Colbert: Second Amendment was like a 'Constitutional pre-nup'

Thursday night on "The Colbert Report," host Stephen Colbert dedicated an edition of his recurring segment "The Word" to the battle over guns rights and public safety.

In a segment titled "United We Standoff," Colbert mused about the fact that the U.S. Constitution has "a built-in mechanism to stop democratically elected tyrants from taking our guns."

"President Obama and his stormtroopers say it's okay for me to have a pistol. It's okay for me to have a rifle. It's okay for me to have a shotgun," he said. "But it's not okay for me to have military style weaponry? Maybe they forgotten what the Second Amendment was all about."

He then rolled a clip of several Fox News talking heats saying that the reason the nation's founders included the Second Amendment to the Constitution was because they feared "government tyranny."

"Damn straight," Colbert agreed. "Like anybody setting up a new government, the founders added a clause that said, 'If you don't like what we're doing, fell free to shoot us.'"

"The Second Amendment is like the ultimate veto," he continued. "It's almost like a Constitutional pre-nup."

Which is why, he said, it's the duty of every patriotic American to arm themselves. The government could turn on us at any time. And not with some "weak-ass" magazine that only holds ten rounds.

He quoted RedState.com editor and CNN contributor Erik Erikson, who said, "You may think a 30-round magazine is big, but under the real purpose of the Second Amendment, a 30-round magazine might be too small."

Yes, Colbert agreed, when the Second Amendment was written, the most powerful weapon in the U.S. military's arsenal was the "horse-drawn smallpox blanket." Now the U.S. military is armed with the most powerful weapons in the world.

"And it's because I respect our troops so much," Colbert said, "that I need a fully automatic assault rifle with a 100-round magazine to kill them when they come for my guns."

Do you really think, he asked, that a humble AR-15 is going to be able to save you when Uncle Sam comes knocking with an Apache helicopter? No, he said, if the Second Amendment is really to protect U.S. citizens from a tyrannical government, then no one will be safe until everyone in the country has their own aircraft carriers.

Of course, there are risks. Suppose some deranged individual "takes their aircraft carrier to a mall somewhere" and rains Hellfire missiles down on a Cinnabon.

"Well, of course, there's no stopping that," said Colbert. "But as Thomas Jefferson said, sometimes the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of the innocent. Look it up."

Meanwhile, the screen next to him said, "Don't look it up."

"Mr. King-President," Colbert said, "unless you and your gun brigade will admit that we gun-owners are constitutionally guaranteed the right to have any weapon we want, we will use every weapon we can get to keep every weapon we have."

Watch this video, embedded below via Comedy Central: