The Second Amendment Didn't Work

The crown argument for the 2nd amendment was that it protects America against tyranny.

Donald Trump and his lackeys are in the process of establishing an autocratic regime. Oh, but how can this be? Have we not been told that the 2nd amendment makes it impossible for America to have a tyranny?

I have always argued that the conservative American belief that the Second Amendment somehow protects their liberty is absurd. It never protected African Americans against slavery, segregation or any other forms of oppression. Nor did it protect Native Americans against genocide.

In fact, the Second Amendment has more been a way to allow the oppressor to engage in oppression. The Californian genocide of Native Americans in the 1860s and onwards was enabled by citizens carrying guns and thus able to murder at will.

When African Americans or Native American people ever tried to resist by using guns, settlers would use this as an excuse to call in the US army to settle what they would describe as a "riot." The 1921 Tulsa race massacre is another good example. When black people tried to fight back against whites, it simply created a pretext for a calling in the US military. We have seen this during Hong Kong demonstrations. Authorities kept attempting to goad protesters into violence to have a pretext for a violent crackdown.

In fact, this is a very common tactic for authoritarian regimes, which is why so many successful regime changes have happened through non-violent protest.

The Otpor organization in Serbia ousted dictator Slobodan Milosevic using peaceful resistance means. From Otpor and the Struggle for Democracy in Serbia (1998-2000):

When a group of students founded the new organization Otpor (“Resistance”) in October 1998, the regime of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic seemed firmly entrenched. Only two years later, he was driven out of office after a massive mobilization of civil resistance inspired and in many ways shaped by Otpor organizers. The Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), the broad reform coalition that ousted Milosevic, dominated parliamentary elections in December 2000, took control of the government, and restored democracy to that war-torn country.

German anti-fascist Three Arrows also has a detailed video discussing the absurd conservative American claim that Jews would have been spared the Holocaust if they had been armed. He covers this in the video Guns in the Third Reich - A Response to Ben Shapiro and Others.

About 7 minutes in he makes this statement:

Imagine you're a german jew in the 1930s and you own a rifle when would be the best point to start your armed insurrection against the nazi government and keep in mind that this government is supported by the majority of the population and in this list of events I've included an event that was caused by a jew shooting a nazi diplomat and pay attention how that played out.

It is worth listening through his arguments in more detail. He goes through a series of dates regarding what happened to Jews in the Third Reich and points out how there was no obvious date to mount a resistance against the state. When you are something like 1% of the population and most voted for and support the current government an armed resistance is futile. It would simply have been used as a pretext to murder all Jews on the spot.

What Ben Carson, Ben Shapiro, and other 2nd amendment advocates fail to understand about the Holocaust is that it was not implemented from day one in an obvious fashion. It took a whole 8 years for the "Final Solution" to be implemented. During this time period, Jews actually had ample opportunity to leave Germany. A large number of Jews did. Hitler even worked with Zionists to smuggle Jews into Israel past British blockade. This was the so-called Haavara Agreement:

The Haavara Agreement (Hebrew: הֶסְכֵּם הַעֲבָרָה, romanized: heskem haavara, lit. 'transfer agreement') was an agreement between Nazi Germany and Zionist organizations signed on 25 August 1933. The agreement was finalized after three months of talks by the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank (under the directive of the Jewish Agency) and the economic authorities of Nazi Germany. It was a major factor in making possible the migration of approximately 60,000 German Jews to Palestine between 1933 and 1939

The Haavara Agreement should be a strong reminder to those who argue that Trump cannot be an anti-semite because he supports the state of Israel. The Nazis were for the most part perfectly fine with Jews living in Israel. They simply did not want Jews in Germany.

So why did Germany murder Jews? I big part of it was that simply other countries did not accept Jewish immigrants.

Famously, as late as 1939, Jews were still getting denied entry to the US (BBC):

In May 1939 more than 900 Jews fled Hitler's Germany on a luxury liner, the SS St Louis; they hoped to reach Cuba then travel to the US, but were turned away from both.

The increasingly desperate passengers were forced to sail back to Europe, where more than 250 of them were later killed by the Nazis.

If you think armed civilians could have stopped the Nazis I suggest you read up about the Warsaw uprising:

Casualties during the Warsaw Uprising were catastrophic. Although the exact number of casualties is unknown, it is estimated that about 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and about 6,000 badly wounded. In addition, between 150,000 and 200,000 Polish civilians died, mostly from mass executions

The Polish people fought heroically tooth and nail against the Nazi occupiers but were still slaughtered.

As Trump is eroding American democracy, I will, like 3 Arrows, also invite people to answer at what date are the American people supposed to mount their armed rebellion? Let us face reality, there is no particular logical date to do this. If democrats mounted an armed revolt now, it would be used as a pretext to simply secure more power for the Trump administration. This is exactly what happened after the 2016 Turkish coup attempt. Erdogan was able to use that as a pretext for significantly more oppression and power grab.