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[Loud Whispers]

The main problem with the argument is you assume the US will operate at full capacity.

There is estimated to be around 20,000 to 60,000 unorganized militia in the US. The US military running at half capacity would be 1.5 million soldiers with military training.

The point of legitimacy is that there is open rebellion, because the leaders seen as the correct rulers are not in power. The US, unlike many other countries, elects it's leader's directly, instead of choosing a party.

Leaders who represent their party and bring it into power...?

It has it's problems, like exacerbating the Political divide, but it has a purpose. If that person, that person in particular, loses power for what seem to be arbitrary reasons, people get angry, as opposed to being able to hide behind the ceremonial government. You can't just say people will obey one of those, because the entirety of the US governmental system is based around preventing a tyrant from gaining power.

And if they elect a leader into power who repeatedly infringes on freedoms of people in their nation and around the world?

There will be defectors, mass strikes, people just won't listen. Add into that the power of the various state governments, and a effective counter-coup could be up in days. It won''t be Syria like insurgents, it would be every damn city government in Syria deciding simultaneously to defeat the government. It would be his entire cabinet defecting. The states have their own troopers. The problems people who create coups run into elsewhere would be double.

Also sorry, terrorists, governments and how they fall was my mother specialty when she was still a college professor.

So a tyrannical government is made up of a single power hungry individual. Good to know. Both sides of the American left/right are in the pockets of their lobbyists; remember what happened when the Republicans spoke against copyright absurdness?
Blam, taken down in a day.

[misko27]

If they elect him, that's a totally different problem.

Besides, this is refering to an almost let the people rise argument. Coups are more often by multi-indivuiduals anyway

[Nadaka]

Okay....took off for a couple of days, and nobody managed to get the thread locked. Good job, guys.

Hate to bring 2nd Amendment stuff back up, but it is kind of the biggest issue right now. Tuesday's announcement of the slate of executive orders (including finally getting an actual, confirmed Director for BATF) was amazing to hear. That's the most action I've seen out of the White House in a looooong time on the issue of gun violence. My belief in Obama as a worthy President has been mostly restored, because dude's grown a sackful in the last few weeks.

It does, however, have me on edge in the run-up to Obama's 2nd inauguration. By opposing the gun lobby, he's made some powerful (and somewhat unbalanced) enemies.


Couple of interesting points I wasn't aware of until recently:

1. Ronald Reagan, the younger brother of Jesus Christ to most conservatives, supported the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. A letter that Reagan wrote in support of the legislation has been circulating the Web in recent days. Interestingly the reaction from some of the most virulent pro-gun groups has been to find a way to gently denigrate Reagan by suggesting that it was when he was really old and probably going senile.

2. The NRA, in its earlier days, supported automatic weapons bans, background checks, and a host of other regulations that they now virulently oppose as one step away from fascism.

I was not surprised with the executive orders, the vast majority of them are reasonable and potentially productive.

[Loud Whispers]

If they elect him, that's a totally different problem.

And that's what we're discussing!

[mainiac]

It's called "Looking at history". We don't all see the same thing though.

No it's called projecting what you want to see onto history.  And yes, we don't all see the same thing.

[SalmonGod]

No it's called projecting what you want to see onto history.

Not a very productive comment in the sense that you could direct it at anyone no matter what they're saying, and there's no good way to substantiate it.  For as much as you like to remind us of how well politically educated you are (and I do believe you), mainiac, you seem to often forego making a point in favor of aimless snippy belittlement.

[Sheb]

At this point I would like to say that the only thesis I've defended here is that insurgencies can succeed againt a more powerful and organized government. I still think holding on your AR-15 because you're afraid of a dictatorship is between dumb and deluded.

[mainiac]

No it's called projecting what you want to see onto history.

Not a very productive comment in the sense that you could direct it at anyone no matter what they're saying, and there's no good way to substantiate it.  For as much as you like to remind us of how well politically educated you are (and I do believe you), mainiac, you seem to often forego making a point in favor of aimless snippy belittlement.

Have other people's posts in this conversation been particularly substantiated?

The only time someone even took the time to list examples in this "debate" I engaged in the examples.  But I think it would be hard at this point to even accuse me of lowering the tone of conversation here.

[Bot Hack]

The main problem with the argument is you assume the US will operate at full capacity.

