Think hard about this, and ask yourself what you would have done in 1774: sided with the Revolutionaries, or sided with the Royalists.
No, those founding fathers were not anti-authorianists to the degree that people would call a pathology. The continental congress did not descend into a bunch of bickering every time someone asked someone else to do something. They were mostly, from all reports, pretty well-adjusted and got along with each other civilly even with major disagreements on how to do things.
There is probably a lesson in that disorders that make you inconvenient for the system are more likely to be recognized/categories than those that make you a sheep. Fine. I don't think you can generalize from that to "documented mentally ill should be able to buy guns because what if it's actually a conspiracy vs them and not just voices in their head? then they can use their gun to stop the conspiracy.". That seems like pretty awesomely bad policy to me.
Sometimes things happen within the normal human spectrum. You're conflating behavior with a category in the DSM with political action by generally sane individuals.
As far as what little relation this has to the gun debate: Background checks for mental illness are probably a reasonable idea, and I'm pro gun rights.
I was against the recent Toomey-Manchin legislation until I heard that:
- It makes creating a federal database of gun owners explicitly illegal
- It makes transporting unloaded guns across state lines explicitly legal (this is apparently currently illegal a lot of the time)
- It's only applying the same standards for licensed gun dealers to gun shows and internet sales, while explicitly making internet sales legal (gray area before)
It's actually a totally reasonable bill that does a lot of what gun rights people have been asking for. But what's the upside for the NRA in a reasonable bill, versus vilifying it and raising a bunch of money to STOP THE GUN GRABBING BILL? That is why we can't have nice things.
O that we too in America today could think people hold valid grievances against our own government instead of painting them broadly with the brush of mental illness and washing our hands of the mistreatment they suffer at the hands of our own agents...
How do you get from
A) At least one person, somewhere in history, has been falsely accused of being crazy because he was inconvenient to authorities.
To:
B) Johnny over here is telling me that the illuminati are conspiring to destroy the world through mind-control agents in flouridated water and he needs to take violent action to protect our vital essences. He should have the right to buy a gun.
I think you're operating under the assumption that actual mental illness doesn't exist.
The Revolutionaries were really just opportunists. They could have received the representation they wanted in parliament, however they saw the chance to start their own government, a new one, built by them, however they wanted. I'm not saying it was a bad thing that they decided to focus their efforts on starting a new government instead of working with their current one, but they didn't have to.
The Declaration of Independence was written to discredit parliament and the king (who, at this time, didn't have power anymore, it was already with the House of Commons), and to drum up support with other powers who didn't really like England (specifically France). They could have worked out a deal with the House of Commons giving them a representative spot, but their declaration explicitly decided against it.
Take a history class. You might get some context to the events you cite.
You defy the very premise of the United States of America's existence: The God-given right to live free from the oppression of a Draconian Regime!
(I kid, I kid, I like to hear people's opinions)
But it's got to strike you as interesting that I have taken many history classes, along with reading many historical books, and still evidently lack the profound knowledge of the 1770s that you have. I wonder whether my classes and books were somehow deficient, perhaps as they were written and taught by the victors, the same sort of people who benefited from these Colonial Opportunists, and may thus be unwilling to besmirch their hallowed reputations...
I also had the same teachers, teaching from the American view, but my college (Carthage College) has a Western Heritage requirement, where second semester freshmen year some of our readings were Locke, Marx and Engles, and two drafts and the final version of the Declaration of Independence.
Plus, political systems intrigue me.
And a lot of slaves and native americans sided with the Royalists and decent portion gained freedom after the war in GB (though many were returned to their masters after the fact), so I think whose side one would take is more complicated than being mere anti-authoritarians.
This crashcourse video points out some of these things: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EiSymRrKI4]
Despite it all, I would say that an oppressive government could use "medical condition" to confiscate weapons, but whether the populous is armed or not has little to do with the oppressive nature upon the governed in any country.