The Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal by a group of gun rights advocates seeking to overturn Maryland’s ban on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines under the Second Amendment.
The decision, a major win for gun safety advocates, leaves in place a ruling by the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals which ruled that the state may constitutionally prohibit sale and possession of the weapons.
The state legislation, enacted in 2013 after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, specifically targets the AR-15 – the most popular rifle in America with 20-30 million in circulation. They are legal in 41 of the 50 states.
I’m for certain gun regulation, I’m not for an outright ban however.
Consider these two events:
Before the holocaust the jews had to surrender in their weapons
before the nakba, the same happened to the Palestinians, they had to surrender their weapons.
Being able to have weapons to protect yourself from everyday threats but also for if things go south is very important.
If you want to fight fascism if things go south, you’ll need weapons.
I don’t think that’s what the SCOTUS was thinking about when they reached this ruling.
More likely it was California man arrested near Kavanaugh’s home, charged with attempted murder of justice
I guess. But you also need widespread popular support. Randos with guns acting independently aren’t any better at repelling fascist governments than unarmed protestors.
What American liberals lack isn’t merely guns, it’s militias.
You mean some sort of well-regulated militia? That’s crazy, just flood the fucking streets with lead. /s
The Spanish Civil War was Anarchists, Communists, and Liberals vs. a Hitler and Mussolini backed fascist Dictator, Franco.
The resistance had popular support, but the lack of weapons did severely hinder the left’s effectiveness, and caused them to become reliant upon Soviet Russia for weapons supplies, which ultimately spelled their downfall as the Soviets betrayed everyone else and began rounding everyone up to execute them.
I’m not saying having a surplus of small arms in the hands of the leftists would’ve changed the outcome of the war (they also needed tanks, airplanes, and artillery), but it would’ve been a pretty big asset, had they been able to fulfill those other needs some other way as well.
It was Anarchists vs Communists vs Liberals, some of whom aligned with a fascist military commander because they didn’t like how the Anarchists and Communists were treating the Catholic Priesthood.
The Communists were running the country by the 30s. They had all the weapons they could have desired. What they lacked was a petite bourgeois willing to accept their socialist economic reforms. That friction split the military and resulted in a grisly civil war.
The anarchists, in particular, had sizable caches of small arms. It was the lack of tanks, airplanes, and artillery that seriously fucked them.
Incidentally, the Soviets were willing to support the Spanish Communists with some number of tanks, airplanes, and artillery. But accepting aid from Stalin meant pissing off the Anarchists (who would ultimately need those weapons when fighting the Fascists).
But the single biggest asset that the fascists enjoyed and the anarchists/communists lacked was trust in one another. Franco built his brand on the back of the Catholic Church in retreat and won the faith of the faithful. Manuel Azaña and Niceto Alcalá-Zamora lost the confidence of key supporters and were forced to watch the Second Republic disintegrate because the fractious caucuses of local independent groups couldn’t align under a single national banner.
Also didn’t hurt that Franco gleefully took favors from German, Italian, and American fascists, while the Spanish Anarchists and Communists were reluctant to accept more than token aid from friendly leftist groups abroad.
There was no ruling… the case was not taken up, so the ruling of the lower court stands as a precedent (for now).
I think having weapons is purely a stress reduction tool, similar to xanax. Makes you calm to have them around, but when you need them they won’t help much. Incredibly risky things to have around in any sort of quickly usable manner as well.
Consider Waco, TX. And that was 30 years ago before the massive leaps forward in drone, communications, satellite and digital technology.
Having guns does not protect you from the government. It may even barely protect you from an armed burglary. Guns are largely used for hunting deer shooting stationary paper indoors.
If you actually want to use guns to fight back against the government you needed to have built your fortified underground structure which is completely sound proof and infrared proof, and fully self sustaining for air, food, water and sewer filled with hundreds of people by now.
Alternately, see the Bundy ranch standoff. A lot of guns and implication of actually using them led to the government basically backing down.
bad example imo. Bundy’s militia set up check points to demand anyone driving past proved they were a US citizen at gunpoint, and then went on to committ the 2014 Vegas Mass Shootihg, or were sent to jail for more than a decade. The leaders (Bundy and two sons) were arrested and put on trial several times and only escaped due to a jury deadlock and prosecutorial mishandling of documents.
They were also against the Bureau of Land Management, not the US Army or ICE, and their armed stand off caused those threatening the Land Mgmt agents to be arrested by the FBI and incarcerated.
The situation discussed (vs a hypothetical US ethnic cleansing) is not about a Land dispute with the land bureau over cattle grazing, and is also started before 9/11, two Bush and two Trump administrations and the expansion of powers to ICE and immigration
Let’s also consider the decades of little to no mass shootings and gun violence in these entire countries: Japan Singapore South Korea United Kingdom Australia New Zealand Norway Iceland Denmark