Raskin: "Democracy, Gun Violence and the 'Insurrectionist' Theory of the Second Amendment"

https://raskin.house.gov/2023/5/raskin-address-on-democracy-gun-violence-and-the-insurrectionist-theory-of-the-second-amendment-at-the-library-of-congress-may-8-2023

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The problem of insurrection has been with us a long time. In the very first Federalist Paper, Hamilton warned of political operators who pandered to the violent passions of the mob in order to usurp power and then destroy the freedoms of the people, political cult leaders who begin as “demagogues” and end as “tyrants.”

In his famous Lyceum Address of 1838, delivered after the murder of abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois by a racist mob, Abraham Lincoln denounced mob violence and observed that if division and destruction ever came to America, it wouldn’t come from abroad, it would come from within. And when the Confederate rebellion against the Union did come, Lincoln sent a message to Congress on December 3, 1861, in which he described the “insurrection” as “a war upon the first principle of popular government—the rights of the people,” specifically the voting rights of the people and their right to choose their own officials.

Insurrectionism is back today. It exploded in America’s face on January 6, 2021, when a demagogue-tyrant galvanized a violent mob to block the peaceful transfer of power and install the loser in the presidential election over the winner. More than 1,000 people have been charged with crimes in connection with this attack. More than 600 have been convicted of, or pled guilty to, a wide range of offenses from assaulting federal officers to seditious conspiracy—meaning conspiracy to overthrow the government or put it down by force—to obstructing Congress in its work.

But insurrectionism is back not just as a practice opposed to American constitutional democracy. It is back as a theory of politics and a justification for unlimited firearm availability and an excuse for 24-7 gun violence in our society.

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