When is it OK for Americans to exercise their 2nd amendment right?

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platocplx

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Now, this is in no way condoning or justifying acts against the police etc.

However I wanted a conversation about when is it okay and possibly exposing that it maybe a farce or it has an * on who actually can initiate this so called protection of tyranny with the right to bare arms.

For example there are many people who see officers get away with murder, being approached and profiled and targeted.

Wouldnt that be a level of tyranny(cruel and oppressive rule) against certain American citizens?

Since this is occuring and thus initiating people to go as far as baring arms and/or wanting to protest, riot etc against the tyranny they are experiencing.

So does the second amendment really only cover tyranny against a very specific group of people or is it supposed to be for all Americans based on how they feel about how cruel and oppressive the govt is to them?

TL;Dr

xBrLHw2.png
 
It's a good point you make.

Those (like Cliven Bundy) seem to hold the 2nd Amendment in extremely high regard as a means of keeping government authority in check. Some (like Cliven and his crew) have pointed weapons at Federal Officers to protest that authority.

Yet Cliven thinks Blacks would be better off picking cotton. And I'm sure he's not the only one who thinks that. And in every instance someone gets shot by the police, we hear the same people say that Black people should have complied perfectly with the law. Yet these are the same people that run on a platform of, "Government doesn't work so elect us. The government is not the ones to tell you how to live your lives. And if you come for my guns, I'm going to fight back against that authority". Whites routinely feel compelled to challenge authority. They push boundaries. But anytime the black community steps out of line, suddenly it's not okay to rock the boat.
 
The whole concept of Americans bearing arms to fend off the military if they ever decided to attack their own people is the funniest shit I've ever heard. You have a government with a collosal military force, and tons of state of the art weaponry, including military drones. Civilians using what's available to them wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, the military would just mow them down.
 
When they're not "thugs" about it. #trump2016


The whole concept of Americans bearing arms to fend off the military if they ever decided to attack their own people is the funniest shit I've ever heard. You have a government with a collosal military force, and tons of state of the art weaponry, including military drones. Civilians using what's available to them wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, the military would just mow them down.

It feels like you don't actually understand how civil wars work.
 
The second amendment gives people the right to bear arms. What you're asking is when that right should be used to overthrow a tyrannical government. The answer to that is a bit more difficult.

The question here is do enough blacks thing violent uprising is more likely to effect positive change for their situation than working within the system. Then you need to answer "How many people make up 'enough'?". Scholars say when around 5% of a population take up arms against the government they have a chance of overthrowing the leadership. In this case I think the number is too small since a portion of civilians would fight against the uprising in addition to the government.

So yes blacks just like every other group can try and take up arms against the government. But if they fail expect the cause to be set back decades and a lot of lives to be lost m
 
That's some serious bluster to believe you could take on a tyrannical government, their trained military, and their warheads with a gun.
 
That's some serious bluster to believe you could take on a tyrannical government, their trained military, and their warheads with a gun.

Oh I agree,its near impossible for the people without a total coup of the military.

Thats why I find. Some arguments like that to be nonsense. But same time I dont understand why people dont see why certain people are upset with tyranny and resort to higher levels of resistance.
 
That's some serious bluster to believe you could take on a tyrannical government, their trained military, and their warheads with a gun.

This is a strawman argument. The government has already lost if they have to resort to using warheads on their own population.

And sadly we just saw what "trained military" can do against agents of the government. Let's not pretend like soldiers are all mindless and wouldn't defect when told to kill their families and neighbors in their communities.
 
It's even more ridiculous when you realize that the military isn't one block. Why would we assume that they'd all follow an order to go against the citizenry?
 
The whole concept of Americans bearing arms to fend off the military if they ever decided to attack their own people is the funniest shit I've ever heard. You have a government with a collosal military force, and tons of state of the art weaponry, including military drones. Civilians using what's available to them wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, the military would just mow them down.

The military is made up of people. The military members swear an oath to the Constitution and to protect those rights. Most of them will not slaughter their own citizenry.

I don't think we are even remotely close to having to take up arms against our government, though.
 
This is a strawman argument. The government has already lost if they have to resort to using warheads on their own population.

And sadly we just saw what "trained military" can do against agents of the government. Let's not pretend like soldiers are all mindless and wouldn't defect when told to kill their families and neighbors in their communities.
Yeah thats a possibility that the military could be compromised at certain levels.
 
Yeah thats a possibility that the military could be compromised at certain levels.

That's not a possibility, it's a certainty. What civil war has ever been an entirely intact military force vs the citizens?

