I’ve no doubt he actually believes what he just said.
The problem is:
”insurrection” comes from the old French “insurgere,” which means “rise up.”
In modern lingo, the word is very frequently associated with the concept of “armed rebellion.”
Here’s the thing: one needn’t possess a gun in order to be “armed.” When you have anything that can be constituted as a weapon, by definition, you are armed. You’re armed if you have a knife; armed if you have a crowbar; armed if you have a mace; armed if you have a sword; armed if you have nunchucks; etc. This whole deal about “armed means guns” is an exclusive American perversion, and the US does not have exclusive rights over the word “insurrection.”
And yeah there’s the extra layer of “yeah, there were guns too.”
So not only is Tucker absolutely wrong, he cannot be right. This level of wrongness is right up there with the assertion of Noah’s Flood as actual history: we know it isn’t right, and we know it cannot be right. He’s not going to get out of that by playing semantics about as well as Todd Marinovich played QB in the NFL.
The US legal code isn’t gonna help him, either.
”Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
It says absolutely nothing about guns, so he’s gonna have to give this one up.
But such is the mind of the right wing: lazy, suggestible, inarticulate, uneducated, undisciplined, unmotivated to do anything except be a dick for dick’s sake. They have as much business being offended when they’re called “degenerates” as a fire truck has when it’s described as being “red.”