EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope.
“If you think that your guns can protect you from the government, you’re deluded or crazy!”
The premise that private ownership of firearms is, ultimately, about enabling the citizenry to stand in defense or insurrection against a tyrannical government is one that many casual folks consider crazy and foolish. It is, however, a core reason for the Second Amendment. The historical debate is a topic for another day. This article addresses the “crazy/foolish” aspect of the argument i.e. that the very idea that American citizens could effectively stand against the government is itself folly.
First, I offer a disclaimer. While it should be obvious that this article is solely about debunking an anti-gun argument, and that, as a self-professed libertarian, I oppose the initiation of force, I will nevertheless explicitly state that nothing herein is intended to advocate for revolution, insurrection or violence against the government, any of its agents, or anyone at all, for that matter. In other words, don’t make stuff up about me to advance your own arguments and undermine mine.
Now, on to business. The history of the world is full of examples of revolutions against governments deemed tyrannical. America herself began with one such revolution, and the first shots of the War for Independence were fired over an attempt by the Crown to confiscate arms from American colonists. But, wait, weren’t those simply muskets? The British didn’t have tanks, or armored personnel carriers, or war planes, or automatic weapons. They did, however, have a well equipped and well-disciplined army, “state of the art” for its day, and lost.
Consider, also, the insurgencies of modern times. In Afghanistan, the balance of the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the jungles of Central America, and elsewhere, you’ll find example after example of insurgents and guerrillas waging battle against more powerful armies. Armed populaces are capable of putting forth significant resistance.
This reality is demonstrated by history. Totalitarian regimes throughout history prefaced their oppressions with gun confiscation. The Turks prefaced the Armenian genocide of 1915-1917 with gun control laws instituted in 1911. The Soviets instituted gun control in 1929, and Stalin proceeded to murder 20-50 million countrymen. The Nazis established their gun control in 1938 – you know the rest. Red China established gun control in 1935. 50 million died. Rwanda, Guatemala, Uganda, and Cambodia offer similar stories. If guns in the hands of the citizens aren’t a threat to to the government, why did all these nations disarm their citizens?
Machiavelli, in The Prince, wrote of the perils of disarming one’s subjects, i.e.
when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you.
He went on to discuss how that leads to the need to arm those loyal to you as protection, and you can either read or infer the rest. He also spoke of disarming those in newly acquired lands, further delineating a notion of “us” vs “them” and further validating the idea that disarming a populace is divisive.
That point is vital: Should a situation arise where the American military is ordered to turn upon the citizenry, should we assume that those soldiers, who are our friends, neighbors and family, who grew up among us, who signed up for the military to defend American values, and who swore an oath to defend the Constitution (not to blindly obey whomever is in charge), are going to readily take up arms against Americans? How many would actually obey orders to shoot at their fellows? Would an insurgency actually have to face the full and unified power of the American military, or would big chunks of that military choose to stand with the citizens agasint a tyrannical government? That changes the “folly” argument quite a bit.
Then there’s the matter of sheer numbers. By the more popular estimates, there are 350 million firearms in private hands in America. This number has grown dramatically in the past decade, and some have opined that Barack Obama is the greatest gun salesman in the history of the world. These guns are not evenly distributed, and the best estimates are that 1 in 3 households has one or more firearms. That puts guns in about 40 million households in America. Compare these figures with the 1.4 million total enrollment of the US Military – only about 20% of whom actually handle “combat arms” regularly. Tens of millions of armed citizens vs 300,000 armed soldiers (many of whom wouldn’t fight). Does the idea of an armed populace facing down the American government still seem so silly?
Still, one might argue that America is not Soviet Russia, or Red China, or the Third Reich, or the Khmer Rouge, or Ottoman Turkey. One would be correct – today. Tyrannies don’t pop up overnight, and the totalitarian impulses that portions of the populations in those countries held were far more easily indulged when the balance of those populations were disarmed. Just as a burglar is less likely to target a house in a town where everyone owns guns, government tyranny is deterred by the presence of an armed populace.
One might argue that the probability of needing arms against a tyrannical government doesn’t offset the damage done by civilian ownership of firearms, but the reality is that gun crime has been in steady decline for 30 years, even as gun ownership has grown dramatically in that span of time. In other words, more guns do NOT correlate to more crime. But, that’s it’s own Gun Rights Lesson, for another day.
So:
Gun rights lesson #633: Armed populaces HAVE successfully resisted tyrannical governments, and disarmed populaces HAVE been victimized by tyrannical governments. If you don’t think that armed Americans could fight back against a government that turns against, you’re only indulging your own baseless bias.
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Very well written and succinct, Peter!