[Webstral]

Thanks for that great feedback, swaghauler. Your commentary aligns with my research on the subject and the very little shotgun training I have received.


While I intended to cover my ideas on classifying firearms by type such that firearms optimized for self-defense, hunting, and combat could be separated, I think I will go into a different direction for right now. The 800lb gorilla in the room is rebellion against domestic tyranny. In my experience, this is where arguments about the Second Amendment tend to break down. Would-be patriot revolutionaries (WBPR, or “Whoppers” as I like to call them) insist that they have a right to resort to arms to protect their rights against domestic tyranny. Moreover, they claim, the Second Amendment enshrines their right to have unfettered access to the tools for the job. Going further, Whoppers often maintain that having their names appear on any sort of government list associated with gun ownership would violate their right to resort to armed violence against the State by allowing the State, often denigrated at Big Brother, to round them up at will and/or confiscate their weapons of revolution. Safety and efficacy, the argument goes, are to be found in anonymity. Hidden from the agents of Big Brother during the time leading up to revolution, true patriots will come together like salt crystals in a saturated fluid when the circumstances mandate action by true patriots.


There are two issues that have to be addressed in order to expose the Whopper argument as part logical fallacy and part self-serving myth. The first, the logical fallacy, is the idea that the State can guarantee the citizenry access to the tools needed to behave in a way the State considers a) illegal and b) unjustified. The second item is the myth that the Framers might think masses of anonymous and otherwise unrecognizant armed civilians would be a better guarantee of republican liberties than an organized, trained, and (hopefully) disciplined force of reservists operating under the command of a popularly elected chief executive. In both cases, the question is what the Framers could be expected to believe, not what individual citizens in modern America might prefer to believe.


Whopper ideas about rising up against Big Brother beg the question of conditions. When is it okay for a private citizen to engage in offensive killing of police and soldiers? By “offensive killing”, I mean use of lethal force (whether anybody dies or not) when the citizen’s physical well-being is not under imminent threat. We may argue about the so-called natural right to overthrow a tyrannical government by force of arms. I happen to think that people have a right to overthrow tyranny by force of arms. However, the Second Amendment is part of the US Constitution. Whatever my natural rights might be, the Constitution is a contract between the State and the citizenry. Access to arms is guaranteed by the Constitution, not God or natural law or any other force. This distinction is all-important. Whether God has decreed that any American should have access to an AR-15 is a matter for clergy to decide. The State is bound by the Constitution, which is a contract written by men describing a legally binding arrangement between the State and its citizenry.


The Constitution has established means by which individual citizens may find redress for their grievances. The judiciary interprets law. The legislature, in whose selection a citizen has a voice, creates the laws. The creation of laws or their repealing is accomplished by convincing the legislature of the virtue of said creation or repeal or by simple electoral power at the ballot box. Representative government being what it is, one could argue that the legislature of a republic can become a tyranny of the majority. For this reason, the judiciary exists to rule on challenges to the law or whether charges by the People that an individual has broken the law are valid. In short, there is a process by which individuals or even groups may influence the corpus of law and may seek redress of unjust laws. These means logically preclude the legitimacy of resort to violence by aggrieved individuals or groups. As a practical matter, violence is always an option. As a matter of law, the State is under no obligation to make provision or allowances for citizens to resort to violence when and if their options for legal redress of grievances haven’t panned out for them. At the risk of belaboring the point, the Second Amendment is part of the corpus of law of the United States. Therefore, it cannot be interpreted as making allowances for citizens to take the law into their own hands (such as launching a revolution on whatever scale) on their own initiative and on their own recognizance or to guarantee access to arms designed for the purpose of engaging in combat with professional forces (law enforcement, soldiers) pursuant to taking the law into their own hands or launching a revolution on whatever scale.


Looping this back to what kinds of arms are covered by the Second Amendment, the fact that the State doesn’t protect private ownership for the purposes of executing violent revolution in the name of redress for individuals or groups doesn’t impact free access to arms for the purpose of self-defense. Arms for self-defense certainly may be misused, but they are not designed to make a citizen[-soldier] the equal of a professional soldier.


At this point one could be forgiven for asking whether the issue of revolution has not become a conundrum. I assert that the State isn’t obliged to tolerate either the equipping of civilians for revolution by arms or the act of revolution by whatever means comes to hand. Yet without a doubt the Founding Fathers believed in violent revolution as the vehicle of reform of the last measure. I agree with their position. How are these two ideas to be correlated?


The answer, I believe, comes back to the militia. Operating under the command of an elected chief executive and regulated by the elected legislature, formations of citizen-soldiers derive their authority to execute violence from the electorate. The will of the electorate is the basis of authority in the republic. Individuals legally may not take it upon themselves to execute violence against agents of the State except under extraordinary circumstances. They certainly are not authorized to take up arms against the State based on their personal beliefs about violations of their rights. They may do so, but they will be considered common criminals at best and traitors at worst in the eyes of the law. The militia, on the other hand, may take to the field against agents of the State—the federal republic—imbued with the authority delegated them by the electorate of the state republic through the chief executive. In other words, the taking up of arms against the federal government must be an act executed by the state chief executive and state legislature on behalf of the body politic of the state. Presumably, this bold act will signify a systemic violation of the rights of the citizenry by the federal government such that violent overthrow of the federal government by the militia manifests the will of the electorate. Where the electorate of a single state or a few states put their troops into the field against the federal government, the federal government is sure to triumph. Thus the systemic violation of rights causing one electorate to call its troops into action for redress may not be as systematically systemic as the citizens of the state in question believe. See again: the US Civil War.


The matter of efficacy requires a good deal more attention. I’ll come back to it later. Before leaving off, I want to look at why efficacy matters. The question is simply whether one believes the Framers of the Constitution cared about success. Was the next revolution going to work or not? If we believe the Framers cared about success, then we must ask whether they cared about cost. Revolution can take many different paths. I argue that the Framers wanted revolution, when it came, to be quick and decisive. Indeed, moral men and patriots could hardly desire anything else. The Whoppers of the nation believe that the Framers would have been enthusiastic supporters of something along the lines of Red Dawn or what the Taliban are doing in Afghanistan currently. I propose that the Founding Fathers would have seen Red Dawn as a modus operendi of last resort. They would have wanted a coup de main—a swift and decisive blow executed by an overwhelming mass of organized, trained, and disciplined citizen-soldiers rising up more-or-less simultaneously to execute the will of the citizenry to overthrow a despot and his followers among the professional military. It should go without saying that only a real militia can accomplish this, not anonymous gunmen in any number.