If the people are just going to rely on the military splintering into the two sides, at what point does their own guns come into play?

It very likely wouldn't be even and the military certainly has a technology advantage despite defectors probably getting some equipment. The citizenry would still need to take up arms to actually make some sort of victory out of it so standard military tech would need to be supplemented by numbers with less advanced weapons.

It's really not cut and dried either way. We would not be facing a fully intact military so their victory wouldn't be assured by having all the trained soldiers and modern equipment. At the same time, you can't overthrow the government even a reduced one with civilian weaponry but you also can't rely on the defectors to defend you. Civilians would have to fight if it came to it.
 
If the people are just going to rely on the military splintering into the two sides, at what point does their own guns come into play?

Why do you assume only two sides? Multiple factions devolving into warlords or strong men is just as likely in which case having guns and organizing local militias is a pretty good idea. You don't have to look far back to see how common splintering and tribalism is during civil war.
 
I don't think that picture is as much of a gotcha as you seem to think.

It isn't like the gun crazies would support any group rebelling against the government for any reason. Only their own reasons, the reasons they personally think are right.

They aren't being hypocritical in this instance.

They are being hypocritical in the instance of the Minnesota shooting though, that's for damn sure.
 
There is no possible framework where 2A protects against a "tyrannical government" in any capacity where people would rally around the instigators and choose to also take up arms. Gun violence is horrifying not inspiring
 
You have a second amendment right to bear arms, you don't have a right to use those arms to oppose a tyrannical government. Once you actually take up arms against the government, you have decided that they are the enemy, and you are the enemy to them.
 
The whole concept of Americans bearing arms to fend off the military if they ever decided to attack their own people is the funniest shit I've ever heard. You have a government with a collosal military force, and tons of state of the art weaponry, including military drones. Civilians using what's available to them wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, the military would just mow them down.

Advance weaponry requires a lot of highly educated personnel to operate and maintain.

If one day America became a dictatorship, I would expect most soldiers, especially the non combatant to either leave their post or join the rebels.

No matter how many fighter jets or drones you have, eventually you will have to send men to occupy the cities for resources and infrastructure. The easy access to guns made it that much harder for potential dictatorship to control strategic area. Sure they can bomb it with drones, but what good would it do?
 
Not to mention you'd just be neutralized by their control of the power grid and communication channels.

If this insane hypothetical scenario actually went down this is the only real-world advantage besides training and resources IMO.

No matter what happens I don't think the US would mobilize heavy hardware or launch fucking hell fire missiles at the populace like people here are implying.

The country would never recover from anything like that. No politician would be that stupid.
Okay maybe Trump would.
 
This is a strawman argument. The government has already lost if they have to resort to using warheads on their own population.

And sadly we just saw what "trained military" can do against agents of the government. Let's not pretend like soldiers are all mindless and wouldn't defect when told to kill their families and neighbors in their communities.

Exactly, the military is filled with people that support the 2nd ammendment and would be the first in line to stop a tyrannical government. In the unlikely scenario something like that ever did happen, there would be mass mutiny and defections rendering the military very disfunctional.
 
If this insane hypothetical scenario actually went down this is the only real-world advantage besides training and resources IMO.

No matter what happens I don't think the US would mobilize heavy hardware or launch fucking hell fire missiles at the populace like people here are implying.

The country would never recover from anything like that. No politician would be that stupid.
Okay maybe Trump would.

If the rebels took over some big strategic resource like a power plant though the government wouldn't be able to bomb it or they would lose it. So then the government would have to post military to guard the resource which in turn would spread their resources thin and cause them to be vulnerable elsewhere. The military forces being forced to guard strategic resources would help the rebels quite a bit tbh.
 
I've always interpreted the second amendment to exclusively mean you're allowed to have the guns. The part about well-regulated militia against tyrannical government is a footnote from the founders that's saying "this is why you have the second amendment." It is still not within your rights to use violent force against the government in a legal sense at least.

I also don't get the notion that it would be impossible to overthrow a tyrannical government. Uh, you realize that the American military is made up of Americans, right guys? If the populace started a revolution, I can't see my dad start to just bomb civilians. The military isn't some force locked away in a cage ready to take orders from anyone for any reason.
 
There is no possible framework where 2A protects against a "tyrannical government" in any capacity where people would rally around the instigators and choose to also take up arms. Gun violence is horrifying not inspiring


gun violence is only inspiring when it's state sanctioned i guess you mean

You can legally walk around with a loaded ar-15 in some states, but try walking around with a sword. Right to bear arms, my ass

nobody wants to lobby on behalf of Big Sword
 
Never, nobody should ever have a goddamn reason to shoot another with guns.

