There’s no real debate about 9/11 being the worst massacre in American history, at least within the context of someone or a group killing as many people as quickly as possible, generally in a single day.
But before then, there was another massacre that reigned supreme, and while it involved plenty of guns, making it an exception to my look at massacres of the past where they weren’t used, it’s actually a great example of why we need the Second Amendment.
See, this one was carried out by the United States government.
In 1890, the United States Army launched a campaign against the Lakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. They were dealing with settler concerns that the “Ghost Dance” the Lakota were engaging in might lead to a resurgence of conflict with white residents of the area.
So, on December 29, 1890, the Army troops sought to disarm the Lakota people they’d surrounded the day before.
One of the Lakota, a deaf man, didn’t understand what was happening and resisted handing over his rifle, arguing that he’d paid for it. In the struggle, the gun went off, and hell fell upon the Lakota.
By the time everything was done, more than 250 Lakota were killed, many of them civilians, versus 25 soldiers (six more died later from wounds sustained in the engagement, however).
Now, let’s understand that the Lakota hadn’t actually done anything hostile. People were worried they might, which sounds an awful lot like red flag laws, if you ask me.
Then, the soldiers sought to disarm people who hadn’t actually done anything wrong, during which there was an accident, and the soldiers responded by shooting everything that moved. This, of course, is the problem with forcibly disarming people, especially those who didn’t do anything wrong. The deaf Native American isn’t that much different than someone who simply doesn’t get why the cops are at his door with a court order to take his guns away.
And in the end, hundreds were slaughtered.
The Second Amendment wasn’t considered applicable to the Indian nations of the time, though. They were largely viewed as having no rights at all under the law, which is why so many treaties were ignored when it became convenient.
Yet today, things are thankfully different. The Second Amendment means, at least in theory, that the Army won’t be surrounding our town and coming to take our guns. The Second Amendment means they can’t lawfully do it, no matter how much some people would like to believe they can and should.
The government is a lot like fire. It’s got its purpose, but it’s dangerous if you don’t maintain strict control over it. I mean, in a part of Canada, a day hike in the woods is now a criminal offense with thousands in fines for doing so, all because Canadians failed at this. And they’re giving up a whole lot of guns up that way, too.
Here, we’re protected from much of that, in part because there’s a line that no one is really sure of where it is, but it still cannot be crossed with impunity.
I won’t say that Wounded Knee can’t happen again. It most certainly can. Waco is a prime example, really. But the Second Amendment means that it’s a whole lot less likely to happen, all because our Founding Fathers understood the necessity of government, but also understood that it should never be trusted entirely.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights, something that would lead not to greater peace as they claim, but likely a whole lot more massacres, some of which might make Wounded Knee look like a mild fender-bender.
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Editor’s Note: History is replete with incidents where disarmament led to disaster.
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