Shot in the Dark

We, The People

To:  “David Smalley”
From:  Mitch Berg, irascible peasant
Re:  Your article on, ahem, “Patheos”.

Mr. Smalley,

I”m not going to bother dispensing with the bulk of your “seminar caller”-stule, utterly and intensely illogical assault on “gun culture”.

But there is one line that I want to call out, by way of accelerating its demise from conversations among the smart people.  It’s this oldie-but-goodie:

So even today, with the 2nd Amendment in full effect, we don’t have the rights to be “armed as well as our government.”
Secondly, what if you were? I could hand you 50 M-16s, give you 1000 illegal bombs, steal you a couple of tanks, and smuggle in some bazookas, and even let you fully train 500 of your closest friends.
If the government wants your shit, they’re going to take it.
You still wouldn’t be a match for even a single battalion of the United States Marine Corps. Not to mention the Air Force, Army, Navy, National Guard, Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and Seals.
So stop acting like your little AR-15 is going to stop tyranny.

This makes perfect sense, Mr. “Smalley”, since as we know the military – especially the “combat arms” people – infantry, armor, artillery, combat engineers and cavalry,, as well as special forces – are drawn from families with two parents who have masters degrees in poli sci from Oberlin, work for social justice non-profits, shop at Whole Foods, drive Subarus, listen to NPR and practice vegan lifestyles.

Right?

Wrong.

The families – fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins – of those soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, and generally by extension those troops themselves – are drawn from the caste of our society that owns guns, for ideological as much as practical reasons.

It’s culturally almost impossible to separate the “gun culture” and our military.  :

Your little cultural genocide tale  only exists in lefty fantasy.

That is all.

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16 responses to “We, The People”

  1. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    Yes, overwhelming military force will negate the need for forceful dissent. Which is why Iraq, Afghanistan, and Venezuela are all models of peaceful bliss.

    Herr Smalley is an idiot. The idea is not to make it so that armed rebellion is necessary, it is to constrain government’s actions with the threat of severe disruption so that it is NOT necessary.

  2. Loren Avatar
    Loren

    And an armed citizenry may be killed, but never enslaved.

  3. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Guys like that are frustrating because he might know something about guns and even about the Constitution, but he knows nothing of logical analysis so his column is a waste of time. Here’s how to properly analyze the issue:

    1. The Constitution doesn’t mention rights, it only describes powers given to government.
    2. The Bill of Rights was added to clarify that giving powers to the government did NOT affect people’s rights, which they retained in case they needed to use those rights against their own new government.
    3. The Supreme Court invented a new power that never was given to it – judicial review – in the case of Marbury v. Madison. It set itself up as the supreme arbiter of what was Constitutional and what was not.
    4. The government passed a law that infringed upon the Second Amendment (National Firearms Act of 1934) but the Supreme Court didn’t want to vindicate the citizens’ rights for political reasons (Negros with guns – gasp!), so it punted the case back to the trial court by which time the Plaintiff (Miller) had died; the constitutional arguments were never addressed.
    5. The infringement remained in place nearly 100 years. Whole generations of Americans have grown up under infringed Second Amendment rights and have never known any better, until a bold man named Heller came to court.
    6. Smalley argues “So even today, with the 2nd Amendment in full effect, we don’t have the rights to be “armed as well as our government.” That’s an invalid premise. The Second Amendment is not fully in effect, it’s only partly in effect, having been infringed by an unconstitutional law adopted generations ago.
    7. Smalley argues that arming 500 citizens with military grade weapons can’t compete with the US military. That’s a straw man argument. 500 citizen can’t, but 300 million citizens could and that was the original intent of the Second Amendment, before the infringement was imposed.
    8. I won’t debunk the studies – scholars have done that already.
    9. Since the Second Amendment protects a fundamental right, a right no lesser in quality then speech, religion, voting, gay marriage or abortion, then it’s obvious that Smalley’s list of solutions is flat unconstitutional. Imagine trying to apply them to any other fundamental right.
    10. We’re not killing each other. A small group of dedicated criminals is killing each other. The rest of us deserve the means to protect ourselves from them. The fact that also would protect our liberties from the government is icing on the cake.

    Conclusion: Smalley hasn’t proven his case for gun control, he’s proven he doesn’t know how to make a case. The choir he’s preaching to won’t know the difference because they’re all nodding slyly about penis length. The rest of us shake our heads in disbelief.

  4. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    The troops may well be as you describe, but the senior officers are having this “bred” out of them by selective promotion of those who know to play the PC game. Command and control is going to be a flas point.

  5. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    This is where I depart company with so many of my fellow conservatives.

    First off, let me say that I fully support second amendment rights, no caveats, no exceptions – but this idea of defending liberty with sporting weapons has a sort of – if Spiderman and The Hulk got into a fight – quality to it.

    We do not know how things are going to go down and almost always, they end badly for all parties…. but the problem I have with this mindset is that sooner or later some idiot or group of idiots, like Timothy Mcveigh takes it upon themselves to become Braveheart and then things go quickly south.

    The talk about defending liberty with our guns obscures the world of possibilities of things we can do now.

    In this concept of resistance, the left is way ahead of us. They have been honing the skills of non-violence (and violent) civil disobedience for 50 years.

    It is time we get in on the act.

    There are a million ways to wage war on repressive governments shy of pointing an AR15 at it. Allow me to suggest just one.

    I happen to live in a red county, a very red one, (sorry Mitch, don’t feel too jealous). How about this? If blue cities and counties can declare themselves sanctuary entities, why not red cities and counties?

    All it would really take on a number of hot button issues is for a county board and sheriff to simply, “prioritize citizen safety” and cease to enforce a long, long, long, long list of mandates from Saint Paul and Washington DC.

