As I’m sure we’re all aware by now some guy from California tried to get access to Associate Justice Kavanaugh’s home around 1:30 AM this morning to assassinate him. He didn’t get past the US Marshals assigned to patrol and secure the Kavavaughs’ property and the Kavanaughs themselves, immediately admitted to what he was doing, then admitted it again after he was Mirandized. Several hours later Senator McConnell did his usual lachrymose bit on the Senate floor demanding the Democratic led House of Representatives immediately pass the bill that the Senate unanimously passed in under half an hour to increase the security and protection of the Supreme Court justices. You may recall the Senate actually moving very fast about a month ago within several hours of Associate Justice Alito’s neighbors hosting a block party to protest Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe V Wade. The neighbors were armed with such deadly weapons as wine, cheese, crudites, and s’mores for the kids!
It is important to note that it is already illegal to protest at the homes of Supreme Court justices and that protesting at/in front of the Supreme Court itself is severely restricted. There’s no reporting on what the home owners’ association covenants in Associate Justice Alito’s neighborhood have to say about this.
If the motto on my business cards wasn’t “The question IS NOT am I paranoid; the question is AM I PARANOID ENOUGH?” and because I don’t believe in coincidences, I’d almost think this was all too convenient.
Regardless, part of the problem here is the Republican Party and the conservative movement has been very vocal that the 2nd Amendment was actually intended to stop tyranny and/or overthrow the government, not for hunting.
Here’s Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Gun Owners of America) saying that on his House web page:
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is not principally about hunting or recreation. In fact, the Second Amendment to our Constitution is our Founding Fathers’ restatement of our natural God given right to defend life, liberty, and property.
Here’s Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Pedo) making it even more explicit:
The Second Amendment is not about hunting, recreation, or sports. The Second Amendment is about the ability to maintain, within the citizenry, an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary. I hope it never does.
Here’s the video, which was at one of his joint appearances with Congresswoman Taylor Greene (R-Sex With Someone Other Than My Husband In the Crossfit Box).
Here’s Senator Rand Paul (R-Moscow Oblast), who was almost shot when the GOP softball practice was targeted for a little armed rebellion if you know what Matt Gaetz means and I think you do (it means paying teenagers to dress up like Jefferson Davis and have sex with him).
Why do we have a Second Amendment? It’s not to shoot deer. It’s to shoot at the government when it becomes tyrannical!
Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Had Sex With the Guy Who Looks Like Zangrief and Is Not My Husband) has this to say about the 2nd Amendment on the Blue Footed Booby of Budapest’s radio show:
“Ultimately, the truth is it’s our Second Amendment rights, our right to bear arms, that protects Americans and gives us the ability to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government,” she said. “And I hate to use this language, but Democrats, they’re exactly … they’re doing exactly what our Founders talked about when they gave us the precious rights that we have.”
Here’s what Congresswoman Boebert (R-I Bought Bolt Ons Bigger Than My Head In the Hope That My Husband Will Stop Exposing His Penis To Teenage Girls In the Bowling Alley Instead and Will Instead Look at My Aftermarket Chest) had to say about the 2nd Amendment:
Congresswoman-elect Lauren Boebert says with a giggle that the Second Amendment “has nothing to do with hunting, unless you’re talking about hunting tyrants, maybe.” Boebert expressed this opinion in an interview with Breitbart News at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit held in Florida last week.
While not a Republican official, here’s The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway’s take on the 2nd Amendment:
“I think it’s comforting for simple-minded people to think that restricting the natural right to keep and bear arms would solve all of our problems, that destroying the Constitution would solve our problems,” said Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway on Fox News after President Joe Biden’s Thursday night gun control address. “We have a natural right of self-defense and to guard against tyranny in the Second Amendment, this is something that makes us American.”
“And Joe Biden showed that he does not respect the Constitution,” Hemingway continued. “He does not support this natural right. That really is an impeachable offense to talk this way against something so foundational to the country.”
