Democrats are lying about either the Second Amendment or the January 6 'insurrection'
Oh hell, maybe it's both!
One of the perennial tropes advanced by Democrats, and gun control activists more generally, goes something like this: “Well, you claim the Second Amendment protects your right to keep and bear arms in order that you can protect yourself from tyranny. But you could never fight against the U.S. government with just your AR-15.” Here’s President Joe Biden making that argument this week in his own curiously muddled way:
This argument is, of course, bunk. We know from extensive historical experience that a determined people can wreak considerable havoc—sometimes decisively so—on much more powerful foes with considerably fewer and/or weaker armaments. You could go all the way back to the Battle of Thermopylae at the Hot Gates for a fine example, though we have plenty more recent engagements to demonstrate this principle, such as that of the American Revolution, and more still within living memory, such as that of Vietnam and the ongoing endless war in the Middle East.
But beyond that we know this is an obviously bad-faith argument from Biden simply because in other contexts he has significantly downgraded the hurdles one must clear to constitute an existential threat to the United States. Here he is earlier this year, for example, on Jan. 6, one year after the stupid redneck riot at the U.S. Capitol:
Madam Vice President, my fellow Americans: To state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, democracy was attacked — simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution — our Constitution — faced the gravest of threats.
Uh huh. Imagine that: Nine months ago all it took to put the nation in existential peril was a few hundred unarmed low-information misanthropes wandering around the Capitol for a few hours and overturning a few desks. Now you apparently need a fighter jet to pull off the same thing! I feel like the goalposts shifted here in some intangible way, I don’t know.
The Democratic narrative on guns is that they are useless for anything other than mass shootings. Their narrative on the January 6 riot, meanwhile, is that it was a legitimate insurrection that legitimately threatened the United States government in a real, meaningful and horrific way. Both of these things, of course, can’t be true—which makes sense, since neither of them is true. The Second Amendment is of course a magnificent bulwark against tyranny; the Jan. 6 riot, meanwhile, was little more than what it appeared to be: Just a petulant outburst from people who don’t know how to healthily process their negative emotions.
I mean, again, you can believe that our democracy was almost overthrown by unarmed goobers on Jan. 6; you can also believe that the only way to overthrow our democracy is with Strike Eagles and bombers and tanks. You can’t really believe both. I mean, I suppose you can, but you’ll just end up looking as foolish as Joe Biden, and believe me, you do not want that.