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[Sheb]

I find it funny that you link a movie where British gangster are so desperate for guns they end up using 19th century stolen shotguns. I mean, sure, they work. But in the US they'd just have bought a couple of handguns at a gun show.

[smjjames]

So is your explanation that criminals in Britain are just smarter than criminals in other part of the world? Why use 19th century firearms if its not for the lack of real guns?

No, it's common in other parts of the world as well. And yeah, I wouldn't want to claim that that is the only reason. But criminals sharing guns is not unheard of. Could be that a British gun shortage is just making this more noticeable.

Also old guns are still real guns. For reference. :v

That looks like a modern AK-47 or kalaskinov, possibly back to the 50's, but it isn't 19th century. But I could be wrong for all I know.

[TheBiggerFish]

I'm going to PTW...

[scriver]

I find it funny that you link a movie where British gangster are so desperate for guns they end up using 19th century stolen shotguns. I mean, sure, they work. But in the US they'd just have bought a couple of handguns at a gun show.

Yes, it was funny. It was a joke.

That looks like a modern AK-47 or kalaskinov, possibly back to the 50's, but it isn't 19th century. But I could be wrong for all I know.

That's a bren gun, one of the iconic WW2 guns. It's not a 19th century gun, I just wanted to make the Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels reference.

The article itself notes that old does not mean bad, though. It used the Colt 1911 as an example, which has apparently remained one of the most popular guns in the US since it's creation. I assumed in my head that those are freshly produced still, though.

[SalmonGod]

A) I'd love to see North Koreans simply refusing to join the army.

Because if North Koreans refused to join the military, then the North Korean military would punish them, right?

B) You're missing one point. Prisoner's dilemma, such as "should I get a gun", or "should my country have an army" needs to have mechanisms that build trusts between parties, or some kind of enforcement mechanism. Within a country, there is one governing body that can take guns from every party in the game(and even then, it's not perfect, so we have an armed group - the police - for enforcement). There is no equivalent thing for states. I want Belgium to have an army because Russia has one. And Russia (and the Russian people) wants a be in army because the West have one. If one side disarm unilateraly, that side is screwed (and I'm not even saying we'd see US tanks parading in the streets of Moscow, but the side with an armed force would definitely be in a position of strength.)
 
Sure, I'd prefer for no-one to have an army (and keep in mind that would need to include guys like ISIS too). But it's something that can only be done slowly, by mutual diplomacy, and is hampered by the fact that every side is going to try to benefit by getting the other to disarm more than it does.

I get it.  But the principle of the argument is the same.  Yours is a different version of "If the government bans guns, then only criminals have guns, and innocents are defenseless."  The only difference is you make the case that it's harder to eliminate armies than guns.

And this is irrelevant to my original point, anyway.  Agreeing with Solifuge that there are parallels between the dark sides of police and military, because both represent the same normalization (due to acceptance of inevitability) of certain people being able to employ violence to get their way.

[Helgoland]

And this is irrelevant to my original point, anyway.  Agreeing with Solifuge that there are parallels between the dark sides of police and military, because both represent the same normalization (due to acceptance of inevitability) of certain people being able to employ violence to get their way.

There's similar bright sides too, though. And you're not the type of anarchist to cry for the abolition of all police, right?

[SalmonGod]

And this is irrelevant to my original point, anyway.  Agreeing with Solifuge that there are parallels between the dark sides of police and military, because both represent the same normalization (due to acceptance of inevitability) of certain people being able to employ violence to get their way.

There's similar bright sides too, though. And you're not the type of anarchist to cry for the abolition of all police, right?

A modern society needs to be able to enforce some rules and compromises.  Something like a law enforcement infrastructure.  But I don't think it needs to be very much like police as we know them now.

[Willfor]

The problem I have with the ideal concept (?) of this anarchism is that the police structure we have is 100% caused by simple human nature, and I am not entirely sure what structures could be created that don't involve labyrinthine methods to prevent that force from being human in order to make that work. Every conception I can think of with an anarchic system quickly breaks down into a warlord-driven political structure within a generation, which quickly takes us back to the beginning of the western civilization chain of events.

[Shadowlord]

Excusing the existence of military as necessary for defense against other militaries is basically the same as arguing that guns make the world safer.

Well, it's a prisoner's dilemma. The world would be a better place if no one had armies. But if the other side has an army, I'd rather have one too.

The parallels with guns doesn't quite work, because in the case of gun controls you have an entity (the government) who can in theory make sure no one has guns. There is nothing like that for states and armies. (And I'm not eve getting into non-states actors that require a military response).

Criminals in England have resorted to using 19th century antique firearms. While it's a "told ya so" in one way, in that the criminals have found a way to get guns, it's also a "told ya so" for the gun control people: banning guns really is keeping proper guns out of the hands of criminals. In some cases, bullets in extremely disparate cases in England can be shown to have all come from the same gun. i.e. there is an extremely limited pool of illegal weapons and they get passed around to whichever gang needs a gun. While of course, this shows on the one hand that criminals are compensating for the lack of guns, the very fact that e.g. 6 crime gangs only have 1 gun between them is also a cause for comfort.

