| ▲ | idle_zealot 4 hours ago |
| > Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk? It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. Also, yeah, the "don't tread on me" folks mostly aren't very principaled and don't mind authoritarian actions so long as they're dressed up right. Obama wants a public healthcare option? How dare the government institute Death Panels to decide who live or dies! ICE shoot random protestors? That's what they deserve for "impeding" and "assaulting" law enforcement. The Second Amendment was written so that the US could avoid having a standing federal army and quickly gather up defense forces from States as necessary when attacked. It was thought that having a standing army would lead to bad incentives and militarism. Just like the Executive branch only has enumerated powers, with all main governing functions belonging to Congress. The founders were worried about vesting too much power in one man, so made the President pretty weak. Of course, we've transmogrified ourselves into a nation primed for militarism and authoritarianism by slowly but surely concentrating power into one station. Exactly what the Constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job. |
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| ▲ | onjectic an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > The Second Amendment was written so that the US could avoid having a standing federal army and quickly gather up defense forces from States as necessary when attacked. Too narrow. It secures an individual right, not a federal mobilization clause. > Isn’t this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk? Only if you think the second amendment is an on demand partisan defense force. It is not. It is a personal guarantee and a reserve of capacity, not a subscription service where “second amendment supporters” are obligated to show up on cue. > It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. “Latent” is largely the point. Deterrence is not measured by constant use, and a right is not refuted by the fact that strangers do not take on extreme personal risk to prove it to you. The first line checks are still speech, courts, elections, oversight. This right exists for when those fail. > Exactly what the constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job. If power has drifted, enforce the constraints. It is the second amendment, placed immediately after speech and assembly, not the third or the tenth. Do not redefine the right into irrelevance and call that proof it failed. |
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| ▲ | pseudohadamard 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| As a footnote, it was also written at a time when a bunch of guys with muskets could face down another bunch of guys with muskets. When one side has tanks and attack helicopters and training and outnumbers you a hundred to one it doesn't really work any more. |
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| ▲ | 8fingerlouie 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Ukraine is taking out tanks and helicopters, as well as infrastructure daily, using 3D printed drones and AliExpress electronics. Not suggesting anyone tries it, but modern warfare has evolved. Just like the tanks changed warfare in WW1, and tanks/planes changed warfare in WW2, drones are changing warfare once more. a $10000 drone took out a multi million dollar Russian warship, and while not exactly 3D printed (at least not all of it), drones are cheap enough to manufacture to be expandable, especially if they can target and destroy things that are not that. For comparison, a single cannon/mortar shell fired on the Ukrainian front costs €3500, and they fire up to 10000 of them per day. Making a few hundred $10000 drones is cheap compared to that, and while they likely don't hold the same "barrage level" destructive power, they are focused weapons and can destroy much more with less. | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That would explain why it was so easy for the US to suppress insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan... It's actually rather difficult to think of tyrannical regimes which persisted against an armed citizenry in the long term. | | |
| ▲ | AngryData an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Especially when you consider the US citizenry have direct access to logistics and infrastructure. You can't bomb a city or factory into producing more fuel or bombs or any of the million other things that are required to keep the US economy working well enough to fund any military operations. It would be hell on earth to be in the US, but the US military/ICE/cops/courts don't work if the citizenry aren't being productive and playing along nicely. | |
| ▲ | vintermann 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Is armed with knives enough? Presumably it isn't, and you'd need a certain minimum level of technological parity with your tyrants. Presumably that also isn't fixed. So even if rifles might have been sufficient in the early US even though the government had cannons, rifles may not be sufficient when the government has chemical weapons and armored cars. So where's the industrial base which makes the weapons? Or the money to buy the weapons? For Iraq, Afghanistan, and for that matter in lots of conflicts the US weren't involved in (or were involved in on the anti-government side!) the answer seems straightforward enough: in foreign countries which also don't like your government. Without a bunch of neighbors and rival powers which really didn't want the US in Iraq/Afghanistan, could the insurgents have done much? Who do you propose should arm the resistance in the US, if government supported "police" paramilitaries run amok? (Let's for the sake of argument not get into whether that has happened yet). It's going to have to be quite an impressive level of support, too, to stand up against systems developed precisely against that sort of eventuality and battle-tested in the US' sphere of influence. