Second Amendment

The second amendment to the United States Constitution reads as follows:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It’s been debated ever since its adoption what the purpose of this amendment is. For the sake of this article, I want to focus on just one of the reasons:

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. … The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard, against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.

Aftermath of World War I

Europe was in a shambles and the victors wanted to crush Germany to the point that it would never again have the appetite for war. This backfired. What happened instead? A humiliated population living in a country with a tanked economy and ridiculous levels of inflation was ready for a leadership change that would help them regain a sense of pride in their country and take them out of economic depression.

They believed that they had lost their country. A brilliant propagandist (Joseph Goebbels) joined forces with and helped elect a charismatic politician (Adolph Hitler) as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy. When the Reichtstag building (the Weimar Republic’s seat of power in Germany) was set on fire (by Hitler’s Nazi party), they blamed the others, that is, the communists, the jews, the slavs, etc. and used it as a way to get himself granted special powers to deal with the problem.

The decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. With Nazis in powerful positions in the German government, the decree was used as the legal basis for the imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and to suppress publications not considered “friendly” to the Nazi cause. The decree is considered by historians to be one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany.

Things went down hill for Germany and the rest of the world from there. Germany had become fascist.

One common definition of the term [fascism] focuses on three concepts: the fascist negations of anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anti-conservatism; nationalist authoritarian goals of creating a regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture; and a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth and charismatic leadership.^[25][26][27] According to many scholars, fascism—especially once in power—has historically attacked communism, conservatism and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the far right.

A (Very) Last Minute Plea

Does any of this sound familiar? A brilliant propagandist (his campaign chair Steve Bannon, form CEO of Breitbart) working to get a charismatic politician (Donald Trump) elected by blaming difficult economic times on international capitalism (that is, the trade agreements like NAFTA and TPP), and “others” (that is, Muslims, illegal immigrants, and thinly veiled references to jews with talk of giving our sovereignty over to the “international banks”). Combine this with the politicizing of the FBI, and you have to ask yourself how long will it take before we end up with some sort of “attack” on our country with (hopefully not) President Trump asking for “special powers” to deal with the attack?

If you are pro second amendment, and believe that one of its main functions is as described above, a Trump Presidency is exactly the situation you believe the second amendment exists.

A vote for Mr. Trump is a vote to start us down the road on which lies the need for gun owners to rise up against their government. Please don’t start us down that road because you believe the lie put forth by that brilliant propagandist Steve Bannon that Hillary “… wants to abolish the second amendment”. We can’t afford it. The world can’t afford it.