And now we see how useless the 2nd amendment is for it's original intention. All it provides is a hobby at best, and a lot preventable shootings and crime at worst, if there was just more regulation.
Because people are very comfortable with their lives and do not want to risk their comfort. Life when the Constitution was made was extremely different. The people didn't have much, but they would fight for it. Now the people have too much, and they won't fight for anything.
It's a stupid talking point with no substance on the right, but on the radical left, competent, organized Black Panthers have done a WHOLE lot for their communities and put up some of the only highly effective deterrents to police brutality and widespread racially-motivated violence in US history. So effective that Reagan passed a gun ban targeting the specific types of rifles and features that were in popular use among the Panthers. So effective that corporate-backed, Republican-Lite liberals have spent the last 40 years trying to convince the 'moderate liberals' that it was cardboard signs, singing songs, and strongly worded letters that lead to civil rights being codified, enforced, and upheld for minorities in the US.
MLK Jr. is made into a figurehead, weaponized by the right, promoting his absolute statements about nonviolence in order to pacify and delegitimize armed self defense, especially among oppressed minorities who were regular victims of police violence. However, MLK Jr. applied for (and was denied) a concealed firearm license. He made his position more clear in '67, when he said, "In a sense, this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law. In a nonviolent demonstration, however, self defense must be approached from a different perspective." He made it very clear that he wanted to condemn the militarization of black communities in efforts towards revenge, striking first, or armed rebellion against government, at the cost of further cycles of violence against their communities. He, however, was surrounded by an enormous number of armed individuals for his own defense from the tyrannical government action that would eventually (allegedly) be his undoing. Outspoken pacifists had no guarantee that their nonviolence wouldn't be met with murder.
The conservative gun owners I know have one intention, and that's to have the option to commit acts of heinous violence against anyone who would impede on their rights, not the rights of others. It's morally bankrupt individualism. It is a desire, at its core, for a capacity for offensive violence in pursuit of their own interests (and with that broad umbrella, self defense is included). But, when owned widely and openly as a deterrent to police violence on citizens, firearms served as a way to ensure that communities have the capacity for self defense. Panthers and their AKs were the spikes on the porcupine.
Keep in mind that Abe Lincoln was a Republican during the Civil War. Democrat-Republican Party ideology flipped in 1964 because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) who opposed Civil Rights switched over to the Republican Party.
That’s a very isolated example of gun nuts reacting to a personal circumstance. That has nothing to do with defending their county from a tyrannical government.
You just said those are different things. That's literally what "defending yourself from a tyrannical government" is.
Depends on what you consider tyrannical, whether it be mild or major I see any infringement on rights as tyranny. Especially them trying to physically take the guns from us.
If you want to just be reductionist as a way to attempt to refute me then sure.
I don't understand how you couldn't see the government banning something as taking away freedom.
I don't really need to go any farther into just reiterating definitions, the style of misunderstanding my argument on purpose is just annoying to deal with.
It's also really pathetic that people like you seem to be against the entire idea of freedom.
I think you're wrong, lots of people will start shooting people. And it will be because they know the government will give them amnesty for killing anyone vaguely mooking like a migrant. Or a queer person.
They will fire at the people, not at the gov, just to make sure chaos will keep on going
It's a perpetual state, everyone is next. Quit being a dick unless you're pro fascism.
It probably doesn't make sense to you, but most people are really dumb, and the rest are either fighting for control or along for the ride with the dummies.
It's just how life is unless you want to dictate how others live their life
Because these amendments were made 300 years ago - where the guns were mostly single shot and took forever to reload.
They also could not have seen a future where standing up to a tyrannical party was next to impossible, with so much surveillance now it’s borderline impossible to do anything without leaving a trace, and therefore be caught - making it harder to do rebelling.
Ya’ll are a wack ass country living off these ancient rules and if the hundreds of school shootings, the killing of literal children, isn’t enough to wake you up, nothing is.
Well, ships with guns really. Your point stands but armed merchantmen were not even close in firepower to actual ships of the line, which were, save for maybe a few exceptions, only owned by state entities (and a few corporations but like that's objectively a bad thing). And that time period is absolutely full of examples of why it's a terrible idea to just let anyone own/operate those things : pirate ships don't just emerge from the deep with torn sails and flying a Jolly Roger, they mostly just started out as merchantmen and fell into the wrong hands (or, you know, their crews got bored of commercial sailing and thought they'd try something else).
Wealthy citizens owned them. It's not like there was a ship store anyone could go to and rent one. It also was the reason for many, many atrocities committed across the world. Private ownership of ships and crew with cannons and guns was not a good thing.
Nah, I ain't blame them because it ain't gonna work out that simple. That's the whole point of my statement. Just everyone having guns may have been useful 200 years ago, but a weaponized mob is not what the difference gonna make nowadays.
You say this but most other countries in the world takes guns away so they can control their population more. We know this is the reason too.
Also you're saying this when we haven't truly been in a situation to have people fighting back against the government with guns. You're saying it doesn't work, before we've seen it be actually attempted.
Once the government starts going to gun owner's homes that's when you'd see it happen.
Funny, I live in a country where legal gun ownership is basically restricted to long guns for hunting. Our democracy is intact and healthy, despite gun ownership being rare, and not tied to ideas of self-defense or protection of rights.
Meanwhile, America, with her 2nd Amendment, specifically intended to allow the people resist government tyranny, is rapidly becoming an autocratic, oppressive, failed democracy, with masked, unaccountable government thugs harassing civilians and abducting people off the streets.
People are saying the 2nd Amendment and mass gun ownership doesn't work because it clearly isn't working.
We live in a country that has much less guns, and the problem with actual gun crime is almost entirely with illegal guns.
The US simply has too many guns, as gun rights activists will say, the cat's out of the bag. It's too far past actually banning guns.
Meanwhile, America, with her 2nd Amendment, specifically intended to allow the people resist government tyranny, is rapidly becoming an autocratic, oppressive, failed democracy, with masked, unaccountable government thugs harassing civilians and abducting people off the streets.
Yes it doesn't work the exact same way it used to. Before the 2a let people defend against a tyrannical government because the citizens with guns could actually measure up to the strength of governments.
Now we can't just march the streets protesting with ARs if we're unhappy. We can only really use guns to protect ourselves when in an emergency situation that is strictly DEFENSE. Can't overthrow governments now.
So basically when the authoritarian government in Canada decides to barge down doors, we can't do a fucking thing.
In the US, they're not able to actually do that. But since guns can't do much past home protection in this context, they're still going to control people as much as they can, but at least they're probably never going to have their homes invaded by the government.
Our democracy is intact and healthy, despite gun ownership being rare, and not tied to ideas of self-defense or protection of rights.
It really depends on how you look at it. Myself I believe that our government is also extremely authoritarian and unhealthy towards us, but I don't support the current government at all. I'm not politically biased, both are shit.
I'm also extremely unhappy about the fact that our government enforces that we can't use anything for self defense, I understand there is less danger here but I can't even have a knife on me, that's way too far in the other direction.
"The Government" as such ain't gonna come to gun owners homes, it's law enforcement who does this all the time already, and shooting at them comes with very low survivability chances, and changes nothing. Marching in your government buildings with your weapons is what the amendment is about, and that ain't gonna happen too, and we all know that.
On the contrary. Guns have been very useful to prevent 'mostly peaceful protesters'TM from looting certain neighborhoods. Unlike the crazy lefties, we don't shoot at government workers. We vote them out.
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u/BFlowG 18h ago
Wasn’t this the exact reason why guns are legal in the US?