A scenario for the second civil war

Forward Observer ^ | August 30, 2016 | Matt Bracken

[Travis McGee]

MATTHEW BRACKEN is a former Navy SEAL (BUD/S Class 105), a Constitutionalist, and a self-described “freedomista”. He’s the author of several books, including Enemies Foreign and Domestic. This is the first part in a series of different author’s thoughts on the next civil war. Here’s what Bracken sees as a potential scenario for the next American Civil War.

The Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights does not “grant” Americans the right to armed self-defense, it simply recognizes and affirms this God-given human right. The Constitution, including the Bill or Rights, is a very succinct document that was written in plain English intended to be fully understandable by ordinary citizens, requiring no interpretation by judges. Article III of the Constitution discusses the responsibilities, powers and limitations of the Judiciary, including the Supreme Court.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Supreme Court is a super-legislature authorized to amend the Bill of Rights by a simple majority vote among its nine lifetime-appointed justices. In fact, Article III Section 2 explicitly grants to Congress the power to regulate which cases the Supreme Court may adjudicate at all. However, in the current political climate, with a toothless Congress abdicating its power to the Executive and Judicial branches, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will be reined in and confined within its Constitutional limits.

My scenario for a second American civil war involves a Hillary Clinton victory in November 2016, followed in 2017 by the appointment of a Supreme Court justice politically to the left of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The Second Amendment will then be gutted using a specious argument such as that the militia has “evolved” into the modern National Guard, meaning that there is no longer a right for private citizens to individually keep or bear arms. Liberal politicians and the collaborating liberal mainstream media will be in full-throated agreement with this false interpretation of the Second Amendment.

Subsequently, some states will ban semi-automatic pistols and rifles capable of taking a detachable magazine, meaning that nearly all semi-automatic firearms will become “illegal” with the stroke of a pen. Firearms confiscation raids against gun collectors and outspoken “Right to Keep and Bear Arms” activists will then take place with the intended purpose being to strike fear into holdouts. But instead of forcing gun owners into compliance, the confiscation raids will be the trigger for a new civil war. There will be casualties among both citizens and law enforcement as these confiscation raids are increasingly met with armed resistance.

The First Amendment will likewise be gutted, using the argument that the “bitter clingers” who are still advocating the “obsolete” interpretation of the Second Amendment are supporting terrorism when they argue that law enforcement has no valid legal or moral reason to engage in gun confiscation raids. Freedom-oriented writers will declare that the federal government is in breach of contract with the people, because the rogue Supreme Court had no authority to unilaterally nullify key elements of the Bill of Rights.

Millions of Americans who still support the original interpretation of the Second Amendment will consider those who advocate the new interpretation to be traitors and domestic enemies of the Constitution. Writers who argue that the new interpretation of the Second Amendment is invalid, and that citizens are therefore morally justified in opposing the new gun laws by force of arms will be arrested for “inciting violence” and “encouraging terrorism.” Websites which promulgate these views will be banned and shut down.

At that point, with no other options available to oppose the emerging hard tyranny, a guerrilla insurgency will emerge, and some of those responsible for limiting the Bill of Rights will become victims of sniper attacks. Targeted individuals will include national politicians, prominent “journalists” and federal law enforcement personnel who vocally support or even simply enforce the new gun bans. These deadly sniper attacks will typically involve a single shooter firing a single shot from long range. Federal law enforcement will be given the impossible task of predicting who will become the next sniper from among scores of millions of Americans. Gun confiscation raids and arrests for “inciting violence” will escalate, and so will the retaliatory sniper attacks.

The start of Civil War Two will probably be pegged to the assassination of a prominent judge or politician who is held responsible by “constitutional originalists” for invalidating the First and Second Amendments. The new tyranny will not back down in the face of these sniper attacks, but will double down in its efforts to disarm the resistance. Arrests and disappearances of “constitutional extremists” will be countered with even more sniper attacks against key supporters of the new tyranny. Civil War Two could resemble the “Dirty War” in Argentina during the 1970s, with recalcitrant “constitutionalists” becoming the victims of secret government special-action units. It’s difficult to imagine the final outcome of an American “dirty civil war,” but it’s impossible to imagine the forces of tyranny successfully disarming the American people.

It’s well known that Switzerland has never been invaded by a foreign power, largely because of its national policy of providing adult male military reservists with modern battle rifles, which they keep at home for their entire lives. It’s less well understood that Switzerland has also never seen the emergence of a tyranny, and for the same reason: a would-be tyrant would not survive for long in Switzerland. Likewise, would-be tyrants in the United States might have a strong desire to disarm the American people, but any widespread attempts to do so will, at the very least, result in a prolonged and bloody dirty civil war.

“…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 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….”

[packrat01]

In the case of the United States, it was still an open question as of 1859 what degree of sovereignty actually lies with the several states which formed These United States. The war settled that question.

Might makes right?

[Lazamataz]

I am ready to die. I hope not to, but mine has been a rich and wonderful life... even the horrid parts.

[Lazamataz]

Being dug in seems... unwise.

However, proactively bringing light to dark areas... now that seems wise.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

“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

[PROCON]

CW2 Bump, thanks Travis!

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[PLMerite]

“They are going to kill you anyway.”

Yes, something we should all remember. Sooner or later, one way or another, they want us dead.

[packrat01]

The conclusion of the US civil war merely re-iterated the old adage that "Might makes right."

Beat me to it...

(note to self, read ALL posts before replying.)

