Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 ... 1738 1739 [1740] 1741 1742 ... 3611

Author Topic: AmeriPol thread  (Read 4462733 times)

Kagus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Olive oil. Don't you?
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26085 on: November 23, 2018, 07:48:47 pm »

There are some extremely expensive jackets being marketed as "bulletproof" though! Guaranteed to not work as well as we'd all like to pretend they do!

Many are also ugly as sin. And as they say, the best defense is a good offensive fashion sense.

Hanslanda

  • Bay Watcher
  • Baal's More Evil American Twin
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26086 on: November 23, 2018, 07:50:56 pm »

I'll just start wearing titanium plate armor over mail under a Dragonscale vest.
Logged
Well, we could put two and two together and write a book: "The Shit that Hans and Max Did: You Won't Believe This Shit."
He's fucking with us.

Egan_BW

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26087 on: November 23, 2018, 07:54:05 pm »

They're not really bulletproof so much as slightly-bullet-resistant. Especially if rifles get involved.
Of course, the best defense against getting shot is to not be shot at. That might mean shooting first, but human bodies can sometimes just decide to ignore the whole bullet thing and carry on.
So the best defense against being shot at is to not be near anyone who wants to shoot you.
Logged
I would starve tomorrow if I could eat the world today.

PTTG??

  • Bay Watcher
  • Kringrus! Babak crulurg tingra!
    • View Profile
    • http://www.nowherepublishing.com
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26088 on: November 23, 2018, 08:02:37 pm »

Here's the weird thing with America: You bring up actually banning guns and people act like you're proposing genocide. But when the government actually rounds up children and shoves them in cages, the response is "Obama technically did the same thing on a tiny fraction of the scale, so it's OK."

Don't get me wrong, I realize that actually banning and collecting guns would literally cause a civil war (ironically enough). It just really makes me uncomfortable with this country that about half the population has their priorities so twisted.
Logged
A thousand million pool balls made from precious metals, covered in beef stock.

Dorsidwarf

  • Bay Watcher
  • [INTERSTELLAR]
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26089 on: November 23, 2018, 08:26:16 pm »

Here's the weird thing with America: You bring up actually banning guns and people act like you're proposing genocide. But when the government actually rounds up children and shoves them in cages, the response is "Obama technically did the same thing on a tiny fraction of the scale, so it's OK."

Don't get me wrong, I realize that actually banning and collecting guns would literally cause a civil war (ironically enough). It just really makes me uncomfortable with this country that about half the population has their priorities so twisted.

Kids in cages on the Texan border doesnt personally affect people in, say, rural minnesota. Immediacy always wins out when it comes to people getting up in arms about injustices.
Logged
Quote from: Rodney Ootkins
Everything is going to be alright

Loud Whispers

  • Bay Watcher
  • They said we have to aim higher, so we dug deeper.
    • View Profile
    • I APPLAUD YOU SIRRAH
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26090 on: November 23, 2018, 09:12:59 pm »

A supernova far away shines dimmer than a lit matchstick held before your eyes

Dunamisdeos

  • Bay Watcher
  • Duggin was the hero we needed.
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26091 on: November 23, 2018, 09:25:40 pm »

I do not think it would cause a civil war. I think a minority of wahoos who think they can beat up the actual military with their rad tactical coolguy guns would get their asses handed to them in like a week.

It's great that said wahoos are ready to defend their home and land with cleverness and gumption, but after you heroically take out a couple of infantrymen they are going to raze your house with a drone then park a tank on the rubble. This isn't the 1800's, you aren't on equal footing with the US military because you have a cache of small arms.
Logged
FACT I: Post note art is best art.
FACT II: Dunamisdeos is a forum-certified wordsmith.
FACT III: "All life begins with Post-it notes and ends with Post-it notes. This is the truth! This is my belief!...At least for now."
FACT IV: SPEECHO THE TRUSTWORM IS YOUR FRIEND or BEHOLD: THE FRUIT ENGINE 3.0

Hanslanda

  • Bay Watcher
  • Baal's More Evil American Twin
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26092 on: November 23, 2018, 09:29:42 pm »

I do not think it would cause a civil war. I think a minority of wahoos who think they can beat up the actual military with their rad tactical coolguy guns would get their asses handed to them in like a week.

