The 2008 Heller ruling made clear that the 2nd amendment is a political right, an empowerment of
the people, for personal defense and as the ultimate balance to the government's power. Anti-gun writers, particularly Josh Horwitz, try to turn this simple historical fact around, and pontificate that anyone who believes in a right of revolution supports
cop killers,
crazies who shoot up city council sessions, and
the murderer who attacked the holocaust museum. But if this is valid it must go both ways; if the 2nd amendment was written to protect the right of the people to rebel against government, and rightfully protects the vicious murderers they have listed, then it puts our own national founding fathers, who wrote this amendment to defend the right of future generations to armed "insurrection," in the same category as these murderers.
But the way the anti-gun groups try to twist the political intention of the RKBA takes them to about as low of a depth of rationality as it's possible to descend to without physical brain damage.
The
Declaration of Independence, still a legal founding document of the US used in court cases, quite clearly states that the founding fathers considered the right to revolution a natural right:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
But just as important is the fact that the "right of revolution" is not a step to be taken lightly or at the first offense:
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.
That is the context of the "right of revolution" that the 2nd amendment supports. Not a right to shoot police officers because you're afraid there might be a restrictive gun ban, not even a right to shoot government agents serving
improperly obtained warrants (though of course those shootings didn't make right the events that happened afterward). But the right of the general populace, when all other means have been exhausted, to use violence against violence when the government has turned tyrannical. Or, as Thomas Jefferson so poetically stated it, "
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.The cycle of the revolutionary war was, in essence:
1. The government (England) began implementing policies the people felt offensive.
2. The people complained about the policies.
3. When the government refused to respond, massive protests began.
4. When the government began cracking down and seizing weapons, limited violence began, mostly notably at Lexington/Concord (NOTE: This is why people who study history are afraid of gun bans -- they
often precede organized violence/persecution).
5. The colonials again made an appeal, this time directly to the King, while only limited violence continued.
6. The appeal to the king rejected, the colonials declared war and wrote the aforementioned declaration of independence - one of the greatest documents of human liberty and history.
The above did not begin and start with:
1. Man gets angry about parking tickets, shoots up city council meeting, murders several people.
Some anti-gun writers twist this logic to even
more outrageous lengths:
This view allows the Second Amendment to trump the First, Fifth and Fourteenth; after all, I may have to shoot you because you are protecting some speech that offends me, or because I don't agree with the procedural due process you have granted someone else, or I don't believe in equality and integration. And in each case, the soothing Second Amendment stands in the wings, crooning that I did the right thing.
Wow. So this person believes that if a RKBA exists, it inherently means you can shoot first for any reason. But the RKBA is about the defense of one's own life and taking responsibility for one's own future, the not right to kill to supress other people's rights. Duh.
Thankfully this madness about the 2nd amendment is limited to anti-gun people and a few other crazies, who would be crazy and dangerous with or without a 2nd amendment. The real protection of the 2nd amendment is for the rest of us, who know that while an American government turned into a tyranical, repressive dictatorship is unthinkable and virtually impossible ... when it comes to humans and positions of power, NOTHING is completely impossible.
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