Josh Kraushaar appears mystified by a Twitter message from Marco Rubio, the GOP Senate candidate, about the uprising in Iran.  Noting that a few politicians have managed to embarrass themselves through the use of the social-networking platform, Kraushaar manages to embarrass himself by misunderstanding the nature of the 2nd Amendment and its place in American history:

Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio is the latest to make his own curious comparison drawn from the Iranian demonstrations — that the protesters would have more success if they had a constitutional right to bear arms.

“I have a feeling the situation in Iran would be a little different if they had a 2nd amendment like ours,” Rubio tweeted on Sunday.

Not sure if Rubio was advocating an armed uprising from the otherwise peaceful protesters, but his follow-up tweet was a bit more dovish: “Hoping police and military in Iran will refuse to attack unarmed civilians if ordered to do so.”

Wouldn’t it be just awful if an armed citizenry overthrew a tyranny by force and established democracy and liberty?  That never turns out well.  Oh, except for that one time when we did it, of course.

Besides, Rubio quite obviously means that an armed citizenry would not allow tyranny to be imposed in the first place.  That is one of the reasons that he founding fathers of this country included the right to keep and bear arms in the Constitution, right after the right to free speech, religious practice, and peaceable assembly.  In fact, it meant to guarantee that Americans could expect those other rights to continue unmolested — rights that the past week proved yet again that the Iranian people do not have under this regime of mullahs.

Rubio was being glib, of course.  (Can you be anything else in 140 characters or less?)   However, his meaning was pretty clear, and hardly controversial or “curious”.  Supporters of the 2nd Amendment offer these reminders whenever oppression makes itself obvious in the world, to help Americans recall the value of the Bill of Rights and the exceptional place it has in human history.