Questions? +1 (202) 335-3939 Login
Trusted News Since 1995
A service for political professionals · Thursday, March 28, 2024 · 699,410,787 Articles · 3+ Million Readers

Second Amendment: A License for Insurrection? Really?

February 4, 2013


By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINNEWS.com

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve promised myself I won’t write any more columns about guns. For one thing, no pun intended, it’s all seemed so pointless. How many members of Congress are brave enough to take one for the cause of rationalizing U.S. gun laws? For another, what chance does any weapon control measure have to slip through the Supreme Court’s gun-ownership-is-an-individual-right filter?

But here I am again, finding the topic irresistible. Why? This time because the gun debate re-triggered by the massacre of 6 year-olds at Newtown has escalated from the right to own individual weapons to the right of citizens to take up arms against the U.S. government.

In a very real sense we’re now into the logical extension of the “originalist” legal argument. That is, if it was good enough for the original founders of the United States and the writers of its Constitution to launch an armed rebellion, it’s good enough for me.

Personally, I find this a very healthy argument. It elevates to the surface the reason why such virulence boils below. The intensity isn’t driven by the right to keep guns for self-protection, hunting, collecting, skeet shooting, target practice or other recreational use.

None of that would be impacted by tightening background check laws, or maintaining databases of gun ownership for law enforcement, or banning military-style assault weapons, or even by giving greater freedom to communities to locally control gun distribution.

Nearly 18 years ago Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, 19 of them children under the age of 6, and injuring 680 others. Why? Because he was incensed by the way the U.S. Justice Department had attacked cult members at Waco, Texas, ending a nearly two month armed weapon standoff.

McVeigh hoped that his act would trigger an insurrection, and that militias of like-minded “patriots” would take up arms to overthrow what they believed to be a tyrannical Clinton administration. McVeigh carried with him that day a bumper sticker that read: “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." In his handwriting, McVeigh wrote on the bumper sticker, "Maybe now, there will be liberty!"

Few people translate their extreme views into deadly action. But the idea that we are living under a tyrannical federal government and citizens must be prepared to take up arms against it is hardly limited to those who bomb and shoot.

NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre testifying before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee:

“I think without any doubt, if you look at why our Founding Fathers put (the Second Amendment) there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny.”

Florida Republican Congressman Ted Yoho:

"When you read the Second Amendment, the militia had the same equipment as the military to protect them against the tyrannical government. I think it’s more important today than ever that we uphold our Second Amendment.”

Steve Sanders, an accounting major at Lone Star College, Texas and the president of the college's “Second Amendment Academy”:

"Our society is based on guns. It is a strong ideal we hold. The last time an oppressive entity tried to remove our guns, the War of Independence occurred.”

Luke Weinhagen (In an email response to one of my recent columns):

“The Second Amendment (states) that since the government needs people with guns, and because those people with guns could pose a possible threat to the citizenry, the citizenry retains the right to the same type of weaponry as that militia. The use of the word ‘arms,’ rather than specifying specific types of arms, means any weapon currently available to our national guard is by right available to every citizen of the United States.”

I’ve heard the same argument from many readers as those quoted here. That is, the driving force by those who oppose gun control is really about the right of citizens to take up arms against the U.S. government.

Except for the Civil War, which is, of course, a monumental exception, for 225 years the power to govern the United States has passed relatively peacefully from one political party to another, each respecting the process no matter how contentious the election or the issues dividing the country. The U.S. Constitution confers the right to the people to change their leadership and remake their government every two years. That’s the safety valve that the nation’s founders created so that rebellion would not have to be the recourse for change.

I said earlier in this column that I find the current gun control debate a healthy one. Why? It elevates to the main debate stage an issue that’s been lurking in the shadows of polite conversation: whether the nation is in danger of succumbing to tyrannical rule, creating a threat great enough to signal true patriots to the barricades.

While many of those who feel threatened do so, I’m sure, sincerely and deeply, they are but a tiny minority of Americans. Occasionally when one of their number crosses the line into domestic terrorism, such as Timothy McVeigh, or Wade Michael Page, who murdered six people last August at a Wisconsin Sikh temple, the nation is stunned and revolted. Americans may have disagreements with their government--they always have and hopefully always will--but the American ideal, at its core, is that the people rule, and do it through fair and free and frequent participation at the ballot box.

Terrorism, foreign or domestic, that threatens our democratic institutions is not tolerated lightly by the vast majority of Americans. That’s why it’s important for Americans to know that an active minority is seriously wedded to the notion that the Second Amendment is a fire alarm for revolution and that they literally are arming themselves for such a battle.

When it’s clear that potential insurrection is behind the issue, efforts to rationally control weapons sales and distribution have a real chance.

(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at joe@einnews.com)



Joe Rothstein is a political strategist and media producer who worked in more than 200 campaigns for political office and political causes. He also has served as editor of the Anchorage Daily News and as an adjunct professor at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management. He has a master's degree in journalism from UCLA. Mr. Rothstein is the author of award-winning political thrillers, The Latina President and the Conspiracy to Destroy Her, The Salvation Project, and The Moment of Menace. For more information, please visit his website at https://www.joerothstein.net/.