Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Three percenters

Part of the purpose of the second amendment is to protect us against a government gone rogue.

This is a widely held belief among politically active gun owners--The argument is in defining rogue.

We've got the "three percenters" who think the current government is already rogue, and promise to respond to confiscation of their guns with armed resistance. The name comes from a claim that around 3% of gun owners will refuse to comply with a gun ban, to the point of armed resistance if necessary.

On the other hand, there are the people who say that Ruby Ridge and Waco prove that you can't stand up to the government, it will inevitably crush you.

Armed revolt is the nuclear option--its primary benefit is in deterrence. The balance of power is important--Small groups should not be able to stand against the government, but the government should not be able to stand against a majority who oppose it. The key here is majority. In order for armed revolt to be an honorable option, the government needs to have tampered with the election process severely enough that a majority voting for someone else isn't enough to unseat an incumbent. Corruption, Hanging chads, butterfly ballots, incumbent franking privelege are nowhere near severe enough.

Freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the right to due process and to bear arms are all meant to work together to prevent such abuse by the government.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:38 AM

    Exactly... we may yet get to the point where certain things become necessary. But we would be fooling ourselves if the country we know as "America" would survive an armed insurrection, and we would be deluding ourselves even worse to think that time is now.

    We still have a plethora of legal, Constitutional options available to us, and we should make every attempt to execute each and every last one of them.

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  2. My 'line in the sand' is where armed men come to my, or my neighbor's, door to enforce unconstitutional laws. Surely, we can agree that 'America as we know it' is a distant memory at that point? If one's line in the sand lies past the point where they have been disarmed, they might suffer the same lament as Solzhenitzyn.

    "And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? . . ."

    The Second Amendment alludes to the Constitutional option we are left with. Decades of saying, "Stop, or I will say stop, again!" has brought us to where we are.

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  3. Anonymous5:07 PM

    CorbinKale is right. If you wait until they come to take your arms, it is too late. While it is difficult to say when the time is as was has been said before, "...to shoot the bastards," take solice in this:

    Many police (not all) and many National Guard will support the insurrection and having access to the weapons, they will be able to augument the civilian arms with more tactical arms and from personal knowledge I know that they not only can do it, but WILL do it---under the right circumstances. May it never be necessary, but I fear it will--and even if arms be not so needed they may yet be if there is a complete economic breakdown with the attendant breakdown of law and order. Have extra guns and ammo to trade for other commodities--silver too!

    SamAdams1776

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  4. Anonymous8:16 AM

    I don't understand why we have to have majority rule. Our nation was founded on individual liberty, not pure democracy. tyrannical majorities can tyranize the individual and try to take away his inalienable rights. The simplest explanation of this concept is that democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what's for dinner. Liberty is a well armed sheep.

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  5. Anonymous6:12 PM

    I know, necroposting here, but I ran across this today.

    What do you think now?

    The nuclear option will only come about if the FedGov desires it to.

    We must use all of our freedoms to defend what we will have, or we will surrender them one at a time.

    In the end though, it is the willingness and ability to use each one in its proper time that will ensure our liberty. This may include 2nd Amendment solutions to 4th Amendment problems, for instance.

    You mentioned the three percenters. I would say the group needs to expand what it is willing to defend with force. The 2nd Amendment is not the only one worthy of such jealous guardianship. Indeed, if we lost the other nine rights as explained in the BOR, I would submit that having guns would not be enough. It would be too late.

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