It's great that said wahoos are ready to defend their home and land with cleverness and gumption, but after you heroically take out a couple of infantrymen they are going to raze your house with a drone then park a tank on the rubble. This isn't the 1800's, you aren't on equal footing with the US military because you have a cache of small arms.

This. Even if they outnumbered, say, a platoon of Marines sent in to confiscate their guns, it would be a very short, very one-sided fight. The Marines are trained in group fighting tactics while the nutsos are islands in a storm. They'd be individually overwhelmed very swiftly. They're mostly too paranoid to work together.
Logged
Well, we could put two and two together and write a book: "The Shit that Hans and Max Did: You Won't Believe This Shit."
He's fucking with us.

Loud Whispers

  • Bay Watcher
  • They said we have to aim higher, so we dug deeper.
    • View Profile
    • I APPLAUD YOU SIRRAH
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26093 on: November 23, 2018, 10:36:10 pm »

This. Even if they outnumbered, say, a platoon of Marines sent in to confiscate their guns, it would be a very short, very one-sided fight. The Marines are trained in group fighting tactics while the nutsos are islands in a storm. They'd be individually overwhelmed very swiftly. They're mostly too paranoid to work together.
1. How many times do the Americans have to lose Vietnam again and again all across the world from Iraq to Afghanistan before realising that the USA hasn't failed because it didn't apply enough firepower, the US failed because you're not supposed to send in the Marines, you're supposed to send in the police, and the police aren't supposed to have more weapons than the marines. By the time you're treating a civil issue as a military one you've failed, game is over. The British failed to suppress the American rebellion because they were fighting fucking nutso islands in a hurricane, capturing one of their bases or units meant fuck all to the rest of the nutsos - the professional elite force will find victory after victory does absolutely nothing to actually destroy the enemy, like an oil slick spread over the ocean. Drone striking every American who refuses to hand over their armaments would not strike sufficient fear into the heart of the American people that they would surrender. Hell no. They'd be disgusted and fight harder. Looking at the British experience in Ireland or India, even when the force discrepency between a civilian populace and a post-WWII war machine was at its highest, every fight was politically insufferable for the British government, same here. You'd be handing the narrative on a silver platter with a very ostensible display of tyrannical power.

2. It wouldn't take much for the militias to organise in the same manner that the Ukrainian ones did, and everyone seems to be overlooking the obvious potential in millions of rednecks who do bugger all but shoot and fuck all day led & trained by any number of the USA's current population of 18 million+ veterans everyone forgets about, of which there's a significant portion of homeless, suicidal or sick. To paraphrase a British officer fighting undisciplined manchu infantry: they were not as well-trained, but manchu bullets killed just as easily as theirs. Whose to say how many of those 18 million would oppose surrendering their weapons? For whom would they fight?

3. Lone nutsos & group nutsos would not stand in the open waiting for the full weight of the US military machine to grind them down, especially in the likely event of their ranks including veterans. Civil wars hurt for a reason, everyone knows their enemy. Using an elite mobile force to patrol a sea of American towns populated by unknown quantities of nutsos presents the significant problem of your elite units being in the open, the nutsos in the crowd. Or innawds. They can't be everywhere at once, and they've also got to be sensitive of disrupting the public lest they incur protests & obstructions, or dissent within their ranks

4. We're assuming that no one within the armed forces would be sympathetic to the 2nd amendment, which seems like an alternate reality stipulation
5. Organised crime & foreign intervention will confound all US efforts at the first sign of weakness. A divided, well-armed populace would very easily find sponsors stoking the flames. If you believe foreign powers are willing to hack your elections and fuck up your infrastructure in peacetime the likelihood of them sitting out a perfect opportunity to permanently cripple your country is 0%. Attacks on US communications, intelligence, infrastructure, flooding the US with guns, drugs, cash and foreign volunteers. Already US domestic terrorism is trained internationally, a war would be a marsh of death
6. Your intelligence would be key. Considering the state of US intelligence, blighted by leaks, corruption and interservice rivalry... It's optimistic to say the least.

