One of the digressionary trails of Second Amendment debate concerns the practicality of local militias

in the age of the attack helicopter

and the heavy tank

and it goes like this:

Assuming for the sake of argument that one purpose of the right to keep and bear arms is to be able to throw off the yoke of a government that has become oppressive, such argument (and by extension the Amendment itself) is now no longer operative, because there is no way a bunch of yahoos with varmint guns and revolvers can stand up against an Apache gunship or the Abrams tank.

On that point, the experience of the U.S. military in Iraq should be quite instructive. Contrariwise, as Sanford Levinson points out, the U.S. might want to reconsider its official position regarding the disarmament of Iraqi militias, mightn’t it?

Margie.
You can say it is programed into our brain from evolution.

Others may say it comes from drinking water, or what ever.

Where ever it comes from?
We all have it!

Our forefathers cited that they inherited their inspiration from God to make these certain rights into American law.

Thats just our history, and we can not, should not try and change it.

To each his own.

You are free to beleive where the inspiration or desire comes from as you wish.

However we are not free to change the historical facts that our forefathers beleived these rights came from God.

Our current government can pass a law and abolish citizens rights to own weapons today if they wanted to.

But they would find out quickly that they would be embroiled in mass civil disobedience for eternity.
The death rate to enforce such a law would be much higher than the death rate we now have allowing the people to own personal weapons.

I think we both now have a good understanding of each others veiws.

Smile…..

Perhaps the necessary ingredient is timing, a wide-spread dissatisfaction and a feeling of helplessness to right wrongs, guided by a chrismatic, passionate individual playing on the peoples vanity or rage. I stand corrected, R. Smith. Still, in this age of sophisticated weponry, a high-up military leader with the power to mobilize would be a necessary component of a successful revolution. Holy Cow! I can’t believe I am so nonchalantly discussing revolution here! Even as a purely intelectual exercise, it gives me the shivers! Let’s keep our future options open with the second amendment and pray it never, ever is necessary here.

Rick, could it be that our inherent desire for these rights stems from simple self-preservation and our ego-driven idea that we deserve them? It would be interesting to know from what portion of the brain it is generated. How ancient is that urge or is it just a product of social evolution? Sorry, just an amusing red herring, as there is no way to understand the indisputable fact that faith will outweigh logic everytime. A fact of human nature I find puzzling but accept.

Margie,

I see your point but, I don’t think it’s applicable to compare our generals to those from third world nations.

And…

Castro was not a general. He was a minor league baseball player.

Lenin, never in the military

Stalin, also, was never in the military.

Hitler was a corporal in WW1. A corporal is one notch above a private, which is one notch above a nothing. Pretty much everyone in Europe was in the military during WW1. Except Stalin and Lenin.

Mao was never a general.

Ho? NO! Never a general.

Pol Pot? I think not.

All these men had one thing in common though. They were dillusional fanatics obsessed with exacting vengence against percieved enemies and willing to destroy anyone or anything that got in their way. They pledged obedience to ideology, not truth, they worshipped power, not justice. And they were all certain that their way was the one TRUE way.

Rick,

Exactly. If we are not willing to break the enemies will to resist, like we were in all of the wars we have won, we are doomed to failure, not just as a power, but as the only power seperating the current age from the next Dark Age.

Larry,

The whole idea of the militia is not just in case of a need to overthrow our own government. It’s a means of defending ourselves from all sorts of threats, external and internal. The National Guard is intended to be a modern state militia, but as we can see, having state militias under defacto federal control results in the states and localities getting screwed over, as our Guardsmen are mostly over in Iraq now fighting a foreign war rather than being the local militia they are supposed to be.

In the event of a major natural disaster or riots or foreign invasion, we would be pretty much screwed if the only to depend on was the National Guard (remember Hurricane Katrina) so long as the President decides he wants to do something else with those troops. The old model of local militias under local control worked better.

At the moment, the idea of foreign invasion seems far-fetched. But this is an unusually secure moment in our history. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese conducted a number of feint land invasions to distract us and test our defenses. Early in the 20th Century, Pancho Villa crossed the border and sacked several American towns. It would foolhardy in the extreme for America to give up the fundamental legal basis that allows us to defend ourselves simply because for a few brief decades we find ourselves rather safe. This won’t last forever.

