Well, Saint of Killers, let's review some things according to your view. Since we should all just pick up a gun when the law doesn't work the way we want it to:
1.) October Revolution: Well, what's wrong with that? The Bolsheviks just got tired of the Czar, that's all. Law? What's that? Oh, but they were communists, so they are disqualified from being the heroes they would have been had they been right-wingers.
2.) Symbionese Liberation Army shotout: Down with The MAN, man! We luv you Tania! Up the Revolution! The SLA got tired of just taking crap from the government they hated, so they TOOK A STAND WITH GUNS. Oh, but they're LEFTISTS!! So that makes them automatically wrong! Now, had they been some militia right-wing "waa-waa-I-hate-the-government" types, they would have been heroes.
I find it rather remarkable that YOU expect the government to work within the law, but YOU can just discard the law when it does not work the way you want to. And pick up a gun to make it so. So, you want to set that precedent? I don't like your frickin' cat howling at night and the law won't help me. So, I shoot your cat to help myself. To retaliate, you shoot my dog. To retaliate for that, I burn your car. So you burn my house. So I burn your house. This is how the Hatfield-McCoy type feuds get started. This is what makes Africa such a volatile place---using guns to solve problems. Your point is hypocritical and childlike. Children think that they can just take the ball and go home because the teacher said it's actually the school's ball and everyone gets to play with it. The law belongs to everyone, SofK, not just you. Picking up a gun when the law does something you don't like just leads to everyone else doing the same. And this is "responsible gun ownership" how? This kind of thinking is exactly why some states are leery of granting CCW. They are afraid of the vigilantism you are espousing here. If one person might decide, forget the law, I'll solve this myself with my gun, then so will many other people. People quick to run to a firearm to solve a problem are not only cowards hiding behind a gun, they lack the courage of their convictions to make a stand without a gun and by working within the system or even by peaceful resistance. You think the Freedom Riders with Martin Luther King Jr. (oh, why am I bringing him up, he's one o' them commeenests) had it easy going through the Jim Crow South doing what they did? No, they didn't. But they did NOT pick up guns to solve the inequality that the law itself posed. They changed the system peacefully, preserved the rule of fair law at the same time, and did not cause a tit-for-tat system of white-on-black-black-on-white violence. Gandhi brought change from one of the world's greatest empires without firing a shot. Yes, there are times when one must defend oneself. But we are NOT living in a tyranny and anyone who thinks we are slaps the face of hundreds of millions of people who perished at the hands of REAL tyrannies by trivializing that wrd until it has no real meaning anymore. No one is shoving you into gas chambers. You are not being arrested for "counter-revolutionary statements" because you said state-baked bread was lousy. You are not being put to death because you have a Bible.
I compare Stanley to Hitler because this is how despots start out. Read your history. They all take advantage of a situation to create unrest and then profit personally from the resulting unrest. Either monetarily, through power, or by ego. Yes, there are lots of micro-despots in this country. I compare Stanley TO Hitler, but I did not say he IS Hitler. That is the difference.
So the guy has the "guts" to fight for what is right? No. He has the cowardice and lack of conviction to hide behind a gun instead of standing in FRONT of a podium and using his FIRST AMENDMENT rights to make his case. People are throwing the Constitution into every argument to make their case that the 2ndA "gives" them this "right" to use the gun to defy laws they don't personally like. But not one has the courage to use the 1st Amendment to defend their rights except to use the net to try and draw more people into the grave wth them. That's the thing about cowards; they don't like dying alone. They need other people there to die with them, all the while maintaining some twisted credo of "rugged individualism". Well, the Constitution does not guaruntee you that life is fair. And it does not say that if you use the 1st Amendment to speak out, that you are automatically going to win. But that's the chance you take to live in this nation. Armed thugs lording their personal opinions over everyone else at gunpoint is not an answer no matter who's doing it. Two wrongs do NOT make a right. And I am going to quote some liberals here when I say that an eye for an eye leads to blindness.
