The Second Amendment crowd is AWOL when the tyrant is President Trump

Remember when the gun nuts warned about the government sending the military after citizens?

The price of hypocrisy.

The firearms and ammunition industry is massive, growing by 379 percent in less than twenty years, from $19.1 billion in 2008 to $91.7 billion in 2024.

As President Trump sends the military into American cities, targeting American citizens, never forget that figure: $91. 7 billion

It is the price of hypocrisy.

The hypocrites are the so-called Second Amendment advocates.

For years, the Republican Party has killed gun control legislation that scientific studies indicate saves lives. As I wrote for Salon Magazine in 2023, “in terms of decreasing violent crime, studies prove a correlation between lowered violent crime rates and laws like mandatory waiting periods, prohibiting firearms to those associated with domestic violence, imposing child-access prevention laws, and forcing those banned from owning firearms to surrender them. Child-access prevention laws and waiting periods also were linked to drops in suicide rates, as were minimum age requirements. By contrast, concealed-carry laws and stand-your-ground laws were both linked to increased rates of violent crime.”

Laws like the positive ones listed have been proposed by Democratic presidents and legislatures since the days of President Clinton. They are repeatedly killed by Republican politicians. When this happens, the Republicans use a slippery slope argument: If we ban these dangerous weapons, ordinary citizens will be helpless if the federal government becomes tyrannical.

Conservatives are not the first people to make this argument. When the Black Panthers of the 1960s faced violent reprisals from law enforcement, they armed themselves to the teeth. Their pro-Second Amendment position prompted California’s then-governor Ronald Reagan to support strict gun control laws. By the time Reagan was president in the 1980s, however, the wealthy firearms and ammunition industry had overtaken the NRA. They spread far right propaganda about a “Big Government” that would send the military to arrest innocent law abiding citizens, the US as a latter-day British Empire needing to be thwarted.

To stop them, the Republican Party and NRA insisted, citizens needed unfettered access to firearms and ammunition. Take this statement issued by the Trump White House to prop up an executive order that ostensibly strengthens Second Amendment rights (but actually just weakens regulations that hamper firearms and ammunitions profits).

“The Second Amendment is an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty,” the statement said. “It has preserved the right of the American people to protect ourselves, our families, and our freedoms since the founding of our great Nation. Because it is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans, the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed.”

By sending the military against American citizens, Trump has proved correct the warning he insincerely made in that text.

Let’s call out their hypocrisy.

Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck recently told NPR that America’s founding fathers only wanted the president to be able to send the National Guard against ordinary citizens if (a) crime existed in a locale to such a severe degree that local authorities requested it or (b) extraordinary emergencies exist which mandate such force regardless of local acquiescence.

Neither of those conditions apply anywhere in the United States, so although Trump has the right to deploy the National Guard in Washington, DC (for esoteric legal reasons), he undoubtedly does not have the ability to do so anywhere else in the country. Vladeck added that this would clearly realize one of the founders’ greatest fears.

“If we go all the way back to the founding of this country, you know, one of the charges against King George III that was leveled in the Declaration of Independence was that he was using, you know, the military to effectively supplant civilian rule in the colonies,” Vladeck said. “This is why, for example, the Constitution prohibits the quartering of troops in our homes in the Third Amendment.”

It also explains the Second Amendment, which reads that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Everywhere you go, share this article. Spread it on all of the social media platforms you can find. When posting it, include the key facts and figures.

The so-called Second Amendment crowd is nothing more than a puppet of the firearms and ammunitions industry. For $91.7 billion a year, they dupe millions through the Republican Party to deregulate their industry by arguing that they fear Big Government sending the military against ordinary citizens. On this purported basis, they oppose legislation that would save lives.

Yet when their paranoid rantings actually prove true, they remain damningly quiet. Because a Republican president is the one sending the military after ordinary citizens, they ignore that his justifications are transparent lies and that he is blatantly defying the wishes of America’s founding fathers.

These are facts. Don’t let Trump supporters forget them.

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Back Seat Socialism

Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, "Neurosocialism," which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.