The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[Hygro]

Which would be...what? The hardcore Democrat-aligned types don't have many of the guns, obviously. How do you get from Democrats being unhappy with their midterm results to Civil War 2?

That’s what I’m saying dawg freedom isn’t free guns are expensive and require we act responsibly if we own them .

 

[EgonSpengler]

Foreign Policy magazine looked into the possibility of a new "civil war" in the US a while back. I think the author didn't restrict the definition of civil war to a conventional, military war with definable battles between uniformed armies. I think he looked at widespread political violence, by which you could classify the US in the late 1960s or Germany in the late-'20s/early-'30s as civil wars. By that definition, events like the Ferguson demonstrations and Dylan Roof's attack on the church could certainly be viewed as the early 'battles' of a new civil war. The Ferguson police certainly viewed those demonstrations that way at the time, even if nobody else did. The people the author of the article polled on the likelihood of such a conflict were all over the place; some thought it was all but inevitable, some thought it was crazy-talk. In the event, of course, it's the people who think conflict is inevitable that we have to worry about, because they're the ones most likely to start it, even if they believe they're just being prudent and taking precautions.

There was another article somewhere, where a US Army vet broke down the home state of US servicemen, based on the assumption that they would return home in the event of a "2nd Civil War" that wasn't just street violence, but was more like our first Civil War. California won the numbers game in a landslide, iirc. Texas was #2 and New York #3, pretty much what you'd expect. I don't think his analysis included veterans, but I imagine the distribution of able-bodied vets wouldn't be too far askew from the distribution of active-duty people.



EDIT: Found it. Foreign Policy Magazine, Oct. 10, 2017 - "What a new U.S. civil war might look like", by Tom Ricks

I don't have time to re-read it right now, to see if my memory was correct. Maybe at lunch.

 

[Commodore]

The hardcore Democrat-aligned types don't have many of the guns, obviously.

That's not really so obvious. You'd be surprised at the number of anti-gun advocates that either own guns themselves or employ armed security if they are wealthy enough to do so.

There was another article somewhere, where a US Army vet broke down the home state of US servicemen, based on the assumption that they would return home in the event of a "2nd Civil War" that wasn't just street violence, but was more like our first Civil War. California won the numbers game in a landslide, iirc. Texas was #2 and New York #3, pretty much what you'd expect. I don't think his analysis included veterans, but I imagine the distribution of able-bodied vets wouldn't be too far askew from the distribution of active-duty people.

That also assumes all those people would stay loyal to their home state. That is certainly not a given for California or New York since those are very left-leaning states and those who join the military, especially the Army or the Marines (which is who would be doing the bulk of the fighting), tend to lean to the right politically. So while they may return to their home state, a significant number of them may do so in order to fight against their state government, not fight for it.

Foreign Policy magazine looked into the possibility of a new "civil war" in the US a while back. I think the author didn't restrict the definition of civil war to a conventional, military war with definable battles between uniformed armies. I think he looked at widespread political violence, by which you could classify the US in the late 1960s or Germany in the late-'20s/early-'30s as civil wars.

That is exactly how a second civil war would be fought. Just look at most of the civil wars that have happened in recent history and you'll see most of them aren't fought with conventional battles, but rather through political violence and terrorism with some low intensity asymmetrical warfare occasionally. In fact, that's how the Syrian civil war was for about the first year or so before it finally escalated into full-on conventional battles once the military became divided. But in the context of the recent history of civil wars, Syria breaking out into full-scale battles is the exception, not the rule.

 

[JollyRoger]

I have noticed an uptick in the gathering of conservative forces in public men's rooms lately. Lots of training in the stalls.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Foreign Policy magazine looked into the possibility of a new "civil war" in the US a while back. I think the author didn't restrict the definition of civil war to a conventional, military war with definable battles between uniformed armies. I think he looked at widespread political violence, by which you could classify the US in the late 1960s or Germany in the late-'20s/early-'30s as civil wars. By that definition, events like the Ferguson demonstrations and Dylan Roof's attack on the church could certainly be viewed as the early 'battles' of a new civil war. The Ferguson police certainly viewed those demonstrations that way at the time, even if nobody else did. The people the author of the article polled on the likelihood of such a conflict were all over the place; some thought it was all but inevitable, some thought it was crazy-talk. In the event, of course, it's the people who think conflict is inevitable that we have to worry about, because they're the ones most likely to start it, even if they believe they're just being prudent and taking precautions.

