American History in Three Easy Lessons

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American History. 1. The British tried to take our guns and ammo. 2. We shot them. 3. We formed a new country. Class dismissed.

Tom Gresham @Guntalk
Posted on X June 19, 2026

I didn’t say it was the complete history.

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13 thoughts on “American History in Three Easy Lessons”

  2. If you ever read the history of the US according to the gun control groups like CSGV and VPC, it is bizarre. A funhouse mirror image of American history.

    They have this absolute obsession with the Whiskey Rebellion. To hear them say it, the actual American Revolution was a weird, minor event, and probably a mistake; but Washington putting down the Whiskey Rebellion was the defining point in American history, that undid most of the damage of that silly Revolution.

    They also are obsessed with the proto-totalitarian philosophy of Max Weber, defining (against all history and law) a government as an entity with a monopoly on violence, and then using that psychotic definition to draw the conclusion that if a government doesn’t use any and all means necessary to enforce that monopoly, it isn’t a government at all. (As if no government is somehow worse than a tyrannical regime).

    I swear, reading their evil shit, I have to wonder if they have pictures of incinerated children from the Mt. Carmel massacre on their hard drives, for purposes of masturbation.

    • The bit about government and violence… it can certainly be overstated, sure, but the basic idea is sound.

      In practice, it’s among the most foundational things about government – if it *doesn’t* have the monopoly on force, it’s not “the” government but one among competitors. See Mexico and the cartels, or various South American nations and their organized crime (usually also drug cartels – that’s their funding source since they don’t *usually* tax directly) problems over the last 50 years.

      That said, it doesn’t mean that it can’t accept help from citizens or that self-defense has to be outlawed, etc, but it does require *approval* from the state – the state has to have that power, the *power* of the monopoly of force, even if it magnanimously *allows* others to participate.

      I don’t think that’s really healthy, and I do think that a better place can be achieved, but that’s the easy, obvious, default way it works. And it works that way for some fairly obvious reasons (again, see Mexico and the cartels for how things go when that is violated).

      • While that is certainly very common, my view is that it should be that the people *allow* the government certain powers. The public *servants* cannot exercise any power that the people did not originally have to grant them.

        • “should”

          Sure. That would indeed be better. I like that entire comment.

          But that (or lack of that) doesn’t matter to the inherent need of the state to have the monopoly on force. How it is achieved doesn’t matter to the need for it to be achieved.

          It matters for *other* thing, yes, and better mechanism to achieve it can produce better results overall, but that’s a much larger discussion.

          • I don’t see it as requirement the state has a monopoly on force. I would phrase it more like the state has a monopoly on the *initiation* of force after the exercise of due process. Both individuals and the state can use force in the defense of themselves and other innocent life.

          • “Both individuals and the state can use force in the defense of themselves and other innocent life.”

            And you can see how that turns anywhere people don’t put in the effort to keep the state reined in, no matter the intentions.

            There’s an argument that the entire point of government, functionally speaking, is the monopoly on force (I think that’s overstating things, but not by nearly as much as I would like). Certainly without it, nothing else is really possible in even the medium term, barring a strong monoculture of the right kind, and even then, it’s iffy.

          • My view of the purpose of government is a little different. I can’t claim to have originated this concept. But you might be able to find the author this where I first read it:

            We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

            Emphasis added.

          • That’s theory of government. That claim is aspirational, and I support that aspiration.

            I’m talking about *function*, the inherent nature of a thing.

            To fly in world with gravity, there are things you need. You need them whether you want a fighter jet or a luxury passenger plane. It doesn’t fly without it.

            The PURPOSE of the government varies – historically, there’s a good case the purpose was for bandits to ranch the people like sheep, shearing them for wealth rather than slaughtering them for it as bandits had done before. The purpose you are talking about there is a wonderful thing.

            But the function… for government to function, it needs the monopoly of force. That’s how it works. You will never have the consent of ALL of the governed – the most obvious example of violent criminals. “Enforcement” requires… “force”.

