Osugi Sakae

What is the purpose of the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution? Not self-defense from muggers, rapists, or even murderers. The 2nd amendment exists to allow citizens to protect themselves from their government. Citizens have a responsibility to resist tyranny and oppression and they must have the ability to do so.

This is probably a good time to mention that nothing I am writing about here has anything to do with current politics in the United States. The US government is not tyrannical and there is currently, in my mind, absolutely no need for anyone to rebel against it. In fact, the election of 2008 showed just how healthy the US democracy actually is.

Another thing I am not going to touch on in this article (after this paragraph) is guns and self-defense from day-to-day crime. As I said, I do not consider that the point of the 2nd amendment and I believe there is plenty of room to argue about the value of guns in preventing crime. But that is an entirely different topic, one that I will not be addressing here.

So now that we are clear on that, back to the gun and rebellion thing. “But how could anyone fight tanks and nuclear weapons with pistols, rifles, and machine guns?” is the common response when guns are the topic and I mention what I consider as the real and only purpose of the 2nd amendment. Well, let’s think about that for a moment, shall we?

First off, no one said you had a right to win your little rebellion, now did they? So if you cannot think of some ways of winning, maybe you shouldn’t have rebelled, eh? Seriously, especially in a modern democracy, there are so many other ways to influence the government that rebellion has to be second to last on the list of things to do about poor government — just above suicide and maybe just after becoming a citizen of another country. Seriously, if you have no hope of winning, doesn’t it make sense to go with a strategy that has some chance, even if a minuscule one?

The end of the list of ideas for dealing with your repressive government:

• flee to, or become citizen of, another country
• start or join a revolution
• suicide
• (end of list)

One of my poly-sci teachers in college talked about the “2%” rule. Basically it says that if 2% of the population is actively against a law, than the law is meaningless because it cannot realistically cannot be enforced. One reason is that a huge majority of the population is not going to care one way or the other, so a couple of percentage points of people who are actively working against a law is more than enough to doom it. You can argue about the exact percentage needed, but the idea is, I believe, valid. (A current situation that may be approaching the magic number is copyright-infringing file sharing, but that is something for another time.)

Two percent of the current American population is about six million people Even if you only count adults between 20 and 65, you are looking at over three million people. Think three million true believers could get a law changed if they put their minds to it? If the other 297 million don’t care enough to actively support whatever law we are talking about, I bet three million are going to be pretty successful.

Back to the revolution, which was about to be totally destroyed by the government. What if between three and six million people actively supported this revolution? Many will be rank-and-file cannon fodder, but some of them might be police officers, judges, members of the military, lawyers, the mega-wealthy, skilled hackers, doctors, elected officials, etc. In other words, people in positions to provide significant resources, intelligence, and skills to the rebellion.

But what about those tanks and nuclear weapons? Even if you recruit a couple of active military types with access to some heavy firepower, won’t the government just roll over them with all their other tanks or nuke them out of existence?

Is it really that simple though? If the government is willing to nuke, say, Omaha and the 98% of loyal citizens there, that is pretty good evidence that the rebels may have a case. What would the destruction of Omaha do for revolutionary recruitment? Support for the government? How would other governments react? Nukes are too powerful to be useful, in the early stages at least, against a home-grown rebellion. (Later, when the rebellion has captured a couple of cities, that might be a different story.)

So the tanks, what about the tanks? Surely they aren’t overkill? No, I don’t think they are. But they are also a whole lot easier for the rebels to get their hands on and use against the government. Which is basically where this whole thing was going from the first. The 2nd amendment doesn’t need to mean that citizens get to have tanks (but then again some of the freaking SUVs that Americans drive are already pretty close to tanks in size anyhow). Americans just have to have weapons powerful enough to help them get into the nearest armory (national guard base maybe?) and liberate the war making powers therein, leveling the tactical playing field a bit.

Of course, please remember that success in the rebellion depends on the active support of at least two or three million people. If you haven’t got at least that, it might be better to rethink the whole rebellion thing. Like I pointed out above, there are currently a lot of other, better ways to deal with political power in a democracy, most of which do not get you shot on sight.

Conclusion is simple — get involved in your democracy but leave the 2nd amendment alone, just in case we need it one day.