There was another article somewhere, where a US Army vet broke down the home state of US servicemen, based on the assumption that they would return home in the event of a "2nd Civil War" that wasn't just street violence, but was more like our first Civil War. California won the numbers game in a landslide, iirc. Texas was #2 and New York #3, pretty much what you'd expect. I don't think his analysis included veterans, but I imagine the distribution of able-bodied vets wouldn't be too far askew from the distribution of active-duty people.



EDIT: Found it. Foreign Policy Magazine, Oct. 10, 2017 - "What a new U.S. civil war might look like", by Tom Ricks

I don't have time to re-read it right now, to see if my memory was correct. Maybe at lunch.

Civil war times is just like doomsday and apocalypse times. The're always just around the corner. Look at all the things that are happening. Things never used to happen.

Invertebrate Spain (1921) by Jose Ortega was a prophetic essay about the disintegration of the Spanish state. Ortega warns against particularism for competing ideologies and interests at the expense of society as a whole which seems just teeny bit spooky now that I think about it. But then again the American editor who wrote the forward for the 1930s English print also thought the same, so meh. Things are spooky I guess.

 

[Farm Boy]

That is exactly how a second civil war would be fought. Just look at most of the civil wars that have happened in recent history and you'll see most of them aren't fought with conventional battles, but rather through political violence and terrorism with some low intensity asymmetrical warfare occasionally. In fact, that's how the Syrian civil war was for about the first year or so before it finally escalated into full-on conventional battles once the military became divided. But in the context of the recent history of civil wars, Syria breaking out into full-scale battles is the exception, not the rule.

If that's the case, definitely watch and pay attention to the policing tools that the PRC rolls out pre-emptively*. In addition to flat internet censoring abd social media/location monitoring of targeted groups, they're doing some pretty impressive things with facial recognition software, police sunglasses, and live identification of warrants. I'm starting to wonder if they might get prisons down to being mostly obsolete(hell, compared to us they have. I suppose that might be the harmony at work). Simply won't need them to keep close enough control over anyone that doesn't need flat removed.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Foreign Policy magazine looked into the possibility of a new "civil war" in the US a while back. I think the author didn't restrict the definition of civil war to a conventional, military war with definable battles between uniformed armies. I think he looked at widespread political violence, by which you could classify the US in the late 1960s or Germany in the late-'20s/early-'30s as civil wars. By that definition, events like the Ferguson demonstrations and Dylan Roof's attack on the church could certainly be viewed as the early 'battles' of a new civil war. The Ferguson police certainly viewed those demonstrations that way at the time, even if nobody else did. The people the author of the article polled on the likelihood of such a conflict were all over the place; some thought it was all but inevitable, some thought it was crazy-talk. In the event, of course, it's the people who think conflict is inevitable that we have to worry about, because they're the ones most likely to start it, even if they believe they're just being prudent and taking precautions.

There was another article somewhere, where a US Army vet broke down the home state of US servicemen, based on the assumption that they would return home in the event of a "2nd Civil War" that wasn't just street violence, but was more like our first Civil War. California won the numbers game in a landslide, iirc. Texas was #2 and New York #3, pretty much what you'd expect. I don't think his analysis included veterans, but I imagine the distribution of able-bodied vets wouldn't be too far askew from the distribution of active-duty people.



EDIT: Found it. Foreign Policy Magazine, Oct. 10, 2017 - "What a new U.S. civil war might look like", by Tom Ricks

I don't have time to re-read it right now, to see if my memory was correct. Maybe at lunch.

The difference between the US in the late sixties, or today, and a 'civil war' as defined by widespread political violence, is disruption of services. All the protests, even violent protests, that you can muster are not a 'civil war' until they disrupt vital services. The occupy movement got in people's way when they were going to their bank, and the cops cracked heads and cleared the way. The Ferguson demonstrations blocked one street. There was no blackout in StLouis. Other than a few panicking survivalists there was no massive storing of foods in anticipation of disrupted supply. In terms of interruption of services all the political violence of the past twenty years, if concentrated into a single day, would not be as disruptive as any one of a score of natural disasters I could name have been.

When political violence approaches a state that could be called "civil war" cops aren't shooting unarmed drunks who they can claim "reached for their gun," cops are hunkered down in their stations and wondering which window the next Molotov cocktail or stolen RPG will come through. People aren't checking their phone apps to find the next closest McDonald's since they don't want to get caught up in the 'riot' down on demonstration boulevard going to the one they usually go to. People aren't writing scathing letters to their local paper because they are disappointed in how the "horrific problem" of panhandlers is being addressed. They aren't demanding to be allowed to carry a gun because they fantasize about being a hero even though they haven't actually been within fifty yards of a crime in twenty years, they just carry a gun because shooting their way home is an everyday possibility when they go to work...if they are willing to go at all. And they aren't grousing on the internet and using social media to ratpack the "evil lib'ruls" because they don't have time to waste on such nonsense during the intervals that they miraculously have electrical power.

