I condemn political violence. So do all of our former Presidents. So do lots of other Americans liberal and conservative. But a lot of gun-loving rightwingers who are demanding that “The Left” condemn political violence, as if we don’t already, mostly to further MAGA’s narrative that liberals are an evil, treasonous bunch who don’t belong in America.
But if you condemn political violence, you must condemn the Second Amendment, which inherently justifies political violence.
Recall the words of Charlie Kirk, recently sacrificed at the altar of the Second Amendment, on which he professed this expertise:
The Second Amendment is not about hunting. I love hunting. The Second Amendment is not even about personal defense. That is important. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government [Charlie Kirk, response to question at Turning Point USA Faith event, Awaken Church, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2023.04.05; transcribed by Media Matters, reposted with emphasis by Jordan Liles, “Charlie Kirk Once Said Some Gun Deaths ‘Worth It’ in Order to Have Second Amendment,” Snopes.com, 2025.09.10].
I don’t agree with Kirk. I contend the Second Amendment is an obsolete and ineffective provision intended to support a militia that would defend the nation, not attack its political institutions from within.
But since MAGA faithful are writing the Book of Charlie to append to their Trump Bibles, let us take Kirk’s words as gospel. Kirk said the Second Amendment provides defense against tyranny. Kirk’s Second Amendment envisions taking up arms to overturn the political order. By Kirk’s words, the right to bear arms embodies a right to commit political violence.
If you say political violence has no place in America, then you must say the Second Amendment and its threat of political violence has no place in America’s Constitution.
A full and honest call for an end to political violence necessarily calls for an end to the Second Amendment. If we have no right to use violence to achieve our political ends (and I agree that resorting to violence represents a grievous and contemptible failure of reason, discourse, and respect for human dignity), then we cannot tolerate the constitutional provision that Charlie Kirk himself said exists exclusively to make it easier to kill members of a political order with which we disagree.
If you adhere to Charlie Kirk’s words and profess to abhor political violence, then you must reject the Second Amendment and demand its repeal, to remove that justification of political violence from our nation’s fundamental governing document.
Excellent points.
Yeah, I wonder if by tyrannical government maga means getting questioned/detained/arrested for no reason other than looking Hispanic? I can’t think of any situation where one thinks the government is being tyrannical, uses a gun to retaliate, and doesn’t end up in jail or worse…
Make house and senate magats squirm. Present a bill titled the Charlie Kirk gun reduction act and watch magats vote it down.
I like the Second Amendment precisely because it is a check on tyranny. It’s not a very effective check on tyranny in this day and age, but neither is the rest of the Constitution, apparently. I prefer elections as a means to stop tyranny, but, as we know, elections aren’t always an effective weapon, either. I’m not suited to political violence. I think that it is the lazy way out. You need a citizenry smart enough to reject tyranny. That isn’t always what happens, and history shows that tyranny often wins through democracy. One thing is for sure: if you are going to resort to political violence, you had better not miss the tyrant, or just bloody his ear.
Regarding Kirk, he was an embryonic tyrant. I remember the discussions after John F Kennedy’s assassination about whether it was ever appropriate to use political violence. The example of Hitler came up. If you could have prevented the Holocaust by killing Hitler in the 1920s, would that political assassination have been justified? I tend to think it would have, but you can never know whether better leadership in the various democratic parties would have been a better route to take. And you don’t know whether a more tyrannical leader of the Nazi Party would have emerged and taken power. Most of the time political violence breeds more political violence. It’s really not worth it.
Can’t wait for the new tyrannical laws that get passed because of Kirk shooting… None of which will have anything to do with guns or access to them by lunatics.
Yes, bullying can lead to massacres and when the US ended the draft in 1973 the number of mass shootings began to rise so Congress should enact compulsory military service or police training as one way to slow gun violence. Enlistment could look like the Swiss model where soon after high school eighteen year olds would join for two or three years then re-up or enroll in the college or vocational training of ones choosing. Let’s review. Adam Lanza was 20, James Holmes was 25, Seung-Hui Cho was 23, Jared Loughner was 22. Dylann Roof was 20. Salvador Ramos was 18. Thomas Matthew Crooks was 20. Tyler Robinson is 22. All these men were victims of bullying, isolation and ostracism. All had histories of extensive teevee usage, many of video game exposure and of easy access to firearms. Distrust of government was a factor in most, if not all of the episodes for which they are infamous.
magat lies about mass shootings and wbo commit them rise faster than mass shootings themselves.
Hi, MFI. There was another CO school shooting, near me, this week. It’s become passe’.
