The Right to Overthrow

I may be on the wrong end of a gun debate, but I am still bringing a knife to this gunfight. My position is that the Second Amendment does not relate to guns, but has a far more visionary intent: revolution. To me, the argument that the Second Amendment is about guns completely misses the target. The Second Amendment is about the right to pick up a pitchfork, sword or gun to either protect or restore our rights against any tyrannical government (and oddly enough, tyrannical governments do not interpret this similarly).

The colonists, having survived a bout of tyranny, were in no mood to be restricted. Guns were as commonplace as spoons and necessary for daily existence. They were a daily tool and not explicitly mentioned in the Second Amendment. Has anyone proposed any good hammer amendments recently? At the founding, tyranny was real threat. Retaining a right to keep arms to rise up against government is far more logical as the foundation for the Second Amendment.

While we can debate whether we need to preserve (or expand) our Second Amendment right of revolution, the idea that has been postulated for most of the 20th century that the Second Amendment is to protect or regulate guns is misguided. Whatever side you are on, gun control or gun ownership, you are wrong to think the Second Amendment is your problem or your savior. The real issue is the change in society and how this relates to the Second Amendment.

The deinstitutionalization of America in the late 1960s put thousands on the street based on the theory that one is insane only if the person is ‘dangerous to self or others’ (usually proven after a mass shooting). While deinstitutionalization was a victory for personal freedom (and humanity), the downside is that the state, freed of its commitment to its mentally deficient, failed to provide support on the outside for those released from the inside.

Mass shootings, often the work of the certifiably insane, trigger a debate about gun control under the Second Amendment when it really should initiate a discussion of how our society fails its mentally deficient. Having potentially insane people among us can be dangerous (as it was back then). Guns are an easy means for the insane to vent their frustrations, but is the solution to take away the guns or to better care for our mentally unstable? Is your answer for us to submit to more tyranny because we are allowing more freedoms? Do we still fight wars for peace?

I do not own a gun (as I may be dangerous to myself and others). I have used a gun. I can state unequivocally, I don’t see myself as shooting people (even those assholes who bring 15 items to the 10 items or less cashier. Although, as an aside, does corn count as one item or 12?). All that said, I would shoot a tyrant, with malice aforethought. I guess that means government needs to keep me happy enough not to see it as tyrannical. Either that, or take my Second Amendment rights away, or shoot me, or both.

The Second Amendment is my inalienable right to overthrow my government, and that, they will have to pry from my cold dead hands.