Let’s leave aside the conflating of natural rights, which is a Catholic theological concept, with the US Constitution, which is not the reason to cite Hemingway here is she’s been beside herself all day about this. And quite frankly that’s TWO Mollie Hemingway’s too many! Earlier today Hemingway was freaking out about Associate Justice Kavanaugh’s safety and how this is all Senator Schumer’s fault for inciting Americans to acts of terrorism against the Republican members of the Supreme Court. Or any other elected or appointed official either.
Consistency, little minds, hobgoblins…
It took me two minutes of keyword searching to find these quotes and videos. It took 35 minutes longer to copy, paste, and write it all up in a post than it did to find it with the keyword search.
This rhetoric, specifically indicating that the sole purpose of the 2nd Amendment is so that Americans can either scare elected and appointed officials into doing what they want them to do or not do or to overthrow the government is all the rage in the Republican Party and conservative movement. As a result none of them should be surprised, least of all Senator McConnell, when an American decides to take his 2nd Amendment rights out for a cross country adventure to stop what he believes is tyrannical behavior by an appointed government official with lifetime tenure and his own security detail.
That’s not to condone what fortunately didn’t happen in the early morning hours on the mean, manicured lawns of suburban Maryland. But given the Republicans own violent rhetoric and publicly expressed fantasies it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that someone is listening, absorbing it, and ultimately acting on it.
That’s why we call it stochastic terrorism.
Finally, the 2nd Amendment is NOT about overthrowing the government, it was about Madison trying to finagle the thorny issue of who would have control over the state militias in order to keep the anti-Federalists from preventing the Constitution being ratified and destroying the US before it had a chance to get started. The best history of this is Saul Cornell’s A Well Regulated Militia.
Open thread!
bbleh
… is all the rage in the Republican Party …
ISWYDT
Carlo Graziani
Yeah. Plus, reading through the bill of rights, every one of those amendments gets right to the point, stating with clarity and directness some proscription on Federal power. Except for the Second Amendment, which opens with an apology: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”
japa21
As usual, there is some truth to all that. It is not about hunting or that other crap. Nor is it about what they say it is. Up until Heller, it was not viewed by the courts as giving anyone the right to own firearms. And some of the most conservative states now, had the strictest laws against owning guns. The towns and villages of the old west would be aghast at all the open carry and concealed carry laws out there.
Yet, it has become the established wisdom that A) there is a constitutional right and B) for many that it is so that people can rebel against the government.
And they will argue that the SCOTUS says it is a constitutional right, and therefore it has to be. These same idiots say abortion isn’t a constitutional right, even though SCOTUS said it was.
debbie
A reminder of our friend Massie.
Gvg
Um, I have always understood the 2nd amendment was about preventing tyranny and I learned that in elementary school in the 60’s. It didn’t come from republicans and it’s not new.
I think it’s a waste of time to try and refute a long national legend with sophisticated scholarship. It just won’t take. It doesn’t say what we want it to say. It says something I disagree with.
It may help to emphasize the militia part of it and also to stress that they meant the government to survive.
I personally have come to think it was just plain wrong. What guns do is allow bullying. Those open carry people who scream at regular people are bullying me from living my life the way I want to. They are threatening to kill anyone who they say is doing something wrong and since people have all kinds of ideas about what is wrong, they are threatening murder. Naturally that makes most people be cautious about saying a lot of things publicly. It’s also a threat to murder against every politician or judge. The republicans think they are able to ride this tiger, but it’s going to bite some of them too. So basically I think the right to guns is actually anti democratic not a defense against tyranny.
That damned amendment needs to be repealed. I know we can’t actually do that new, we don’t have the votes, but things change. It may take decades though.
The founders were smarter than most countries first governments, but they weren’t perfect and the 2nd was one of their mistakes.
germy shoemangler
I thought the 2nd amendment was about slave catching/killing and the genocide of the indigenous.
bbleh
Adding, and yeah, this is all just bog-standard modern-Republican paranoia / male insecurity. “EEEK, gummint comin’ to take mah gunz so them boys can come take mah TV ‘n’ mah wimmin!” And thus Trump as bandolier-strapped He-Man, Lauren Boebert as Bad-Ass Garage Pinup Girl, and the constant, deafening shrieking about Hillary, Michelle Obama, the Squad, and pretty much every other woman who doesn’t come straight out of Gilead.
germy shoemangler
guns don’t kill people, bullets do.
