Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Starver]

The Young Women's And Old Mens Communist Association could form a millitia and boom done.

♬It's fun to stay at the YWAOMCA♬

Code: [Select]


\   /     / \  ( )  ^ ^       / \
 \0/   0  \0/  |0|  \0/   0/\ \0/
  |  \/|\/ |    |    |    |\/  |

♬It's fun to stay at the YWAOMCA♬

[Shazbot]

"What are military style weapons in civilian hands for?", asks a thread full of people who have complained for years about a President being a puppet controlled by a foreign government, fretted over a racist forced-migration threat for millions of undocumented neighbors, lamented the rise of racially-motivated killings of minority youth by unaccountable police, feared the militarization of formerly civilian police agencies, contemplated the virtues of an entire reconstruction of the American economic system, and the only answer anyone has is, "shoot coyotes".

That's... that's the joke to me. The need for every citizen to have arms equal to the common infantryman under the bed is every step toward a tin-pot dictatorship that you bemoan. How much faster would your rights be trampled over if there was no fear of a general insurrection against tyranny? Every President in our history has stepped down from power at the end of his term for this very reason; very few countries can say the same, none of which are of our size.

It never fails to amaze me how the same groups who relish describing in florid terms the insuperable power of our military when advocating for more ready recourse to war are also absolutely convinced that a bunch of variably-trained and disorganized schmucks with small arms are a meaningful threat to that same military over and above the difficulties already represented by conquering their own industrial base.

The heaviest police presence per capita is the District of Columbia at 6.5 police officers per 1,000. The US military is at 5.22 soldiers per 1,000 American citizens, 430,000 of which are in the Navy and so dubiously useful at anything inland. In the last civil war, the American military had its officer corps gutted as all the experienced officers were Southerners or in southern posts during the Mexican-American war. At that time, military units were organized around states, much as the National Guard currently is. Today we have an all-volunteer military. Most officers and men have their homes or families where they are posted. Most counties with military bases vote Republican. Furthermore the logistics train for the military, all its spare parts and fuel and the power and rail needed to move it, will be surrounded on all sides by the insurrection it needs to fight. All officers take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and the gun-owning insurrection types are nearly all constitutionalists.

Being a guerrilla war waged over a few hundred million more people and a dozen times the square miles, I'm sure it will go as easily as Afghanistan or Vietnam, Trekkin. After all, what young man motivated by patriotism isn't thrilled at the idea of carpet bombing his own country?

The US Code does not recognize the YMAOMCA's members as lawfully eligible for the militia and are therefore domestic terrorists. Pew pew pew pew.

[smjjames]

"What are military style weapons in civilian hands for?", asks a thread full of people who have complained for years about a President being a puppet controlled by a foreign government, fretted over a racist forced-migration threat for millions of undocumented neighbors, lamented the rise of racially-motivated killings of minority youth by unaccountable police, feared the militarization of formerly civilian police agencies, contemplated the virtues of an entire reconstruction of the American economic system, and the only answer anyone has is, "shoot coyotes".

That's... that's the joke to me. The need for every citizen to have arms equal to the common infantryman under the bed is every step toward a tin-pot dictatorship that you bemoan. How much faster would your rights be trampled over if there was no fear of a general insurrection against tyranny? Every President in our history has stepped down from power at the end of his term for this very reason; very few countries can say the same, none of which are of our size.

It never fails to amaze me how the same groups who relish describing in florid terms the insuperable power of our military when advocating for more ready recourse to war are also absolutely convinced that a bunch of variably-trained and disorganized schmucks with small arms are a meaningful threat to that same military over and above the difficulties already represented by conquering their own industrial base.

The heaviest police presence per capita is the District of Columbia at 65 police officers per 100,000.

What about outside DC? That's somewhat distorted due to it being the nations captiol and being the place where lots of VIP dignitaries, etc, hang out.

Your point would still be made otherwise though.

