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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

I also wish he would finish the sentence by filling in the blank: "The government is constrained in what it can do by _______."

As soon as you realize that "government" is the only thing filling the blank, you should realize how silly (and scary) the whole scenario is.

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Ah, but you can also fill in the blank with "the well armed populace".

Maybe not anyone you know, but at least half of the nation, 300+ million guns and more every day. Heck, 2/3rds of the nation lives in shall issue concealed carry regimes, with well over 8 million licenses granted.

This puts constraints on a would be out of control government. Let us hope we don't have to file a claim on this insurance policy.

Please remember that these concepts apply outside US too, where gun ownership and constitution defending the citizens aren't as available. This is one of the reasons why the "but we have guns to take 'em down if needed" is not very applicable argument when talking about these issues. The other being that the means to achieve influence and share of power should be political, and not rely on violence.

Well, sure, there's always the armed populace, but that is inherently illegal rebellion against the government, and it would be violently resisted by the government. (And, for the record, almost everyone I know owns guns, and that percentage was even higher before I moved to San Francisco.) But even though founding fathers wrote about the inevitability and even duty to violently resist an oppressive government, that's certainly not built into the government's rules for itself (the Constitution). Nowhere in the law does it say that these laws only need to be followed if you believe them to not be oppressive, or that you are free to overthrow the government if you find it oppressive.

You're wrong. The constitutions of New Hampshire, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas allow for the people to abolish the government.

I was explicitly referring to the US Constitution and federal law.

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