That said, I am Swedish, not American. For us when a police shoots their gun it becomes almost scandalous and there will be investigations following on how, why and how it can be prevented.

I do wonder though, there is absolutely no chance that the police in America is so goddamn jumpy to everything and ready to shoot everyone (but mostly black people) on sight BECAUSE of the 2nd amendment where you arm your citizens so readily with assault rifles and all other manners of weaponry?

gun violence is only inspiring when it's state sanctioned i guess you mean

Wasn't that movie about a guy who in actual life was a little bit too much into shooting middle eastern people and an actual dick?
 
I do wonder though, there is absolutely no chance that the police in America is so goddamn jumpy to everything and ready to shoot everyone (but mostly black people) on sight BECAUSE of the 2nd amendment where you arm your citizens so readily with assault rifles and all other manners of weaponry?

That is actually a problem. Because there is always the possibility that someone could be armed, cops in the United States are put in a situation where something as simple as a traffic stop could be a life or death situation. It makes them mentally more prepared to reach for their weapon if they suspect a situation could arise.

There was a post in the topic about Pokemon Go being potentially dangerous for Black people, where someone pointed out that when pulled over Black Americans have to treat it like they are fighting a boss in a Turn-Based Strategy Game. It becomes a slow methodical explanation and justification of every action they take, for fear that moving too quickly or not adequately explaining themselves could result in the officer thinking they are going for a gun.
 
I've always interpreted the second amendment to exclusively mean you're allowed to have the guns. The part about well-regulated militia against tyrannical government is a footnote from the founders that's saying "this is why you have the second amendment." It is still not within your rights to use violent force against the government in a legal sense at least.

I also don't get the notion that it would be impossible to overthrow a tyrannical government. Uh, you realize that the American military is made up of Americans, right guys? If the populace started a revolution, I can't see my dad start to just bomb civilians. The military isn't some force locked away in a cage ready to take orders from anyone for any reason.
The militia part wasn't really tacked on as militias played a key part throughout our nation's history. It was in every revision and it starts off the amendment. I think we need to follow the thread from individual colonies with militias, individual colonies trying a confederacy and then the colonies trying a republic. In all of those scenarios the States or colonies were individual entities trying to strike a balance between their own power and yet having a government strong enough to represent them all. So each time power was further and further shifter to the Federal government but great pains were taken to try and keep as much power as possible in the hands of the individual States. Some probably just as a concession to get some of the less keen States on board and some probably because they really felt that power needed to be more local.

I think during that time they recognized that not everyone in every State would be happy with the government, there were small "rebellions" put down after all so they recognized State and Federal power needed to be supreme. But at the same time I think they wanted to strike a balance where at least each State at least felt "free enough" from the Federal government. The Federal government was stronger under the Constitution than the Articles of Confederation but its Army was not exactly a force to be reckoned with, State militias could have easily been a counterbalance(in practise not just theory) to the Federal government which you somewhat see during the Civil War.

But I think the important thing for us is that not all the founders agreed on anything back then with people having wildly different opinions of the role of the government. What the constitution means comes down in many ways to which camp you side with from that era. Regardless of what any individual founding father thought of the 2nd Amendment I'm willing to bet the States that signed on to the Constitution viewed the 2nd Amendment as language ensuring they had some deterrent against Federal overreach. It was also probably a check in that the Federal government hopefully wouldn't need a giant army and in a time of emergency could be augmented by State supplies and militiamen.
 
THIS I PURELY MY OPINION AND HOW I SEE IT. Many of you will not agree with me and you have that right, but this is how I feel.

The 2nd Amendment, outside of causing damage, in my opinion is extremely useless.
When the 2nd Amendment was drafted, it was in a time when the country was small, technology, society, medicines, tools where vastly different.

When fighting enemies such as the British only the following weapon existed:
Muskets
Rifles
Pistol
Bayonets
Cannons
Sabres
Knives
Tomahawks,
Axes,
Swords
Pole Arms

Fighting against trained men was very up close and personal. Generally when humans think of technology they can can only fathom two things, that modern warfare will remain the same for hundreds of years, or technology will jump to unreasonably science fictional proportions (Laser Pistols, flying cars, etc). Hell, Scientists firmly believed humans could not exceed 50MPH until the 18th-19th century. The general idea is that if an invading force enters the country that armed civilians will be able to fight back and even counter. But technology is so advanced beyond what the founding fathers thought capable of.