Los Angeles draws water through five major aqueducts, all of which run through vast stretches of unoccupied desert. You could go out there with a three truck construction crew and spend a month prepping the entire water supply to self destruct and no one would even see you, much less notice you. The chain grocery stores (ie, all of them) all rely on daily deliveries from their big corporate warehouses downtown, which are stocked by thousands of trucks per day passing through the Newhall Pass...on thirteen lanes each way of very vulnerable blacktop. High tension power lines run through mountainous areas where the only access is the dirt roads maintained by the crews who go out there once a month to check on the towers, and if a tower comes down and kills the line it would take a month to rebuild it even without bushwhackers. If someone in California ever really takes it into their head to escalate from protesting to civil war, trust me, you'll hear about it. And the same general idea, though differing in detail, applies everywhere.

Ninety percent of the US population, at least, is totally dependent on the continuation of primary services for their very lives. A civil war under those circumstances will extinguish itself very quickly as soon as the casualties start.

 

[Bootstoots]

That's not really so obvious. You'd be surprised at the number of anti-gun advocates that either own guns themselves or employ armed security if they are wealthy enough to do so.

Sure, such people exist. It's not true that anti-gun liberals have literally no guns - there's plenty of hypocrisy to go around. But there are relatively few people on the leftward end of the spectrum who have both the means and the willingness to stage an armed rebellion of any real consequence - the left is armed disproportionately poorly relative to the right, and has not generally made any real preparations for an insurgency. I'll grant that a few tiny extremist groups of Antifa or New Black Panthers or whatever could choose to launch terrorist attacks, but we're not talking about very many people here. We're not going to get any more left-wing violence than we had in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the Weather Underground, SLA, original Black Panthers, etc.

If you lay out a plausible scenario where we get from left-wing groups being unhappy about their election results to the point where there are armed left-wing insurgencies in significant parts of the country, I'm willing to take it a bit more seriously. Right now, though, that seems far-fetched.

OTOH, I think there really is a significant chance of armed right-wing insurgency in the event the Democrats regain political power. On the right, there are a lot more people who have significant stashes of weapons all the way up to small private armories, along with shelters containing provisions, small armed militias, and the kind of rhetoric that more credibly signals a willingness to fight. There is also a substantially more powerful series of propaganda channels reaching a lot more like-minded people. Finally, there's a strong concern that they are losing power permanently for demographic reasons - losing the election isn't just about this one election, but about their prospects in the future as well.

I was watching Alex Jones and Breitbart pretty closely in the lead-up to the 2016 election because I was concerned that a narrow Clinton victory would result in the sort of situation that can blow up into a real insurgency. Once you have a whole lot of armed people who believe in conspiracy theories for why the government is illegitimate, and the one person they hate the most gets narrowly elected president amid numerous claims of fraud that get repeated ad nauseam on all their media outlets, and the candidate they support is fanning the flames in every possible way, things can get pretty dangerous.

It's not too hard to see how some spark could snowball rapidly into large-scale insurgency by loosely affiliated groups in rural parts of the Mountain West, Appalachia, and the Deep South. Perhaps a bigger takeover of federal lands by an armed militia is responded to heavy-handedly in the early days of Clinton II. A Waco-style event happens, which serves as a casus belli for further rebellion. A few National Guardmen and military personnel defect and join in; most don't, but aren't too keen on suppressing it either. Jones and Limbaugh and all the rest provide vocal support over the airwaves and internet, and attempts to suppress them simply make them even more popular. Pretty soon there are armed takeovers, IEDs, suicide bombers, ambushes, and whatnot across a large swath of the country.

So that's the sort of way a right-wing insurgency would start. But it's not at all clear how a left-wing one would.

 

[Takhisis]

I was watching Alex Jones and Breitbart pretty closely in the lead-up to the 2016 election because I was concerned that a narrow Clinton victory would result in the sort of situation that can blow up into a real insurgency. Once you have a whole lot of armed people who believe in conspiracy theories for why the government is illegitimate, and the one person they hate the most gets narrowly elected president amid numerous claims of fraud that get repeated ad nauseam on all their media outlets, and the candidate they support is fanning the flames in every possible way, things can get pretty dangerous.

