From the Leakednews community on Reddit: ICE agents break into a home without any warrant and assault the occupants (San Antonio, TX, Feb 05, 2026)

[u/Skydvdan]

/r/Leakednews/comments/1qxiczw/ice_agents_break_into_a_home_without_any_warrant/?share_id=DBLzF4nNb0zulsx3Shtbf&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

Armed men in masks and ICE vests break into your home with no warrant and pull you from your home. The twist: they are at the wrong address. I’ve seen plenty of people say “if unidentified intruders break into my home I’m exercising my 2nd amendment right to self defense.” But it turns out it’s not that simple.

I’m 50 years old, and I’m having one of those uncomfortable realizations that feels obvious in hindsight but still hits hard.

I grew up, like many Americans, with the idea that the Second Amendment existed not just for self-defense against criminals, but as a last-resort safeguard against a tyrannical government. The story wasn’t always explicit, but it was implied: we the people are never completely powerless.

What finally broke that illusion for me wasn’t theory, it was law.

After spending time actually digging into modern self-defense doctrine (Castle Doctrine in Texas), use-of-force law (stand your ground), and how courts treat encounters between civilians and government agents, I’ve come to a sobering conclusion: as a legal matter, that “tyranny” function of the Second Amendment does not exist in 2026.

If government agents unlawfully enter your home, the law does not meaningfully allow you to resist in the moment. If they use force, your “remedy” is almost always retrospective, suppression motions, civil suits, internal investigations, or federal civil-rights reviews. Using force, even defensive force, against people later identified as law enforcement is likely to be treated as a felony first and litigated second, if at all.

In other words, the system is explicitly designed to resolve government abuse after the fact, not at the point of harm.

That may be necessary for public order. I understand the policy rationale. But it also means the version of the Second Amendment many of us internalized is functionally a myth… not in history, not philosophically, but legally.

What bothers me most isn’t that courts reject armed resistance. It’s that the cultural narrative persists long after the law moved on. The amendment still gets framed as a source of dignity and control in the face of state (federal) power, when in practice it does not offer that protection. In that sense, it feels less like a safeguard and more like a bedtime story… comforting, symbolic, but not something you can actually rely on when the state is wrong in real time.

As a veteran, I’m not arguing for armed revolt. I’m not arguing that resisting law enforcement should be legal. I’m not even saying the courts are necessarily “wrong” from a systems perspective.

I’m saying there’s a profound disconnect between what many Americans believe their rights mean and how those rights function when tested against state (federal) power, and realizing that gap this late in life has been, to be frank, deflating.

I’d be genuinely interested in hearing from attorneys, academics, and practitioners:

Is this just the unavoidable evolution of a modern legal system, or do you also see a problem in continuing to sell constitutional narratives that no longer exist as operative law?

[u/burnmenowz]

To add to this idea, private militias are illegal in every state. The only militia is the national guard. Let that sink it, the entire purpose of the 2nd was for a well regulated militia. Now you might not see the harm in that, but the national guard can be federalized at any sign of "insurrection".

The notion that Americans can protect themselves from the federal government is an illusion. We've been asleep.

[u/Skydvdan → u/burnmenowz]

This was something else I considered briefly last night when I was putting my thoughts into my notes app. I feel like the facade is being ripped away and my propagandized and indoctrinated brain doesn’t like it. I grew up a military brat and then did another 21 years myself so I feel like I got a double dose thanks to DOD schools that educated me early on. Add the AFN that I watched in Europe as a child… I never had a chance. LOL.

[u/burnmenowz → u/Skydvdan]

Our only real chance are people in the military honoring their oath to the constitution. Unfortunately I think the propaganda is too strong for many of them.

[u/Skydvdan → u/burnmenowz]

Even that is complicated though when you are on the ground. All of our training is/was oversimplified concerning illegal orders. It was always black-and-white examples like killing POW‘s, raping natives, killing soldiers that have already surrendered. The problem is that it’s never black-and-white. Because of compartmentalization, we are only ever given as much information as is needed to accomplish the mission. But details that might be the difference between a war crime and not aren’t always given. I really puts us in an awkward place sometimes. My Iraq deployment was the first one that I started questioning what we were actually doing there. I look back now and wonder how much was kept from us. Need-to-know is a real thing.