If you think that the 1:30 ratio of guns to people in the US is going to stop the government from doing whatever the fuck they want, you are suffering from a potentially terminal case of optimism. I am an ardent believer in “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”(even though the context was the Penn family bribing the governor to avoid taxation, I still align with both the original and modern meanings), but a “well-armed militia” isn’t doing jack against an FBI task force or god forbid the military, which has recently been deployed in ever more dubiously-justifiable ways domestically.

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AngryData 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You say that, and yet insurgents with a tiny fraction of the population using mostly 60s era guns with zero access to the US economy and base logistical stores or sources managed to keep the US on their toes for two decades. A single redneck in Texas with a hunting rifle has 100x more damage potential to the US military and economy than 1000 middle eastern insurgents.

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cutterl6 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You underestimate how little resistance it takes to make a difference. It's not about every free man in the country single-handedly holding off the might of the US military on his doorstep.

As soon as a single shot is fired in defence, every thug now has to think twice before busting down a door. The game changes. Tyranny becomes a whole lot less efficient.

You send an FBI task force or god forbid the military to interfere with the life of a peaceful stranger and now you've given every man in the country a damn good reason to get himself organised for when they come for his family.

It's clearly not about a flu, at that point.

	▲	Tanoc 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If they shoot a federal agent that causes an escalation of violence, and future federal agents will be more brutal in response to anything. That loss in efficiency is partially regained by being more violent. That is, in my view, something inevitable when a power structure encroaches too far on those it has power over. But that inevitability doesn't mean you ignore the danger that comes with it. What it comes down to is can you scare those within the power structure sufficiently enough that they back off before they escalate violence to the point of mass murder? In the U.S. I don't think that you can. It seems that a lot of other people don't either, which is what is delaying people from using violence. There are still enough incentives to be handed out that those capable of committing the harm will escape being harmed by the power structure. When the rewards run out and those who wield arms in service of power become no different from those being harmed, then it will change. The issue is that so much of the world is connected now that those rewards are at no risk of running out, because they can always be pulled from somewhere else.