Let them keep their guns. Take away their ammo.
/
Wakeshift
@germy shoemangler:
Yes.
That.
But now that we won’t let them do that, they need (and find) new targets.
germy shoemangler
Dangerman
I’m confused (not unusual). Right to bear arms is for stopping tyranny. WTF does that mean? Is there like a batshit crazy signal that says what is and is not tyranny? Maybe this Dude (and I’m not supporting his actions) thought BeerBrett was engaging in tyranny with the likely overturn of Roe. Ergo, fair game according to their rules (not my rules as noted).
Or maybe it’s all bullshit.
David ☘The Establishment☘ Koch
Sending thoughts and prayers
Wakeshift
@germy shoemangler:
This can be expanded to:
-Bad Thing-
Everyone: Dems must DO SOMETHING
-House passes Bill about Bad Thing
Everyone: …
-Bill dies in Senate because zero Rs support it-
Everyone: Why won’t Dems DO SOMETHING?
Repeat for next Bad Thing
ETA because formatting
Gravenstone
Yeah, they’ve always been big on the “we need moar gunz to stop tyranneeez” bullshit. Although yes, the rhetoric has been heating up in recent years. Funny how they suddenly get all up in arms when those guns may pose a threat to the parts of the government they actually like. Ya know, their pet autocrats and judges as well as themselves.
I know it’s poor form, but may they reap the whirlwind they have so aggressively sown.
CliosFanBoy
As Adam says it was about state militias. The Founding Fathers didn’t trust an executive Commander in Chief with control of the only standing military even with some Congressional controls. State militias diluted that power.
FWIW, I currently have a book “in press” with the Naval Institute Press on the President as Commander in Chief so I had to reacquaint myself with The Federalist Papers and the arguments about the executive’s role. So yes, the gun humpers are lying, as usual.
Spanky
@Dangerman:
Republican: “Tyranny is what proscribes what I want to do!
ETA – No republican actually knows what “proscribe” means.
Wakeshift
Rs: “Guns are the source of my natural right to tell you what to do, and to prevent you from telling me what to do.”
EarthWindFire
@Gravenstone:
Exactly. If the 2nd amendment were indeed about preventing tyranny, our would-be assassin did the right thing. He finds the not-so-supreme five tyrannical and tried to exercise his 2nd amendment rights against their tyranny. If these jackasses weren’t so full of themselves, and had self awareness beyond a turnip’s, that might occur to them.
Another Scott
Kavanaugh lives in Montgomery County, Maryland.
(I was surprised it was Maryland, also too.)
Cheers,
Scott.
bbleh
@CliosFanBoy: As I recall, it was also about the financial and logistical impossibility of maintaining a 13-state-wide standing army (and navy) sufficient for all defense, and hence the question was not so much whether any “regular” armed force would exist at the state level, but rather, given that it was inevitable, how to make some degree of centralized control politically palatable, especially to the smaller (in population, at the time) states who were the most skittish about signing up to any federal arrangement at all.
Another Scott
@CliosFanBoy: Neato. Let us know when the book is available to order.
Cheers,
Scott.
Quaker in a Basement
“Suppress an insurrection. Start an insurrection. Poh tay to, poh tah to.”
SpaceUnit
If America’s schoolchildren have to live in fear everyday so can our Supreme Court justices. Fuck ’em.
The 2nd Amendment is a relic.
Professor Bigfoot
@Dangerman: for most of those people, “tyranny” consists solely of Black people having political power.
bbleh
@Wakeshift: This. The Prime Directive of the MAGAts. “You can’t tell me what to do, but I get to tell you what to do.” Also of third-grade bullies the world over. But I repeat myself.
Professor Bigfoot
@Wakeshift: yeah, it’s 100% that simple.
Another Scott
@CliosFanBoy: Also too, visiting Colonial Williamsburg would be an education for some of these yahoos who claim that it’s obvious that the Constitution lets people drag weapons of war around with them whenever they want.
ColonialGhosts.com:
More at the link.