[Reelya]

All officers take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and the gun-owning insurrection types are nearly all constitutionalists.

Righto, just call yourself "constitutionalists" and have the illegal armed uprising and everyone will just go "gee, they support the constitution? So do I! Let's overthrow the elected government together!". That argument is stupid because just calling yourself "constitutionalists" doesn't mean that everyone sworn to uphold the constitution will join an armed rebellion. The act of armed rebellion to overthrow the constitutional government, mind you. Who need the "things that made me laugh today thread" when we have this stuff?

[Shazbot]

That is the single highest officer-per-citizen municipality I found in listing of the major cities, picked specifically because it is hyper-policed. My point being; the police are not sufficient to be useful in suppressing a hypothetical uprising unless said uprising has no small arms.

WOAH, extra 0. I thought that was way too low. 65 per 10,000. I'll edit the post.

http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/law-enforcement-police-department-employee-totals-for-cities.html

[Shazbot]

All officers take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, and the gun-owning insurrection types are nearly all constitutionalists.

Righto, just call yourself "constitutionalists" and have the illegal armed uprising and everyone will just go "gee, they support the constitution? So do I! Let's overthrow the elected government together!". That argument is stupid because just calling yourself "constitutionalists" doesn't mean that everyone sworn to uphold the constitution will join an armed rebellion. The act of armed rebellion to overthrow the constitutional government, mind you. Who need the "things that made me laugh today thread" when we have this stuff?

No more absurd than those black-clad "anti-fascists" who beat people over the head with bike locks for having opinions they don't like.

I never said everyone. You inserted that yourself to avoid admitting very reasonable some. If some portion of the military and some portion of law enforcement refuse these orders, the notion of an insurrection being not credible goes the rest of the way out the window. There are some 20-30 million lawfully owned military style rifles in America, 44% owned by former law enforcement and military, and 100 million rifles of all types. For comparison, all AK-47s ever made amounts to 70 million.

Only about 20% of the Army is in the "combat arms", and even there about only one in seven are principle front-line combatants. The rest are logistics, service and support. The modern military is leaned down to a handful of high-lethality systems intended to engage other high-lethality systems in a conventional war. But when you consider only one of the hundred people required to support a tank is actually in the tank, it becomes evident why guerilla wars are very difficult to fight by conventional armies. Any randomly selected soldier's primary task is engine maintenance or operating a radio or creating PowerPoint presentations. Any randomly selected guerilla's primary task is shooting their given rifle. It does not take long at all before the high-lethality systems lose their ability to fight due to broken-back logistics.

The casual dismissal of an armed populace being a credible threat to a foreign invader or a theoretical tyrannical American government is therefore unfounded.

[UristMcChladni]

The casual dismissal of an armed populace being a credible threat to a foreign invader or a theoretical tyrannical American government is therefore unfounded.

This does explain why places like France, Germany, and Australia are having so much trouble holding their government accountable to it's own laws, and have valid fears of a slow decline into a dictatorship. Unlike the US. /s

[Shazbot]

France, Germany and Australia.

31 per 100 ownership, 30 per 100 ownership, 13 per 100 ownership.

To break it down simply, for every able-bodied French or German man, there's a firearm. The Australians will have to arm half that number with knives, spiders and drop bears.

[Zangi]

Nah, a slow decline is actually how you do tyrannical Murrica properly. 
A swift hard smack is more likely to get people up in arms, rather then the slow moving must-watch trainwreck as it bungles ahead in a drunken stupor.

Also mass breeding of apathy, most people worrying more about living week-to-week, and the state of affairs in education probably helps with being content to watch that impending trainwreck slowly roll along.

[UristMcChladni]

France, Germany and Australia.

31 per 100 ownership, 30 per 100 ownership, 13 per 100 ownership.

To break it down simply, for every able-bodied French or German man, there's a firearm. The Australians will have to arm half that number with knives, spiders and drop bears.