[Albion Wilde]

bump

[Ohioan]

You make a distinction that really is not factual. That monarchy was in no sense ocean distant. The Colonists were British subjects at the time--albeit being treated as second class subjects, by the Parliament.

I am too busy right now to want to get drawn into a fight over historic definitions. Have business to attend to, and Trump campaigning to attend to. I only stopped by to see what was going on here with respect to the Trump campaign.

I will defend to my death the right of fellow Americans to argue over our history; but really our effort right now should be more towards working together in the spirit that Americans--both those who identified with the Blue & those who identified with the Grey--displayed in the World War II era, where public celebrations regularly combined both the playing of Dixie and The Battle Hymn of the Republic; both the Bonnie Blue Flag & When Johnny Came Marching Home.

General MacArthur in his beautiful exposition at West Point in 1962, clearly celebrated both groups of American soldiers; and I think that we should always do likewise.

[Billthedrill]

Yet another McGee BTT.

Anyone who has run the numbers on this (and believe me, Soros and the rest of the totalitarian Left have) knows it is unlikely to end well as things are at the moment, through lack of a reliable enforcement arm. This isn't like a coup in Panama, the country is huge. There are two traditional ploys to address this difficulty: inception of another law enforcement arm, and bringing in what amount to occupation troops from the outside. Toward the first alternative we have already seen some motion. The second does not seem feasible - even in Northern Ireland the British went from welcome stabilizers to intolerable occupiers in the eyes of the public in the space of a year or so. It is that option, however, that gives rise to the Red Dawn scenario: formations of blue-helmeted unfortunates tasked with a takeover. Open season, no bag limit. Sucks to be them.

But the formation of a domestic enforcement arm is something that is under active investigation under the auspices of Homeland Security at the moment, as others have pointed out. That's something that sounds perfectly feasible to the academics and urban elites who will be planning the thing, but I'm a bit skeptical if it's any more feasible than marching in a bunch of human targets from Anakanapanistan. Think of the folks running their fingers over old ladies at the TSA checkpoints trying to kick down doors in rural Wyoming. Sucks to be them too.

Hence a need to concentrate the real effort on those islands of power that are the Democrat-controlled major cities, at least at first, and to starve out the gun owners by restricting supplies of new purchases and especially ammunition. The current government of California is experimenting with options in that regard with, I am told by people who live there, somewhat limited actual success on the ground. This sort of thing always looks better on paper than it does in practice.

What I'm suggesting is that the resistance will have the initiative from Day One, if we are ready for it. If we are ready. In the late 18th century we had Committees of Correspondence and formal communications pipelines outside the control of government already established - that is, after all, what Revere was cantering over the countryside in the dark to accomplish. I tried one time to estimate how well we are armed today compared to how well they were in 1775. It's staggering. All we are short is the same thing they were then, the determination to resist and a sense of having run out of alternatives. As you have said yourself many times, that's a powder keg waiting for a match.

[Noumenon]

One always needs a base from which to operate. And I do have a Little List of Places to Go, People to Meet and Things to Do. When the stars are right...

[Crusher138]

There are pretty good arguments to be made that the current financial system is unconstitutional. It is a very complicated discussion with contradictory Supreme Court decisions.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 of the Constitution is often used to say that States are prohibited from producing currency, but the whole and entire clause says that Congress shall have power...

“To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;”

An argument could be made that this doesn’t specifically prohibit States from coining money. It clearly gives Congress the right to coin money, but it doesn’t expressly prohibit States from doing so.

[Lazamataz]

.

[Dr. Sivana]

Might makes right?

Sometimes Might makes Reality. I didn't want to start another argument, so I decided to let people make their own conclusions.

[mbynack]

I’m totally prepared for this. I’ve marked out my safe space and posted “no guns” signs to keep the government at bay.

I’m a little more optimistic. I think Hillary and the unelected federal bureaucracy will continue to nibble away at the 2nd by outlawing certain ammo. Taxing ammo. Using the EPA to crack down on manufacturing and gun ranges. Use the IRS to shut down sellers. Outlawing civilian transfers of all firearms. Making CCWs harder to get, and outlawing more and more types of guns. It’s just boiling the frog until one day we emerge from our dens to find out that we no longer have any more Constitution or individual rights.

She’ll appoint a couple of liberal judges who want to legislate from the bench and they’ll rubber stamp her new executive orders.

[mbynack]

I’m totally prepared for this. I’ve marked out my safe space and posted “no guns” signs to keep the government at bay.

I’m a little more optimistic. I think Hillary and the unelected federal bureaucracy will continue to nibble away at the 2nd by outlawing certain ammo. Taxing ammo. Using the EPA to crack down on manufacturing and gun ranges. Use the IRS to shut down sellers. Outlawing civilian transfers of all firearms. Making CCWs harder to get, and outlawing more and more types of guns. It’s just boiling the frog until one day we emerge from our dens to find out that we no longer have any more Constitution or individual rights.

She’ll appoint a couple of liberal judges who want to legislate from the bench and they’ll rubber stamp her new executive orders.

[5th MEB]

That would not be a very good idea; most mudslimes are trained (if at all) in the spray and pray technique of target acquisition and elimination.
All American Marines, Army, and to a somewhat lesser extent Navy and Air Force, active and inactive personnel are trained for sight picture, sight alignment, and breath control.
There are basic range requirements for marksmanship.
30 million mudslimes, 31 million rounds expended at 500 meters, problem solved.
The extra 1 million rounds are for the people who have trouble with a moving target.

[mrmeyer]

Perhaps, but are they flame retardant?

[DuncanWaring]

[5th MEB]

YES !!!!