Stupid Bumper Stickers

Exercising your Second Amendment Rights to avoid space invasions.

I realize that looking to bumper stickers for anything beyond a chuckle is a fool's errand.  But still...

I saw a sticker on a pick-up (natch) that said, "The Second Amendment is the one that preserves all the others."

Really?

Can anyone think of a SINGLE moment in American history where a well armed, well regulated militia preserved the right of trial by jury?  Preserved the right of freedom of assembly and petition?  Preserved the right to not quarter troops in your home?

I personally cannot think of one single instance where the use or threat of force has preserved our civil liberties.  And I consider myself pretty well versed in American history.  Certainly there have been instances of labor unrest like the Homestead strike or the Pullman strike where violence has been used by men and women who saw no other way to preserve their rights.  But those instances almost always ended with the state or capital in some form or another crushing those who would use their second amendment "rights" to preserve their economic prerogatives.

No, our rights are preserved because before America had a second amendment, a Constitution or even a Continental Congress, we had a very British respect for the rule of law.  Much of the unrest that preceded the Revolution took the form of legal petition and tracts written in the tradition of the Whigs of England.

We consent to our laws because we understand that laws are necessary.  And we elect men and women to craft those laws, and if they do a really poor job, we don't elect them anymore.

The Second Amendment has fuck all to do with that.

What is worrisome is that there is a sizable number of Americans - millions of them - who think their personal arsenal is what keeps a tyrannical government at bay.  Their understanding of civil government is so profoundly bassackwards as to to be essentially un-American - and I use that term advisedly and cautiously. To think that only the right to bear arms keeps government from tyranny is to completely misread the American Experiment in constitutional law and elective democracy.  It is to deny the Founders in the most profound way possible.

I don't give a damn about gun rights one way or another.

But I find the idea that guns alone keep this country from being Belarus or Myanmar to be an evil, evil idea.

Oh, yeah, Happy New Year.