There is estimated to be around 20,000 to 60,000 unorganized militia in the US. The US military running at half capacity would be 1.5 million soldiers with military training.

I can't wait to see how capable America becomes when we inject every man with hostile drug and draft nearly every single one of them, well like 60% or some crap. Coming back home after a five year tour is going to CHANGE things in America.

[mainiac]

Not sure if trolling.
Certain that I approve.

But where do we send our 102 million man army of users for their tour of duty?

[MaximumZero]

Going to follow this thread. Probably not going to contribute much, if any.

[SalmonGod]

No it's called projecting what you want to see onto history.

Not a very productive comment in the sense that you could direct it at anyone no matter what they're saying, and there's no good way to substantiate it.  For as much as you like to remind us of how well politically educated you are (and I do believe you), mainiac, you seem to often forego making a point in favor of aimless snippy belittlement.

Have other people's posts in this conversation been particularly substantiated?

The only time someone even took the time to list examples in this "debate" I engaged in the examples.  But I think it would be hard at this point to even accuse me of lowering the tone of conversation here.

At least other people are attempting?  You haven't even bothered to state your own perspective, only make passing sarcastic remarks about other people's.  Your tone throughout the thread has been like reading a cranky, spiteful Stewie Griffin.  I know you're better than that.  Are you acting this way because of that agreement you made with greatjustice?

[Trollheiming]

The whole blaming the violent culture bothers me when there's no one acknowledging what it's promoting in the first place: Gun violence. Americans are not more prone to being mass killers than people in other countries, it's just way easier for people to get their hands on the weaponry to do so if they're so inclined [or, you know, crazy without a support system to help them since we live in a lovely country] [with the conditioning that guns are the tool for the job].

Britain didn't seem to solve its murder rate with a gun ban.


People have reasons to kill other people, and they choose whatever means are convenient. If there are guns at hand, that's often a popular way... but the murder rate doesn't fall just because a certain tool is removed from the murderer's toolbox. Mictlantecuhtli is wrong. In Mich's world, every gun is a sentient evil like Frodo's ring, and gun owners gasp and wince as they try to resist the homicidal visions being sent to their minds by their gun collections.

I mean, it's great to spew baseless opinions without sources, like claiming that gun violence is somehow distinct from other types of violence, but that's not the evidence. People simply find other tools to kill and threaten the people that they were going to kill and threaten, regardless.

And how is a person who owns even a good rifle going to "revolt" against the entire U.S. Army?  The army government and the army are more well equipped than any survivalist nutter could ever hope to be.  One drone strike, tank deployment, or a regular police force and they're done.  The concept that having guns will somehow protect you from the "big ebul gubmint" is completely ludicrous and merely helps appeal to the paranoid among us.

If even a small fraction of gun owners, like 0.1% of them, happened to view one pivotal act as a "shot heard round the world" you could get 20,000 armed people in front of the whitehouse and capitol building before Obama had finished signing an executive order to ban their guns. It would be like a flash mob, except this one is bristling with guns. Can you imagine a battle in DC around the national monuments and government buildings? The president would not call in heavy strikes to destroy DC. If he even saw it coming to begin with.

There would be no frontlines for a set-piece battle, just urban warfare where soldiers are having to kill their own citizens for laws that they themselves probably don't support. And that's the flaw in the Milgram study. These soldiers are not neutral observers. Many of them are sympathetic with gun rights. If you look at the "gun nuts" a good chuck are former soldiers or current soldiers. Such a situation would hearken back to Tiananmen, and you may be surprised to learn than Deng had to search the army for a unit actually willing to pull the trigger on its own citizens.

In the wake of this bedlam, America's image as a free country is toast. It basically loses it's raison d'etre. Complete lack of legitmacy.

[Scoops Novel]

Trollheiming, given past experience, source your graphs.

using WMDS on your own population tends to have certain disadvantages. Remember that no one has ever used a nuke since 1945. They use it, and on their own population no less, and it'll start all out war with everyone else.

That's a given to begin with in a US coup. The crux of my point was the threat potential of bio-weapons.

[Loud Whispers]

Britain didn't seem to solve its murder rate with a gun ban.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Please if you use Britain as an example get it from British or international sources.


UK - 1.2 homicides per 100,000 people
US - 4.8 per 100,000 people


"The number of murders and killings in England and Wales has fallen to the lowest level in nearly 30 years, Office for National Statistics figures show."