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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

>The 2nd amendment does not give the citizenry the ability to overthrow the government, it prevents the government from restricting the right to bear arms because bearing arms is necessary for a free state.

Why is the right to bear arms necessary for a free state if not to give the citizenry the ability to overthrow the government? It's not as if indian raids or an invasion from Spain or Britain are causes for concern, nor does the second amendment make up for the lack of a standing army anymore. Overthrowing the government is the only thing left that it's good for, as far as a free state is concerned.

>If the government does not serve the people, the people have an a priori right to reform that government.

What other means of "reform" does the second amendment offer the people, than revolution by force of arms?

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This is going to sound fussy but it's a really important point to understand. This is not the case of a bunch of farmers rebelling against a king, or a duke staging a coup. The people reforming the government is akin to the CEO of a private company firing their mid-level managers. That's the right of the people, and the members of the government serve the people.

The reason why the right to bear arms is important to a free state is because both sides of a negotiation must possess power. Kent State was a tragedy, but it's aftermath happened in a court room with lawyers and journalists. Tienanmen square on the other hand saw a government run over it's people with tanks and then pretend it never happened.

When one side of a power dynamic has no power, the opposite side can do whatever it wants - install a president for life, promote the president to a position without any checks, directly compromise basic human rights for short term political wins, and so on.

A "revolution by force of arms" isn't very likely, but a large well armed group of protestors is a great way to convince a government to show up in court and use words and lawyers instead of tanks.

it's probably not possible for armed citizens to actually overthrow the US government without support from the conventional armed forces. but it's not necessary to completely overthrow a government to extract concessions. a credible threat of widespread chaos and violence might tip the scales against a very unpopular policy.

> it's not necessary to completely overthrow a government to extract concessions. a credible threat of widespread chaos and violence might tip the scales against a very unpopular policy.

And how often does that actually succeed? The American Civil War caused the South to lose out on slavery, at great cost to its economy; while The Troubles didn't induce the UK to give any concessions it wasn't already willing to give beforehand.

Most insurgencies ultimately fail in their aims, and this is already when we're talking about insurgencies against weak governments and civil societies where monopoly of force is close to nonexistent in the first place.

> while The Troubles didn't induce the UK to give any concessions it wasn't already willing to give beforehand.

You're saying that the Brits would have agreed to let Northern Ireland vote to join rejoin the rest of Ireland at some point in the future WITHOUT force of arms? I don't believe you. And yes, that was included [0] in the Good Friday Agreement.

And even if most insurgencies fail, "let's not do that because it might provoke an insurgency" is valuable all on its own.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement#Status_o...

Scotland got its devolution referendums and independence referendums without severe political violence, so I suspect that the British would have been willing to let such a vote happen if the Sunningdale agreement had lasted longer.

An alternative interpretation is that Scotland got its independence referendums because London had seen how much of a clusterfuck the "no, let's ignore the desires of this not-a-colony" route could end up being.

>while The Troubles didn't induce the UK to give any concessions it wasn't already willing to give beforehand.

If you look farther back in Ireland's history, it seems like Ireland's independence from UK was achieved mostly by violent resistance. After there was too much violence, England finally decided it wasn't worth it, and came up with an agreement allowing most of the island to become independent, with the exception of a handful of northern counties.

while The Troubles didn't induce the UK to give any concessions it wasn't already willing to give beforehand.

Quite the contrary. The Troubles in Northern Ireland were not a unilateral insurrection, but an emergent response to aggressive incumbent paramilitarism when confronted with demands for greater civil rights for the minority population. Military strategists favored withdrawal of the occupying forces; political hardline thinking won out, but was unable to win a conflict of attrition and eventually settled for power-sharing and de-escalation. At the present Northern Ireland is as likely to see reunification with the rest of the island as continued membership of the UK.

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