YES! I cannot agree more. Second Amendment advocated and gun owners have been given a free pass for far too long. They have been allowed to profess the “possession of guns,” but possession is NOT what defends from tyranny — shooting those guns at the tyrants is the real check/power of the Second Amendment. It is a violent, deadly, undemocratic answer to the opposition (especially when viewed as an individual right and not as the enforcement arm of a properly regulated militia as the amendment textually demands).
The righty, Second Amendment folks have not been pushed to say that their solution to political opposition is the shooting of political opponents — the tyranny so loosely and ill-defined by the right.
President Trump and the MAGA cult say that it is the Left’s use of terminology like “Nazi” that lead to this shooting. I disagree. It is the right’s move toward Naziism, tyranny, anti-democracy, and fascism in an environment where THEY keep pushing for violent Second Amendment solutions. MAGA has lit this bed on fire, now they must sleep in it. MAGA is all about national single-minded group think; now that is backfiring.
I also partially agree with sx123; the only time the right got serious about gun control was when the Black Panthers started to publicly exercise their Second Amendment rights to open carry. Then guns became a problem for the Right.
Hi Porter. I have a BIL in Longmont and we have minor discusses about politics on rare occasions.
Any regulars here remember this tidbit from iowa?
In November 2021, two teenagers, Jeremy Goodale and Willard Miller, murdered their Spanish teacher, Nohema Graber, in Fairfield, Iowa, by bludgeoning her with a bat in a park after being upset about poor grades, according to prosecutors. Both teens pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and have since been sentenced to life in prison, with Goodale eligible for parole after 25 years and Miller after 35 years.
It took a few years before this was sorted out. The motive, I mean.
Mr. Mike, who is from Iowa, points out that homicidal miscreants have many tools at their disposal to do bad, bad things.
Be sure and check out Professor Tim Schorn’s takedown of Kirk.
Sounds like a patriot took on Tubby Toby in Aberdeen.
Grudz, still as abrasive as ever. Them South Duhkota beans still working up a blow for you?
Raise the civilian age of possession, operation and ownership of all firearms to 21, levy 100% excise taxes on the sales of semi-automatic weapons then tag the revenue for Medicaid expansion so parents have the resources to address the devastating effects of Fox News on American youth.
If it were possible and the oligarchs wouldn’t hijack a Convention of States a rewrite of the Second Amendment would be at the top of my list.
The whole idea that the founders proposed and ratified a law such as the 2nd Amendment so that if the some element of the population deemed the founders to be tyrants that these people could then legally slaughter the same tyrant-founders seems a bit odd doesn’t it? And if tyrants took over the government why would these government-tyrants respect or enforce a law that would enable people to possess weapons needed to kill those deemed government-tyrants?
But what do I know? I guess the tyrant theory must be correct since historically so many killers of government officials have been able to raise the 2nd Amendment as a defense to murder charges. Wait, is that correct – has the 2nd Amendment ever been successfully used as a defense to a charge of murdering an American alleged by the killer(s) to be a government-tyrant? Inquiring minds want to know.
A I or was that A! says no to your premise, bcb.
ps I believe they determine Grtudz to be an anomaly between a magat and a chupacabra. Oh Noes!
BCB, have you heard of MeidasTouch Network? There are several lawyers and some have spinoffs like Michael Popok who has Legal AF. He has been a lawyer for a long time and knows his way around the fed and brings the heat on the numerous missteps of the felon’s lawyers and the DOJ which act like his personal lawyers.
You might find this guy interesting or amusing as hell. Hope things are going well in the Hills.
https://www.youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN
Thanks mfi. I’ll check him out.
BCB, as far as I know, the Second Amendment has never been used to successfully defend a political assassin. The Second Amendment seems only to come up as a defense of possession, not use in extremis.
The man accused of shooting Charlie Kirk, if he wishes to confess that he pulled the trigger, should attempt to set that precedent: “Your Honor, I was exercising my Second Amendment right as Charlie Kirk said the Founders intended. Charlie Kirk was promoting tyranny and was himself a tyrant. I committed the political violence envisioned by the Second Amendment to protect the Second Amendment and the entire Constitution.”
The Heller Supreme Court decision also made the Second Amendment an individual right (stripping away the limiting condition of the “well-regulated militia” that begins the Amendment).
Add that to Cory/BCB hypothetical defense.
Let us also establish that Constitutional rights trump illegal action prosecution: if the DEA raids my fully-stocked and in-production meth lab without proper warrants, the 4th Amendment shields me from prosecution from that illegally obtained evidence.
Finally, all these hypotheticals stem from the Right’s (Kirk’s specifically) positions on speech and guns.
If the left had our way, Charlie Kirk would be recovering from a splinter in his hand from carrying a sign all day in front of Harvard that read, “Can’t a wealthy, white man catch a break in this country?”
If the felon in the WH has anything to say about splinters, it won’t be from a Canadian tree unless they become our 51st state!