Interestingly enough though, that 'right to bear arms' actually gives zero protection from the government as theorized- even if the gov't is acting in a corrupt manner.
If this guy was in Texas holed up with a small armory, the FBI would still bust in there and arrest him. If he tried to use that small armory (and wasn't killed) it wouldn't have just been him 'exercising his right' of course.
While the right to bear arms doesn't give one person the natural ability to resist overwhelming force, it does make imposing tyranny on larger numbers of people rather expensive for the tyrants.
Let's say the government wants to send my family to a death camp - perhaps for a racial, ethnic, or religious affiliation. (Historically, this does happen from time to time, even in countries that were 'liberal democracies' in the recent past.)
The government would absolutely be able to do so - I've got no fantasies about my ability to resist a government agency. However, I could certainly try to make it expensive for them, and I might succeed. If enough people are similarly inclined to make things expensive for them, the price may grow to be too high for the government to pay.
What we really have in this country is literally a "right to bear arms". You have no right to fire or wield or use your arms.
I can think of no situation where you could fire upon an agent of the government that would not end badly for you, unless there was a total dissolution of Federal and probably State government. Even acting in self defense, even against a corrupt agent of the government, I can't imagine it ending any way but badly for you. You can't shoot the government a little to make a small change. Either you completely overthrow the government, so that there is no one left to hang you, or you go to jail in the best case, and be executed lawfully or gunned down in the street in the worst case.
Well, in Texas (and other states), there's Castle Doctrine, that would have allowed him the right to fire, wield and use his arms with lethal intent if in fact those FBI agents didn't have a warrant, which provides some protection that the agents would at least have to prove to a judge that there was reasonable cause to arrest him.
Of course, they likely would have had a warrant, and if not, might possibly have gotten one from the FISA court (I'm not sure on the process there) which pretty much always issues a warrant, so it still wouldn't have been great for him.
I don't believe there are any laws against shooting federal agents actually, though I could well be wrong, but in the absence of a verifiable warrant, there's no guarantee that they are federal agents. Even if they are federal agents, that doesn't give them any right to enter your home without your consent, absent a warrant.
I don't otherwise disagree with the synopsis you've put forth, I'm just saying that our right to bear doesn't prohibit us from ever firing in the event that there is clear justification. People storming your home is such a justification, no matter what uniforms they're wearing.
Fun fact: Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the murder of 8 federal agents who were in the Federal Building. They didn't bother to charge him with the other 160 counts of murder, because those weren't federal crimes.
Thanks for the correction, however it should also be noted that it uses the term 'murder', which by definition is different from homicide in that murder is unlawful, where homicide is not necessarily.
If I kill someone attacking me, I have committed homicide, but not necessarily murder. If I kill someone ala McVeigh, I have murdered them.
Since it is a federal charge, it's very likely that the 'intent' would be determined in a federal court, which does exist outside of state jurisdiction and is bound to uphold federal laws, but it isn't quite open and shut.
Still, your point stands, which is to say that he's almost certainly screwed.
Yeah, the definition of "murder" is tricky. Reading http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder it looks like the sticking point is "malice aforethought". I'm not remotely close enough to a lawyer, to be able to guess which way the court would fall on that in this hypothetical situation.
I'm not up on my history as much as I should be, but I think some of the influence there conceptually is from the "right to overthrow the government", and the idea that many of the new governments at the time were only lasting a short period of time and then would need revised.
If this guy was in Texas holed up with a small armory, the FBI would still bust in there and arrest him. If he tried to use that small armory (and wasn't killed) it wouldn't have just been him 'exercising his right' of course.