Of course, if you're taking up arms to resist/overthrow a government, then you should be entirely anticipating that the government will shoot back. Or shoot first.
If protest is approaching/crossing the line into insurgency, people need to seriously consider that they may be putting their life on the line. It's not a game.
I'm pretty sure that if people are taking up arms to resist their government, things have already gone far enough down that path that they feel their lives are in jeopardy.
> Just this week there were Catholic PRIESTS who were advised to draw up their last will and testament if they were going to resist ICE in Minneapolis
Episcopal (the US branch of the Anglican Communion), not Catholic, and it wasn't conditioned on going to Minneapolis, it was a statement about the broad situation of the country and the times we are in and what was necessary for them, with events in Minneapolis as a signifier, but not a geographically isolated, contained condition.
Everything seems fueled by social media radicalisation, and the social media side of things is very much 'gameified', all about scoring likes/upvotes/followers (and earning real revenue) for pushing escalating outrage.
A vehicle can be just as deadly as a firearm. And vehicles had previously been used aggressively by the protestors.
There were claims (no idea if true) that the agent who fired the fatal shots had been dragged down the road and injured in a previous vehicle-based altercation.
If him being previously injured affected his mental state such that he needed to kill someone who was not presenting an immediate threat to life, he should not have been on duty.
Well… she accelerated in drive with a federal agent in front of the vehicle, while ignoring other federal agents to stop and get out of the vehicle, he THEN drew his gun from the holster, she the hit him with that car.
Her mental state was clearly not peaceful or rational - while armed. If she had made better decisions she would be alive.
In which case it's no longer relevant because nobody is going to overthrow a government that has nukes, tanks, drones, and chemical weapons using a hunting rifle or a handgun. The idea was cute enough back when the firepower the government had to use against the people was limited to muskets and cannons, but currently the idea of guns being used to overthrow a government with a military like the US is a complete joke.
Today you'll still find a bunch of 2nd amendment supporters insisting against common sense regulations because they need their guns to stop government oppression and tyranny yet you can open youtube right now and find countless examples of government oppression and tyranny and to no surprise those guys aren't using their guns to do a damn thing about any of it. In fact they're usually the ones making excuses for the government and their abuses.
There are reasonable arguments for supporting 2nd amendment and gun ownership but resisting/overthrowing the government is not one of them. That's nothing more than a comforting power fantasy.
>nobody is going to overthrow a government that has nukes, tanks, drones, and chemical weapons using a hunting rifle or a handgun.
The Chechens in the first Chechen war more or less did so by starting with guns and working up the chain via captured weapons. Eventually gaining complete independence for a number of years, against a nuclear power.
I think that it's fair to say that the military power Russia had in the 90s was very different from what the US has today. Even back then, as you say, the war still wasn't won with rifles and handguns. That isn't to say that what the Chechens accomplished wasn't impressive though.
The text of the second amendment, as written, would seem to indicate that the premise of the second amendment is to arm "a well-regulated militia" (which was relevant to the government that adopted the second amendment, as it had no standing army).
It was basically crowdsourcing the military. We've been running through all the various problems with that idea ever since, including:
- oops, turns out not enough people volunteer and our whole army got nearly wiped out; maybe we need to pay people to be an army for a living (ca. 1791)
- oops, turns out allowing the public to arm themselves and be their own militia can lead people being their own separate militia factions against the government, I guess we don't want that (e.g. Shay's Rebellion, John Brown and various slave rebellions fighting for freedom)
- oops, turns out part of the army can just decide they're a whole new country's army now, guess we don't want that (the civil war)
- oops, turns out actually everyone having guns means any given individual can just shoot whomever they like (like in hundreds of school shootings and mass shootings)
- oops, turns out we gotta give our police force even bigger guns and tanks and stuff so they won't be scared of random normal people on the street having guns (and look where that's gotten us)
Honestly, the whole thing should've been heavily amended to something more sane back in 1791 when the Legion of the United States (the first standing army) was formed, as they were already punting on the mistaken notion that "a well-regulated militia" was the answer instead of "a professional standing army".
No it isn't -- that's an ignorant myth. Madison was the last person in the world who would have endorsed overthrowing his new government ... the Constitution is quite explicit that that is treason and the penalty is death. The first use of the 2A was Washington putting down the Whiskeytown Rebellion.
The source is from one of the preeminent scholars of the indigenous history of North America. Get the book if you don't like the website it was published at.
> In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by the militia, "a standing army ... would be opposed [by] militia." He argued that State governments "would be able to repel the danger" of a federal army, "It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops." He contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as "afraid to trust the people with arms"...
This was posited as the nice sounding reason for the second amendment, when the more accurate reason was to ensure citizens had guns to drive out the indigenous peoples and steal their lands.
We rather quickly saw the federal government rolling over the people even with weapons in the Whiskey Rebellion.
But it's still very funny seeing the Right wrestle with "wait, the other team has guns?!" and "wait, Trump sounds like he wants gun control?!" right now when this claim has been the basis of their argument for decades.
In 46, Madison was discussing foreign danger in response to Hamilton in 29. but... thx for providing a citation. That's a much better response to downvoting.
> This essay examines the relative strength of the state and federal governments under the proposed United States Constitution. It is titled "The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared"… he describes at length in this paper a series of hypothetical conflicts between state and federal government. Madison does not expect or hope the constitution to lead to the kind of conflict between state and federal authority described here. Rather, he seeks to rebut the arguments that he anticipates from opponents of the constitution by asserting that their "chimerical" predictions of the federal government crushing state governments are unfounded
