When I am asked why I need a magazine for my “assault rifle” larger than 10 rounds, the answer is “because soldiers carry magazines larger than 10 rounds.” The 2nd Amendment was written to protect the people from more than just criminals. It was also understood that each sovereign state in the union would need to depend on its citizen militias to project power as needed. That meant well-armed men . . .
Our founding fathers also understood the danger of too much power in the hands of a government. They took great pains to hobble it through a system of checks and balances. The 2nd Amendment gave us the means of rebellion should the government go too far in encroaching on our freedom.
I’m not an anarchist or an insurrectionist. I think government is a good thing. Liberty must be ordered to be meaningful. To prosper, civil matters like contracts need to be adjudicated peacefully and fairly. Criminals must be punished sufficiently to suppress their activity.
That said, too much government is lethal. Untold millions suffer under the malignant brutality of all-powerful governments. Western European fascism, eastern European communism, communism in the Far East and Southeast Asia, totalitarian socialist nations from Cuba and throughout Central America. Over and over again, these governments resort to oppression and murder to maintain power over a helpless populace.
Could this happen in America? Consider this scenario: What if Texas decided to rebel against excessive taxation. What if a law passed that permitted Lone Star citizens a right to give themselves a tax cut of 20% and promised protection from Federal arrest or property seizure by Texas Rangers?
While I would hope that law enforcement officials and military units wouldn’t obey orders to quell an otherwise peaceful rebellion violently, our history says that’s not necessarily a safe bet. To what degree would millions of well-armed citizens in the Republic of Texas deter the arrest of the governor and state legislators?
Socialists like Senator Feinstein and President Obama have access to the same data you and I do. They know that confiscating baseball bats would save more murder victims than confiscating AR-15s would. They know that the Clinton assault rifle ban did nothing meaningful to reduce crime. Why then are they hell bent on making a move that’s already proven worthless for the ostensible reason it’s been proposed?
We have no reason to think these college-educated adults have fully benign intent. What would they do different if they were working to set America up for a future tyranny that today’s Americans would openly rebel against?
Socialists the world over have disarmed the populations they went on to enslave. Americans – at least some of us – are quite a bit different than the peasants of Russia and Central America. Many of us will fight, though under exactly what circumstances is less than clear. Are the American socialists in charge today as malignant as all the other socialists? Rifles with high-capacity magazines in the hands of citizens skeptical of government power are one way to ensure we never find out.