The actual purpose of owning small arms is to make authoritarianism expensive. It is a deterrent.
As someone who lives in a country which has not in 150 years or more been seriously threatened with territorial invasion, it always surprises me how Europeans, who have experienced two world wars in their own backyard, as well as multiple genocides just in the last century, cannot ever see a situation in which guns might come handy in a political context.
I mean, it blows my mind. Most of a whole generation of my family died fighting in Europe, and when I hear the typical European, "Unlikely or won't happen here," especially in the sort of condescending tone Europeans like to take with Americans sometimes, it makes me wonder sometimes why we even bother with NATO and the like.
But Americans will get caught up in this conversation about the insurrectionary intent of the Second Amendment vs. self defense, but the point is moot: defense of oneself against a home invader, against an invading army, or against your own government is just
self-defense.
The detail changes but the root principle does not. What really underlies the Second Amendment is a radical principle:
As an individual,
you matter.
As an individual you can
say no.
No to your government. No to a predator intent on doing you harm. There are important political metaphysics here: the state exists at our pleasure
as individuals, whereas, those who push gun control insist its the other way around -- we exist as free men and women at the government's pleasure.
The government may revoke our rights at any time because they're scared of us, or they despise us, or they're uncomfortable with us living in their neighborhoods.
Americans like me can imagine blowing the whole fucking thing sky high, were this warranted (and it is not, and has not been in my lifetime.) This would be no less the United States with the White House or Capitol on fire. What defines us is not government, not obediance or obeisance to the state. Rather, it is our intent to assert our rights - not ask for them, petition someone for them, plead for them, or demand them.
European states are much older. For much of Europe, rule of the people which we'll call democracy here as short hand (itself problematic especially for Americans - mob rule is just tyranny of the majority over the minority, and the smallest minority is the individual) came gradually (there are obvious exceptions; the French got really angry about this paradigm the same time we did). It was won, piece by piece, over centuries as feudalism was slowly beaten back.
The USA? We said, "Fuck you, no," and opened fire.
And that was it.
What I want, is not to ever live to see a revolutionary condition arise in this state: I despise and abhor violence (gun control advocates find this debatable; they will believe what they want to believe.)
What I want, is the knowledge of people in power to understand just how bloody, how destructive, how civilization-ending any war upon its own citizens would be. And I don't believe anyone seriously contemplates this.
But times fucking change.
You'd think Europeans having been through centuries of change would know this, but the European Left is completely and totally blind to the fact that they live in a world created quite recently by the sacrifice of previous generations - many or most of which didn't faint at the sight of a gun and could imagine it all sliding backward without the eternal vigilance liberty requires.
Times will change yet again. This is not the end of history.
Permitting the rights of individuals to bear arms to be infringed - and I believe firmly that you have that right -
right now, this minute, however infringed it may be in your country - results in exactly one outcome:
You are powerless.
The state owns all of the weapons, and all of the means of force.
As do terrorists who threaten you now, who laugh at your gun laws for the absurdity they are. As do criminals and organized crime.
Gun control merely enlarges the power of the state; for people who cry "Fascism!" every five minutes, you'd think the European Left would see the irony in their hostility to The People being armed.
Does all of this have a cost? You undoubtedly know America's homicide-by-firearm rate. It absolutely does.
Bad people,
insane people,
irresponsible human beings
get their hands on firearms, the same way just about everyone gets their hands on drugs, if they really want to.
The "sensible" gun laws so many seem to support tend to lead to government registries, which contradicts one of the major aspects of civilian gun ownership in general: it makes them easy to seize, piecemeal. The Soviets did exactly this when they tried to quell an uprising in Lithuania in the early 80s. They knew who had guns, they seized them, then they rolled the tanks in.
Do you think civil war over guns is even reasonable?
I think with the number of civilian gun owners in America, it would be ludicrous to even consider.
And I aim to keep it that way. After all, we live in what is the only superpower, right? A government whose propensity for authoritarianism and abuse we get complaints about every five minutes from the rest of the world, right?
Why would we
ever
need guns?
There are those who insist, dismissively, that with all of the firepower of America's military, civilians wouldn't stand a chance. This is contradicted, firstly, by the failed wars in the Middle East, Vietnam, and even dumb intervention in Central America, all of which were at least in part, guerilla wars.
There is also the assumption that the US military and police would uniformly decide to go to war with its own citizens.
That is seriously mistaken. One thing you learn quickly when you own a gun and you go to ranges is how many military personnel and police support the rights of individual to own guns and have the same distrust of the excesses of the state.
So in reading the link you reference, the American there says that gun confiscation would itself trigger an armed response, or civil war, from gun owners.
If they tried it, I agree. That would be ample cause to say, "No. Sorry, but no, we don't recognize your authority to do that."
But I doubt they'd try.
The most likely response to a confiscatory gun policy is mass non-compliance. How they plan on arresting millions of us, I don't know.
Millions of us who are armed.
Good luck.
All of this I would say is not something all gun owners believe in; some are merely hobbyists and sport shooters. Gun control advocates are in denial of just how many of us do believe this, however. There may not be 50 million of us, but we do number at least a million, and likely far more.
Has there been cases where gun ownership was bad?
Of course, unquestionably. Our critics like to insist we like gun massacres at schools and the like. They can't parse - they refuse to parse or understand - that anyone would be anything but insane, paranoid, or ill intentioned, to own firearms.
I mean, can you think of people that shouldn't own guns?
The following people should not own firearms. I do not know how to legislate in such a way that would both deny these people firearms, while protecting the rights of others:
People with an uncontrolled temper.
People with an out of control drug or alcohol habit.
People who fantasize about, or would rationalize
ever
shooting at an innocent person.
People who seriously fantasize about or consider being a vigilante while the rule of law is still in force (with all of its flaws, it is, and in a fairly stable way).
People who are mentally ill, or suffer from untreated depression.
At this point in the conversation, which I know because we as gun owners have had this conversation thousands of times, people will start proposing so-called "common sense" gun laws which would prevent the above list from owning weapons, while "allowing" the rest of us to have them (They believe the government "allows" us to own guns, like a parent "allows" their child to stay up past midnight - it's adorable.)
Any law which creates any form of government registry or database listing which citizens have guns and which kind are out of the question.
Currently, law requires us to pass a supposedly shredded (after 90 days) federal background check through the NICS system when we buy firearms. We go to a dealer, we fill out a form, and this is then called in via phone. The government then researches our criminal histories and authorizes the sale, or refuses it. Every firearm I have ever purchased has led to a background check, and in my case I have also been fingerprinted and trained multiple times because I have a concealed carry permit.
I have done enough.
The one possible gun control law which would have a reasonable chance of passing in the United States is to strengthen and make more complete the NICS system in terms of requiring uniform reporting of crime from state-to-state.
Confiscation of guns, or the public giving up guns is out of the question. Our opposition believes it is on the table for discussion: they elect politicians and then those politicians, by virtue of having been elected by a plurality, then get to do what they want.
We disagree, and we point to the fact that this is in the Bill of Rights for a reason; just as a majority may not censor a minority or decide to violate any of their rights simply by virtue of being a majority, we assert that our right to keep and bear arms is not up for a vote.
And when I say we assert, I mean just that: We will not ask. We will not plead. We will not equivocate.
The answer is no.
And the debate our opposition thinks we're having, this "national conversation" is completely and totally moot.
They refuse to understand this.
I pray a situation never arises where we will have to make them understand.