With a country run by idiots, our military stretched to the breaking point and the National Guard taken from us, I take great comfort in the fact that there are hundreds of millions of firearms in private hands in America. The idea of directly attacking any portion of the United States with invading troops would be total suicide for any of our enemies. Who cares if the military is on the other side of the world? Any foreign soldier who attempted to set foot on American soil would be greeted by the most ferocious hail of gunfire imaginably from every window and treetop - a hail which would not end until the enemy was gone.

Your case that we should only use the “here’n’ now” situation to defend Second Amendment rights is short-sighted and ill-advised. When we are talking about the preservation of fundamental rights we have to consider not just what is needed today but also what might be needed in 50 or 100 years. When you lose a right, you don’t generally get it back. Ever. In a future time of peace and political harmony, perhaps we could do away with freedom of speech because it doesn’t fit that ‘here ‘n’ now.‘ Or maybe we’ll get our justice system working so well that we feel like we can throw out habeus corpus. But neither political harmony nor an effective justice system would last forever. When things broke down again, we would find ourselves up the creek without a paddle.

That’s what the Constitution is for, that’s what all of these rights are for. When government breaks down and fails us, we’ve still got a backup plan. The Second Amendment is part of that.

By using the term God given, I only mean that they live inside us.

We are born with the desire[to be free, speak out etc.] and those desires can not be beaten out of us.

We are created with them in our hearts.

There is no where in religious history that God just delivered the people without the people first taking action on their own accord.[at least I am not aware of it]

I went to school,church, and work, with a lot of blacks.
I have neighbors and personal black friends also.
Nearly every one of them credit God for inspiring the negroe race to perservere, endure, and ultimately found the courage in the scritptures to stand up against slavery.

Those old negroe spiritual songs have true meaning.

There is a reason why Jesse Jackson still says “keep hope alive” to this day.

Hope and faith or 1st cousins.

Both have changed mankinds condition on this earth more than any other force known to man.

Like it or not.  If you give them credit or not.

Our forefathers cite the bible and their faith in God as the source and inspiration for all of the rights written in our constitution.

You dont have to beleive in God to reap the benefits of those rights that were inspired and embedded into the hearts and minds of the nations founders. [they themselves credit God as the source of their ideas]

No one here is asking anyone to beleive in their God.

Just give credit where credit is due.

Be accurate with history.

R. Smith, the Generals I was refering to are often found in South American nations, where they came to power by force, as Castro did in Cuba, promising to stand for the common man. And remained in power, becoming worse the rulers they ousted.

The key element, as you stated, would be the military man’s willingness to defend the constitution, not the people in power. No, it isn’t ever likely to occur, but I would not rule it out as an impossibility, either.

Rick, I won’t get into religion here, but to state that rights are ‘God-given’ is not something that seems logical to me. It appears to me that they exist only in places where they have been wrested from governments. From the cave men days till the present, the strong have ruled and God has not stepped in to give anyone anything they could not take for themselves. The desire for those rights could be said to be inherent in human nature, but that doesn’t mean we are going to get them unless we fight for them and sometimes not even then. Does God not grant these same ‘inherent’ rights to the people who have always been denied them since the beginning of their histories? You are overlooking how unique and scarce the rights contained in the Bill of Rights are on Earth and always have been. They are ours only as long as we can hold on to them.  You might almost call them a historical fluke.

Thankyou R.Smith for the correction.
Indeed it was Afganistan that held off Russia for 10yrs.

Even though they did have shoulder fired missle launchers it pales in comparisson the the arsenal that Russia had.

You touched on the real weapon that wins wars.

“Will”

Which ever side looses it first looses the war.
Loosing the will to fight is seen as weakness and invites more enemys to test us.

The Afgans “will” outlasted the Russian’s.

The Veitnamese “will” outlasted the Americans.

It seems that the insurgent terrorist in Iraq have a stronger “will” to continue to fight than most Americans these days have.

If we cant get our “will” back to pay what ever the cost is to win a war, then we may never win again.

Anywhere!

Bill:

You are exaclty right.
I think the term they used were “God given inalienable rights”.

Sometimes we get caught up in using the same term as others use in order to keep from confusing the conversation, but in doing so we loose significant meaning and possibly confuse the conversation worse.

