So what if they come get our guns.

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Waitone

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Another thread got me thinking.

How often do I see the following phrase or a derivative? ". . . . . .and they will come get our guns."

So what? What does it mean? There is an implied next step after "they come get our guns."

What is that next step.

We just surrendered free political speech and no one said, ". . . . .and they will keep us from speaking in public." Hate speech laws seek to control non-political speech yet there is no outcry or threats leveled against our government.

Freedom of association is well-down the road to being obsolete yet there is no followup comments.

Someone would say the right to due process is squashed by the Patriots' Act but there is no implied danger or threat to the government for its actions.

So what is it about the second amendment that causes a followup comment?
 
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That is a good question, but I am not sure I have an answer for it, except that guns are a physical object, while speech is esoteric. It is easier for Joe Sixpack to notice his gun is gone than it is for him to realize he can't buy air time to speak out against a candidate prior to an election, unless he is a member of a government-authorized organization.

Its a shame. Supporters of gun rights sat back and watched free political speech die with very little resistance. Heck, the majority of them are going to vote for Bush, despite the fact that he signed the legislation, after even stating he thought it was un-Constitutional.
 
With no intention of any bravado or "tough talk", coming to get my guns would be a very dangerous undertaking, and I suspect this is true for most of us on this board.
 
coming to get my guns would be a very dangerous undertaking, and I suspect this is true for most of us on this board.
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has that been the case anywhere in the world that it's already happened? australia, great britain, california, chicago, etc...
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the motto of this fine site not "come and get them"??

What, if anything, are you people prepared to defend??
 
BLEH

no offense intended but i'm sure there will be some.

EVERY ONE of you "vote from the rooftops people" should just go ahead and post here before you do... we will count the posts... and see how many of you stood for yer bravado.

That goes for the "coming to get my guns would be a very dangerous undertaking"

oh? what... the cops that decided that you'd be dangerous didn't thnk of that?

or were you going to shoot a few of em?

I'm not saying its WRONG... i'm saying that its very different to talk big than to be faced w/ a brit/ausie/canadian senario and say - YA instead of living my comfy (mostly i hope) life of football/baseball/soccer/hockey/hot dogs/driving fast<sometimes...rofl>/cheesburger from mickeyd's/steak from outback/ shopping at walley world life.... i'm going to start shooting cops cause they want my guns....

I would think the point of this board was to try to stop it from getting there - and any big talk about if it DID get there is pointless... but please... be sure to post before it happens... cause i'd like to see the success ratio's....

J/Tharg!
 
*shrugs*

Interpret it however you wish to. I'm curious though as to why anyone would post on this board if they weren't committed to defending their rights were it to come down to something like door-to-door gun confiscation. I like to think the spirit of this board is such that the pledge to vigorously defend one's rights wouldn't be ridiculed......

You may take your rights less-then-seriously......I do not.
 
Supporters of gun rights sat back and watched free political speech die with very little resistance. Heck, the majority of them are going to vote for Bush, despite the fact that he signed the legislation, after even stating he thought it was un-Constitutional.
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That's what never ceases to amaze me. So many people here support Bush because he's supposedly a friend of the 2nd Amendment (in truth, he's merely not an active enemy like Kerry is). But many don't seem to mind when Bush and Co. support restrictions of the 1st, 4th, 6th Amendments, the right to privacy, etc. These are the rights worth defending with our guns if need be, and they're also the ones that let us first peaceably work within the system to defend the RKBA without having to "vote from the rooftops."

The Bill of Rights works together. It's foolish and myopic to think only the Second Amendment matters or takes primacy. If you were to let the government take all your other rights but allow your RKBA, would you be happy? Because then you'd to need to actually use your guns to fight the state whenever you tried to excercise those lost rights. Good luck. One-issue voting makes no sense to me.
 
. . . australia, great britain, california, chicago, etc...
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Can't speak for the first three, but as a former resident (inmate?) of Chicago, I can assure you that discrete noncompliance with Chicago's gun ban is the rule, not the exception. They tried going door-to-door with warrantless searches for "illegal" guns in the city-owned housing projects some years ago, but the courts slapped them down on that one.
 
We don't have a 2A and all firearms are to be licenced. Once we get a Dunblane/Columbine kind of an incident, heavy pressure for more regulation will be reality. That might result in anything but no-knock raids to confiscate... we don't have that kind of policy nor police. So "molon labe" in such a sense won't be actual either.