The Framers were afraid of a tyrant having a standing army. They wanted the states to have their own regulated militias, made of people in the states, to be called up when needed as an alternative to a permanent standing army. That’s what the 2nd Amendment is about. (Another sign that that is the correct interpretation is looking at the famous 3rd Amendment.)
Not “fighting tyranny” (which just happens to be beating up on people and ideas that I disagree with, not actual tyranny. Imagine that.).
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
@SpaceUnit: They think they will always be on the shooting, not the receiving end — from the Supreme Court all the way down.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Chief Justice Taney was quite surprised at the open scorn and contempt that his moronic Dred Scott opinion generated. In his mind, once decreed by the great and powerful Him, people were to meekly accept it without question as settled law, and then go about their lives.
I’m seeing a lot of parallels.
We should be able to protest them at home, in the gym, in restaurants and at their grifty speeches.
brendancalling
Apropos of nothing, I’ve known Christian Winthrop—writer/publisher of that “married Margie Greene fucks people she’s not married to” article—since high school. I haven’t seen/spoken with him since we graduated, but it’s wild to see Newport Buzz referenced here.
BC in Illinois
@Another Scott:
Haven’t we kind of settled the issue of a standing army?
Yeah, G’g’g’g’g’great g’pa Rush was in the Pennsylvania Militia (Somerset County).* But it seems to me that more recent relatives have been in what we would call a standing army (or navy). Of which, Joe Biden is Commander-in-Chief.
*I don’t know what G(6)-G’pa did during the Whiskey Rebellion — a local affair for that part of Pennsylvania — when Pres. Washington federalized the PA Militia and led them into battle.
Another Scott
@BC in Illinois: Yup. Somehow having a permanent federal military isn’t a problem for these militia yahoos. In fact, they seem to think that the only legitimate purpose of the federal government is to fund the Pentagon.
’tis a puzzle.
Cheers,
Scott.
SpaceUnit
@Barbara:
They are likely at some point to learn otherwise.
Achrachno
I thought it was official R doctrine that everyone has a right to carry a gun anywhere they want, though of course they don’t have the right to actually shoot anyone unless they feel that someone is a threat. This guy didn’t shoot at Kavanaugh, so where’s the problem from the R POV? He was just carrying his gun, applying his 2nd amendment rights, not shooting it.
Cameron
It’s a very selective right. Ronald Reagan was a proper Second Amendment Republican when he was governor of California……until all those unwhite people showed up to protest – and they were (legally) carrying guns…..Suddenly it was all very different. Gee, I wonder why?
Steeplejack
Relevant thread I saw today about the “well regulated militia.”
Adam L. Silverman
@Another Scott: Most likely because he grew up there. Also, because Maryland has far more restrictive firearms laws than VA.
I’ve fixed it.
p.a.
2nd didn’t help Shays’ Rebellion or Whiskey Rebellion (well one of ’em was pre-Constitution.)
Didn’t help slaves- well no rights anyway.
Didn’t help freedmen prevent Jim Crow, Klan, & lynching.
Didn’t help WVa coal miners.
Didn’t help western hard rock miners.
Didn’t help loggers, or anyone else trying to unionize.
Didn’t help Japanese-Americans in the camps.
Didn’t help the civil rights movements of the last 100 years.
Sure helped the usual suspects terrorize all the above as they tried to access the full benefits of the OTHER parts of the constitution.
ksmiami
@SpaceUnit: The Supreme Court helped create this nightmarish dystopia, they can live and or die in it like the rest of us….
CaseyL
I’d like to see a lawsuit brought against GUNZ! by someone on the grounds that GUNZ! are a violation of their (and everyone else’s) First Amendment right of freedom of assembly and association. As in, citizens have a right to freely go about their lives without worrying about getting shot to pieces.
I’d also like someone to bring suit against the Senate on the grounds that the filibuster is also a violation of the First Amendment, the right to redress of grievance against the government. In that the government won’t do anything about, for example, GUNZ!, because of the filibuster. (Since the filibuster isn’t even in the Constitution, it’ll be fun to watch SCOTUS dance around that one.)
Another Scott
@Adam L. Silverman:
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@CaseyL: +1
Cheers,
Scott.
catothedog
Q: Will white power yield to democracy?
A: — No, because Guns
SATSQ.
