The right to arm bears
What relation does the US's right to bear arms (the Second Amendment) have to freedom more generally? Ignoring the trumped-up figures on self-defense, the party wishing to exalt freedom and the will to rebel can sometimes by swayed by the "defense against tyranny" argument. If nobody at all had guns, wouldn't they be easier to oppress?
However, that argument is bunk. Like the "self-defense" argument, it appeals to the kind of putz who faults the Virginia Tech victims for not "taking out" their attacker. (Yes, they do exist.)
Look at the history of popular warfare. In France, Russia, Algeria, China, Vietnam, they were not enabled by popular ownership of arms. Instead, their practitioners acquired arms -- by stealing or receiving them from the army (which often fractures in a true national movement), or by smuggling or manufacturing them themselves. All the gunowners in America, put in serried ranks, could not make any kind of formidable fighting force: that comes from cause and struggle, when popular violence is not a fevered fantasy but a painful necessity.
In the absence of any even hypothetical use against oppression or foreign invasion, guns are toys that magnify how people can hurt each other. Local or state governments should be able to ban or strictly license their ownership, depending on circumstances. A more systemic approach, alongside that, is to discourage their manufacture. If the supply of guns is low (as it in fact is in many countries), even criminals will use them less.
Yes, the Supreme Court has denigrated the original intent of the Second Amendment, which was (fairly unambiguously) written in a time when guns were scarcer, and the citizenry assembled could actually become an army of sorts. Yes, it has created a right to privacy that was only adumbrated in the Constitution. This is not a problem, because the former has become irrelevant while the latter has become all the more relevant.
Freedom does not change, but its manifestations do. Since our land is dedicated to the ideal of freedom, insistence on of keeping that manifestation exactly as it was centuries ago has become a standard tactic of oppression. Beware.
However, that argument is bunk. Like the "self-defense" argument, it appeals to the kind of putz who faults the Virginia Tech victims for not "taking out" their attacker. (Yes, they do exist.)
Look at the history of popular warfare. In France, Russia, Algeria, China, Vietnam, they were not enabled by popular ownership of arms. Instead, their practitioners acquired arms -- by stealing or receiving them from the army (which often fractures in a true national movement), or by smuggling or manufacturing them themselves. All the gunowners in America, put in serried ranks, could not make any kind of formidable fighting force: that comes from cause and struggle, when popular violence is not a fevered fantasy but a painful necessity.
In the absence of any even hypothetical use against oppression or foreign invasion, guns are toys that magnify how people can hurt each other. Local or state governments should be able to ban or strictly license their ownership, depending on circumstances. A more systemic approach, alongside that, is to discourage their manufacture. If the supply of guns is low (as it in fact is in many countries), even criminals will use them less.
Yes, the Supreme Court has denigrated the original intent of the Second Amendment, which was (fairly unambiguously) written in a time when guns were scarcer, and the citizenry assembled could actually become an army of sorts. Yes, it has created a right to privacy that was only adumbrated in the Constitution. This is not a problem, because the former has become irrelevant while the latter has become all the more relevant.
Freedom does not change, but its manifestations do. Since our land is dedicated to the ideal of freedom, insistence on of keeping that manifestation exactly as it was centuries ago has become a standard tactic of oppression. Beware.
posted by Minivet at 7:12 PM
2 Comments:
Isn't Iraq a pretty good example of how an armed populace can resist, if not militarily defeat, an outside force?
I never said otherwise - I just said whether they had arms before the conflict started doesn't matter. They get them anyway, by hook or by crook.
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