I sure as heck won't be getting into any kind of altercations with any "authority" so long as the society somehow remains intact. Plus that I strongly suspect that burglars looking for firearms will become a true pest in my area by then. Oh bummer. :scrutiny: :D

Actually, my main theoretical peeve is the use of the firearm registry by an invading force. Seeing what e.g. the Russian political developments have been the last ten years, who knows what the next twenty-thirty will bring? We have Europe's longest land border with them.
 
Does anyone but me notice the irony in the last post: "they tried warrantless confiscation, but the court slapped them down (para)"?

Y'all can thump your chests all you want, safe in the knowledge that the odds of this ever happen are right up there with government sanctioned book burnings and crucilfix confiscation. How come no one wants to vote about those from the rooftops?

Standing by for the inevitable nazi Germany/Waco/ ungrounded analogies.
 
MP5 - What makes you think that the Democrats would be any better? The Patriot Act passed the senate with 98 yeas, 1 nay, and 1 who didn't vote. Kerry and Edwards both voted for the bill. The McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reforms passed the senate 59-41, with most of the support coming from Democrats, including Kerry and Edwards.

If you compare the candidates, neither side looks particularly good. So, I'll go for the guy who isn't a gun grabber as well.

I've got other reasons for voting for Bush, but since we're talking 2nd Amendment and such in this thread, I'll stick to those points.
 
Why bother to answer the question posed in the initial post, when you can just sit back and use it as an excuse to poke and prod at your fellow board members? Judging from some of the responses, not only would these people NOT resist a gun confiscation, they would cheer, as the resisters were carted off to jail and/or killed. Rarely do they offer a positive post. Jab. Jab. Jab. Troubling and immature. (Honesty about oneself indeed!)

Re: The original question. Lone gunman was correct in drawing a distinction between legislation that banned an action, and the type of law that would require .gov to come into the homes of peaceable citizens to steal their property. The smart legislators have nibbled around the edges, focusing on specific weapon types, (i.e., EBR's) and even then, avoiding house-to-house enforcement actions (theft); and the JBT connotations that would bring. the general public tolerates reactive oppression somewhat better than proactive oppression, it seems.

Perhaps the question can be answered in the third-person, and discussed at higher than a third grade rhetoric level, avoiding the false bravado on both sides?

What is the next step?

On the part of the government...seems clear that removal of the means of self defense & retaliation emboldens the worst of the bureacrats to come up with ever more oppressive laws, cloaked in "public safety" or similar numbmush justification.

On the part of citizens...embrace "strategic ambiguity", as the Isreali government does when addressing hypothetical questions about response to threats. This means reserving every option up to and including nukes, if the need arose. For individuals (presumably not possessing nukes), utilize every means of resistance at your disposal. The idea is to maximize uncertainty, on the part of the oppressors, and maximize their costs. Without dwelling on the armed confrontation at one's front door, many other options out there. Suiffice to say, a gauntlet would have been thrown.

(edited 'cause my keyboard went tu in mid- post!! )


:banghead:
 
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Can't speak for the first three, but as a former resident (inmate?) of Chicago, I can assure you that discrete noncompliance with Chicago's gun ban is the rule, not the exception. They tried going door-to-door with warrantless searches for "illegal" guns in the city-owned housing projects some years ago, but the courts slapped them down on that one.
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Hiding your guns, or turning in some of them and not registering the others is certainly a far cry from the bravado laden, "They will get the lead first" or "vote from the rooftops" and is a far more likely outcome.

What also amazes me is how people in california, NYC and other places thump their chests and talk about how they will defend the 2nd amendment and start shooting once its infringed..... um.... hello?
 
My original question just morphed. Back to the original.

I'm asking about the implication contained in the phrase, ". . . . .come get our guns."

Is it a fear you won't be able to defend yourself against garden variety criminals?

Or are you fearful of not being able to defend yourself when civil order collapses?

Or how 'bout not being able to defend yourself from Blue Helments?

Or how 'bout being pushed too far by our own home-grown fascists?

Or how 'bout the humiliation of your loss of "manhood." <Just making up ideas>

There is an implicit fear associated with, ". . . . . .come get our guns." I want to understand what that fear is.

Second point is why is there a line drawn in the sand with the second amendment but not with the destruction of the first, fourth, tenth, et al?
 
