Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
I don't see legalized firearm ownership as being a "system of redress", if that's one of your arguments. I'm not opposed to the 2nd Amendment, per se, but I don't buy into the whole "firearm ownership is a counter to tyranny" argument. What about the tyranny of gun violence? There are at least a dozen countries in Africa where firearm ownership- legal or otherwise- is widespread, and those are some of the most violent, horrific, unsafe, and unstable countries in the world (Somalia, anyone?). These "republics" routinely bounce from one tyrant to another and the proliferation of military-grade weaponry there means that anyone who can muster a few dozen supporters can launch a new armed rebellion/revolution/coup/putsch/liberation movement, etc. Does it really matter if these guns or uprisings are "legal" or not? More or less could also be said for the so-called Tribal Areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
And I'm going to go back to the Whiskey Rebellion again. Armed frontiersmen couldn't stand up to a federal army- and that was when the disparity in weapon types available to one party or the other was much smaller (i.e. the rebels had muzzle lading muskets; the federal troops had the same, plus a few canons, plus some cavalry). Heck, look at the American Civil War. One of the reasons that the South lost is because of the North's overwhelming industrial capacity. The South was confident that its citizens' gun ownership/experience and fieldcraft, vis-à-vis the more urbanized, less well-armed Northern citizenry, meant that the rebels would win the war. In the end, the correlation of forces was just too much for the South to withstand. In a worst-case scenario, are mobs of citizens armed with assault weapons going to be able to stop federal tyranny? Assuming blanket military support, the feds can bring to bear incredible firepower (Apache gunships, Predator drones, M1 MBTs, etc.) which armed citizens are going to be hard pressed to stand against. Best case for the rebels would be a long, drawn out guerrilla war (like what's been going on in Syria for the last 3 years, or Afghanistan for over a decade). The idea that armed citizenry is a guarantee against tyranny is really a macho fantasy.
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I've recently been reading about the armed conflicts that arose in West Virginia from 1912 right through the 1920s, as a result (from my interpretation of events) of the free market capitalism system running completely amok. The
Battle of Blair Mountain is one example. Coal miners were being treated EXTREMELY poorly by the coal companies of the time, and when they tried to seek redress they first had quasi-legal hired thugs set on them, then at one stage an armored train being driven past tent cities with machine gun fire pouring out indiscriminately, and eventually when thousands of miners armed themselves and tried to fight back, the Federal Army was sent in and suppressed all dissent.
In those events the US State-Federal system, the judiciary, the police and eventually the professional military were all used to back the tyranny of powerful business interests, and the hard-working working folk were brutalised into submission. Any opportunity for redress under those circumstances were slim at best, utter fantasy at worst.
Dark days in the history of American industrial relations I'd say.