Bill Maher: It’s ‘Ridiculous,’ ‘Quaint’ & ‘Nonsensical’ to Think 2nd Amendment Can Prevent Tyranny

The Blaze ^ | May 4, 2013 | Erica Ritz

[2ndDivisionVet]

HBO host Bill Maher had MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell as one of his guests on “Real Time” Friday night, and the two were adamant that the Second Amendment cannot protect against tyranny (and that such a conversation shouldn’t even really be happening in this age).

After pointing out the poll where 44% of Republicans said an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect liberties in the next few years, compared to 18% of Democrats, Maher said:

“Can we get to, first of all, how ridiculous it is for people to think that the Second Amendment protects them from tyranny. Didn’t Waco solve that? We just had the anniversary a couple of weeks ago. Remember Waco? You know what they had in Waco? They had like 1.9 million rounds of ammunition; they had .50 caliber machine guns; they had grenades…What did the government have? Everything else. The winner and still champion – the United States government. Thinking the Second Amendment protects you from tyranny is like thinking the First Amendment protects you from Thor. It’s quaint. It’s ridiculous. It’s nonsensical. And they never get called [on] it!

After Pete Hegseth, a veteran, asked whether Maher could imagine a scenario even in the abstract where liberty might need to be preserved with a weapon, O’Donnell said to audience applause: “Zero. We’re past it. We’re past it!…This country [is] long past the point where you would ever have to rise in arms against this government.”(continued)

[Texas Eagle]

Good thing Maher wasn't around in 1773.

On second thought. Maybe it would've been better if he had been around in 1773. That way he wouldn't be around today.

'Course, somebody else just like him would be around.

[wardaddy]

Kapo in making

Blissfully ignorant of history

Pray tell sans guns

How to resist tyranny

Waco...however flawed Koresh

Was push back of a sort

And it got attention from both sides

In the long view it served a purpose but at a high cost of children

It may or may not be etched down the road

[Forward the Light Brigade]

You think the Taliban are fierce fighters! Get the American people angry and you will unleash a force that will make them appear like a Sunday school picnick. Think Irish Republican Army on Steroids. Suicide bombings, Railroad de-railings, Power towers pulled down, assassinations, why we Americans INVENTED Terrorism! Look at the tactics used in the early Labor movement? Look at the KKK in the south, Look at the Gangsters in Prohibition. If angered the American people will become un-governable. The government might own the cities—but the countryside will belong to the Partisans. All the drones in the world can stop this from ripping away the infrastructure— Liberals are fools to think otherwise—and they haven’t studied history.

[CodeToad]

If that was the case then why do I hear liberals calling for a “bloody revolution”?

[Georgia Girl 2]

The 2nd ammendment allows us to protect ourselves agains’t tyranny.

[willyd]

Waco was the FEDGOV against a small church...what Bill Maher needs to think about is whether that same force could have won against every household in Texas.

I think the answer becomes obvious to even the most casual observer. There are less than 25,000 police officers in the entire state of Texas. Add another 30,000 Fed LEO’s if you like. There are over 25,000,0000 people in the great State of Texas (mostly armed to the teeth).

If it ever came down to it, they wouldn’t amount to a fart in the wind against those odds. Now if nobody was armed and they had to throw rocks instead, it would be an entirely different story. A seven year old can see that. I am pretty sure Bill Maher can too if he is honest about it.

[mad_as_he$$]

Look at what two guys with a few bombs and one handgun did a short time ago.

[tanknetter]

The problem is, here, that he’s very very wrong.

There’s a threshold out there, a tipping point, where The People will rise up against tyranny. Waco wasn’t it (small group of loons) and neither was Boston (very specific, temporary and isolated incident involving a massive perception of potential threat to the public).

Gun confiscation could be it. The one thing that, in my experience, stops gun-control supporters in their tracks is to point out that if 1% of 1% of the 80 million gun owners in the US were to do the “Molon Labe” thing in the face of confiscation there’ll be 8,000 separate instances of armed response to tyranny.

Local, state and Federal law enforcement will be quickly overwhelmed by that kind of response ... requiring either a backing-down, or an escalation (call in the National Guard and the military). Which then may provoke ANOTHER 1% of 1% to start standing their ground (so another 8,000 incidents of armed response).

Leading up to Pearl Harbor Admiral Yamamoto - who was trying very hard to reign in the Japanese Army nutters who were taking their nation to war against the US made comments along the lines of it being insanity to try to invade the US (which he said was the ONLY way Japan could actually win) because there’d be a “rifle behind every blade of glass”. There was a Russian back in the 50s (not Molotov - that would be way too ironic) who said the same thing but used the example of Coke bottles and gas stations ...

Dipsh*ts (Admin/Mods, pls excuse that one) like Maher - who have lived privileged and affluent lives in very sheltered and protected environments, just think that if the Government pushes The People will cave in, and for those who don’t cave in the Government has the means to put them in their place.

That kind of clueless thinking scares the cr*p out me. Especially if he’s reflecting the thoughts/opinions of real decision-makers.

[wardaddy]

KKK has had more members outside the South than in

Since 1900

The original Klan to resist occupation and radical Republicans till Hayes

Yes...a southern thing

[wardaddy]

Americans have rarely targeted women and children as policy

But have on Occasion yes

Night bombings WWII

Atom bombs

Sherman ....latter Shenandoah cavalry campaign

East TN irregulars

Missouri

Indian wars

But given our might we have resisted more than anyone else ever has

The terror you allude to is scant compared to jihad or Palestinian resistance or Hindu/Muslim/Sikhs

Or Sri Lanka Tamils

Or Congo savages attacking Belgian colonials

Etc

Missouri

[x]

I think the idea is more that having a population with gun rights discourages people from even thinking about establishing a tyranny.

Think of it as analogous to the freedom of the press. Reading a newspaper to a column of tanks won't turn them back, but a vigorous journalistic culture just might turn our leaders minds away from going too far.

[Yardstick]

As if Waco disproves the utility of the second amendment as a hedge against tyranny. The Waco compound was isolated -- but imagine ten thousand Waco compounds, working together. At the very least, an armed citizenry means the government can't just casually snatch you away in the middle of the night as the totalitarian governments of the 20th century could. Each household would be a minor seige with gunshots and fighting and violence, not just a silent capitulation. That is a huge difference.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Every woman I dated in the South during my bachelor days had a pistol in her handbag. Without exception and in four states (Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana). Think on that. Also, speaking of a disarmed populace, there's this:

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn