The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[Farm Boy]

You set the bar as a few people standing up, directly and at the end of the line, to over 200 million occasional fascists with the strongest naked force in the world. What do you think winning looks like? What does it cost?

Violent donkeys indeed. They're just upset when they have to hear about it. That which is't news when the trains run on time.

 

[Kyriakos]

Not that I am a fan of keeping the guns, but in the context of a hypothetical resistance to a totalitarian future regime in the US, the idea isn't to use handguns and rifles to defeat F16 etc, but to make it impossible for the regime to maintain any semblance of humanity while putting large groups of armed people down.
Ultimately, unless the dystopia is very generalized, US killing its own citizens en masse will sort of mean it won't be head of nato by then.
More practically, however, it likely also implies that states (other than Texas) can secede without being attacked by the army, since US can't afford to massacre its own people like during the civil war when it had no internationally meaningful power.
Clearly it's not a US-specific thing. No one would stand idly if UK did that to prevent Scotland from leaving, or Spain to prevent Catalonia etc.

 

[E.man]

I'd been wondering if there was even a single instance of a successful use of private arms against the government since the War for Independence, so thanks for the tip.


I wonder that, too.

Just to use one example, the officers who killed Breonna Taylor were just generally incompetent, but one relatively-minor detail that stood out to me is that the officers who actually made entry into the apartment were not very good at using their weapons. 7 officers made entry, a total of 32 shots were fired, in two barrages of 16, separated by a space of about a minute, and not a single one of them hit the target. The guy they were actually shooting at went unscathed. One of the officers was so reckless, he was fired just for being an unbelievable moron, even by the standards of his department (he fired several rounds through a window, from the side of the apartment, with no view of anyone).

For another example, the officers trying to apprehend the Tsarnaev brothers in a suburb of Boston after the Boston Marathon bombing fired hundreds of rounds in a running car chase and gun battle. Homes on either side of the gunfight were riddled with bullets (estimates are that police fired ~250 rounds and the Tsarnaevs fired ~50). I remember thinking at the time that, from the way it was described, it sounded like the officers were firing in all directions, as if they were fighting a Predator. It was a miracle no civilians were hit (the government had issued a "shelter in place" order for the entire region, so everybody was home). I think the officers actually put each other in a cross-fire. When I was a kid, we used to call that a "[Ethnic group] Firing Squad", where the shooters all stand in a circle around the target. In this case, it wasn't a joke: A police officer was actually shot in the leg by a police round. His femoral artery was cut, and he barely survived after paramedics disregarded protocol and took him to a nearby hospital, even though that hospital didn't have a trauma unit. One of the brothers was killed in the gunfight, but 15 police officers were injured in the process.

Seems to be the American way, just *more* of anything.

 

[E.man]

I don't have it at my fingertips right now, but I think it was even worse than these other high-profile incidents of the last couple days, in a way. From what I read last night, the guy didn't shoot at the girls while they were in his car. They realized their mistake immediately and got out of his car right away. He then got out of his car, followed them over to their car, and shot them there. It wasn't even some perverted version of self-defense. I'm not sure yet what it was. Misogynist homicidal rage? Psychosis? Machismo run amok?

Yes, those were the details. Actually hunted them down, shot the car full of bullets after the mistake was realised and corrected by the girl and they were leaving.

 

[Lexicus]

Fundamentally different weight of values, I'd wager.

I acknowledge the cost of the right and deem it worth it. Same as I grudgingly acknowledge a right that kills, in my understanding, more. Disarming minorities always comes first for a reason.

I don't want to discuss abortion here because I do think that believing an abortion at, say, ten weeks is morally equivalent to blowing off a schoolchild's head with an AR-15 is literally pathologically insane/psychotic, so we're just not going to have a productive conversation around that topic.

What I would submit to you is that there is plenty of scope for policy solutions reducing the death toll from guns without (completely) sacrificing the right to own them. And I'm curious exactly how you weigh the actual policy options here, if that makes sense. Do you believe that any restrictions on the purchase, ownership, storage, use of guns constitutes a destruction of the right? Or is there room for regulation, in your mind, that does not destroy the right?

In all honesty, I'm no longer thinking that legislation to restrict guns is the right answer, rather I think we are going to need to approach this as a kind of cultural deprogramming where we help people work through whatever psychological issues are making them believe that the US is so much more dangerous than it actually is. I suspect this would be more cost-effective than just doing a gun buyback or something similar - and it seems likely that, without some psychological breakthroughs, no amount of money would persuade many American gun owners to disarm.

 

[EgonSpengler]

You set the bar as a few people standing up, directly and at the end of the line, to over 200 million occasional fascists with the strongest naked force in the world. What do you think winning looks like?

I'm genuinely not sure. As I said earlier, I was struggling to think of even one instance of arms being used successfully to resist the government since 1776. otoh, I can think of a few times it was a total failure.

