Via Of Arms and the Law comes this piece, in which Josh Horwitz defends.. tyranny? To be honest, I’m not quite sure where to start (or stop) quoting to make any sense of this, but these two bits kinda stick out.
Before we get carried away with the idea that guns are the ultimate guarantor of our civil liberties, however, we should consider what maintaining the capability to resist the decisions of a democratically accountable government really means.
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If this insurrectionist logic were to be embraced by the Supreme Court, however, our democracy would be severely degraded.
He goes in so many circles that it’s hard to tell where he’s going, but to me it sounds like he’s saying (and perhaps unintentionally) that that tyrants need a monopoly on force to protect democracy and freedom. Or something. And no, I’m not making this up. Towards the end he says Saddam Hussein’s regime was tyrannical, but even then that the state needs a monopoly on force to enforce rights. And that the state is the “only hope of vindicating individual rights.”
Ooookay…
Speaking of circular logic, in the amicus brief he co-authored in favor of the DC ban, it was claimed that the Second Amendment was a federalist provision which “enhances state and local authority to protect life and liberty through the maintenance of militias composed of the local populace” and “prevents unreasonable federal intrusions into gun possession that would impair state authority by defeating the States’
ability to raise “well regulated militia[s]†to protect public welfare and order.” Or, in other words, just a few months ago, he said the Second was there to prevent the Feds from having the total monopoly on force he’s calling for now.
So which is it?
Even more amusing (or sad, depending on how you look at it) is the bit in the middle where he sings about all the wonderful things the Feds’ monopoly on force has given us.
Since the ratification of that document, our nation has been through much travail, but through some of our biggest challenges (i.e., the Civil War, World War II, and the civil rights movement) it was ultimately America’s ability to mobilize both a federal bureaucracy and military power that kept us free.
Civil War? That was a bit of a toss up since it freed the slaves (which is a good thing) but it saddled us all with a more powerful, repressive central government (which is a very bad thing to everyone but you, apparently). I’ll give you that one though.
But the civil rights movement?! If your anti-gun group had been around during the civil rights movement, you would have been on the side of the segregationists. All your precious gun laws are based on Slave Codes and Jim Crow laws, but now you want to claim your victim disarmament agenda played a role in the civil rights movement? Fuck you.
If it weren’t for folks like the Deacons for Defense and Justice or the brave, black veterans who took on a racist county in the Battle of Athens, the civil rights movement might have died (literally and figuratively) before the Federal government got off its ass to do anything.
And then there was United States v. Cruikshank in 1875. Let’s see here.. A group of KKK types attacked a group of freedmen. Said freedmen defended themselves with private arms. Then your beloved Federal government ruled in favor of the oppressors. Is that an example of this “only hope” you were talking about?
As for World War II, umm, are we forgetting the thousands of citizens with private arms who volunteered for Civil Defense programs to help secure the coastlines? Not to mention the Japanese admiral who said they couldn’t invade the mainland because there would be “a rifle behind every blade of grass.”