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.
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.