Where is 'The line' with respect to 2nd Ammendment and tyrannical governement?

[Manic Moran]

A question I've been asked, and can't seem to answer, as I'm personally more focused on firearms ownership for personal defence and recreation. I'm posting this question on a few boards for variety of source.

What sort of egregious issues today would be enough for the People to say 'enough', rise up and take arms against a tyrannical United States government? (Especially considering the government is a lot better armed than we are)

If the Bush/Gore court case had gone the other way? I don't see it happening.
If a few Arabs were detained without trial in the interest of National Security? Probably not.
What if the Government declared a state of emergency and announced a 6-month delay on the next elections? One year? Five years?
A declaration of a nationwide gun ban? (Or is that just a fight to keep the firearms, more than a fight for liberties)

I know that there's no solid dividing line, and there's a great danger of 'creep.' (OK.. today it's the NSA deal, then the phone records deal, then we'll do these detentions, and from there it's not a big jump for highway checkpoints, and after that....) but is it a case of 'a weapon which will never be used is a useless weapon?'

NTM

 

[Mauserguy]

When do we say "Enough!"?

Probably when machine gun wielding tax agents come to arrest people on trumped up, or simply false, charges, and burn children to death. Luckily, that will never happen here.
Mauserguy

 

[rbernie]

When the majority of the population no longer believes that the ballot box can solve the problems that they see. Until that time, there will be no
'uprising'.

 

[k_semler]

Depends upon which line you mean. If you mean the line that signifies that the government has only the desire of the dollar at heart, and can no longer be trusted with the intrests of the Citizen; that line was crossed for me on 06/23/2006. I no longer trust our government one bit. It is only a matter of time before we are forced to call thier hand.

If on the other hand, you mean the line where it is time to take up arms, I don't think I could awnser that question for you. Prior to the Kelo v. New London decision, I did not think that the federalies would absolutly neuter the 5th amendment, and render land-owners to mere peasents on government land that is rented to us. Granted, property taxes have existed forever, but that was more of a state of a lease other then rent. Since Kelo v. New London, you can stay on "your land" until the government decides it has a better use for it.

So you will have to awnser the question of when to take up arms yourself. Just don't expect support when you do it, because you will more than likely be fighting a personal geurilla campaign with no support, (either moral or material). Even if you have moral support, nobody will dare voice it for fear of retaliation upon sympathizers of the enemy.

Even I cannot awnser this question for myself. I guess I will know when it comes time. all I can confidently awnser at this time is, Not Yet.

Read Unintended Consequences by John Ross. It will drastically change your perspective regarding this whole subject matter.

 

[swingset]

I don't know but some guy just posted this exact same question on Arfcom.

You must have a twin out there somewhere.

 

[akodo]

I think part of history is to allow us to look at what has happened in a neutral light without the hysteria going on at the time, and allow us to more easily recongnize the same thing happening again.

Specifically, the internment of US citizens who happened to be of Japanese decent during WWII was a travisty, but people swept up in the hysteria of the time allowed it to happen.

Right after 9-11 there was talk about 'rounding up all the arabs/middleeasterners and putting them in camps'. Sure, this talk was mostly around the watercooler by the wackier sort, but still, I'm glad that I had formulated the opinion beforehand that rounding up a group of US citizens and putting them in a camp simply because of the ethnic group they come from or the nationality of their parents is wrong. It is something I would take up arms against.

Note, however, that no gunowner seriously considers taking on the 82 airborne or the 5th armored cav, or what have you. However, us gunowners can count. We also know that one armed man will cause the government to send 20 armed men of their own, if not more. Armed citizens, while unable to take on an army directly, will be able to bog it down causing trouble, shooting supply trucks and drivers, and the like, at least that is my opinion. Sending 5 jackboot thugs to kick in every door of gunowners in the USA would be one hell of a long, expensive eandevor.

 

[Raph84]

I'm starting to worry that we live in a society where there are not enough people willing to put everything on the line for what they know is right (like our fore fathers did).

With regards to taking up arms, it takes alot of guts to stand up against a government, and it takes the ability to recognize that sometimes you have to deviate from normal ideas about what is right and wrong. I think this has been beaten out of our society in many ways as well.

If it came down to it I would be there, and I am darn sure plenty from here would be too. I just don't know if there would be enough to do what needed done.

I think alot of people beleive there is nothing worth dieing for.

As to when, I think if free elections were ever suspended or all arms were being taken nation wide, it would be time to make a change.

 

[k_semler]

Yeah, Probably one of these folks. Can you say, "Fed-Bait"?

 

[Limeyfellow]

Probably when machine gun wielding tax agents come to arrest people on trumped up, or simply false, charges, and burn children to death. Luckily, that will never happen here.

Its happened before but nothing much comes out of it. We had things like Kent State, the incident in Waco, the communist arrests and interregations in the 50s and today, the racial riots and marches that often resulted in bloodshed, whole races of people being transferred to concentration camps, genocide, not too many decades ago. Most of this is from a while ago, but usually the US people have been taught from an early age not to go against the government, especially after the civil war.

More recent troubles we seen is more and more people arrested as material witnesses and held without trial. We seen some rubber bullets being used on antiwar protests in Miami. We even saw a tank turn up at an antiwar protest in Los Angeles to intimidate the crowd but it backfired. We seen legal organised raves busted by troops armed with assault riflesm from helecopters and people beaten down in Utah. We all heard the reports of a large number of gang members being wiped out in New Orleans after Katrina hit.

We seen increase in survelliance, the monitoring of phone calls and spying illegally, the introduction of a national id card with the REAL ID act that been signed into law which includes such disturbing details as people's religions on it. Lookly the supreme court in Tennessee stop the police randomly searching people without cause that they claimed they had the right for and demanding people present their papers. We even had qute a number of talks about doing away with the The Posse Comitatus Act (who you calling a pussy communist boy? Ah, Tank was a great movie.), paid propoganda being passed off as news on at least 6 times its been caught.

Will this cause an armed response? Not likely. Maybe one or two nutjobs might try and assassinate the president and so on, but most of these incidents didn't make anything more than local news, even if there is videos and articles for them and I doubt anything short of another Bonus Army event or a bunch of Kent states will do much at all and then likely cause rioting and mass protests. If people were to take up arms the national guard would quickly put it down. Thats why it generally takes the military to side against the government and thats forms a coup and looking at most the highest ranked generals that is hardly likely to happen.

 

[.41Dave]

When ESPN, American Idol, beer, and McDonalds happy meals are no longer available to most people, blood will run in the streets. Until then, the Feds are safe.

 

[rangerruck]

i think it is if a national registration is signed into law by the congress, despite it being approve of by the people, this could be your tipping point.

 

[Vitamin G]

I posted similar before...

Every citizen has a different "the line" at which they will rise up and attempt to reclaim their rights. Like a frog in a pot of water, the government is raising the heat slowly, and calling those who raise up crackpots and moonbats, and paranoid, and anti-child, anti-safety, whatever.
For some people, "the line" could have been ANY INFRINGEMENT on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

...like 1934 NFA.
Or perhaps the Gun control act of 1968.
Or the creation of ATF in 1972.
Or the 1990 Crime Control act? (Gun free school zones)
Or the AWB of 1994.
Or the reinstitution of the AWB in 20??

Sure is getting warm in this pot...
Its kind of pleasant though, like a sauna
Are those bubbles?


(Its kinda fun to plagerize yourself.)

 

[Justin]

Closed. This has been discussed to death.