The Jews in the Attic Test

The article is not talking only about tyrannical governments, or laws passed by such governments. The test the article is proposing is meant to apply to any law passed by any government. The example of Jews in the Attic is just an illustration; it's used because one of the article's points is that failing to apply the test early on, when your government is not tyrannical but is just asking for a little bit more power to "fix" some problem, is how you ultimately get to a government that is tyrannical enough to either just ignore laws or pass them by fiat to suit itself.

Yep. What does that tell you?

> illegitimate governments don't suddenly give up when there are no legitimate means (laws) that lead to their ends, they just use violence

Only if they can get away with it. That is not always the case. And that's a key point of the test: it could be rephrased as "will this make it easier for an illegitimate government to achieve its ends using violence?"

At the time the amendment was passed, privately owned warships, comparable in power to those available to governments, were common. In fact the use of such warships as privateers was a key component of the United States' strategy in both the War of Independence and the War of 1812.

The current situation, where governments have a level of force available to them that is much, much greater than that available to any private entity, is a large change from the situation throughout most of human history. That might indeed make it a good idea to talk about a further amendment to balance the right to keep and bear arms with the realities of current weaponry; but unless and until that happens, the second amendment says what it says and you can't just ignore that because you don't like the implications.

1M soldiers (O(current armed forces)), armed with all the equipment they have (unless they decide to nuke the whole country) could not take down a rebel force spread across most of the US (concentrated away from the coasts, of course ;-).

It's not just theoretical.

Occupation is already expensive and essentially temporary. Look at the situation in Afghanistan, the US invades and occupies the country. As they begin to withdraw, territory is taken back by the Taliban and warlords, they simply bide their time and wait for an opportunity to return.

An armed populace changes the math around occupation and engaging in violence. Of course this also leads to other oppressive mechanisms like propaganda and manufacturing concent, but at least people aren't dying. Its a step in the right direction.

The actual force that is impossible to repel with typical means is naval and air force. (though you can still attack the logistics of those operations)

They can't. So by the proposed test, a government monopoly on law enforcement is a bad thing and should be opposed.

If you ask "how can it be possible not to have a government monopoly on law enforcement?", note that historically that has been more often the norm than the system we have now. See, for example, David Friedman's The Machinery Of Freedom for a number of historical case studies.

> From this premise, to suggest the government should not enforce laws is a non sequitor.

No, it's a reason, as above, to not have the government have a monopoly on law enforcement.

> From this premise, to suggest the government should not enforce laws is a non sequitor.

That is correct, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

If maniacs take power, we’re deeply screwed. Our efforts should go toward making sure that doesn’t happen.

Edit: as another commenter astutely pointed out above, this rule, when sufficiently contorted, can essentially be applied to invalidate every law. It amounts to a radical mistrust of government. I wonder what the author's perspective is on property rights and their enforcement.

Not necessarily. Even assuming there's an intention to fire the gun in the first place (it might be meant as a deterrent), there also might be the intention to only wound the assailant. Not all gunshots are fatal, after all. Of course, even a shot to the leg can be fatal, but the intent is still not to kill.

You're leaving out some key factors.

First, firearm violence in the US (like violence in general) is highly locality dependent. It's not a coincidence that the incident you linked to of a woman getting shot while seeking help after a car accident happened in Detroit. Most of the US has a rate of violence (firearm and otherwise) than is at or below the norm in European countries like Switzerland. The statistics you see don't show this because they average over the entire country instead of separating out the particular areas where almost all of the violence actually happens.

Second, the localities in the US that have high rates of violence, including firearm violence, are all inner cities that have been run for decades by liberal governments that have imposed strict controls on firearm ownership. The rest of the US, which, as above, looks like Switzerland as far as violence is concerned, has much more reasonable policies on firearm ownership. So at least in the US, the data does not support the common claim that gun control reduces firearm violence; it supports the opposite claim.

Third, the mass shootings that make the news are most often not perpetrated using firearms that were legally owned by the shooters. Either they were legally owned by someone else and the shooter got access to them (illegally), or they were illegally obtained by the shooter in the first place.