A long time ago, I was an arrogant Eurofag who posted somewhere laughing at some Americans (Democrats btw) for why America allows guns. One of them was a Southern Democrat, whose argument was that guns are good because, some day, God forbid (he said), people might have to use them against the federal government because it would have become tyrannical.
I was not convinced, and thought the idea was rather preposterous, but in retrospect, I can see the logic in the matter.
I was not convinced, and thought the idea was rather preposterous, but in retrospect, I can see the logic in the matter.
Okay, he's a scale framing exercise for you. Currently, if the U. S. Federal Government armed every single one of their active duty agents: military, reserves, every police officer able to be seconded to DHS, FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, IRS, ATF, Customs, Border Patrol, Postal Inspectors, OSHA... every single person who draws a paycheck from Uncle Sugar and can carry a gun... they would have a force shy of 5 million. We'll call it 5 million for a nice, round number. (Ignoring that some of these would desert, would refuse the call up, would turn into Mr. Magoo out of self-preservation, etc.)
Now, if you take the New Yak Time's absolute, utterly ridiculously low number for American gun owners, there are at least 20 million people in this country who own guns. It's actually probably more like 80-120 million people, but we're looking at a utterly low floor for argument's sake, here.
Tangent-- this number is just absurd, for a lot of reasons, but to give you one, July 2023 was the 48th consecutive month of 1 million plus Form 4473s being filed. That means at least 1 million guns were sold in the U.S., in July alone, and based on a lot of talking with gun store people, the average guns-per-4473 is about 1.5, so that 48 million plus forms actually probably represents 72 plus million guns sold in 4 years. Do you think that each and every one of those supposed 20 million gun owners bout 3.5 guns in 4 years? Or do you think that 100-120 million people did that much buying?
Less than 5 million versus 20 million is a 4-to-1 disadvantage. Assuming the highest sane number I've seen (120 million), that's a 24-to-1 disadvantage. That's not even counting the fact that once anything got spicy, a lot of those 5 million would get a real bad, sudden case of the Blue Flu, or just walk out after raiding the armory. That also completely disregards the fact that there is now a major corps of people who were involuntarily separated from government service for refusing to get the Clot Shot... and those were typically the competent ones.
Like I said, I do see the logic, though I'm not as sanguine about you regarding the chances of 'gun owners' vs. the state. The following is a purely hypothetical exercise, and not intended to incite anything against the noble US government, which is very ethical and a force for good in the world.
It's true that government claims that individuals can do nothing against a government force is untrue, given the fact that it got its ass kicked in Afghanistan. At the same time, Afghanistan was a very peripheral territory to the US Empire - much easier to abandon than its heartland, whose tax revenues fund the entire extent of the empire.
Assuming for a moment that there were to be an uprising by gun owners, very deplorable, then it will be scattered. For one, there are many people with different thresholds of what constitutes tyranny, which means the government can just salami-slice them - or rather, crush one group to strike fear into the rest. It would be the response to January 6 but then cubed. And I can see even here, the deterrent effects of January 6, that people fear engaging in any sort of peaceful protest, and claim that e.g. calls to peacefully protest the political process against DJT are 'federal efforts'. That may be wise, but what is the likelihood that such individuals would be persuaded to engage in (very deplorable) violence, especially after any grossly disproportionate fed response to any previous very deplorable violence?
People would rather peacefully perish than take action that risks their person and their property. If you keep your head down, then maybe the regime will leave you in peace, but if you attempt something, you will definitely not be left in peace.
Even those people were persuaded of the desirability of very deplorable actions, and they were not deterred by the government, and they thought it worthy to risk their lives. How many of the 40 million people will be left? And given that, how likely is it that it would be successful?
A very small-scale revolt that is easily crushed would be blown out of proportion, leading to even greater crackdowns on dissent and then on guns as well. Most of those 40 million will obey, as they call themselves law-abiding citizens, the rest will hide their guns and do absolutely nothing.
The point of being well armed isn't that we're going to have a large army rise up and miraculously overthrow the corrupt federal government.
The point of being well armed is that, once the disappearings start happening, the people doing the disappearing have to worry that they might not come home themselves because they run into someone who objects to being disappeared.
If all you have is silverware and kitchen knives to defend yourself when the state comes for you, you're going to probably be leaving with them whether you object to it or not.
The corrupt federal tyranny is here. It's almost certainly not going to go away quickly. An armed populace helps to accelerate its entropy.
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
The point of being well armed isn't that we're going to have a large army rise up and miraculously overthrow the corrupt federal government.
That is the impression I got, or at least that weapons would be able to keep out federal authority.
If all you have is silverware and kitchen knives to defend yourself when the state comes for you, you're going to probably be leaving with them whether you object to it or not.
Why is this not true for criminals then?
Fun fact: in some European countries in late 2021, the police refused to enforce some coronavirus restrictions because people got angry and perhaps aggressive when they attempted enforcement. Just being obstreperous can have real effects.
The corrupt federal tyranny is here. It's almost certainly not going to go away quickly. An armed populace helps to accelerate its entropy.
Ah yes, that does make a lot of sense.
That said, how do Europeans fight tyranny? We don't have weapons, nor is there any prospect of introducing any right to weapons (would be opposed by 97%+ of the population).
No clue. Pray for mercy from the people who hate you, or for them to run out of money/resources before they get around to killing you would be my best guesses.
A long time ago, I was an arrogant Eurofag who posted somewhere laughing at some Americans (Democrats btw) for why America allows guns. One of them was a Southern Democrat, whose argument was that guns are good because, some day, God forbid (he said), people might have to use them against the federal government because it would have become tyrannical.
I was not convinced, and thought the idea was rather preposterous, but in retrospect, I can see the logic in the matter.
Okay, he's a scale framing exercise for you. Currently, if the U. S. Federal Government armed every single one of their active duty agents: military, reserves, every police officer able to be seconded to DHS, FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, IRS, ATF, Customs, Border Patrol, Postal Inspectors, OSHA... every single person who draws a paycheck from Uncle Sugar and can carry a gun... they would have a force shy of 5 million. We'll call it 5 million for a nice, round number. (Ignoring that some of these would desert, would refuse the call up, would turn into Mr. Magoo out of self-preservation, etc.)
Now, if you take the New Yak Time's absolute, utterly ridiculously low number for American gun owners, there are at least 20 million people in this country who own guns. It's actually probably more like 80-120 million people, but we're looking at a utterly low floor for argument's sake, here.
Tangent-- this number is just absurd, for a lot of reasons, but to give you one, July 2023 was the 48th consecutive month of 1 million plus Form 4473s being filed. That means at least 1 million guns were sold in the U.S., in July alone, and based on a lot of talking with gun store people, the average guns-per-4473 is about 1.5, so that 48 million plus forms actually probably represents 72 plus million guns sold in 4 years. Do you think that each and every one of those supposed 20 million gun owners bout 3.5 guns in 4 years? Or do you think that 100-120 million people did that much buying?
Less than 5 million versus 20 million is a 4-to-1 disadvantage. Assuming the highest sane number I've seen (120 million), that's a 24-to-1 disadvantage. That's not even counting the fact that once anything got spicy, a lot of those 5 million would get a real bad, sudden case of the Blue Flu, or just walk out after raiding the armory. That also completely disregards the fact that there is now a major corps of people who were involuntarily separated from government service for refusing to get the Clot Shot... and those were typically the competent ones.
Like I said, I do see the logic, though I'm not as sanguine about you regarding the chances of 'gun owners' vs. the state. The following is a purely hypothetical exercise, and not intended to incite anything against the noble US government, which is very ethical and a force for good in the world.
It's true that government claims that individuals can do nothing against a government force is untrue, given the fact that it got its ass kicked in Afghanistan. At the same time, Afghanistan was a very peripheral territory to the US Empire - much easier to abandon than its heartland, whose tax revenues fund the entire extent of the empire.
Assuming for a moment that there were to be an uprising by gun owners, very deplorable, then it will be scattered. For one, there are many people with different thresholds of what constitutes tyranny, which means the government can just salami-slice them - or rather, crush one group to strike fear into the rest. It would be the response to January 6 but then cubed. And I can see even here, the deterrent effects of January 6, that people fear engaging in any sort of peaceful protest, and claim that e.g. calls to peacefully protest the political process against DJT are 'federal efforts'. That may be wise, but what is the likelihood that such individuals would be persuaded to engage in (very deplorable) violence, especially after any grossly disproportionate fed response to any previous very deplorable violence?
People would rather peacefully perish than take action that risks their person and their property. If you keep your head down, then maybe the regime will leave you in peace, but if you attempt something, you will definitely not be left in peace.
Even those people were persuaded of the desirability of very deplorable actions, and they were not deterred by the government, and they thought it worthy to risk their lives. How many of the 40 million people will be left? And given that, how likely is it that it would be successful?
A very small-scale revolt that is easily crushed would be blown out of proportion, leading to even greater crackdowns on dissent and then on guns as well. Most of those 40 million will obey, as they call themselves law-abiding citizens, the rest will hide their guns and do absolutely nothing.
The point of being well armed isn't that we're going to have a large army rise up and miraculously overthrow the corrupt federal government.
The point of being well armed is that, once the disappearings start happening, the people doing the disappearing have to worry that they might not come home themselves because they run into someone who objects to being disappeared.
If all you have is silverware and kitchen knives to defend yourself when the state comes for you, you're going to probably be leaving with them whether you object to it or not.
The corrupt federal tyranny is here. It's almost certainly not going to go away quickly. An armed populace helps to accelerate its entropy.
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
Yup. That's the exact paragraph I was thinking of when I wrote the above post.
That is the impression I got, or at least that weapons would be able to keep out federal authority.
Why is this not true for criminals then?
Fun fact: in some European countries in late 2021, the police refused to enforce some coronavirus restrictions because people got angry and perhaps aggressive when they attempted enforcement. Just being obstreperous can have real effects.
Ah yes, that does make a lot of sense.
That said, how do Europeans fight tyranny? We don't have weapons, nor is there any prospect of introducing any right to weapons (would be opposed by 97%+ of the population).
No clue. Pray for mercy from the people who hate you, or for them to run out of money/resources before they get around to killing you would be my best guesses.
I'd rather die.
I think they're fine with keeping folks like me as a slave underclass with no power. There's no point in killing people if they are no threat.