Guns are all about white power. It’s the ultimate veto held by white power. That power structure shall not be demolished by democratic means. Any such attempt will be resisted with violence. That there exists a smattering of other pretenders on the 2A bandwagon does not alter this
reality.
Blacks, Hispanics and other of those people in this country should start buying guns at the same rate as whites, and open carry everywhere. That would not be an easily done, since it would make the underlying motive of white racial power come out of the woodwork. The cops would harass minorities/shoot them and criminalize them with felonies, if minorities become gun nuts. But that’s is the only way this is getting resolved
Equally sizable gun purchases by non-whites is the only path to getting rid of guns. If that seems ridiculous, see the history of Ronald Reagan/California gun control
Cameron
@CaseyL: I saw something a couple years ago by (I think) a law professor out West who suggested protesting against open-carry by immediately walking out of any place of business you were in if somebody came in with a firearm. Don’t stop for anything; if you’re in the middle of dinner at a restaurant, get up and walk out, telling anybody that tries to stop you that you’re afraid for your life, His thought was that business owners would get sick of this shit, and that they have more sway with Republicans. Didn’t go anywhere and wouldn’t have done anything about concealed-carry, but I liked the idea.
SpaceUnit
@ksmiami:
Yep. Maybe holding active shooter drills every month at the Supreme Court Building and in their own homes will give them a newfound perspective.
RSA
@CliosFanBoy:
Sounds like a good opportunity for one or more guest post here, with the benefits of publicity for your book and awareness for all of us, if you and the front-pagers are game.
Another Scott
+1
Cheers,
Scott.
kalakal
@CliosFanBoy: cool! can you let us know when it’s published?
Suzanne
@germy shoemangler:
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
So let’s lock up people, starting with Republicans.
JAFD
@Another Scott: There’s still a Magazine Street in the east end of Newark. The north end’s now gentrified with new apartments, the south end – 500′ under the EWR landing pattern – site of hi-rise urban farms.
kalakal
Adam thanks for this
I’ll give it a read. Has anyone any more recommendations on this? Asking as a bewildered furriner who finds the whole US guns things scary & insane.
Grumpy Old Railroader
Congress should enact a law limiting the number of doors to SCOTUS residences
debbie
Huh. The local Fox/Sinclair affiliate just ran a PSA for tomorrow night’s hearing.
Another Scott
He misspelled “absolutely predictable”…
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
Halteclere
Republicans were not so interested in protecting Supreme Court Justices two years ago: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/19/politics/sotomayor-salas-supreme-court-security/index.html
I guess they see a difference between “our” Justices and “their” justices.
Adam L. Silverman
Ukraine war update is up.
Mathguy
I have say that I giggled at the names of the “districts” of each GQP rep. Boebert’s was especially amusing.
bbleh
Lol, hey, I wouldn’t go out on a limb there …
different-church-lady
I’m still struggling to understand why a continuous stream of dead schoolchildren and grocery shoppers is the price we have to pay for freedom, but leaking a first draft of a high court decision is a mortal threat to the republic.
N M
Great snark Adam!
BellyCat
@catothedog: Truth. See Malcolm X.
Jesse
Man, you really tell when Adam’s fired up. Love those links!
lee
Let’s also be clear the ‘stopping tyranny’ is code for ‘killing cops’. With even a nanosecond of thought about how they are going to ‘stop tyranny’ you realize it involves killing first responders (cops).
lowtechcyclist
I’m with Thomas Hobbes: what’s worse than tyranny is the state of anarchy and civil war that would replace it.
There have been some exceptions: it’s hard for much of anything to be worse than the reigns of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, but they’re the exceptions that prove the rule, as the saying goes.
So even if the purpose of the Second Amendment was for fighting tyranny, it goes without saying that slapping a ‘tyranny’ label on the current U.S. government doesn’t make it a tyranny (they’re making me wear masks! I can’t breathe! (gasp, choke)). And even if this was a real tyranny, and not ‘help, help, I’m being repressed!’, what would replace it in the event of armed rebellion would be far worse.
Dave P
By wingnut “logic”, John Wilkes Booth was just exercising his 2nd Amendment rights in Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865.