I had a big kerfuffle on my facebook page this week. I posted a peripheral comment about the student walkouts, and it devolved into a pretty typical gun debate. There were reasonable comments and discussion — I enjoy a lively debate — and of course a couple of the typical kooky/outlandish ones as well.
A lot of times I don’t get involved but this time I did. In doing so, I mentioned that one of the main reasons that the Second Amendment exists is to prevent the rise of a tyranny here in the US. This was dismissed with not a small amount of derision as something that would never happen, so there is no need to defend against it. (Never mind that a different subthread had the dismisser arguing that Donald Trump was behaving in a tyrannical fashion…..)
And this kind of irritated me. And then it it hit me. He’s right — it is basically impossible for tyranny to occur here in the US, precisely because the Second Amendment exists. People find the notion of our government becoming a true tyranny laughable precisely because the Second Amendment guarantees the ability of the people to rebel against such a turn of events.
The fact that the notion of a tyranny arising here in the US is found to be a joke by those (typically) on the Left is because the right of the people to bear arms has made it a joke. Take it away, like they did during the 20th Century in Germany and Russia and China, and you have key ingredient in the recipe for tyranny. It can be a slow burn in that direction — witness the deterioration of free speech in Canada — but it can head in that direction only with an unarmed populace.
An armed populace makes tyranny laughable.