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Is armed with knives enough? It depends on the numbers. Do they have 100,000 guys with guns but you have a hundred million with knives? Then you have a chance. But your chances improve a lot if your side is starting off with something more effective than that. > Presumably it isn't, and you'd need a certain minimum level of technological parity with your tyrants. You don't need parity, you need a foothold to leverage into more. > So where's the industrial base which makes the weapons? Or the money to buy the weapons? In a civil war, you take the domestic facilities and equipment by force and then use them. But first you need the capacity to do that. Can 10,000 guys with knives take a military base guarded by a thousand guys with guns? Probably not. Can they if they all have guns? Yeah, probably. Then the government has to decide if they're going to vaporize the facility when you do that. If they don't, you get nukes. If they do, now you have a mechanism to make them blow up their own infrastructure by feigning attacks. And so on. | | |
| ▲ | vintermann 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Can they if they all have guns? Yeah, probably. Heck no, they can't. Even if they could, the government's advantage isn't just in weapons. Long before you'd get your 10000 people with their gun safe stash together, they'd know exactly who you were and what you were planning. I think your proposal reads like bad power fantasy fiction. You can resist a powerful authoritarian/occupying government with force, but not without a lot of foreign backing - like in Iran right now - and I don't think you are prepared to ask the Russians for help. It would of course open a huge can of worms if you did, and you'd be right to ask if the world where you win with such support will even be better than the world where you lose. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Heck no, they can't. Well that settles it then. > Long before you'd get your 10000 people with their gun safe stash together, they'd know exactly who you were and what you were planning. It's almost like anonymity and private communications tech belongs next to weapons on the list of things needed to resist authoritarianism. > not without a lot of foreign backing Why does it require any foreign backing whatsoever? You're not going to do it if you're three people, but a civil war is when some double digit percentage of the country is on the other side. You don't think that's enough people to supply substantial domestic resources? | | |
| ▲ | vintermann an hour ago | parent [-] | | Look, I don't want to be mean because if you're in the US right now you're in a situation which sucks. But that situation of 10000 people with guns seizing a military base to bootstrap an effective civil war, is just so absurd I don't even know how to begin. You're right, private communication is an essential tool of resistance, more important than any weapons. But if you start buying up old Blackberries to give to your kids and all your friends, don't you think that gets you on a watchlist in itself? Not only should your 10000 people have guns to take on a military base, they should have impeccable infosec too? Pretty much all civil wars in history had foreign backing for one or more sides. It seems no one ever had enough domestic resources to confront the domestic resource control machinery - which makes sense when you think about it. Though the more optimistic way to look at it was that if you had that level of control, you'd win without a civil war. |
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| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Knives are basically obsolete technology in military terms. Firearms are not obsolete; that's why almost every soldier (or "paramilitary") carries one. Your technological parity point is technically correct, but it doesn't really apply here. There are more privately owned guns than people in the US. We are already profusely armed. | | |
| ▲ | vintermann 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not contesting that you're armed. I'm not contesting that guns can still be "useful". But not in resisting a government with anti-"insurgence" drones battle tested against various levels of resistance from Palestine to Ukraine to Afghanistan. | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >Afghanistan We're going in circles. The Afghans won. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46791876 | | |
| ▲ | vintermann an hour ago | parent [-] | | The Afghans won - not without foreign support, by the way - against a foreign occupying force, in the end by promising a lot of amnesties to people who had been working with the occupying government, and convincing them to turn en masse. Promises which they from what I understand, mostly kept. They fought for years and died in droves, then they suddenly won "without firing a single shot", figuratively speaking, with diplomacy directed at their own countrymen. I'm sure there are some lessons to be learned there for resisting your own government too there, but I really only mentioned them as a place where anti armed insurgence technology has been extensively battle tested by the government you're considering picking a fight with. |
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| ▲ | 8note an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | the insurgencies in Afghanistan at least were difficult to suppress because they based of out pakistan, a supposed american ally and notable nuclear power. to actually do the job of taking out the taliban would require going into pakistan to stop them in their bases. in iraq, the insurgency was the former iraqi military, not just random citizens with small arms | |
| ▲ | moi2388 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That however is a political issue, not a military one. Given free rein the military absolutely can do that. | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | If the US military wasn't willing to simply flatten cities all over Iraq and Afghanistan, why would you expect them to do that in their own country to their own homes and family members? | | |
| ▲ | asksomeoneelse 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Because Iraq or Afghanistan weren't threatening the man in power. Just take a look at what is currently happening in Iran if you wonder what happens when the local authority fears the crowd. | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD an hour ago | parent [-] | | I would say Iran is a much better illustration of what happens when your citizenry is disarmed. The crowd isn't very scary. They don't pose a real threat. There's little risk in crushing them. They can't fight back meaningfully. |
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| ▲ | renewiltord 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you don’t care about how many you kill, these kinds of insurgencies can be ended. I don’t think the US Armed Forces could be convinced to attack their fellow Americans but if they did it would be worth remembering that the Warsaw Uprising ended poorly for the uprisers. This is not like Ukraine where there are lots of underground manufacturing facilities. If you tried building drones to stop US tanks and IFVs then the Californians would tell you that your factory needs to first go through environmental review. By the time the review is done the war will be lost. | | |
| ▲ | 8note an hour ago | parent [-] | | > If you tried building drones to stop US tanks and IFVs then the Californians would tell you that your factory needs to first go through environmental review. By the time the review is done the war will be lost. this would very obviously not be the case if California needed them for war, or had been in on again off again war already for a decade | | |
| ▲ | renewiltord an hour ago | parent [-] | | I don’t think it’s that obvious. The US was delayed in building shells for Ukraine because they couldn’t scale up production at a factory on account of it being historically listed. It’s been 10 years since Ukraine was first attacked in Crimea and we’ve been involved on again off again. Californians frequently will tell you that we’re in a housing “crisis” and then oppose all housing. I’m sure when another crisis arrives it’ll be different. What’s the other “crisis” popular as a cause in California? Climate change? Man, this state must be at the forefront of fighting it then. Oh what’s that? Ah, wind and nuclear opposed by local homeowners. I see, I see. Oh yes, when the next crisis arrives I’m sure it’ll be different. We’re just waiting for a real crisis, guys. Any second now. |
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| ▲ | kislotnik 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Have you seen expensive tanks and helicopters being taken out by 500$ drones? No? I have a surprise for you | |
| ▲ | DeepSeaTortoise 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It also applied to other things existing at that time, like warships, canister shot in cannons or machine guns. |
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| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I see a lot from the left about how right-wingers are supposedly hypocritical on gun control. However, concrete examples of hypocrisy are rarely provided. In terms of actual concrete statements, what I'm seeing from gun rights people like Thomas Massie and the NRA is consistent with previous stances: https://xcancel.com/NRA/status/2015227627464728661#m https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/20155711073281848... I'd say the left is actually much more hypocritical. Just a few years ago they had essentially no issue with the government taking everyone's guns. Now suddenly they understand the value of an armed citizenry as a final last resort against tyranny, something the right has understood for years, and then they start calling the right "hypocritical"... |
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| ▲ | epistasis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The NRA is not a very honest or good gun association, their immediate statement was quite different: > “For months, radical progressive politicians like Tim Walz have incited violence against law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do their jobs. Unsurprisingly, these calls to dangerously interject oneself into legitimate law-enforcement activities have ended in violence, tragically resulting in injuries and fatalities. https://x.com/NRA/status/2015224606680826205?ref_src=twsrc%5... (they then go on to say "let's withhold judgement until there's an investigation" despite them passing quite extreme judgement, with a direct lie, and getting their judgment extremely wrong when there was lots of video showing it wrong when they posted...) In light of their large change of attitude, the initial critiques were quite correct. In another Minnesota case, they refused to defend a gun owner that was shot for having a gun, despite doing everything right when stopped by police. Other gun associations besides the NRA have been more principled and less partisan. Rep. Massie is barely a Republican, he's pretty much the only one willing to go against Trump on anything. Right now the Republican party is defined by one thing only: slavish obedience to Trump. For Republicans' sake, and the sake of the Republic, I hope that changes soon. | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't see inconsistency between the two NRA statements. Your interpretation seems imaginative/unsupported. Gun rights people understand that owning a gun comes with certain responsibilities. The accusation of "hypocrisy" seems to be based on a cartoon understanding of gun rights from people on the left. Find me a gun rights person who previously claimed that resisting arrest while armed is all fun and games. https://policelawnews.substack.com/p/cbp-involved-alex-prett... | | |