    If you want to smoke in a bar, go ahead.

    If the Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Agency jerks your licence, who is going to bar the door, and who is going to bar it again after you open it?

    If you don’t like a process or a regulation, slow walk it. If you can’t slow walk it, take every last word, comma in the regulation and subject it to Clintonesque interpretation.

    If the courts get involved, shut down the courts with nuance lawsuits, appeals and complaints.

    There is a world of possibilities and a world of fun before anyone reaches for a weapon.

  6. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    Cupcake’s wish list:
    Treat guns like cars.
    Mandatory licenses
    License renewals
    Mandatory training
    Mandatory insurance
    Operating laws
    Operating age limits
    Restrict some models
    Require safety inspections
    Mandatory registration
    Background checks

    Do we have a deal?

    When you’re ready to apply a similar list to voting, I’m your Huckleberry. Because, hey a Constitutional right is a Constitutional right.

    Also because vote slinging *coff* leftist *coff* idiots cause 100x the suffering and carnage any single gun nut, or group of gun nuts could ever dream of.

    Do we have a deal?

  7. Sauk Fantoche Avatar
    Sauk Fantoche

    Think it through Greg, recent trivial armed resistance in Baltimore, NYC, and Ferguson has resulted in a local near collapse of order because the police are not equipped or trained for even loosely organized urban warfare. The National Guard can be used for suppression but then only superficially and again only effectively in highly localized settings. If instead of small groups of unskilled criminal shooters the govt had to deal with large populations of antagonistic citizens, backed by even larger populations of sympathetic citizens the govt would find the “pacification” process daunting enough to view the negotiation table with longing.

  8. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Greg,

    Great points.

    As you pointed out, if we could get a red county, run by true conservative, constitutional Republicans or even Indies and Democrats for that matter (don’t laugh. I happen to know about 10 of them), that would be the way to go. I’d contribute to a defense fund for that any day!

  9. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Again Sauk, this is like, could Spiderman beat The Hulk? It is pretty silly to speculate about.

    In any kind of civil action, the losers are always the general population, that certainly was the case in Baltimore as well as inner-city Detroit and much of North Minneapolis.

    The object, I would hope, is to emerge from civil antagonisms with the world intact. It is kind of ridiculous to be able to say you won – when you are battling mutants in the desert for gasoline.

  10. Sauk Fantoche Avatar
    Sauk Fantoche

    Greg
    Think it through! I’m not suggesting that anyone begin with force. Everything you suggest is fine until you refuse to back it up with force, then it all collapses and leaves you with nothing more to do than read your favorite Marvel comics.

  11. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Sauk, I disagree.

    India gained its independence, apartheid ended, the wall came down in Berlin and Eastern Europe was liberated from the most repressive empire of the modern era, all without a shot being fired.

    The problems I have with the mindset of force are two-fold: some idiot or idiots are going to go all Braveheart before anything of that sort is warranted and there goes popular support. It is things like that that give oppression a good name. Or lots of people with guns means lots of opinions with guns – and it never fails, there is always someone who is going to see you are the oppressor.

    At least in my humble opinion, when the time comes to reach for a gun, the civil society that it takes to ensure freedom has been long lost – and the fight becomes for can of beans.

  12. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    India gained its independence, apartheid ended, the wall came down in Berlin and Eastern Europe was liberated from the most repressive empire of the modern era, all without a shot being fired.

    India gained it’s independence from a nation that realized it could no longer lay claim to it and look itself in the mirror. England, for all it’s faults (I’m Irish), is at it’s core a moral nation…at least for a while longer.

    Berlin and Eastern Europe were liberated from the most repressive empire through the direct actions, always accompanied with the implicit threat of armed intervention, of the world’s champion of freedom and Democracy. Without America, East Berlin would be celebrating Nokor’s great achievements today.

    The world is changing for the worse. There is a significant segment of the population that is living in squalor and inhuman debauchery, largely though not entirely through their own efforts, and another segment that is determined to drag the West down into squalor and inhuman debauchery and then, rule like King Nebuchadnezzar II reborn.

    These reprobates would just as soon gain their aims without a bloody slaughter, they are attacking the tree of Liberty and Light at it’s roots; our children. And they are seeing great success, but make no mistake; they will go to the gun if they have to, and if they are successful the bloody slaughter will eventually arrive anyway…it always does.

  13. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Greg, I’m confused by the premise of your argument. Are you saying the Founders never intended the Second Amendment to protect the right of private citizens to possess weapons sufficiently robust to resist the government? Or are you saying that even if the Founders did intend that, their idea belongs to a long-distant past so the Second Amendment should be ignored, or better still, repealed?

  14. Sauk Fantoche Avatar
    Sauk Fantoche

    Greg
    this quote:
    “But the fact is, our conventionalities allow to barbarians only the right of actual self-defence; we expect that civilized States will fight according to etiquette, and that the real nation will not be guilty of such rudeness as to go on fighting after the official nation has had to give in”.
    By Frederich Engles in the winter of 1870-71 seems to best summarize your view as you’ve expressed it above of the 2nd A

  15. Sauk Fantoche Avatar
    Sauk Fantoche
  16. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    I actually agree with both points: armed society is a polite society and it would be fun to turn the tables on the libturd tactics; and the reason we are still speaking English and not Russian is the existence of 2nd amendment as a deterrent to direct action.

    But, I have to absolutely disagree regarding this:
    India gained its independence, apartheid ended, the wall came down in Berlin and Eastern Europe was liberated from the most repressive empire of the modern era, all without a shot being fired.

    Plenty of shots were fired and countless thousands, if not millions died in proxy fighting during the Cold War. And I doubt very much you would get ANY Afrikaaner or an Indian agree to your statement.

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