For decades, conservatives in America have shouted that the Second Amendment exists to protect citizens from government tyranny.
They have armed themselves to the teeth, wrapping violence in the U.S. flag and sanctifying the rifle as a symbol of “freedom.” They said guns were the only thing standing between liberty and dictatorship. That armed patriots would rise up if the government ever turned on its own people.
Now the government under Donald Trump has done exactly that, and these so-called defenders of liberty are nowhere to be found.
What we are witnessing today is not theoretical tyranny. It is real. The federal government, under the Trump regime, has used militarized federal forces and ICE agents like a personal Gestapo. Peaceful demonstrators have been assaulted, journalists detained, and ordinary citizens abducted from streets into unmarked vehicles.
Trump’s allies have celebrated this as “law and order,” while local mayors and governors begged federal agents to leave their cities alone. Instead of resisting authoritarian overreach, Second Amendment conservatives are cheering it on.
This isn’t about policy disagreements or partisan divides. It’s about the raw hypocrisy of a movement that built its identity on the claim that guns were a sacred safeguard against tyranny, yet stands silent as the state’s guns are turned on its own people.
These men and women who once fantasized about “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants” are now content to let that tree wither under the weight of fascism, because the tyrant happens to be one of their own.
When unarmed citizens are gassed and beaten for protesting government abuse, when federal agents break into homes without warrants, when the military is deployed against American cities, that is tyranny in its purest form.
But rather than invoking their vaunted Second Amendment rights, these self-proclaimed patriots are posting memes, waving flags, and boasting about “backing the blue.” Their rebellion was never about defending freedom — it was about defending privilege. Their idea of liberty extends only to people who look like them, vote like them, and pray like them.
For years, the American right warned that Democrats were coming for their guns, that the deep state would enslave them, that federal agents would storm their homes. Now that those same federal agents are brutalizing citizens in plain sight, they stand shoulder to shoulder with the oppressors. The fantasy of armed resistance evaporated the moment resistance required courage.
In Portland, Chicago, and Washington DC, heavily armed federal officers stormed through crowds and neighborhoods. ICE agents carried out “extraordinary rendition” operations on U.S. soil, detaining citizens with no clear charges.
Unidentified men in camouflage uniforms loaded protesters into vans as bystanders pleaded. These scenes looked more like Pinochet’s Chile than the United States. Yet the very people who once screamed about tyranny have either shrugged or applauded.
If the Second Amendment truly existed as a check against government tyranny, then where are these defenders now? Where are the militias who promised to rise up if Washington ever turned its weapons inward?
They’re not fighting for liberty. They’re on the side of the boot. They’ve traded the language of rebellion for the slogans of submission.
The entire conservative mythology of armed patriotism collapses the moment reality tests it. Their movement was never built on moral conviction.
It was built on fear, fantasy, and fraud.
They never wanted to defend democracy. They wanted to abolish it. The guns were not for resisting tyranny. They were for enforcing it. When fascism arrived wearing their colors and praising their God, they embraced it like a savior.
And while they clutch their rifles and talk about “freedom,” the actual freedoms of millions of American citizens are being stripped away. The right to protest, to vote without intimidation, to live without fear of state violence — these are the freedoms that define democracy. But they mean nothing to those whose only notion of liberty is the power to threaten others with a gun.
The so-called “Second Amendment conservatives” have become what they once claimed to oppose. They are collaborators in the authoritarian project, enabling the same overreach they swore to prevent. They cheered as the National Guard patrolled American neighborhoods, as military helicopters hovered low over peaceful crowds, as journalists were blinded by rubber bullets.
Their guns are silent not because tyranny never came, but because it came from the direction they were already facing. This silence is not ignorance. It is complicity.
These people know what’s happening. They’ve just decided that authoritarianism is acceptable when it serves their interests. They called themselves patriots, but patriots defend the Constitution even when it’s inconvenient. These people defend corrupt power. And they defend a corrupt man who uses the government as a weapon against its citizens.
For years, they warned about “government agents coming for your rights.” Now, when ICE agents drag people off the streets, they nod approvingly. For years, they swore they would stand against “military occupation of American cities.” Now they film it on their phones and call it justice. For years, they claimed they’d fight a tyrant. Now they worship one.
The truth is that the Second Amendment argument was never about liberty. It was about control. The same people who threatened violence at the mere suggestion of gun regulation now applaud state-sanctioned violence against their fellow Americans.
The flag on their porch and the Bible on their nightstand have become props for a political cult that confuses obedience with patriotism. When they said “come and take it,” they didn’t mean their guns. They meant other people’s rights.
To understand the depth of this hypocrisy, look at how quickly their principles collapsed the moment a strongman gave them permission to indulge their worst instincts. They justified every abuse of power. Federal agents kidnapping citizens, soldiers patrolling city streets, journalists beaten and arrested.
These are not “isolated incidents.” They are coordinated assaults on democracy, cheered on by the same crowd that once claimed guns were the only defense against such government abuse. Their loyalty to the myth of Trump’s America outweighs any loyalty to the Constitution that America was built on.
For all their talk of “defending freedom,” they never imagined freedom belonging to anyone outside their tribe. The moment they saw Black, Latino, or progressive Americans exercising the same constitutional rights, suddenly law and order became more important than liberty.
When immigrants sought refuge, they demanded walls. When women demanded autonomy, they passed bans. When students marched for safety, they called them traitors. And now, when federal troops occupy American cities, they pronounce their prayers fulfilled.
They are the loudest when they feel safest — and the quietest when courage is required. Their militias are absent not because they lack arms but because they lack principle or courage. They mistook power for virtue and guns for honor.
What they never understood is that tyranny doesn’t announce itself with foreign accents and new flags. It arrives draped in familiar colors, speaking the language of patriotism.
The American right has turned the Second Amendment into a religion. It is their idol, their identity, and their excuse.
But no amount of constitutional scripture can mask the fraud at its core. The claim that private gun ownership prevents tyranny collapses the moment armed citizens line up behind tyranny instead of against it. The same weapons they said would defend freedom are now symbols of its decay.
Meanwhile, ordinary Americans — unarmed and unprotected — are the ones showing true bravery. They face down riot police with cardboard signs and inflatable cartoon animal suits. They record abuses with their phones while tear gas clouds the air. They go to jail for refusing to be silent. These are the defenders of democracy, not the weekend warriors polishing their rifles in suburban basements.
It’s not firepower that defends a free nation. It’s moral courage. And moral courage is what the self-proclaimed guardians of the Second Amendment have abandoned, without making any effort to prove it ever existed within them.
The fraud runs deeper than hypocrisy. It’s a betrayal of the very ideals they claim to cherish. The right to bear arms was never meant to guarantee one group’s supremacy over another. Yet that’s what it has become.
It is a political weapon used to intimidate, suppress, and enforce obedience. It was never about “resisting government tyranny.” It was about ensuring they could never lose control of their White privilege.
There was a time when conservatives said that tyranny must be resisted “by any means necessary.” But when the boots came down on American streets, they chose to shine them instead. They have proven, beyond question, that their faith in the Second Amendment was a lie.
So let’s stop pretending this argument deserves respect. The conservative claim to the Second Amendment is a fraud. Their silence in the face of real tyranny exposes the truth they’ve hidden for decades. They never wanted liberty for all. They wanted liberty for themselves, and permission to deny it to everyone else.
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J.D.S. and Sandra Foyt (via Shutterstock)
