When was the Second Amendment last used to fight against the US government to protect people's freedom?

Question

I was not born in the USA, and I am trying to understand the Second Amendment. My big question is:

When was the last time US citizens made use of the Second Amendment and fought against the US government to protect their freedom?

I expect a date, or an event, or "never" as an answer to my question (see my second edit).

If the Civil War is the answer, then I want to clarify: in the Civil War didn't people fight people rather than the government? Father vs son, brother vs brother, etc?

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Edit: clarification

Some people complained that my question is too vague, and I agree with that. What is meant by government? Do local governments count? Do bullets have to be shot or is a peaceful protest with guns enough to be considered an exercise of the 2nd amendment? I will argue and say that the ambiguity of my question is caused by the ambiguity of the 2nd amendment itself. I think the 2nd amendment is too primitive to adequately cover all user cases of a much more complex world we live in today compared to the way this world was when the amendment was first written. Please use your best judgment and logic when answering questions and posting comments. As an OP, I don't know how I should make this question more specific.

Edit 2: additional clarifications

Here is where I am coming from with this question. A lot of people, when arguing about the 2nd amendment, state that they need the 2nd amendment to protect themselves from corrupt government (I recently participated in such a discussion with friends). The next natural question to those people I had is "when was the last time that happened?" So, I came to this website to find an answer. When I asked the question I expected either a specific date or event, or "never" as a reply. It turned out my question generated a lot of discussion. I received multiple dates/events as answeres as candidates for my answer, as well as requests to clarify my question and suggestions in comments that the 2nd amendment hypothetically prevented the US from a hypothetical corrupt government, which is not really an answer. I also found "counter arguments" (if they can be qualified as such) to the most currently highly upvoted answer. In the mean time, I accept an unpopular answer as "It haven't happened yet" as accepted, until a better answer emerges.

_{Disclaimer: I don't mean to appear anti-gun-ownership. I believe people have the right to own guns, but my opinion has no place on this website. I am on this site expecting to get unbiased, logical answers which weigh both sides of the argument.}

Edit 3: I took away my accepted answer check mark so not too skew other people's opinions on this issue.

Answer 1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_the_United_States suggests Wounded Knee in '73.

In 1973 about 200 people mostly from a Lakota tribe took over a town on the site of a famous massacre. They held the town for 71 days sporadicly exchanging gunfire with law enforcement including the FBI.

It was sparked by a failure of regular mechanisms to remove a elected official (he had goons). It quickly escalated to be about the US not honoring treaties with natives and many non-Lokota joined.

It was fairly successful; popular opinion was in favor, the leaders were not sentenced and the phrase "poor treatment of Native Americans in the film industry" was first broadcast from Hollywood. The official served another 3 years after winning an election that was invalidated because of the actions of the goons, but later upheld.

Answer 2

This has happened as recently as 2014 in Bunkerville, Clark County, Nevada.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff

The 2014 Bundy standoff was an armed confrontation between supporters of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and law enforcement following a 21-year legal dispute in which the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) obtained court orders directing Bundy to pay over $1 million in withheld grazing fees for Bundy's use of federally-owned land adjacent to Bundy's ranch in southeastern Nevada.

As you can see, this was a confrontation between armed citizens and the government, specifically the Bureau of Land Management. Because the citizens were armed, the government was not able to enforce their will on the people.

As for shots fired:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3418491/Ammon-Bundy-arrested-three-fellow-militiamen-shots-fired-Oregon-stand-off.html

Oregon militia spokesman LaVoy Finicum has been shot dead after a traffic stop escalated into a shoot-out that saw Ryan Bundy wounded and eight leaders of the occupation movement arrested.

http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/01/militant_shot_and_killed_while.html

With the car running, she said, Finicum "got out of the car and he had his hands in the air and he was like, 'Just shoot me then, just shoot me.'"

"And they did," she said. "They shot him dead."

Sharp said she thought she heard as many as 100 bullets fired and that those remaining in the car were getting "gassed." She said they were trying to find something white they could wave out the window.

Answer 3

It hasn't happened.

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision. It exists to protect the American people from government tyranny and oppression.

The U.S. government has not exercised its power against the American people in what would be considered mass tyranny and oppression (e.g., Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Castro's Cuba, Ceaușescu's Romania, Chavez & Maduro's Venezuela).

But the threat is ever-present, and the Founders knew this.

As U.S. Appeals Court Judge Alex Kozinski observed:

[The Second Amendment] is designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

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Judge Alex Kozinski
U.S. Court of Appeals
9th Circuit
SILVEIRA v LOCKYER (2003)

All too many of the other great tragedies of history — Stalin's atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few — were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional structure. The purpose and importance of that right was still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it would not be forgotten. Despite the panel's mighty struggle to erase these words, they remain, and the people themselves can read what they say plainly enough:

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.

