How about when the criminals are wearing uniforms and have the power of the state behind them?
Or are you one of those foolish souls who earnestly believes, "It can't happen here, we're special, we're different, we're better?"
OK, totally independent of the Kasich discussion, I see people saying things like this on FR all the time and I'm fed up.
It's time we grew up and started being realistic about the 2nd Amendment. I support gun rights because there's no good reason law-abiding citizens SHOULDN'T be able to own guns to protect themselves from criminals. But people who have visions of a future armed uprising by gun-toting Americans against a tyrannical government are living in a fantasy world.
Not because our government could never become tyrannical, but because if it did, in the end the 2nd Amendment wouldn't make any difference.
This is 2009, not 1776. If Obama declares military-enforced Marxist Sharia law (or whatever seemingly half FR's membership have apparently become convinced is going to happen since last November), and comes rolling down your street in an Abrams tank, the 2nd Amendment is not going to do crap for you, unless you believe that the "arms" we have a right to keep and bear includes an Abrams tank of your own. Buy all the handguns and shotguns you want. Heck, keep an Uzi or two and an AR-15 under your bed. If it comes down to it a UAV can fire a missile through your window from a couple thousand feet up and that will be that.
When the constitution was written, the 2nd Amendment mattered as a safeguard against tyranny. Nowawdays, it's a minor speedbump to tyranny at best, assuming the tyrants are even moderately motivated and determined.
Allow me to reiterate: I SUPPORT THE 2ND AMENDMENT...because citizens should be able to own guns for personal protection against criminals. NOT because re-enacting Lexington and Concord is a viable plan for stopping the rise of a totalitarian regime in the United States.
to be honest I never really knew your moniker but having just seen you on the Liberty University thread and now this and perusing your posting history perhaps you should get our nod as most culturally liberal freeper who has yet to be banned..let me be the first to congragulate you Dan.
Your assumptions are based on the idea that the military will be on their side. Perhaps a good discussion to have but in the USSR Gorbachev may have thought the same thing. That didn't happen though.
And that is not my point. My point is that as a Republican, Kasich, with some hairbrained idea of 'bipartisanship,' thought that he'd offer up on a silver platter to Clinton, something that was going to lose and even a large part of the Democrats at the time, didn't want. That is way beyond anything I would support and he has never, to my knowledge, made any apology or explanation.
So regardless of the scenario you or I or anyone else here would conjure, he violated his oath of office when he thought (wrongly by the pure facts of that case) that he was being 'bipartisan'. I don't care for any smarmy people that think along those lines whether they are right or wrong but especially when they are wrong and on the wrong side of their Party platform.
I have written many op-eds in the NW Ohio area on this subject and gun clubs all across this area know Kasich's view well and will be delighted if he is defeated, as will I.
How about when the criminals are wearing uniforms and have the power of the state behind them?
Or are you one of those foolish souls who earnestly believes, "It can't happen here, we're special, we're different, we're better?"
“Allow me to reiterate: I SUPPORT THE 2ND AMENDMENT...because citizens should be able to own guns for personal protection against criminals. NOT because re-enacting Lexington and Concord is a viable plan for stopping the rise of a totalitarian regime in the United States.
“
Then you don’t understand the purpose of the 2nd nor have any faith in your fellow American.
I refuse to allow the 2nd to be defined as for duck hunting of for personal defense. It is for the use in throwing off the chains of a tyrannical government.