Are gun rights advocates seditious?

Many Americans are upset at our government. Approval of the job performance of Congress is about 20%, which means four out of five folks don't like it. Gun owners tend to be among the political right, and Second Amendment support is a common thread among Tea Party demonstrators. All of us who bitterly cling to our guns are painted by the mass media as a violent bomb, just waiting to go off. From ex-president Clinton on down, there have been comments to the effect that the political right is urging any crazies who might be willing to act out, to commit violent acts against the government. We have been called seditious. We are told that sedition is rising up against the authority of the state, and as practitioners we probably ought be muzzled or incarcerated to calm down the country.

I reject the charge. The number of folks who own guns (estimated at about 122 million) and the number licensed to carry weapons (estimated at 3-5 million) is a very large pool. Indeed, if you count the populations of Vermont, Alaska and now Arizona which allow concealed carry by virtue of being a 21 year old citizen of those states, the pool allowed to carry becomes 7.9 million, but I digress. How many examples of "violence against the authority of the state" have the media been able to pull together that were instigated by rhetoric from the right?

Something that conservatives *frequently* get caught in, is actually an Orwellian nonsense.

That is, almost by definition, conservatives prefer the status quo to change, and even prefer to roll back foolish and injudicious changes that have been made.

However, liberals, the left, and socialists, attack conservatives for this, claiming that they are “fascists”, “Nazis”, and all sorts of other vicious slanders, for not embracing radical change.

By this illogic, the nation that we all live in right now is a terrible, horrible, fascist authoritarian place, at least according to the liberals-leftists-socialists.

Apparently, they really think that they live in Nazi Germany, right now.

And yet their solution to this is more central government, more government control, more authoritarianism, more repression, and more censorship.

So, in effect, while claiming they live in Nazi “Amerikkka”, as they like to call it, they are demanding an even stricter, more intractable, more vicious form of government than that of the “Nazis”.

Thus, in future, when you read or hear of some leftist “liberal” or socialist, proclaiming how wonderful everything will be in the future, they are describing a future even worse than what the Nazis created.

This is what people like Matt Lauer, and Chris Matthews, and most definitely Keith Olbermann want.

What they advocate, based on their perceptions and wants, is a hideous horror of a life, a monstrous place of suffering, deprivation, anguish and brutality. An American North Korea, achieved not through war, but by gradually stripping away civilization and prosperity, so that the filthy elites live like princes, and everyone else suffer, starve and die.

Do not look at the smiling faces of such monsters as anything more than hideous masks, that hide near demonic evil behind them.

The Declaration of Independence states explicitly that "violence against the authority of the state" is a right and duty of the people against a destructive and despotic government.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-

Looks reasonable enough, but what criteria would justify such collective action? A refresher on the list is quite instructive:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

Looks to me like our current government has manipulated conditions adversely by the majority of these metrics.

A little different. First, they opposed Hitler, because he was not a communist. Then Hitler and Stalin signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the US commies did a 180 degree turn, and were all sweetness and light to the Nazis.

But *then*, with the Nazi invasion of Russia, the commies did another shameless 180, and passionately hated the Nazis again. Up to the point involving personal risk. However, many of them still were drafted.

When the military realized they were commies, most were shipped off to the Aleutian Islands to “count penguins” (yeah, I know, Antarctic). This was long after the Japanese attack there, and there was little concern that they would be back. It is important to note that other individuals who had fouled up terribly, like drunks who talked about classified operations, ended up there as well. Often quickly.

I would like to add one anecdote. Since times were dull in the Aleutians, and the army didn’t want them to get bored, at least one unit was tasked with learning if people could be trained to digest plant cellulose. This means that for a year or more, with their meals, they were required to eat lots and lots of healthy, if non-nutritious fiber.

Apparently they learned that people cannot digest cellulose.

All of us who bitterly cling to our guns are painted by the mass media as a violent bomb, just waiting to go off

Is that not the point of an armed populace? Although maybe one could replace "ready to go off" with "ready to be set off".. by the government's abuses.

If the government be equitable; if it be reasonable in its exactions; if proper attention be paid to the education of children in knowledge and religion, few men will be disposed to use arms, unless for their amusement, and for the defence of themselves and their country
T. Dwight, Travels in New-England and New-York xiv (London 1823)

The danger where there is any from armed citizens, is only to the government, not to the society and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage
J. Barlow, Advice to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe: Resulting from the Necessity and Propriety of a General Revolution in the Principle of Government, Parts I and II, at 16 (London 1792, 1795 & reprint 1956).

The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States; With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution 746-47 (Boston 1833

""What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them."
Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356

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