Not that I am a fan of keeping the guns, but in the context of a hypothetical resistance to a totalitarian future regime in the US, the idea isn't to use handguns and rifles to defeat F16 etc, but to make it impossible for the regime to maintain any semblance of humanity while putting large groups of armed people down.

The resistance, if there were one, wouldn't be against the Army and Air Force, it would be against law enforcement agencies. But even then, the track record of armed resistance against law enforcement is simply putrid.

As for making it impossible for the regime to maintain any semblance of humanity while putting large groups of people down, it's the 1st Amendment and not the 2nd that protects our liberties. The proliferation of cell phone cameras and the ability to upload and livestream video has been 1,000,000x more effective than any number of guns. Until then, the government could oppress, suppress, and outright murder almost anyone it wanted. There's a video I saw on YouTube several years ago, of Malcolm X on Dick Cavett's show, talking about how NYPD officers could and would come into Harlem and do basically anything they wanted to the people there, and it wasn't until relatively recently that we can all see that he was right. And I hadn't even heard of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre until it was featured in an episode of Watchmen. The Edmund Pettis Bridge 1965 is pretty famous, but I wonder how many people today know about Kent State 1970? If such a thing happened today, it wouldn't be AR-15s that would protect and/or avenge the victims and expose the perpetrators, it would be iPhones. And this isn't hypothetical. We've see it already. During the demonstrations/riots/uprising in Ferguson, MO after the death of Michael Brown in 2014, I remember seeing a police officer on-camera pointing his shotgun at peaceful, albeit angry, demonstrators. You could see on his face the officer was terrified and furious and didn't know what to do. The police also deployed armored cars and snipers, again, all on camera. To my recollection, none of them fired. None of them has said so - and they wouldn't, would they? - but I'm sure it was because they were on camera and the whole country was watching.

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't want to discuss abortion here because I do think that believing an abortion at, say, ten weeks is morally equivalent to blowing off a schoolchild's head with an AR-15 is literally pathologically insane/psychotic, so we're just not going to have a productive conversation around that topic.

You haven't identified the equivalent correctly. It's not one abortion anymore than it's one dropped gun accident. It's the whole picture of guns as it is the whole picture of abortions. Which is often the intentional culling of a lived physical and neurological* diversity that has made up all of the finest things I've understood or experienced. All deemed upon reflection of the greater society, to generally be things that are worthy of killing at a convenient moments so that we don't need to experience living alongside those existences. <shrug> You're asking for a fundamental difference in worldview to be explained, to do so, we need to look at the world. There are more deadly and insidious culls than the 2nd amendment extracts. But those are simply hand waived away by survivorship bias. A massive loss of varied perspective and values, while we're at it.

But if we're to reduce it to your example, one killing looks on the face to be an example of a possible correct use of the word murder, standing chief among secular sins. The other killing looks like a largely protected and unconditional right.

*forgot culture and class, again, as it plays out. Whoops.

 

[Kyriakos]

The resistance, if there were one, wouldn't be against the Army and Air Force, it would be against law enforcement agencies. But even then, the track record of armed resistance against law enforcement is simply putrid.

As for making it impossible for the regime to maintain any semblance of humanity while putting large groups of people down, it's the 1st Amendment and not the 2nd that protects our liberties. The proliferation of cell phone cameras and the ability to upload and livestream video has been 1,000,000x more effective than any number of guns. Until then, the government could oppress, suppress, and outright murder almost anyone it wanted. There's a video I saw on YouTube several years ago, of Malcolm X on Dick Cavett's show, talking about how NYPD officers could and would come into Harlem and do basically anything they wanted to the people there, and it wasn't until relatively recently that we can all see that he was right. And I hadn't even heard of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre until it was featured in an episode of Watchmen. The Edmund Pettis Bridge 1965 is pretty famous, but I wonder how many people today know about Kent State 1970? If such a thing happened today, it wouldn't be AR-15s that would protect and/or avenge the victims and expose the perpetrators, it would be iPhones. And this isn't hypothetical. We've see it already. During the demonstrations/riots/uprising in Ferguson, MO after the death of Michael Brown in 2014, I remember seeing a police officer on-camera pointing his shotgun at peaceful, albeit angry, demonstrators. You could see on his face the officer was terrified and furious and didn't know what to do. The police also deployed armored cars and snipers, again, all on camera. To my recollection, none of them fired. None of them has said so - and they wouldn't, would they? - but I'm sure it was because they were on camera and the whole country was watching.

If you have an authoritarian regime facing large numbers of armed civilians, last thing to matter would be some camera footage of police excessive force
It won't be comparable to the police dealing with a few tens/hundreds of people.

 

[EgonSpengler]

If you have an authoritarian regime facing large numbers of armed civilians, last thing to matter would be some camera footage of police excessive force

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It won't be comparable to the police dealing with a few tens/hundreds of people.

