Guns, Democracy, And The Insurrectionist Idea

[SecularMotion]

On April 19, 1995, a truck bomb parked in front of a federal office building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was detonated, obliterating much of the building, and killing 168 people. The man convicted as the chief architect of the attack, Timothy McVeigh, had decided in the months before the attack that he was going to commit “a major act of violence against the government” (Michel and Herbeck 2001, 161), settling on the attack against the Murrah Federal Office Building because it housed regional offices of federal agencies including the ATF, DEA, and the Secret Service. In his own words, those who “betray or subvert the Constitution . . . should and will be punished accordingly” (Ibid., 153). The final straw for him was the looming enactment of new gun laws. The American government was edging toward tyranny, McVeigh felt, and it was up to him to strike back.

McVeigh was, to most, a dangerous criminal. But to some, he was a patriot, committing an act of insurrection against a tyrannical American government. What is most astonishing about the McVeigh case is not that he believed the government’s actions justified his violence against it, but that the theory he was invoking – insurrectionism – has met with increasing approval and legitimacy in otherwise serious circles. That this claim is no exaggeration is the basis for Joshua Horwitz’ and Casey Anderson’s disturbing and important book on this subject. As the authors note, insurrectionist theory has won legitimacy not only in public debate and in the pages of law reviews, but from the highest court in the land. In the 2008 Supreme Court case of D.C. v. HELLER, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote with apparent approval (and certainly not with disapproval) that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms is an important right in part because men with guns and training “are better able to resist tyranny” (at 2801) and as a “safeguard against tyranny” (at 2802). More about that later.

Horwitz and Anderson note that the insurrectionist perspective argues not only that the government is to be viewed with the greatest suspicion, but that citizens should be “prepared to resist it with force” (p.4). As groups like the National Rifle Association insist, guns mean freedom; more guns mean more freedom; any government-enacted restriction of guns is, ipso facto, an infringement on freedom; and the threat of armed force by citizens against their government is beneficial, not corrosive; healthy, not harmful to freedom. The book begins by defining insurrectionism, noting that the insurrectionist sloganeering is largely detached from societal reality. They note one of many ironies of insurrectionism: it asserts that the “government is too weak to protect its citizens yet too strong to be trusted” (p.26). More than any other individual or group, the NRA bears primary responsibility for promoting and legitimizing the idea that the threat of political violence (and what is the point of the threat if it is not backed by the prospect of action?) is not only a good thing, but protected under the Second Amendment. The tipping point came in 1977 when hard-liners within the NRA took control of the organization at its annual convention. Since then, the organization’s direction has been ever more political, strident, and radical.

http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/lpbr/subpages/reviews/horwitz-anderson0609.htm

[Loudly]

1. Ask every candidate if the People have the right of armed insurrection.

Against the government. Under the Second Amendment.

Throw a net over any who says yes.