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Comment by gertef | Hacker News Reader

Defense of self and family is not murder.

It is when you kill the members of the ruling body.

This is why "2nd amendment protects you from the government" arguments are absurd. Attacking the government is illegal - if you find a legal way to do it, the government will protect itself from bodily harm by declaring whatever you did illegal.

EDIT: This is not an argument of moral right versus wrong, this is about the definition of "illegal," which only has function as a concept if there's an actual government.

For example, we can all agree that shooting unarmed civilians is wrong, right? Or taking their cash money? But, it's not illegal. Cops do it all the time, and in the case of cash money it's explicitly legal.

I would love to be challenged on this point, so I would greatly appreciate if you could spice your downvotes with a quick thought on why I'm wrong.

The 2nd Amendment allows citizenry to be armed in case it becomes necessary to overthrow a corrupt government that no longer serves the needs of the people, the government is no longer legitimate if that threshold is broken and what it determines is illegal doesn't matter anymore. Killing in retribution when the law fails isn't really a 2nd Amendment usage case, though.

>When the law fails

When would the government admit that the law has failed?

>Overthrown a corrupt government

When would the government admit it is corrupt? When would it "allow" itself to be violently deposed?

When a consensus is reached among the governed that the government no longer represents them. Admission on the part of the government is not expected or necessary.

So, wouldn't that by definition be war? If the governed reach that consensus, I expect the government would just declare them "terrorists," and their actions "illegal."

Yes, It would be a civil war. And that's exactly what governments today do. Turkey, Sudan, Bosnia, etc.

Do you remember something called the "Revolutionary War"? It was an event in history that happened when the people who wrote the 2nd amendment fought the British government for control of the country.

Yes, and the country they were fighting against labeled them "Rebels" and tried to kill them.

The point I'm trying to make is that there is no way US Law would explicitly allow a means to destroy the USA (via the second amendment or otherwise).

It does though. Things were quite different when the constitution was written. The federal government was never supposed to wield absolute power over the states. "...consent of the governed..." etc. It's pretty clear that they believed that a populace should be able to abolish their own government - they did so themselves.

Today washington would be a little crater with horse remains and some drone circling above.

I explicitly addressed this.

>the government is no longer legitimate if that threshold is broken

The 2nd Amendment exists because the writers of the US Constitution had just finished overthrowing a government they did not believe represented the people, and wanted to ensure that if the replacement government ever ceased to represent the will of the people, that the people would have the means to forcibly remove it.

No, it was written largely because the writers of the Constitution were in the process of dealing with the imminent collapse of a central government that had proven incapable of dealing with pressing security problems, and assuring states that the new central government with greater authority would not use that authority to hamstring the states in the event that it, too, was not competent in that regard was important.

They had also, several years before, been involved in the state (formerly colony) governments’ acting collectively to rebel against an unrepresentative (by simple fact that the people were not, directly or by the intermediary of representation of their local government in the central one, represented; this was not a matter of feeling) central government, and, sure, preserving the states’ capacity to do that in the event that the federal government became unresponsive or overbearing was a consideration.

The 2nd Amendment is unique in having an explicit statement of purpose, which for some reason those who claim to be it's Forrest defenders always ignore.

Missed the edit window, but “Forrest” should be “foremost”.

Mobile keyboard autocorrect is fun.

Ok, let me take a different angle - you say there is a "threshold."

Cliven Bundy has decided the threshold has been passed and instigates armed resistance in Nevada. Is the US government no longer legitimate and is allowed to be overthrown wholesale?

You could apply your exact same argument to elections. Why would the government let the people elect a different government?

I'm the United States, the Republican party does make efforts to do this when it is in power. In my home state of Wisconsin they won control of the government for the first time in 40 years, redrew districts, and haven't lost power since.

Not to defend the 2nd amendment as `power to the people' but that is not how the argument works.

The fear is that a benevolent government banishes arms, which makes the populace defenseless. Then later, a malevolent government gets into power, and the populace can no-longer defend itself. The key here is that the government instituting a ban need not be the government that later needs to be revolted against.

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