Armed Populace

It's amazing how gun control advocates try to persuade us that the Second Amendment is about hunting, target shooting or some other similar recreational activity. If they're right, we don't need military style weapons that shoot military ammunition.

There is of course the little matter of the Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment guarantees personal gun ownership for self defense. The anti gunners respond that you don't need a semi-automatic military rifle for self defense.

But is it just about self defense? What about overthrowing a tyrannical government?

The anti gunners claim that the Second Amendment is obsolete. Their reasoning is simple: We the people can't oppose a government armed with tanks, drones and jets. A farmer and his sons could hold off a bunch of redcoats during the Revolutionary War, but we would have no chance against today's Marines. This claim ignores history: in the Revolutionary War we lost most of our battles against the British army, but we won the war. This is for the same reason that we lost in Vietnam and are losing in Afghanistan. In a traditional battle on equal terms, the stronger army will win. Not so in an insurgency, especially if large areas are involved.

To suppress an insurgency, one has to control the territory, which is impossible if the population is hostile and armed. Assuming the Marines supported a tyrannical government, which I doubt, how many personnel do they have? Even looking at the limited urban areas, you can see a scenario where insurgents shoot at government forces, kill or injure a soldier or two and disappear into the night. How long do you think it would take for a tyrannical government to find itself limited to the control of a small number of cities, with the rest of the country inaccessible?

Looking at recent history: the Bolsheviks succeeded in suppressing the uprisings against them only after a thorough weapons confiscation program. They also employed propaganda portraying their opposition as enemies of the people (which a tyrannical government may attempt). This failed to grant them victory until after the population was disarmed.

The Nazis, who used brutal suppression and mass executions, lost control of significant territories in Eastern Europe and the Balkans (Yugoslavia, Belarus) and abandoned them to the local armed population.

I hope it never comes to us having to fight a tyrannical government, but the chances of such a government defeating 90 million armed Americans fighting a guerrilla war are slim.

In this context, semi-automatic rifles using military-caliber ammunition are extremely important, not for hunting but for protecting the rest of the Bill of Rights. I'm sure that a great majority of American gun owners, myself included, didn't acquire their guns in preparation for a confrontation with the government. On the other hand, the importance of the Second Amendment to our freedom is not diminished because of technological advances in weaponry.

Interestingly the Supreme Court in it's 1939 decision of U.S. vs Miller decided, among others, that the Second Amendment protects only the ownership of military-type weapons appropriate for use in an organized militia. It seems that in 1939 the Supreme Court agreed that the main purpose of the Second Amendment is to enable an armed populace to overthrow a tyrannical government.