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).

[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.

[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.

[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.......

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Unless you were a Jew.

[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.

[badlydrawnjeff.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?

The idea is that the democracy survives because you save that for when the representatives fail, not when the democracy does. That it's not your fellow citizen you rise up against, but the government.

That we, as a nation, haven't done so when things were significantly worse than they are with people handwringing about it today is proof positive of this. The Civil War is a great example of doing it for the wrong reasons. But it's effectively the citizen's check against a runaway government, as intended.

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.

I struggle to understand those who do not, haha! Our nation was founded on revolution, on the idea that an unrepresentative government is not valid and needs to be removed, likely by force. It's a very American idea, and that it's effectively codified into our most important legal document gives it a lot of cultural weight.

[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.

[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]

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]

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.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

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

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Um, actually Jews had no shortage of armed resistance, usually relying on at most firearms and grenades. Thing is that this is the age of firepower-intensive warfare and against panzer divisions, bombers, heavy artillery, and the like the use of guns alone led to disproportionately bloody and lopsided bloodbaths:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005213

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005441

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005407

http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/lerman/medal_award/award.php?content=auschwitz

http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/lerman/medal_award/award.php?content=sobibor

http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/lerman/medal_award/award.php?content=treblinka

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005188

Of course this won't stop the would-be Fedayeen from fapping to their own martyrdom in using firearms against a modern army. Nor will it stop them from the ridiculous and insulting argument that Jews didn't resist their own slaughter.

[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.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

1) It's actually not an example at all. Other than committing the heinous offense of being elected on a plurality of the vote, what did Abraham Lincoln do to warrant any secession in 1860? Did he ever speak against slavery the institution? Seceding because you deliberately break up a party that would otherwise have won the election and find in this 'vindication' of an idea of 'Northern Aggression' is no more sincerity on the part of the Confederates than Poles really did attack the Gleiwitz transmitter station in 1939. It was a convenient pretext to delude those willing to be deluded.

This is also without pointing out the degree to which the Confederacy was a grotesque abomination of a regime that relied on no small degree of tyranny itself, against both white and black Southerners.

2) It was not founded on any of these. Unless you're saying that the Founders intended this to apply to say, Gabriel Prosser.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And you are presupposing that losing an election, the only historical reason for secession/revolution rhetoric that leads to practical action, is the same as losing the right to vote a leader out of office.

[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.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

So, are you trying to say that Hitler didn't try to disarm the Jewish population?

[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.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Washington was not involved with the writing at all, he was merely the presiding officer. You know this as well as I do.

[cheezyfish.livejournal.com]

Losing an election is the only way revolution "rhetoric" leads to practical action? Are we discussing the American Civil War here?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

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