FBI raids Mar-a-Lago
(www.zerohedge.com)
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It ain't the first person that's the issue. It's the APC, the snipers, and the 999 behind him make the problem.
That's definitely where the Second Amendment arguments for protecting against tyranny fall apart really quick.
I have no problem with gun ownership and permissive laws.
But being armed to the teeth as an individual only helps you become either a martyr or a terrorist who takes a few down with you when the State come for you.
I never hear any plausible Step 2 on what happens next if you miraculously survive Step 1.
It's similar to how gun ownership deters burglary. It's not necessary that every house has a gun in it. It's that potential burglars know that any given house could, and they don't know which ones do.
This is how robust adherence to 2A serves as a preventative to tyranny. It's not that Bob who's mad at his water bill can take on the entire government and win with what he's got stashed in the garage. It's that a potentially tyrannous government doesn't know what sort of force can be brought to bear against it if it oversteps.
I think this Mar-a-lago nonsense is a clumsy attempt to gauge this. They went straight for the King, but he wasn't even there. What did they get? They got no response, which gives them no information, and they got an empty, if pretty, house. It's going to make a lot of people super mad though, myself included. I view this as some asshole tracking muddy boots on my nice carpet. It's going to get accounted for.
I understand how a well-armed populace could theoretically deter property crimes.
But it really doesn't do much to deter a tyrannical government that doesn't care about the lives of their brownshirts.
And again, what's Step 2 after the standoff for the common man?
No one ever talks about that part.
Well most of the point is that it doesn't get to the point of standoff, unless the party trespassed upon can be sufficiently "othered," like the Waco or Ruby Ridge folks, and they tried to do with the Bundy family in Oregon but didn't quite get there.
Step 2 depends, and that "common man," if he think he's a likely target for the regime, better start considering what sort of communal backing he's got. If the ATF shows up, can he call his sheriff and will that sheriff have his back? If the DoA says his runoff is unacceptable and his business is closed, does he have local authorities to challenge that decision?
That's not a new kind of fight. We've been in this fight forever. For the most part, the centralized authority has been winning. But we do appear to be hitting an inflection point which could turn the tide. I can't imagine it doesn't. I could be wrong, and we're all fucked if I am, but I think we've hit just about the amount of ridiculousness from our centralized authorities that we can bear.
The brownshirts don't want to get shot, and if they have to wonder whether they will be, they won't go as far for a tyrannical government. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn talks about this in The Gulag Archipelago, how things might have been different if the enforcers had been afraid they wouldn't come home.
And any government is going to think twice about doing something that might cause a shootout, if only for the optics.
You can't take down an army by yourself and guns can't do much against tanks etc but the point is not to make it easy for them. When it's easy for them they get a lot worse.
Deterrence is important.
Also ask yourself this, if guns are no threat to them why are they trying so hard to take them from you?
The 2nd amendment is the nuclear option of the citizenry. If the government goes maximum ape and starts "dealing with" its political opponents, the citizenry will revolt. Yes the government has APCs, tanks, and other weapons of mass destruction....but that doesn't stop the random joe with a rifle from putting a bullet between the eyes of [insert politically related individual here].
The chaos and pandemonium that would be caused is immeasurable, and realistically speaking it wouldn't take much of the population to cause an extreme headache for the government. If an issue shows up on the homefront, that is significant enough to require recalling our forces abroad, that will have massive geopolitical ramifications, ramifications that the government really does not want to deal with. Combine this with general unrest driving productivity into the floor and pandemonium throughout, and you swiftly end up in a fall of rome scenario.