Donald Trump, "Second Amendment People," English Syntax, Revolution

I promise I will return to my usual, "Back to Basics"/Background — nonTrump — little essays shortly. But:

"Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said at a rally that if Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton 'gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people maybe there is, I don’t know.'" — MEDIA MATTERS, 9 August 2016 

 

      The most coherent argument for 2nd Amendment protection for light infantry weapons in the hands of US civilians is that the 2nd Amendment protects not only the right of the States to have powerful militias that could stand up to a Federal Army but protects the Right of (armed) Revolution that underpins all the other rights. This is also a standard argument among "2nd Amendment people" Given that Trump's broken syntax and other games with language require our interpreting his remarks, what he said for a lot of "2nd Amendment people" would indeed suggest that the response to a President Clinton appointing dangerous judges would be or could include insurrection: use those weapons to protect the right to hold those weapons, plus other American rights.  

      Thomas Jefferson, who knew a thing or two about insurrection, wrote that "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

      You can argue that not even George III and, more to the point, his Parliament evinced "a design to reduce" Britain's American colonies "under absolute Despotism." For sure, when you're talking about a Democratic President nominating liberal justices and judges, you're not talking "absolute Despotism" or any other justification for a second American Revolution. You, or more specifically Donald Trump, are talking dangerous nonsense that would be sedition (or a threat of assassination) if the man were capable and/or willing to put his thoughts into straight-forward English.

Guns, Abortion, the Second Amendment ... Logic

            The argument on gun control is like the one on abortion: going 'round and 'round because the two major sets of arguments proceed from very different premises or even worldviews. In the case of abortion, the major disagreement is on the nature of the universe and the nature of human beings, which is about as major a disagreement as I can think of offhand. If a human being is essentially (literally in essence) a creature with a soul, and if ensoulment occurs at conception, then .... Etc. Which is quite different from my idea of a zygote, a fertilized human egg, which I don't see as a human person, and you-all probably don't either.

            Similarly, if you want gun control, youse folk who read Leftish blogs such as this will talk about decreasing gun deaths. But most places in the USA most of those gun deaths are suicides or gang related and can seem a reasonable price to pay for people who believe the 2nd Amendment protects all our rights by giving substance to the Right of Revolution, and if you believe effective revolution requires a citizenry not just armed but armed heavily enough to hold off the forces of the State until the military sides with the revolution and the revolution is won (more exactly, the opening round is won, but that gets into complicated history and political analysis).

            I go with Hannah Arendt in On Violence (1970) and elsewhere on how violence undercuts revolutionary power, but I'd concede that a fair number of bolt-action rifles in the hands of citizens probably would help underpin a right to revolution but add that handguns are officers' weapons to keep the grunts in line and that the AK-47 and similar weapons would be for some sort of right of coup or guerrilla warfare and not classical revolution as such. As a kid I put money in cans to plant trees in Israel, and maybe buy arms to drive the British (and as it turns out, Palestinians) from Palestine; as a young adult at neighborhood pubs, I gave money to help the widows and orphans in Ireland, with maybe a few quid going to our boys in the Irish Republican Army to buy weapons to drive the Brits out of the occupied counties. And money for humanitarian aid freed funds to buy weapons by the NLF, ANC, FLN, PLO, and other groups alphabetical, revolutionary, and willing to use violence.

            Most people who'll read this far think those who think President Barack Obama a tyrant are simply crazy: dissociated from reality. Those who think Obama a tyrant (or a potential one) obviously think otherwise and go from perception to premise to the conclusion that they need high-power weapons to hold off the forces of the tyrant, who will insulate his regime from revolution by seizing their weapons.

            So: the arguments on the necessity for assault rifles and such for personal self-defense and home defense are often just bullshit if you look at the statistics, but that's irrelevant: the serious arguments here are on armed insurrection, and for the most part that's not what people want to talk about, and may be an area (like parts of the abortion debate) where clarity would be more honest and less frustrating but really, really dangerous.