            That’s what I’m talking about.

  3. “There’s an argument that the entire point of government, functionally speaking, is the monopoly on force ..”

    A government has the monopoly on force only if the people allow it; under the proper conditions “government monopoly on force” is conditional and transitory, entirely dependent upon circumstances and requirements and in no way obviates, or limits, application of force by the citizens.

    <i"…deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." means exactly that. Whatever powers government may have, or assumes it has permission to execute, actually belong to the people; government is merely an “agent under contract” representing the intent and purpose of the citizens and is subject to the supervision and control of the citizens.

    Government, being composed of men, will reflect the will and intent of men, some of which will become men’s lesser instincts and intents; to that end the citizens must continually exert controls on the activities of those with whom they contract to provide government services; nominally, that is performed through open, accurate and unencumbered elections, legislatively approved statutes, and, occasionally more active and decisive means; to wit:

    “And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” (excerpt from letter from Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787).

    The point being, “government” is a necessary evil, meaning it is both necessary and evil; and requiring of the people constant supervision and maintenance to ensure it meets the needs of the people to whom it is contracted to perform without the assumption that it is a Power Unto Itself and The People are without agency, or recourse. “Government” has no, nor should it ever possess, powers that The People do not possess and grant it pernmission to access’; government is a moderated servant, not a master.

    We have, very regrettably, fallen out of practice on that.

    • You are just pushing the abstraction around.

      “The People” – there is no “THE PEOPLE”. There are “people”, and they will never all agree.

      If “The People” can control the government like we believe they can and should… it’s not ALL of the people, and those who disagree can’t use force the way the majority of people tell them they can’t. It is “enforced” with “force”.

      We like having our government beholden to something like a majority of the people (democratic processes on a republican chassis), but at the end of the day, *that’s still the government*. That it is attempting to approximate “the will of the people” instead of “the will of this one particular guy” doesn’t change the HOW of things.

  4. There is no monopoly of force for the government, not in the Constitution and not in common law. Self defense is legally an absolute legal defense, not grounds for a lesser sentence.

    There was never, before the emergence of totalitarian philosophies in the nineteenth century, a belief in monopoly of force. Preeminence of force, yes, but if you walked in on your daughter being raped and gunned down the rapist, no one said you needed government permission.

    The idea of monopoly of force goes hand in hand with the idea of a unitary state, i.e., one in which all subdivisions are run by the federal government rather than having any autonomy at all. That’s why Max Weber is often called a “liberal”: he wanted to do away with the remnants of feudalism and replace them with an all powerful central government.

    That’s the difference between liberal thought in Europe and (classical) liberal thought here: they are obsessed with the question, what may the government do? We are obsessed with the question, what are the rights of the individual?

    • “Preeminence of force, yes, but if you walked in on your daughter being raped and gunned down the rapist, no one said you needed government permission.”

      If you don’t sufficiently justify your reason to the state, you go to prison. You don’t have the authority, the state does.

      The state can share (and is generally a much better place when it does!), but it has the authority.

      Now, *thinking* people, who want to live in a successful society, etc, etc, work hard to make sure that permission is legally guaranteed for certain things (the scenario you gave, for instance) at the highest possible level (self defense being a right guaranteed in the Constitution explicitly would be nice, for instance), and may even suggest additional, less obvious cases that should also be guaranteed or more firmly encouraged and defended (“Stand Your Ground” laws and such). I’m not against that at all, nor am I at all happy about the State being the arbiter of those things.

      But if the State isn’t the arbiter, the authority, having a full monopoly on who gets to used force when, *functionally*, you end up with warlords. Oh, they may have nicer titles, and in a monoculture or even a single very dominant culture, that might be kept in check and used well at least as often as the state… but what can actually be done about it if they don’t? NOTHING! They have the authority, so nothing short of engaging in large scale violence to change the situation and take that authority from them.

      If you can TAKE that authority from them without said violence (or at least the credible threat of said violence, which is legally the same thing), then they already didn’t truly have it.

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