Second point is why is there a line drawn in the sand with the second amendment but not with the destruction of the first, fourth, tenth, et al?
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Just a possible answer for that:

If the line in the sand for the 2A is gun confiscation, then the line is more obvious than infringements on the other amendments. Taking guns is a physical action, and very concrete concept that even your most ill-educated individual can understand. Whereas for infringements on conceptual/abstract rights, it's a little harder to define a widely accepted concrete line that shall not be crossed.
 
Regarding the question involving the 1st, 4th, 5th etc..

Most folks are anchored in the real world, the pragmatic world. To most if it can't be touched it just doesn't matter.

Let's look at some of our rights in that light shall we:

1st Amendment: Freedom of Speech - can't touch it. To Joe SixPack free speech doesn't mean much. He doesn't believe that anything he says matters much in today's world anyway - and he's right. Take it away most folks won't miss what they never had or exercised.

4th Amendment - how many times have you heard someone say "I've done nothing wrong, I've got nothing to hide." To most people the 4th amendment is unreasonable and prevents the government from putting bad guys in jail. Go to an airport and watch the sheep line up to be searched and never utter a complaint. I've talked to numerous folks who fly about this issue - the most common response I get is "sure it's annoying but it makes us safer". They just don't get it.

Pretty much the same arguments noted above can be applied to all the other amendments - especially the 9th and 10th.

Those arguments cannot be applied, however, to the 2nd Amendment.

Why not? Because the 2nd applies to a physical article, property. When someone in authority tries to take property from you, something you worked and paid for that gets your immediate attention. It's something you can wrap your hands and psyche around. The results of losing that physical thing are immediate and obvious. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand they've lost something. It does take someone capable of abstract thought to realize that they've lost something if they lose the right to free speech, freedome from unreasonable search and seizure, etc. Most Joe Sixpacks either are incapable of abstract though or plain just don't give a hoot.

Still - I don't believe that even 1 out of a 1,000,000 of those who say. "they'll get my guns when they pry 'em out of my cold dead hands" is doing more than just talking big. When the cops come to take 'em away most folks are gonna give 'em up without a struggle because a few 1000 dollars worth of property isn't gonna be worth giving up their lives or lifestyles for.

There will be a few - a very few - that take action and launch bullets at the confiscators. They will die unmourned for their efforts and will pass in vain because there will not be enough of them to make a difference. The populace will cheer their passing as terrorists or right wing extremists and proclaim that the US and the world is better off without them.

The days when freedom loving individuals could stand up and fight an oppressive government have passed into history. The age of the sheep is upon us.
 
Lone Gunman and MP5

I second what TrapperReady said. Bush ain't perfect (in fact, he's far from it), but he's been far better (and would remain so) than Kerry.

Better on guns.

Better on national security.

Better on terrorism and the response to it.

Better on standing up for our country (i.e. telling the world to shove it on wacko environmental, economic and gun-related regulations).

Better on taxes.

Better on regulations.


Note that NONE of the above is intended to show that Bush is perfect, or anything close to my ideal candidate. I have lots of complaints about him, and if he had a credible opponent with truly conservative views in the primaries, that person would have gotten my vote.

You vote your conscience in the primaries, and you vote for the lesser of 2 evils in the general election. As General George S. Patton said, "The enemy of the Good is the Perfect."
 
What makes you think that the Democrats would be any better?
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Nothing. Believe me, I have no love for the Democrats. In general, I'm a conservative/libertarian, which is why I dislike both Kerry and Bush equally, albeit for different reasons.

Whereas for infringements on conceptual/abstract rights, it's a little harder to define a widely accepted concrete line that shall not be crossed.
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Which is perhaps why those rights should be defended even more vigorously. The state has shown us just how easy it is to chip away at them with nary a peep from the populace.
 
There is an implicit fear associated with, ". . . . . .come get our guns." I want to understand what that fear is.

Second point is why is there a line drawn in the sand with the second amendment but not with the destruction of the first, fourth, tenth, et al?
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The fear is of losing your life. After everyone is disarmed, there's nothing anyone can do to stop any kind of fun genocide someone (either the government, private armies, you name it - just look at other countries) cooks up.

THR is a banned site from my workplace. It's because of threads like this. Essentially, what we are talking about is treason, or at least potential treason. But, then again, so was the American Revolution. Armed insurrection ain't fun - it's messy business. That's why most hope it won't come to that.

There are lines drawn on the sand with the other freedoms in our society. If they were to start searching people out on the street or breaking up protest marches, there will be plenty of resistance (witness the civil rights movement). It just wouldn't be necessarily violent resistance. If they try to confiscate guns (or even register them), they would be assured of instant violent response.
 
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