[slg]

Isn't this basically what the fascist in Germany, the communists in China and the Soviet Union, and countless other examples did? It is weird that people think that Americans are somehow a morally superior people to all the other countries that had already fallen down that path. I mean we are already locking up toddlers in cages and I haven't heard a single report of any push back from the people who are controlling those detention camps. World history has taught us that people are perfectly willing to betray or even kill their neighbor as long as you give them a believable enough reason. If anything, I think the overabundance of guns makes things more likely to go to shit quicker rather than less.

[nostrademons]

Surprised you're downvoted. The U.S. already has one civil war in its history, conducted when the 2nd amendment was in force and even more people owned guns than do today. It played out exactly like what the grandparent said was ridiculous: the respective militaries fired into every rural and urban home, set whole plantations on fire, destroyed their own infrastructure, killed their brothers and extended families, fought over their hometowns, and caused thousands of civilian casualties. There were in fact regional coups - really, the whole thing was one big regional coup, with some fractal splitting in the borderlands - but that didn't stop the bloodshed. And eventually, the guy who nobody in the rebellious states voted for won.

War is not rational. People will destroy all sorts of stuff if something close to their identity is under threat.

[diminoten]

The second amendment was nothing then like it is today; until 2008 it has been interpreted to mean the states have a right to raise a militia, not as an individual mandate to possess firearms.

[solidsnack9000]

That is not true, although there is a DailyKos article that says that.

Whatever rights they wanted to give the states in the Constitution, they gave to "the states". The right to bear arms was specifically given to "the people", to prevent disarmament.

[diminoten]

The states are not the same as the people. You literally notice what you wrote is different in the two sets of quotes you have here, right?

[solidsnack9000]

Right, the states are not the same as the people. The right to bear arms is the right "of the people".

[diminoten]

No, it's a right of a "well regulated militia", which was at the time run by the states.

The militia wouldn't have been mentioned if it wasn't relevant, and it's only relevant if it's a limitation to the individual right to bear arms.

[nostrademons]

And yet people did possess firearms - it was pretty necessary when living an agrarian life on the frontier, then as now.

Curious how you think that would alter the conclusion? If anything organized resistance would be more effective then, because you already had state militias and rough technological parity with the military.

[diminoten]

I'm not sure what your point is... both the Union and the Confederacy were "well regulated" armies which issued weapons to their soldiers, in great numbers, and even by then military technology was beginning to outpace simple farm muskets.

I feel like you're treating all guns as equal, when that wasn't true in the civil war and is completely not true now.

[rjf72]

This is the text of the second amendment: "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." From its advent until somewhere around the mid to late 20th century it was interpreted universally as an individual right. The founding fathers and others of the time wrote extensively on this and it was not controversial for centuries.

Wiki provides numerous examples of early commentary here. [1] I find the most compelling and clear to be that of Judge Thomas M. Cooley, which I'll include at the bottom due to its length. In brief form: he posits that if the law were constrained only to the militia, and not the masses of people that may comprise it, then it would be quite a pointless amendment as the very government it seeks to protect individuals from could undermine it by inaction or neglect in regards to the formation of that militia.

What happened in 2008 was DC vs Heller. [2] After DC banned guns in 1975, a police officer found himself in a situation where he was able to have a gun during his line of duty but was left unarmed in the increasingly dangerous and deteriorating neighborhood that he lived in. He petitioned the NRA for help fighting the law. They refused, so he went to the Cato Institute. They (Heller along with 5 other citizens) filed suit, it made its way to the supreme court, and the supreme court unambiguously affirmed that it's indeed an individual right.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

Full quote of Judge Cooley:

"It might be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia, as has been elsewhere explained, consists of those persons who, under the law, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon. But the law may make provision for the enrolment of all who are fit to perform military duty, or of a small number only, or it may wholly omit to make any provision at all; and if the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action or neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms; and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose. But this enables the government to have a well-regulated militia; for to bear arms implies something more than the mere keeping; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary discipline in arms, observing in doing so the laws of public order."

[jcranmer]

> In brief form: he posits that if the law were constrained only to the militia, and not the masses of people that may comprise it, then it would be quite a pointless amendment as the very government it seeks to protect individuals from could undermine it by inaction or neglect in regards to the formation of that militia.

It should be noted that the Bill of Rights was originally interpreted to only limit the actions of the federal government, not the state governments. It should also be noted that one of the major events on the road to the American Revolution was the British government's attempts to disarm the militias in Massachusetts, which resulted in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, so the theory that the government might permit the militia but outlaw its arms was not mere theory but an actual historic act well-known to the drafters.

The modern controversy is whether or not the right in the Second Amendment is a right to keep arms is inherently a military right [1] or if it protects personal arms entirely separate from military contexts. The text isn't particularly helpful, and I suspect in large part because for the people who wrote it, there wasn't a separation between the right to personal use versus the right to military use--if you could use them, you were a member of the militia.

[1] I'm using military as a catch-all term here, which would include militia, civil defense, police, and other similar occupations. In the 18th century, these duties would have been performed by the military or the militia, as dedicated police forces had yet to be invented.

[solidsnack9000]

Perhaps the militia, as a social institution, would correct the issues we see with gun ownership in the US today.