7. If you look at any of the uprisings of the 20th or 21st century from China to Eastern Europe to the Middle East, where rebellions often simply cannot win, it is enough to achieve a breakdown of the ruling regime's control simply by ensuring that the ruling regime also cannot win. Even with armoured regiments and air power, a tank and a jet cannot police a street or collect taxes against a belligerent population, which means that a lengthy occupation by ground forces would be necessary. If this is not possible across the vast geographic size of the USA, administration breaks down and local strongmen or security forces establish their own power bases, and gradually the central government's authority does a Libya. Which is to say it disintegrates and all the security forces or militias left standing at the end claim their slice of pie

8. You always leave a way out; sending in an elite military unit to conduct a police action is going to result in obvious undesirable outcomes. At best, people start burying guns up their arses, at worse they react like cornered rats.

9. Go for the pistols & ammunition. Handguns are the biggest troublemakers because no one walks around with a rifle in their pants, while upping the price of ammunition starves enthusiasts out of guns or money, whichever buckles first. Couple that with gun buybacks and effective border control to cut down on black market trade of guns, and you have a much better shot at successfully disarming the majority of the US population without incurring the wrath of #patriot Americans or harming Americans living in the middle of bumfuck nowhere who have legitimate uses for armaments. Keep it from ever becoming a military situation

Kagus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Olive oil. Don't you?
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26094 on: November 24, 2018, 05:23:00 am »

You're forgetting the part where it would take longer than a week for the military just to finish preparing for an assault on a single building.

Hanslanda

  • Bay Watcher
  • Baal's More Evil American Twin
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26095 on: November 24, 2018, 06:30:07 am »

Those are all very good points. Well stated.
Logged
Well, we could put two and two together and write a book: "The Shit that Hans and Max Did: You Won't Believe This Shit."
He's fucking with us.

misko27

  • Bay Watcher
  • Lawful Neutral; Prophet of Pestilence
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26096 on: November 24, 2018, 10:20:27 am »

The issue here is that confiscating guns is already so far away from the realm of possibility that I don't think it's worth considering the hypothetical consequences; at least considering similarly unlikely scenarios like an alien invasion have a chance to be entertaining.

People coming for your guns is a commercial tactic to make money off of the gullible and a political one to scare people away from some dems. Nothing more. Your average tabloid has more factual content per page than this conspiracy.
Logged
The Age of Man is over. It is the Fire's turn now

PTTG??

  • Bay Watcher
  • Kringrus! Babak crulurg tingra!
    • View Profile
    • http://www.nowherepublishing.com
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26097 on: November 24, 2018, 04:40:06 pm »

I bring it up specifically because it's weird that it is completely untenable.
Logged
A thousand million pool balls made from precious metals, covered in beef stock.

SalmonGod

  • Bay Watcher
  • Nyarrr
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26098 on: November 24, 2018, 04:46:43 pm »

Though that kind of action itself doesn't have a good track record of creating stable and functioning governments, just setting the stage for more violence and tyranny.

I interpret this as stating that every government in the world is violent and tyrannical :P

Because for real - how many governments in the world today are not in their modern incarnations originated from a civil uprising or independence movement that involved at least some violence?
Logged
In the land of twilight, under the moon
We dance for the idiots
As the end will come so soon
In the land of twilight

Maybe people should love for the sake of loving, and not with all of these optimization conditions.

Lord Shonus

  • Bay Watcher
  • Angle of Death
    • View Profile
Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #26099 on: November 24, 2018, 05:13:42 pm »

Apart from the former British territories (US, Canada, Australia, etc), the world's more stable governments went through several cycles of upheaval before settling down into their present forms. The ex-British nations inherited their systems from the British (who did go through several rounds of civil war before their government settled into modern form), with their breaks (most of which were peaceful) being mostly a process of the existing local government severing ties with the British one rather than the nation breaking off and then trying to get things together.


Logged
On Giant In the Playground and Something Awful I am Gnoman.
Man, ninja'd by a potentially inebriated Lord Shonus. I was gonna say to burn it.
Pages: 1 ... 1738 1739 [1740] 1741 1742 ... 3611