Sorry, I guess I'm not following you. Earlier you wrote,

in the context of a hypothetical resistance to a totalitarian future regime in the US, the idea isn't to use handguns and rifles to defeat F16 etc, but to make it impossible for the regime to maintain any semblance of humanity while putting large groups of armed people down.

I don't see how handguns and rifles do a thing to make it difficult for the government to maintain a semblance of humanity while putting down groups of people. Anyway, we don't need a hypothetical future, we have a documented past and present.

There's a push here to rescind "qualified immunity" for police officers, which protects them from lawsuits. One of our local politicians was on the radio talking about it, maybe 20 minutes ago. Do we think an armed populace had even the littlest thing to do with that, or did the repeated, documented instances of police corruption and use of force against civilians lead to that? fwiw, I have no idea how close we are to actually getting qualified immunity removed. Police apologists may actually outnumber 2nd Amendment fantasists in this country.

 

[Kyriakos]

Sorry, I guess I'm not following you. Earlier you wrote,


I don't see how handguns and rifles do a thing to make it difficult for the government to maintain a semblance of humanity while putting down groups of people. Anyway, we don't need a hypothetical future, we have a documented past and present.

There's a push here to rescind "qualified immunity" for police officers, which protects them from lawsuits. One of our local politicians was on the radio talking about it, maybe 20 minutes ago. Do we think an armed populace had even the littlest thing to do with that, or did the repeated, documented instances of police corruption and use of force against civilians lead to that? fwiw, I have no idea how close we are to actually getting qualified immunity removed. Police apologists may actually outnumber 2nd Amendment fantasists in this country.

My point is exactly that it's not the same situation as those you referred to, since those are very limited. An entire state or states wanting to secede due to totalitarianism would mean you have tens of thousands of armed "militia" to contend with, not a random crowd here and there. I don't see the police dealing with that; even an army has difficulties in urban warfare and US can't just flatten buildings like Israel does to Palestine.

 

[Lexicus]

US can't just flatten buildings like Israel does to Palestine.

It has in the past and undoubtedly would again if necessary. Look at some photos of Southern cities at the end of the Civil War sometime.

 

[Farm Boy]

A better example would be the later plains wars. Sherman was a genius, he got better as he went along.

 

[Kyriakos]

It has in the past and undoubtedly would again if necessary. Look at some photos of Southern cities at the end of the Civil War sometime.

Back then it had no international role - and barely managed to avoid getting major european powers involved. Now it'd be impossible to avoid isolation if it attacked its own cities.

 

[Lexicus]

Back then it had no international role - and barely managed to avoid getting major european powers involved. Now it'd be impossible to avoid isolation if it attacked its own cities.

"Barely" is not correct, and foreign intervention would be unlikely to matter at all. The US is many times more militarily powerful than any other country, probably more powerful than any other ten countries combined.

 

[Farm Boy]

That is definitely not true. The allies are necessary and required. You don't want to see a shooting war with the PRC. France was also understood to be unrivaled in might come 1939.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Back then it had no international role - and barely managed to avoid getting major european powers involved. Now it'd be impossible to avoid isolation if it attacked its own cities.

Isolationist far right government seems a likely candidate to be theone putting down its own citizens. Can't see it caring any more about the EU and UNs opinion than it would about any ad hoc militas it gunned down. Fox and other right wing media would doubtless say they were all Antifa for domestic consumption.

 

[Lexicus]

That is definitely not true. The allies are necessary and required. You don't want to see a shooting war with the PRC. France was also understood to be unrivaled in might come 1939.

It definitely is true, but that is not the same thing as saying I think a war with China (or really any other country) wouldn't be a disaster.

At any rate, China's (probably overhyped) ability to frustrate our projection of power in their immediate neighborhood is very different from their ability to land and sustain a force in any US territory. They might be able to seize some pacific islands while the US was distracted with domestic insurrection but holding them would be another matter and an invasion of Hawaii (let alone the lower 48) would probably be completely out of the question.

 

[Farm Boy]

You are arguing that the US can win a conventional conflict with any combination of 10 countries to the extent that we can ignore public opinions?

For how long, a month? Two? Six? A week? Perception matters. It's why the three countries most invested in rewriting the global order through murdering their neighbors in their homes and taking their stuff and women are so dead set on controlling the narrative to their liking.

 

[Lexicus]

You are arguing that the US can win a conventional conflict with any combination of 10 countries to the extent that we can ignore public opinions?

Eh, don't put words in my mouth. I do mean that for certain definitions of "win", one of those being "prevent the 10 countries from effecting any occupation of US territory." I'm sure the US could not conquer and occupy any ten foreign countries while simultaneously dealing with substantial domestic unrest.

 

[Farm Boy]

Fair enough. Any 10 countries combined on the offensive, with poor public opinion, and we're going to be digging into the big deterrent. Just not sustainable, alone. I think the friends really are that important, even at the base level.