You're saying that one of the countries with the strictest gun ownership laws in Europe, France, is adequately armed? Because if that's the case, we can pass a ton more restrictions on guns in the US and get by fine. The strict psych evals, limits on clip capacity, limit on guns and ammo per owner, and the ability to only obtain temporary carry licenses, and only in cases where you demonstrate a need to carry the handgun, would be great to implement here.

Also, you're dodging the point. Democracy doesn't rely on firepower anywhere else, why would it here?

[Trekkin]

Nah, a slow decline is actually how you do tyrannical Murrica properly. 
A swift hard smack is more likely to get people up in arms, rather then the slow moving must-watch trainwreck as it bungles ahead in a drunken stupor.

Also mass breeding of apathy, most people worrying more about living week-to-week, and the state of affairs in education probably helps with being content to watch that impending trainwreck slowly roll along.

This was actually part of my original point, in a way: if we're keeping all these guns around in order to fend off government tyranny (or rather, if 3% of us are keeping half these guns around for that purpose), we should ask ourselves whether those 3% have anything worth taking or any rights it would be profitable to suppress in order to motivate such an imposition.  I contend that they do not; Shazbot has, for all his verbosity, not seen fit to contest this. Therefore, it would seem the problem is moot, and we may as well take the guns away anyway.

[Shazbot]

"We may as well suppress the rights of ten million armed people". Why, to reduce the number of people being shot? You want to go door to door through fifty two million households to confiscate two hundred sixty million firearms away from eighty million people...

With less than a million police officers? Lets see that's... eighty... to one...

At a time when the national crime rate has been declining for decades?

Or you just want to confiscate from the 3% of citizens who are collectors and enthusiasts? Will the other quarter of the population just sit by? Will the police even participate since 44% of your targeted military-style rifles are owned by ex-law enforcement and veterans?

Its ridiculous. You may as well ban the production and sale of alcohol in a nation full of alcoholic police officers.

[Dunamisdeos]

"I shot some police officers dead for trying to take my guns, NOW they'll leave me and my guns alone!"

Also, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't go door to door. I'm pretty sure they would first arrange for a way for citizens to either register or turn in their firearms en-masse, compare the amount taken in to the estimated number owned in the US, then deal with people keeping illegal firearms on a local level.

[Shazbot]

You're pretty sure people who disagree with you are gullible.

[Reelya]

Other countries got on top of their gun ownership problem without door to door goon squads going around. It's not rocket science.

For instance, the rate of household gun ownership in Australia in 1988 was ~24%, which isn't much less than the 31% in the USA. About 6% of Australian households have a gun now, and no goon-squads going door to door was required.

Similarly, the number of US households with a gun fell from 50% in 1977 to 31% in 2014. Less people have a gun, now (even if that's offset by one guy with 50 guns) which succinctly explains why gun deaths are down, overall in the USA. Again, where were those gun-grabbing goon squads which are supposed to be an inevitable part of reducing guns? If you say "the ATF", then well, gun owners are not in fact doing a very good job in preventing the ATF from taking other gun owner's guns, are they?

In future years that current 31% will probably head down to the low 20's and you'll have something like 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 households with any firearms, rather than the 1-in-3 now. And that's good: because 80% of households which have a kid who could go insane won't have that kid getting access to a gun, and at that point in time burglars will be significantly less likely to find a gun to steal when they rob your house - note the obvious fact that burglars try and rob your house when you're not home meaning that self-defense guns are much more likely to be stolen by robbers than used to fight robbers. Very few robbers want a "home invasion" situation because they know it's very likely to turn into a shootout vs the cops.

Again, that's before any laws even need to be passed. People in general are just getting more gun-averse over time, because of all the high-profile shootings. It won't require much in the way of new regulations to cause that number to decline faster, because it's already headed in that direction. A small nudge such as new regulations or taxes, or requiring permits for new purchases of handguns, will cause the number to decline faster.