So, in England, gun control is having the desired effect: the difficulty of gangs having guns means that other people don't need guns as much, which fuels a downward spiral of gun availability, to the point that criminals resort to stealing antique weapons. Clearly, the supply of antique pistols is a limited resource, and a few years down the track, what are they going to do then?

3d print untraceable plastic guns?

[Helgoland]

A modern society needs to be able to enforce some rules and compromises.  Something like a law enforcement infrastructure.  But I don't think it needs to be very much like police as we know them now.

Would you care to describe such a law enforcement structure? I'm awfully uneducated on all things anarchism.

[SalmonGod]

The problem I have with the ideal concept (?) of this anarchism is that the police structure we have is 100% caused by simple human nature, and I am not entirely sure what structures could be created that don't involve labyrinthine methods to prevent that force from being human in order to make that work. Every conception I can think of with an anarchic system quickly breaks down into a warlord-driven political structure within a generation, which quickly takes us back to the beginning of the western civilization chain of events.

Not really trying to get into a political theory debate about anarchism here, but I'll give my basic thoughts on this. 

This really comes down to what you believe human nature is.  I find human nature most commonly used to describe priorities and social behaviors that are believed to be near universally inherent in human beings.  The most common candidates are things like greed, laziness, violence, etc.  I don't find these things to be common or inherent in people at all.  I rather believe that the environment in which these behaviors are observed is taken for granted, and that human beings will behave completely counter to these "human natures" in different situations.  So while common wisdom holds that society is made of so many necessary evils in order to contest with human nature, I hold that the things we call human nature are a natural result of the society that we live in, and we wouldn't have to worry about them so much if we addressed the social constructs that encourage features like greed.

The expected counter-argument is that this society is a product of human nature... but humanity has only entertained the core social constructs of civilization for about 2% of the species' history.  So that assertion requires some serious backup. 

My equally unbacked assertion is that the challenges of establishing early low-tech sedentary lifestyles found certain social constructs to be the path of least resistance, and those constructs were naturally incompatible with other ways of life, which is why they exploded to near 100% adoption by the human race within such a short period.  These social constructs are so naturally hostile towards any others that they are eliminated before they can be observed.  Because we are never able to observe human beings operating in a different social environment, it's very easy to assume that it must be because the priorities and behaviors our social constructs have us mutually enforce on each other are in fact what's just natural.

But if you take the time to read into the things people do with the scraps of true freedom they have, it's nothing but counter-examples, in my opinion.

[Helgoland]

That's all pretty general and wishy-washy. What's your idea, your approach? What do you think human nature untouched by society's vices actually looks like?

[Shadowlord]

A boot stamping on a human face, forever?

If you destroyed society/civilization/whatever to "free" everyone, the nature of the best people is irrelevant if the worst people can still get enough followers and take control by force or "cult of personality."

Also, then there'd be nobody to stop injustices from being perpetrated by the strong onto the weak, of which there are innumerable examples which ignore the laws and in some times and places were ignored by it).

[Baffler]

Excusing the existence of military as necessary for defense against other militaries is basically the same as arguing that guns make the world safer.

Well, it's a prisoner's dilemma. The world would be a better place if no one had armies. But if the other side has an army, I'd rather have one too.

The parallels with guns doesn't quite work, because in the case of gun controls you have an entity (the government) who can in theory make sure no one has guns. There is nothing like that for states and armies. (And I'm not eve getting into non-states actors that require a military response).

Criminals in England have resorted to using 19th century antique firearms. While it's a "told ya so" in one way, in that the criminals have found a way to get guns, it's also a "told ya so" for the gun control people: banning guns really is keeping proper guns out of the hands of criminals. In some cases, bullets in extremely disparate cases in England can be shown to have all come from the same gun. i.e. there is an extremely limited pool of illegal weapons and they get passed around to whichever gang needs a gun. While of course, this shows on the one hand that criminals are compensating for the lack of guns, the very fact that e.g. 6 crime gangs only have 1 gun between them is also a cause for comfort.

So, in England, gun control is having the desired effect: the difficulty of gangs having guns means that other people don't need guns as much, which fuels a downward spiral of gun availability, to the point that criminals resort to stealing antique weapons. Clearly, the supply of antique pistols is a limited resource, and a few years down the track, what are they going to do then?

3d print untraceable plastic guns?

You don´t even need a 3d printer, really. Warning: extremely obnoxious. He did purchase some pieces, but mostly for convenience/safety.

Edit: Slightly more legitimate.

[Reelya]

3d print untraceable plastic guns?

Well, there was a guy in Japan who got caught with 3D printed guns, but there was one flaw: he couldn't get any bullets for the things.

When they get 3D printed untraceable plastic bullets, let me know.

That's also a flaw with plastic guns in general and metal-detectors. What exactly are the guns loaded with?