Answer 4

The most recent event I can identify is the Battle of Athens. It was a direct confrontation with the corruption of the local government and efforts to rig the election to ensure the continuity of power. Recently returned veterans used their personal firearms to secure the ballot boxes and the court house, ensuring a free election.

Answer 5

To address your broader question, I think you, like many, many others, mistake the scope and intent of the Second Amendment. The amendment is not limited to enabling resistance of internal government tyranny and I think too many mistakenly focus solely on that aspect.

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.

The amendment is about securing the free state against all threats, foreign as well as domestic, via a militarily capable citizenry.

Per the Supreme Court's ruling in US v. Miller:

The Constitution, as originally adopted, granted to the Congress power --

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress

With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces, the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.

To secure our free state, we need a well regulated militia. The militia is in a general sense the segment of the populace capable of bearing arms. "A well regulated militia" means one that is armed and well versed in the use of those arms (not one that is heavily encumbered with rules-- "regulated" did not mean that in the 18th century like it does today).

US v. Miller again: "[T]he common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the Militia -- civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion."

To have a well regulated militia, one needs a populace that has access to arms and training with those arms. To secure the free state, the populace must be able to spring into action against invasion at a moment's notice-- hence the apocryphal quote attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, that if Japan invaded the US, they would find "a rifle behind every blade of grass". If they are disarmed, they cannot do this.

US v. Miller again: "And further, that ordinarily, when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time" (emphasis added). It goes on to quote a number of founding-era laws requiring all men to be armed. (N.B. the Miller decision ruled that a "sawed-off" shotgun was not necessarily protected by the 2nd Amendment because "it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.")

The populace may also be less fit for service in the regular army if disarmed. Soldiers who have extensive prior experience with riflery are more valuable than those that don't, so civilian disarmament harms military readiness.

To secure our free state, we must have a well regulated militia. To have a well regulated militia, the people must be free to keep and bear arms.

Answer 6

Every day. The second amendment isn't exercised when someone pulls the trigger in an act of rebellion against the government; it's exercised whenever a civilian purchases a firearm. Actually using them is to be avoided as far as possible, but having them acts as a deterrent by creating the credible threat that strongarm tactics on the part of the government would be met with resistance. It's not necessary to be able to outgun the Army; it's only necessary to put the government in a position where, to put down dissent, it would have to shed an unpalatable amount of its own citizens' blood, thus eroding its legitimacy.

Answer 7

To answer the question as asked, as far as I know, the answer is "never".

The question itself, though, is based on a common misunderstanding of the intent of the 2nd amendment. Here's the text of the amendment, in full:

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.

The people who claim the 2nd amendment is there to protect the people from the government tend to ignore the first half of that sentence. Or, they'll claim that "well regulated" simply means "well supplied" or "well provisioned", which is belied by this bit from Article I, Section 8 (describing the powers of Congress):

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

Clearly, "well regulated" means quite a bit more than just well provisioned.

In short, the 2nd amendment granted citizens the right to keep and bear arms in service of the state, not as protection from the state. At the time the Bill of Rights was drafted, the United States did not have a standing army of professional soldiers, and absolutely relied on state militias for defense and security. And while the US established a standing army rather quickly, the basic rationale for allowing citizens to own guns remained the same - to provide security for the state.

Of course that all went out the window with the Heller decision, which established gun ownership as an individual right unconnected to membership in a militia.

Frankly, the 2nd amendment could use some clarification, you just need to convince two-thirds of Congress to propose the amendment and get at least 38 state legislatures to approve it.

Answer 8

Never. This has never happened, and cannot happen.

The Second Amendment ensures that the Militia can be armed so that it can be called up by the government to defend the United States as a whole, and each State individually.

The Militia that the Second Amendment refers to is described in the Constitution, Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power...

...To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

Each State's Militia is a State (government) armed force. Each State's Militia has officers appointed by that State, and the members of each State's Militia are trained by that State according to the rules passed by Congress.

The National Guard is organized under Congress' power to raise armies, not to command the Militia. This bypasses the requirement that States appoint Militia officers, a power that was used to hand out honorary titles as political favors to individuals such as "Colonel Sanders" of KFC.

The Militia is reference again in Article II, Section 2:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; ...

These passages establish that the Militia are the armed forces of "the several States", and as such are under the command of either a State or the President of the United States.

The Whiskey Rebellion is actually a perfect example of the opposite of an instance where an armed rebellion successfully exercised its supposed "Second Amendment rights". The President of the United States, George Washington, exercised his powers as Commander in Chief of the Militia, called up the Militia to "execute the Laws of the Union [and] suppress [an] Insurrection". The Militia acted as an arm of the Government to disperse a rebellion against the Laws of the Union. The rebels fled.

