When discussing the 2nd Amendment with gun control advocates, the discourse will often drift to the original intent; giving "We the People" the means with which to defend ourselves from a tyrannical regime.
At this point, their responses become eerily reminiscent of George H.W. when asked about abortion on behalf of his daughter in the event of rape; complete shutdown and refusal to contemplate the scenario.
So I will posit the worst-case scenario directly and ask: When Plan "A" is denied you, just what the heck is your Plan "B"?
The 2nd Amendment exists to protect us from our own government.
According to the framers' original intent, the only Supreme Court ruling on the matter, and the current Judicial interpretation, the 2nd Amendment is intended to give us the ability to fight and defeat our own standing army should the need ever arise.
So let's say that you've been successful in your quest to disarm the American citizens. Setting aside the technical difficulties of actually implementing this...let's just say you have.
We now no longer have guns that are useful for fending off our military.
But Slashy, we never had that ability in the first place!
Ah, but we do...err...I mean "did". The Vietnamese managed to ride out our best efforts to control them. The Afghans have managed to ride out our best efforts to control them. The Iraqis have managed to ride out our best efforts to control them. M-1 tanks, AH-64 helicopters, and A-10 attack planes notwithstanding.
And the difficulty would only be increased when contemplating attacking your own people, for a government that manages to destroy its own people has simply managed to destroy itself.
Going all the way back through history, the armed rebellion always wins when it has the support of the people. Same way the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar. Same way Mao defeated the Emperor. Same way we defeated the British. Same way the French overthrew the monarchy....
But neither here nor there. For the purposes of this discussion, we may or may not have had the means with which to defend ourselves from tyranny, but we definitely don't now.
So let's say that some guy comes along....
Some odd confluence of events, where...say people see him as honest and folksy, but really he's just a dimwit who'd rather spend time falling off his bike than taking the helm of his own government. And say that he has this evil Grand-Vizier sorta Vice President who is free to run the show to his own liking, while being given a convenient scapegoat in the "President".
So this V.P. is assigned the task of selecting the cabinet, and goes to his old policy think-tank and grabs up all his like-minded cronies.
And so here sits our bumbling but affable "commander guy", surrounded by people who let him think he's in charge, while they're busy devising their grand schemes....
And so one day something terrible happens.
Say, some terrorists pull off something huge, like (oh, I dunno) maybe hijacking some planes full of people and maybe using them to crash into buildings or something (I know this sounds farfetched, but bear with me here).
And let's say that everybody were to flip out, and overreact out of sheer terror. So they vote out the opposition party from both chambers.
There goes the Separation of Powers....
So anyway....the leadership becomes more and more Authoritarian and erratic as the years go on.
I mean really crazy stuff that would never happen here. Starting up wars based on lies to the American People, secret prisons, Americans imprisoned without due process or legal representation, ignoring the will of the people, signing statements to override laws they don't like, using our media outlets as propaganda machines...
But wait, it gets worse
Hey, it's my 'blog, so I can get as farfetched as I want. So why the heck not, they begin spying on our phone calls, accusing dissenters of treason, marshalling power under the Executive,
And some people, drunk on the kool-aid, even start talking about installing this guy as King!
And the opposition party is powerless to stop his machinations
Because their voice has been strangled by censorship and drowned out by propaganda. Our increasingly paranoid and suspicious population (victims of this crazy color-coded "threat level indicator") actually start to turn on anybody who voices dissent, accusing them of treason, aiding the enemy...
And so the time comes for the election...
But see, the "commander guy" has decided that he's the "decider" and he's "decided" that allowing us to vote him out of office would simply be too dangerous, because he's the only guy that can handle the terr'rists.
So he imposes Martial Law and closes the polls.
He declares himself "President for the duration" (whatever the heck that means). And so here we sit, at the tail-end of a horrible series of events which would, of course, be impossible to ever occur here. Well...maybe not too impossible. Similar (not identical) things have happened before, both here and abroad. For example, Germany, Italy...
So now what?
What the heck are you going to do when the "Commander Guy" sends in the National Guard to quell your treasonous demonstrations?
Wait for the U.N. to save you? What if the rest of the world doesn't want to get involved and face the wrath of the mightiest nation on the planet? What then?
Pack your bags and flee? What if the Commander guy doesn't let you to leave? Although I suppose it would be darkly humorous to see Americans streaming across the Rio Grande, let's say you have a sick grandmother who can't make the trip or something, or (more likely) your name and face are all over the wanted lists as a terrorist sympathiser?
What the heck are you going to do when you realize too late that you ultimately threw away your last chance to protect yourself and help restore your nation? Not just your last chance, mind you, but mine too!
'Cuz I think that at that point, you'd sit down and wait for the blackshirts to come and drag you off to the secret prison, where they'll put you in the holding cell right next to me. And I hope you'd be understanding if I maybe yelled at you a little between waterboardings.