Originally Posted by Broadsword2004
(Post 542202)
Remember also that the Founders did not believe in insurrections. Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 of the Constitution says,
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
Also read this portion of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson:
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Jefferson was an admirer of Tacitus and Tacitus wrote about the dangers of what happens when a representative system of government breaks down, i.e. despotism is usually the result. So while the Founders did believe in resistance to a tyrannical government, they meant when the government becomes really, truly tyrannical. They also recognized the danger in that many people who feel shorted by the political process might try staging a violent resistance, i.e. insurrection, and hence there is the provision in the Constitution to use the militia to suppress insurrections.
So the Founders I believe would think that resistance to the representative system of government doing something like trying to confiscate guns should mostly be peaceful, not violent. If our government becomes a variant of the Assad regime, then that is when violence would probably be needed.
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