gun registry database from a gun’s manufacture to a gun’s destruction. There is no outcry from the German populace as there would be here for such regulation. Apparently the German population doesn’t share the same fanaticism that Americans have over gun control, even in light of their history.

Just sayin’.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That argument is wrong, BTW. Hitler lessened gun control that already existed, he didn't tighten it up.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Even the founders, who had lived through and participated (and led) a revolution, were still fairly decisive in putting down rebellions and civil unrest early in the US' existence. When the Whiskey Rebellion happened, the founders didn't think "Well hey, they've got a right to revolution."

Washington, while considered a founding father, wasn't involved in the crafting of the Constitution. Madison, who was, noted in Federalist 28 that "[i]f the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government." Seems pretty cut-and-dry to me as to the intention of people to be armed there, no?

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

That doesn't really address the wider question, though -- how can a democracy survive if the theory is that unsatisfied citizens should take up arms against the government?

I'm not intending this discussion directly as an argument for gun control, I just really don't understand the concept of the right to revolution.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Washington, while considered a founding father, wasn't involved in the crafting of the Constitution

Excuse me, have you by any chance read anything at all about the Philadelphia Convention and the list of delegates to same? I know you dismiss real historians all the time Jeff, but that statement is inexcusable even by the standards of a Ted Baxter-style Constitutional 'expert':

http://www.mountvernon.org/educational-resources/encyclopedia/constitutional-convention

I would ask you to concede the point but I doubt you're capable of admitting error on anything.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Well it's fairly irrelevant since there is zero chance of an armed US uprising. It presupposes the government is corrupt enough but considering you're voting these people into office, that would require 51% of the population itself to be corrupt in the first place.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

You are "presupposing" that US citizens will always have a right to vote a leader in or out of office.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

Just because a government recognizes the people's rights to revolt, does not mean they will allow any group to take over whenever they like. I don't understand why anyone would think such a thing.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Just pointing this out here as an example for people who think that the US Military would be deterred from firing on civilians even when it was explicitly ordered to stand down and not open fire if it's got a sufficiently bloodthirsty, trigger-happy commander:

http://www.gpb.org/march-of-the-bonus-army

If the government has gone wrong, armed resistance is not the answer to what has already happened. Democracies cannot in any event go wrong in this way without the consent of at least a sufficiently large, motivated plurality.

[papasha-mueller.livejournal.com]

I am not aware of the guns defending people against tyranny - vice versa, guns were mostly USED by the later.
Though I must agree the definitions of 'tyranny' and 'democracy' desperately needing clearance.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Do the powers of government derive from the will of the people, or not? If they derive from the people than how can that not imply that the people have a right to change their government, either through the ballot or, failing that, the gun.

What do you make of something like Thoreau's Civil Disobedience? How can we justify someone like Martin Luther King Jr. without acknowledging the right, inherit in every person, to rebel against what they see as unjust authority?

Does our Constitution grant us rights? No. Not according to a traditional American reading. Our Constitution secures rights that we possess due to our nature. When the government fails to secure our rights, then we have a right to compel that government to change or we have a right to do change the government so that the rights we have are better secured.

Of course, having a right does not guarantee success nor does it compel you to exercise that right in a foolhardy manner or justify whatever cause you fight for. So, yes, the Taliban have a right to rebel... but they have no more right to succeed than did our Revolution. If Washington hadn't been quite so slippery and if Louis XVI hadn't been inclined to tweak the English on the nose, our Founding Fathers would have adorned various gallows up and down the East Coast.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And just like the Jewish Revolts against Hitler.....

[hikarugenji.livejournal.com]

Of course, having a right does not guarantee success nor does it compel you to exercise that right in a foolhardy manner or justify whatever cause you fight for. So, yes, the Taliban have a right to rebel... but they have no more right to succeed than did our Revolution. If Washington hadn't been quite so slippery and if Louis XVI hadn't been inclined to tweak the English on the nose, our Founding Fathers would have adorned various gallows up and down the East Coast.

It seems somewhat different for this case, though -- as you said below, a right to free speech does not mean that you are a successful speaker or that you will succeed in anything you try to do with your speech. But that doesn't involve the government. Are you saying, then, that you do have a right to revolution, but that the government should still try to put your revolution down?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

That would have been awesome if Japanese-Americans had defended their right not to be interned by use of arms.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

That would have been awesome. Just not successful. Just like it was awesome when slaves revolted in the Antebellum South or when Hungarians and Czechs revolted in the 50's and 60's. Exercising your right isn't the same thing as achieving your goals. Otherwise you could exercise your right to free speech next Sunday and convince the whole world that you should be Pope.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Comparisons to Stalin and Hitler have no meaning anymore, the uneducated out there have proven willing to make these comparisons over having to wait at a traffic light a little too long.

The Middle East situation is not helped when the response to dissent by the governments is shooting their own people, they have a lot of culture to get past apparently much like we do and our love for guns. I also have no doubt that there are plenty on the white-wing fringe that want to use their "right to revolution" to take Obama out, when a popular joke out there is "What does Obama and Kennedy have in common?" the intentions of these people become all too clear.

As for the Japanese-Americans, if they shot at the authorities, their treatment would've been much worse. Any questions or doubts about them being the enemy in the nations mindset back then would've completely dissolved. And besides, the victims of that interment is to blame? I don't think so. This idea that shooting solves everything is really, really starting to irk me! It doesn't even belong in the military it is just a stupid, simplistic way to go around solving problems and anyone that seriously thinks like that should not be owning guns!

What do you do when you are pulled over and given a traffic ticket you don't agree with, do you go to court? No! You start shooting! What do you do when you're renting a house out to someone, and they don't pay the rent? You shoot them! What do you do when you're sitting at a restaurant and your food comes cold? You shoot the staff there! How are we going to fix the economy? We start shooting people!

I think someone could make a meme out of this...

[dwer.livejournal.com]

There's no right to revolution in the 2nd Amendment, just like there's no right to secession in the larger Constitution. The purpose was to give the government a pool of already-armed men -- white men -- to call up into a militia to fight on behalf of the government.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

You do realize that the 14th ammendment changed that right? ;)

[telemann.livejournal.com]

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

We should totally legalize personal anti-aircraft missiles.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

At the risk of godwinning myself right off the bat, I've always viewed it as more of an insurance policy against progroms than a "lawful right to revolution".

For instance, I just don't see something like Kristalnacht being all that effective if the brownshirts are faced with return fire.

...and that's leaving aside the obvious moral and property issues.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

That was the point that Hitler really started going after the guns of the Jewish population, right before the Kristalnacht. So, Hitler probably agrees with you.