It's not too hard to see how some spark could snowball rapidly into large-scale insurgency by loosely affiliated groups in rural parts of the Mountain West, Appalachia, and the Deep South. Perhaps a bigger takeover of federal lands by an armed militia is responded to heavy-handedly in the early days of Clinton II. A Waco-style event happens, which serves as a casus belli for further rebellion. A few National Guardmen and military personnel defect and join in; most don't, but aren't too keen on suppressing it either. Jones and Limbaugh and all the rest provide vocal support over the airwaves and internet, and attempts to suppress them simply make them even more popular. Pretty soon there are armed takeovers, IEDs, suicide bombers, ambushes, and whatnot across a large swath of the country.

Just for the record, Señor Trump has recently pardoned all the criminals involved in the situation a couple of years ago.

 

[Lexicus]

https://www.newsweek.com/guns-kids-third-leading-cause-death-627209

KIDS AND GUNS: SHOOTINGS NOW THIRD LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH FOR U.S. CHILDREN

 

[EgonSpengler]

Last May, the governor of Oklahoma actually had to veto a bill that would have removed licensing and training requirements for carrying guns, both open and concealed. I had to let that sink in for a minute. The Oklahoma legislature actually put a bill on the Governor's desk that would have allowed anyone to carry a gun without need for a license or any training. The bill passed the OK Senate in a 33-9 vote, their House in a 59-28 vote. It's possible there was some "strategic politicking" in there, whereby a legislator knew in advance that the bill would be vetoed and didn't have to worry that it would actually become law. But even if that's so, the legislator was trying to curry favor with someone - their constituents; the NRA - by at least appearing to support this bill.

And for those in our audience who must cast every single thing in a partisan light, the Governor of Oklahoma is a Republican. I haven't looked, but I'm guessing some of those "no" votes in the state legislature were cast by Republicans too (I'd be surprised if there were as many as 28 Democrats in Oklahoma's House, but I guess crazier things have happened). The bill was also opposed by the state's law enforcement authorities and business leaders, two groups who naturally tend to be Communists and pacifists.

USA Today, 12 May 2018 - Oklahoma governor vetoes bill to allow adults to carry guns without a license

 

[EgonSpengler]

https://www.newsweek.com/guns-kids-third-leading-cause-death-627209

This is why gun proponents worked so hard for so long to prevent studies such as this one from even being conducted. Of course their opposition to any kind of health study even being undertaken was suspicious and made one think that they knew what the results would point to, but as long as they succeeded in blocking the funding, we couldn't know for sure, and with no data, the gun nuts could argue anything they wanted. I guess it remains to be seen whether having some data moves the conversation at all. I'm trying not to be cynical about it.

 

[rah]

With those types of vote totals, I would think they have enough to over ride a veto

 

[MaryKB]

I don't understand something, maybe I'm just confused, but I thought that like 33-9 and 59-28 would be enough to over rule a veto?

 

[EgonSpengler]

With those types of vote totals, I would think they have enough to over ride a veto

I don't understand something, maybe I'm just confused, but I thought that like 33-9 and 59-28 would be enough to over rule a veto?

Yeah, I dunno. Here's Oklahoma State Legislature, Bill Information for SB 1212. It doesn't show anything since May 11th. Maybe they adjourned for the Summer and just haven't gotten around to it yet?

 

[rah]

Yeah, voting for it when you know it will be vetoed and voting to over ride it might test them a bit more.

 

[Farm Boy]

She vetoed it at the end of the session, yes.

 

[metalhead]

So that's the sort of way a right-wing insurgency would start. But it's not at all clear how a left-wing one would.

Surely at least some of the "stockpiling weapons" crowd can be bought by left-wingers for incorporation into a broader insurgency, or counter-insurgency. Allies could be found from Mexico and points further south.

The amount of people who can be moved to action by the words of Rush Limbaugh would surely be dwarfed by the number of people that can be moved to action by money.

 

[Farm Boy]

Like, rich liberals could probably manage to swing hiring and arming foreign mercenaries? Maybe a sort of international socialist revolution or whatnot?

Regarding the "constitutional carry" gun laws, I don't think Oklahoma is unique in considering them, possibly overriding that veto this Fall. Somewhere around a dozen or so states already have that as the law of the land, pretty sure.

 

[metalhead]

Like, rich liberals could probably manage to swing hiring and arming foreign mercenaries? Maybe a sort of international socialist revolution or whatnot?

I was thinking they would recruit domestic mercenaries who are already armed. Foreign ones as well. It would be a mistake to assume that people stockpiling weapons are all that loyal to one ideological side or another. Or that overrunning and seizing weapon caches from hobbyists/enthusiasts would necessarily be met by armed resistance. Most of the guns owned by most people have never been shot at a living thing, I don't necessarily think your average gun enthusiast will be all that cracked about mowing down a bunch of people with his toys.