We have trained armies who rigorously train, and their weapons have changed.
Pistols
Machine Guns
Snipers
Napalm
Nukes
Atom Bomb
Hand Grenades
Bombs
Jets
Shotguns
Assault Rifles
Uzis
Tanks
Helicopters w/ mounted turrets

And now we have drones, that allow our armies to kill without risking anything. There is no amount of hurrah that will pose any kind of threat to trained armies. This is also assuming that the army decided to blindly follow orders and conquer american citizens in the name of tyranny... which anyone with even a low IQ knows is less likely to happen than the sun actually dropping scoops of raisins.

The 2nd Amendment is a blanket for paranoid people who thinks tyranny is the name of the game from President Carter all the way up to President Obama. The problem is American citizens don't know the first thing about tyranny. Tyranny today is President Obama deciding he wants to make May 23rd Taco Day. Tyranny today is a liberal who doesn't want someone to feel uncomfortable with wanting to be an opposite gender and to live the life. Tyranny today is a tax dodging old fart who constantly likes to break the rules about private property and points guns at people whose property he steals from because America is free for only him. Tyranny is trying to change the rules with the times like any society.

They've never been enslaved, they've never been kidnapped during their wedding day only to be raped and their fiance murdered, they've never been forced to obey the supreme leader and is shot/fed to dogs for having a private thought, they've never been labeled with a star and forced to dig a grave while they're shot in the back of the head.
You can pretty much guess which groups of people have.

The 2nd Amendment is a dead right. Nothing more.
 
This is a dangerous path of thought to follow. The violence against officers in Dallas who were cooperative and supportive of the protestors is not an example of what the op is saying.

The end goal shouldn't be to kill all the racist cops but to have a system that filters out racism from the legal system and punishes it's presence swiftly and without regard to title or protections that officer or official has.

Those systematic changes are not made through violence.
 
The whole concept of Americans bearing arms to fend off the military if they ever decided to attack their own people is the funniest shit I've ever heard. You have a government with a collosal military force, and tons of state of the art weaponry, including military drones. Civilians using what's available to them wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, the military would just mow them down.
You do know that the bill of rights was written in 1789 right? Not yesterday.
 
It feels like you don't actually understand how civil wars work.

There's no such thing as a civil war any more. As soon as civilians start rebelling, the neighbouring countries start moving their pawns, arming the party they like or directly engaging in the conflict. The civilians having a direct access to weapons doesn't matter, because of said external help. Another popular thing is to get the army moving against the government, making a coup.
 
What makes it more difficult is how it varies state from state.

Here in NJ, you aren't allowed to use a firearm to defend yourself inside your house unless;

1. You have no means of escape
2. The person inside your residence also has brandished a gun
3. If the intruder attempts to escape you cannot shoot them in the back
 
The whole concept of Americans bearing arms to fend off the military if they ever decided to attack their own people is the funniest shit I've ever heard. You have a government with a collosal military force, and tons of state of the art weaponry, including military drones. Civilians using what's available to them wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, the military would just mow them down.

I hear this a lot and think about what an easy time we had in Afghanistan and Iraq "mowing down" the opposing force with our superior technology.

If you can't tell I'm being sarcastic.
 
Americans could overthrow their government.

Violently if necessary.

But you are going to need to support of the vast majority of Americans.

if say 15% of the population decided to fight the other 85% it might end up looking like genocide.
 
Now, this is in no way condoning or justifying acts against the police etc.

However I wanted a conversation about when is it okay and possibly exposing that it maybe a farce or it has an * on who actually can initiate this so called protection of tyranny with the right to bare arms.

For example there are many people who see officers get away with murder, being approached and profiled and targeted.

Wouldnt that be a level of tyranny(cruel and oppressive rule) against certain American citizens?

Since this is occuring and thus initiating people to go as far as baring arms and/or wanting to protest, riot etc against the tyranny they are experiencing.

So does the second amendment really only cover tyranny against a very specific group of people or is it supposed to be for all Americans based on how they feel about how cruel and oppressive the govt is to them?

TL;Dr

xBrLHw2.png

I think only amendments 13 and after apply to negroes.

Edit: More seriously the second amendment is a dick waving thing for whites.
 
Americans could overthrow their government.

Violently if necessary.

But you are going to need to support of the vast majority of Americans.

if say 15% of the population decided to fight the other 85% it might end up looking like genocide.
Well, the two ruling parties in the US have made sure that's not going to happen, securing roughly 40% of the political support of the population each, no matter what.
 
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