The militia is always in its construction open to everyone, whereas the gun community is seen as a kind of subculture today.

The militia brings people together in a context where the underlying story about arms is not one of power, violence or even self-defence but rather one of duty, personal discipline, safety and cooperation.

The militia provides a way for people to learn a lot about firearms and firearms safety before buying a gun, as opposed to the situation in the US we have today where often the requirements for an intro course include one's own gun.

As a social institution, militia would not necessarily have to be government funded.

[nostrademons]

It's interesting that militia are looked at with a lot more suspicion than individual gun ownership. Buy a gun as a mentally-healthy individual with no prior criminal record, and nobody bats an eye. Get together with a few hundred of your gun-toting buddies to train together, and the FBI is probably going to come knocking, unless you're a private security contractor with an obvious profit motive.

Possibly says a lot about what the government does or does not consider a threat.

[rjf72]

Can you elaborate on what you mean in regards to the Bill of Rights being interpreted to only apply to the federal government? This seems to be in contradiction the supremacy clause.

[jcranmer]

The concept is known as "incorporation"--Wikipedia has a detail here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...

In short, until the 14th Amendment (and even for some time afterwards), it was generally held that the Bill of Rights only bound Congress. The 1st Amendment starts with "Congress shall make no law," explicitly limiting it to the federal government. While the other amendments don't explicitly mention Congress or states, the original proposals did explicitly include mention of states in some of them, which were struck out before being accepted by Congress.

[diminoten]

Thomas M. Cooley and you are both right, the Second Amendment is now completely useless, as it was written in a time when individual states operated their own militias who were actively being disarmed by the "tyrannical" government at the time. Now they don't and therefore aren't being disarmed, so it can go away entirely.

Trying to warp this specific Amendment written 220+ years ago to serve as guidance for modern times is a farce, and has been manipulated by special interests into causing the murder of hundreds of thousands of people.

Thomas M. Cooley recognized that, but didn't draw the better conclusion; that the Second Amendment needs to be revoked.

2008 was a substantial setback, but it isn't the end of the conversation. The Second Amendment will be the thing our grandkids shame us most about.

[rjf72]

In the instances you mention, the government tended to pass gun control or confiscation before engaging in widescale tyranny. In 1938 Nazi Germany passed a gun control law that effectively gave 'true Germans' vastly more gun rights (which had been compulsory rescinded at the end of WW1) yet, they it simultaneously prohibited Jews from owning any weapon - even knives. [1] The holocaust began in 1941.

In 1924 in the Soviet Union all firearms were banned except for smoothbore shotguns which pose minimal In the danger outside of close range. [2] This was greatly expanded with increased penalties and also eventually applied to knives as well. The culling of opponents and directed starvations began around 1929 leading to the deaths of millions of Soviets.

In 1966 China laid out the foundation of their now famously strict gun laws. That was the same year that Mao began the "Cultural Revolution" leading to the deaths of millions of Chinese.

Ultimately their civilians, by the time the worst came, had no way to pose any resistance. And so they died.

---

As for our situation, I think we can appeal to the declaration of independence: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

You're comparing a transient discomfort for a relatively tiny number of people entering the country illegally, to events where millions of citizens were systematically and intentionally killed or starved to death by their governments.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmament_of_the_German_Jews

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_in_the_Soviet_Unio...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_in_China

[slg]

Directly from the Wikipedia article you linked:

>The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of the country's population. It is preposterous to argue that the possession of firearms would have enabled them to mount resistance against a systematic program of persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced by a well-armed police state, and either supported or tolerated by the majority of the German population. Mr. Carson's suggestion that ordinary Germans, had they had guns, would have risked their lives in armed resistance against the regime simply does not comport with the regrettable historical reality of a regime that was quite popular at home. Inside Germany, only the army possessed the physical force necessary for defying or overthrowing the Nazis, but the generals had thrown in their lot with Hitler early on.

You could even argue that armed push back from the Jews would have resulted in more popular support for their extermination and would have hastened and worsened the Holocaust.

>As for our situation, I think we can appeal to the declaration of independence...

The Declaration of Independence is irrelevant here. We aren't talking about any legal, moral, or ethical reason for opposing despots. We are talking about it from a practical perspective. It is wildly less practical today than it was in the 18th century because the growth in military might of today's government has far outpaced the firepower available to the citizenry.

>You're comparing a transient discomfort for a relatively tiny number of people entering the country illegally, to events where millions of citizens were systematically and intentionally killed or starved to death by their governments.

And just like with the earlier examples, things start slow. The temperate of the political water in the US is rising and like a frog, no one has yet jumped out of the pot. That doesn't spell doom yet, but it also doesn't forecast great things if the political environment continues to worsen.

[rjf72]

Let's take a single eccentric artist and vegetarian of no meaningful background, wealth, or power. By his 30th birthday our artist was no better off and his life's greatest achievement was working as a low ranking courier during WW1. What are the odds that this arist would go on to become one of the most important and powerful individuals in history and one who would come to within a hair's breadth of dominating the entire modern world? It's never wise to speak in certainties in regards to alternate histories.

One of the few things we can say for certain is that tyrants don't like having their targets armed. Would having arms have saved the Jews, the Soviets, the Chinese, etc? That's impossible to answer. But it'd certainly have given them more options and opportunities, rather than fewer.