Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Guns and revolutionary violence

I am suspicious of folks who think that an armed populous is not a check on government actions.  I would agree that it is not in of itself sufficient, but might very well be a necessary condition in such a large spread out country.
 
Note that the following comes from the left, the group (within the United States) that at one time was the most likely to be providers of revolutionary violence.

Modern Violence, Resistance and the Calculus of Revolution
Ian Welsh, 6 November 2013 (hat tip: NC)
Guns alone mean little.
America’s founding fathers wanted Americans to have guns and be in well regulated militias.  In this, as in many things, they were wise.  A militia, properly oriented towards the community it serves, is an organized body of citizens who have military training and are used to fighting as a group.  They have ties to the community, and there is not more than one militia per community, they also have ties to whatever local government exists.  If enough of these militias decide, as groups, to resist the government, they can do so.
The Arab Spring events indicate that you don't need violence to have a successful revolution.  The only problem with this thinking is that everywhere that the military decided to put down the revolution, they either put it down, or it collapsed into a bloody civil war.   Weapons in the hands of the revolutionaries didn't create victory, but they did allow them to stave off immediate defeat.

4 comments:

PioneerPreppy said...

The open door for these lefty socialist is the "well regulated" part. It makes wet dreams spring into their minds.

Those words allow them to sneak in as many qualifiers as they can get an erection over like: Past Military experience, answerable to government etc.

Well Regulated to the Founders meant specifying an age range and having rules in place for when and where it could be used in emergencies. Until such time as Congress declares war the Militia is answerable only to the local Citizens.

russell1200 said...

Pioneer: I don't even think the militia was ever under the control of congress. It would certainly respond to local call ups, and would fight under who they were told to, but there was not a ton of regulations beyond the State level.

PioneerPreppy said...

NO the militia was never under the control of Congress but Congress has stipulations to exactly how the President could call them up. It went back and forth over and over until 1827 when a court decision basically said that when the militia is called up it is no longer under state control.

Until then it is basically under control of the local populace. Now days it is questionable since most States have quit using militia.

However the last real vestige of when and or where the President could call up the militia is from 1792 which gave the President the authority to call forth the militia when the nation was invaded, in imminent danger of invasion, or when faced with "combinations" against the nation. Whatever combinations really mean is questionable.

Many State Governors basically adopted a veto power over using the militia during the War of 1812 and that wasn't hashed out until 1827 when it was ruled that the militia must be paid by the Federal Government and inducted into the regular army.

The crux is that in order to do that the President has to have Congressional approval. Not only for the funding but also to increase the regular army size and officer positions.

Or so it would seem to me.

russell1200 said...

Pioneer: very good, I didn't realize there was so much back and forth. The fight over state resources had an impact, particularly in the South, in the Civil War, where Southern Governors tended to want to hold onto troops to defend their own territories from incursion, but left the confederacy vulnerable to defeat in detail.