It is true that we are equipted with those rights from the beginning of time and we carry them every where we go.

It is only governments through out history and some even now that want to reign supreme and act as though they can grant or withdraw those rights from us.

When ever any government or world force tries to take away any of those God given rights it will always be in human nature to struggle with that force to ultimately regain what is naturaly ours.
The American struggle to keep slaves is an example of human rights rising up even after 400yrs of oppression. Its a desire built into our “being” and cant be whipped out even over centurys.
“WE ARE INDEED CREATED THIS WAY” 

Take away our guns and there will be constant civil unrest.

I think its the fact that our constitution actualy mentions God given rights is the reason why the left have such a problem with the constitution.

They seem to have a problem with just about every right mentioned in the document and what those rights actualy mean.
It is my opinion that it isnt the rights themselves that they have a conflict with, but its the fact that they “rail against God” and the word God makes the constitution their target.

Any where you find God mentioned in a public place you will find the left railing against it.

To them constitutional rights are the secondary issue.

So in ending, it is all the more important to make sure we use proper terms when discussing second admendment issues in order to help others understand the original source of our human rights, and to relay to others that it is a “REAL AND POWERFUL FORCE” that grant those rights to us.
Much more powerful than any government or weapon created by man.

The apache’ helicopter is a daunting machine and the United States Marines are absolutely the worlds greatest fighting force but they pale in comparison to the force that ensures our human rights.

There is a reason for the terms “King of kings”
and “every knee shall bow”!

JMO

P.S.
I noticed Bart used “attack” instead of apache’ helicopter.
Is that your contribution the left?
ommision?  or submission?
I hate PC.

Rick said,

“Iraq held out against Russia for 10 yrs.
Now they have held out against the U.S. for 5 yrs.
Veitnam held out for over 10 ys.“

It was Afganistan, not Iraq that held out against the Russians, and they did so with sophisticated weapons (shoulder launched, heat seeking missles, ect) supplied by the US.

It’s also come to light in recent years that, according to some of North Vietnams top generals, the NVA were to the point of settling for a North-South Korea style armistice but, decided to stick it out when they realized the American public was turning against the war. Seems the most effective weapon the NVA had wasn’t in stockpile of Soviet weaponry but, Walter Cronkite and Co. The dems picked up a couple dozen seats in congress, the NVA got the country and all it cost was a few million executed Cambodians and Vietnamese “collaboraters”. A small price to pay…unless it was your family being executed because you trusted your American “allies”.

Margie,

America is unique in that there has never been an attempted military takeover of the country. That only happens in Hollywood. While we have had several generals as presidents…Washington, Jackson, Grant, Eisenhower…all served with honor and left when their time came. The closest we ever came, and it wasn’t very close at all, was under Lincoln and Roosevelt. Neither was a military man.

In order for a general to overthrow the gov’t, he would need the support of the soldiers under his command and, contrary to cliche’d stereotypes created by envious runts, America’s soldiers take very seriously their oath to defend the constitution and American people, as well as their duty to abide by the laws set forth by the elected civil gov’t.

Although we might have to change that if the skeptics don’t get their mind right on globalclimatewarmingchange.

As for insurgents and their weapons, all the high tech gizmotronics in the world are worthless without the will to fight and sacrifice for a principle or ideal. Thats how most ideals die. Not by the sword but, from neglect, arrogance and apathy.

I post only to clarify that the rights enumerated in the Constitution are not “given” to us thereby.  The rights predate the Constitution.  Neither the Constitution nor the government can “give” us these rights.  The Constitutions enumerates these rights to recognize that they exist and to state that the federal government is prohibited from encroaching upon them.

These are rights that the Framers recognized as inherent and arising from Natural Law, not as being “granted” or “given” by the government - “the people” have these rights; “the people” created the government by giving up a stated measure of sovereignty to the government they created; what they did not give up to the government were rights they considered to be inherent and fundamental, including the specific rights enumerated in the first 10 amendments.

Noboby really knows exactly what the 9th Amendment means ... but interestingly, it has been used to “discover” constitutionally-protected rights not enumerated, while those expressly stated are somehow “no longer relevant in society” or just re-defined to fit a particular far-left agenda.

OK, I was wrong - I posted for more than just clarifying…

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