| ▲ | mindslight 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Always being able to come up with some exception [0] doesn't mean that you're not being hypocritical, it just means that you've tricked yourself into being unable to see it. For another incident that resulted in a widespread display of hypocrisy, look at the public reactions to what happened when Kenneth Walker exercised his right to night time home defense - one of the basic scenarios the NRA is always rallying around. But I'm sure you've settled on some coping excuse for that one as well. The real thing you need to understand is that this fascist movement will always find some grounds to characterize its targets as worthy of othering. If (when) you get tripped up by it, no amount of conforming or having supported it is going to redeem you in the mind of the mob. Rather it's going to be people just like yourself condemning you. [0] this one seemingly based on an outright shameless lie of "resisting arrest" | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I have no opinion on Kenneth Walker. I'm just annoyed by what I see on social media -- people claiming hypocrisy without any supporting evidence. The flip side of your "exception" point is that you have to actually understand what the person said, and what they believe, before you claim hypocrisy... something that lefty activists in the US largely have no interest in doing. | | |
| ▲ | mindslight 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I'm just annoyed by what I see on social media -- people claiming hypocrisy Fixed that for you. (If you had made a concrete point, I would have sought to understand and address it. Instead you basically just did a wordy version of "nuh-uh") | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | All I want people to do is link to evidence of hypocrisy when they claim it. Argue with an actual person instead of your hallucination of them. Was that too much to ask? | | |
| ▲ | mindslight an hour ago | parent [-] | | You say hallucination, I say reasonable prediction based on past behavior. It wasn't too much for you to ask, but apparently my response was too much for you to handle. I brought up Kenneth Walker precisely because that was a situation for which the dust settled long ago and so we don't need to make such predictions. But to this you merely said "I have no opinion" You then went on to poison the discussion with your own preemptive "I'm not listening" nonsense - "something that lefty activists in the US largely have no interest in doing" Perhaps it might shock you, but some of us opposed to this regime are actual principled libertarians. I'm a gun owner who actually believes in the natural right to keep and bear arms. My opinion of the NRA is that its main function is fundraising from the gullible, which is why they can't avoid leaning into the culture war bullshit. | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD an hour ago | parent [-] | | >You say hallucination, I say reasonable prediction based on past behavior. You're also welcome to make a prediction, but label it as a prediction rather than a statement of fact. | | |
| ▲ | mindslight an hour ago | parent [-] | | Apparently you only address non-substantive points that you can nitpick. So I guess we're done, unless you'd like to go back and do your homework. | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 38 minutes ago | parent [-] | | To me, this is the substantive point. It's about intellectual honesty. That's the key thing for me. From my perspective, most of what you're saying is either (a) not substantive/outright disingenuous, or (b) I don't have much to add. If there is a particular point you really want me to respond to, you're welcome to highlight it and I will consider responding (but honestly probably not, for the reasons I gave). |
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| ▲ | wsatb 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not hard to find examples. "You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple." - Kash Patel “I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign." - Kristi Noem “With that being said, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.” -Donald Trump | | | |
| ▲ | idle_zealot an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Now suddenly they understand the value of an armed citizenry as a final last resort against tyranny, something the right has understood for years What? I thought it was pretty clear that I don't consider an armed citizenry to be doing us any good. The government can take the guns, I don't give a shit. It should also stop arming Police and other goons. We can all slug it out in the streets with batons ;) | |
| ▲ | guelo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Massie is the odd man out out of 1000s of Republican politicians in being willing to publicly criticize his own party. He is very not typical. Everybody else marches in lockstep with whatever insanity trump puts out. | | |
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