Michael Wiik wrote:
>
> Michael Lorrey <mike@datamann.com> wrote:
> > It is not a mistake that the socialist partisans here in the US are the
> > biggest supporters of gun control. They know so long as private gun
> > ownership exists, they can never fully implement their plans.
>
> I wonder if the converse is true. As in, conservative partisans, as long
> as they don't promote gun control themselves, can get away with
> instituting authoritarian measures. Some claim that the 2nd ammendment
> helps enforce the others, but if don't touch the 2nd ammendment, it
> seems you can get away with gutting the rest of the bill of rights.
>
> Maybe an armed citizenry can guard against a left-wing coup, but
> right-wing coups seem perfectly ok.
No, they don't. There has been an instance of such an incident, called
the Battle of Athens, Tennessee, which as I recall, occured just after
WWII. Many returning veterans were fed up with the corrupt politics of
the county sherriff and put together a slate of vets to oppose him in
the election. When balloting occured, the Sherriff and his deputies took
the ballot boxes into the station to 'count' them in private, refusing
demands for observers. The vets then staged a seige of the sherriffs
station, a battle that ran for a few days until the Sherriff
surrendered, ballots were fairly counted, and the vets slate won the
election.
An armed citizenry guards against any sort of abrogation of the
constitution, of the right or left. If it is only the citizens of the
right who choose to be armed, then leftist insurgencies will be more
likely to be opposed than right wing attempts, but that is a matter of
the negligence of the leftist citizens to fulfill their responsibility
as citizens. Societies get the government they deserve.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:24 MDT