The concept of the State Militia is now almost entirely obsolete. The closest modern equivalents of organized State Militias are State defense forces. Because State Militias can be called up by the Federal Government, State defense forces are not State Militias, per 32 U.S.C. §109(c).

Note that the Constitution grants Congress the power "To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia..." (emphasis added). There was dramatically more distrust between the States at the time than there is now, and some were concerned that Congress could deliberately fail to arm one or another State's militia. The Second Amendment provides that should Congress fail to provide for arming the militia of one or more States, the States could do so themselves.

Therefore, the Second Amendment does not now, nor has it ever protected an individual's right to "keep and bear arms" to defend themselves from the government. It only protects a collective right of members of the militia to "keep and bear arms" in service of the government.

The notion that the Second Amendment is in some way a means of defending against the government is a pernicious myth spread by the gun manufacturing lobby in order to sell more and more guns to a smaller and smaller proportion of the population, which has also been effectively hijacked by anti-government extremist groups to foster fear and paranoia.

The result that mass shootings are now a daily occurrence is a side effect that the gun industry couldn't care less about.

See https://gdrthinktank.org/2021/02/01/the-myth-of-the-second-amendment/ for more details of the history of lying about the Second Amendment for profit.

Answer 9

Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 - it's almost a classic example of the employing of the 2nd Amendment against federal government, mostly by veterans of the Revolutionary War few years earlier.

Somehow the Second Amendment was not called to question by Founding Fathers after that...

Answer 10

Today. Just as the Legislative doesn't have to pass a law in order to b doing its job, and the Judicial doesn't have to rule on a case to be doing its, the rights of the people do their job simply by existing. You wouldn't say we could do without the first ammendment just because no one criticized the government today, because the right of the people to criticized the government is in part what limits the powers of the goverment. It's existence, regardless of any particular exercise, impacts and limits the government.

Answer 11

Effectively, the Civil War was a fight by the confederate states to protect what they considered their constitutional rights against the federal government, although they did not claim the 2nd amendment.

Answer 12

No one has yet answered with the semi-recent infamous standoffs between federal agencies and groups of citizens in the American west who wanted only to be left alone. In both incidents, one or more citizens were suspected of non-violent crimes, and in both cases the citizens under suspicion may very well have deserved that suspicion, but there was no credible or even alleged threat of actual violence until the jack boots were applied. In both incidents citizens took up arms to protect themselves and their loved ones from excessive government force and innocents were killed by federal agents as a result.

1. 1992 - Ruby Ridge, ID

A citizen was charged with an illegal firearms modification in federal court. He was mistakenly informed by mail of the wrong court date to appear and multiple attempts were made to inform him of the correct earlier date. When he did not appear a bench warrant was issued. Federal law enforcement began a tactical operation against him. Agents surprised him in the woods and there was a shootout followed by a siege of his home. A sniper shot and killed his wife through the window while she was holding her baby. His son and a US Marshal were also killed in the incident. Later there was a civil settlement against the government and a Congressional inquiry. The citizen was even eventually acquitted of the original firearms charge but convicted of failure to appear.

2. 1993 - The massacre of the Branch Davidians near Waco, TX

The Branch Davidians had many of the hallmarks of a dangerous cult, including polygamy, child marriage and isolation. The ATF and FBI obtained affidavits accusing them of illegally assembling fully automatic firearms and decided to raid them. The way they prepared for the raid and executed it leaves many questions about the intentions, motives and thought process behind it.

They tried to ambush the compound with tactical officers, armored vehicles and air support. Shots were fired with casualties on both sides. The feds surrounded their compound and the standoff lasted for some time. The final result was that the complex was burned and many lives were lost - men, women and children. The cult leader David Koresh also died. No evidence of a credible threat was ever presented to the public that would have justified such a mass slaughter.

It is not necessary to defend the beliefs and practices of the Branch Davidians to question the unmoderated aggression of the federal and state agencies in this incident. The sum of it is, the government turned their eye on a religious community that aroused their suspicions, attacked them and killed them when they refused to submit to plainly unjustified violations of their rights. The possibility of a mass casualty event was always considered preferable to simply leaving them alone. It is difficult not to suspect that killing them could have been the government's true objective. Even the child marriage aspect, which to me is the most concerning, was not the legal basis for the raid and did not seem to be the focus of the government actions. The agencies were willing to use noxious gases and even open fire on positions where they knew innocent children were present.

In the cases of Ruby Ridge, ID and Waco, TX, citizens took up arms to resist acts of perceived tyranny by the federal government, and the result was tragedy. These cases serve as warnings. While it can probably never be known what would have happened had they laid down their arms instead and submitted, the cost of standing their ground was surely greater. Was it worth it?