3 ms·

The 20th Century suggested the biggest danger to people is their own governments, which killed a bare minimum of 100 million of their own (my personal estimate,

by hga 11y ago

The 20th Century suggested the biggest danger to people is their own governments, which killed a bare minimum of 100 million of their own (my personal estimate, for countries that are still occupied by hostile governments and therefore their killing fields are yet to be closely examined, is 250 million). The US has a strong bias towards allowing the people to be well armed, starting with our 2nd Amendment. This certainly has costs, but many of us prefer the tradeoffs.

pjc50 11y ago
Most of the people in the US killed by the US government or subsidiaries (like police departments) on an ongoing basis are nonwhite. The politics of armed self-defence against the government has ... not worked well for this particular problem.
- hga 11y ago
  Most of the people in the US killed by the US government or subsidiaries (like police departments) on an ongoing basis are nonwhite. Citation please? A quick check reveals that is said to be true if adjusted for raw population numbers, but I seriously doubt it in absolute numbers, or when adjusted for criminality of the respective populations (which last time I checked extends to white sub-populations, like Scotts-Irish/Southerners). And this is happening to millions of Americans? Numbers matter, and I'd say the depredations of US police are limited in part by their knowledge that we can and will shoot back. At least I find that one of the betters explanations for their habit of "puppycide", killing dogs whenever they can, they're a target which of course cannot shoot back.
- kls 11y ago
  The right to self defense does not confer the absolute outcome of successful self defense. Take for example the American Indians many of them where well armed and lead self defense campaigns, some successful. Though ultimately unsuccessful in the big picture, it did have a limiting factor on the atrocity of American Indian genocide. Contrast that with the German Jews who did suffer a slow roll of disarmament, and you get wholesale extermination. The Indian gun brought the US to the negotiating table where in Germany there was only a final solution. Make no mistake Sherman was just as hell bent as Hitler on total eradication (Sherman is credited with originating the term Final Solution). The difference is the gun stood in the way of Sherman's goals. If we are specifically talking about the recent issues with Black America that is a different debate all together as their are cultural implications that go along with it as well. One could blame institutional racism and I am sure it plays a factor but simple narratives are rarely the whole picture. Many of those shot have embraced a faction of US black culture that is fatalistic and backwards at best, therefore it is hard for them to gain broader sympathy beyond their own group who tend to see the world thru black perspective. That being said, they still have the right to self determination and self defense, if they truly are being oppressed then they should take up arms and fight that oppression. But they will have a hard time gaining broad support if the action carries the banner of an individual like Michael Brown, who had just robbed a store and was charging the officer. There are systemic problems in the black community such as the individuals who told the truth about Brown's shooting at the grand jury now being targeted by criminal groups that act as thugs for powers in the black community. The point being is, the dynamics of a handful of killings of blacks by the government does not constitute genocide and the circumstances of many of the cases would be hard pressed to garner broad support outside of their community. The black perspective is that this is racism and it could be, but I don't personally believe that racism paints the whole picture. Regardless of that fact, the black killings and American Indian genocide are completely different examples where one is clearly self defense while the others have questionable criminal activity and police actions associated with them and where further reviewed by independent committees such as Grand Juries. A constant is that bad men are always willing the use force and will go to any length to gain power of force. Another constant is that bad men are not going away. If this flame thrower was some how the end all be all, you can bet whether legal or not, the bad will get it, build it, do what they have to do to acquire that power. Ignoring reality by trying to ban items only furthers the problem because a man hell bent on power is going to, via whatever means possible, gain that power and the balancing factor has been removed. An example of this was the LA shoot out, where an entire force of cops what outgunned because policy up until that point prohibited regular police organizations from carrying military style weapons. Is there a practical civilian application for this device, who knows? I personally doubt it, other than a really cool camp fire lighter, but that is not the point. The point is severely punishing wrongdoers does far more to prevent evil than parenting grown ups. For some reason as a society we have trended more towards the latter and gotten far more soft on the former. Yet a guy in France where civilian guns are all but outlawed, shows up with another AK but we somehow think banning this thing will make it go away.
  - hga 11y ago
    But they will have a hard time gaining broad support under if the action carries the banner of an individual like Michael Brown, who had just robbed a store and was charging the officer. After trying to grab the officer's handgun and getting shot in the hand at contact range for his troubles. One note about our sad history with American Indians is that you can't separate that history with a number of them deciding to side with the French in what we call the French and Indian Wars, the American theater of the Seven Years war (which among other things trained a core of officers who lead in the American Revolution, including Washington; it's not generally realized that the men opposing the British at Lexington and Concord were vastly more experienced). After that there was no way it wouldn't end in tears.
    - kls 11y ago
      Yes agreed don't read my narrative as a cart blanche cover over Indian atrocities, there are a steady stream of raped white woman and dead pioneers in their wake as well. Their savagery gained them the nickname as well as gave Sherman the support he needed to set upon his genocidal plans. But as always Sherman prayed upon the actions of a few to dehumanize the faces of many. Their actions did not justify genocide though it invited it, nor does the genocide at Sherman and the US military hands negate the savage actions of some Indian factions nor does it leave the US population at large accountable for those actions.
leoedin 11y ago
Do you seriously think that having a few guns is going to make a difference when the government come knocking at your door? The idea that the government will somehow turn suddenly into the enemy and millions of Americans will seize their arms and rise up against it, toppling it and replacing it with some new, better government is a complete fantasy. A fantasy which costs 30,000 lives a year.
- hga 11y ago
  At bare minimum it'll make a difference when they come to my neighbor's door and I and other neighbors shoot them from the flank. The rest of what you said is part strawmen, part a testament to passivity in the face of evil and a severe lack of imagination, part a lumping of suicides with homicides, which statistics from other nations with severely anti-gun regimes suggests would only result in substitutions if guns were magically removed from American hands. And let me add this thought from a man who saw many of his fellows die in labor camps: 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? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. 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! That's from Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his GULAG Archipelago. Again, number matter. Make mass murder too expensive, and it can't even be conceived of. Sort of like how you can't conceive of it "happening here." Which neither can I, seeing how well we are armed, not to mention quite capable of offensive counter attacks. Note well how the mostly clueless nutcase Chris Dorner, in a state where I'll note most people are not allowed to bear arms, caused the police to completely lose their shit. Imagine that multiplied 10 million times over (the so called "3%").

by hga 11y ago

pjc50 11y ago

Most of the people in the US killed by the US government or subsidiaries (like police departments) on an ongoing basis are nonwhite. The politics of armed self-defence against the government has ... not worked well for this particular problem.

hga 11y ago
Most of the people in the US killed by the US government or subsidiaries (like police departments) on an ongoing basis are nonwhite. Citation please? A quick check reveals that is said to be true if adjusted for raw population numbers, but I seriously doubt it in absolute numbers, or when adjusted for criminality of the respective populations (which last time I checked extends to white sub-populations, like Scotts-Irish/Southerners). And this is happening to millions of Americans? Numbers matter, and I'd say the depredations of US police are limited in part by their knowledge that we can and will shoot back. At least I find that one of the betters explanations for their habit of "puppycide", killing dogs whenever they can, they're a target which of course cannot shoot back.
kls 11y ago
The right to self defense does not confer the absolute outcome of successful self defense. Take for example the American Indians many of them where well armed and lead self defense campaigns, some successful. Though ultimately unsuccessful in the big picture, it did have a limiting factor on the atrocity of American Indian genocide. Contrast that with the German Jews who did suffer a slow roll of disarmament, and you get wholesale extermination. The Indian gun brought the US to the negotiating table where in Germany there was only a final solution. Make no mistake Sherman was just as hell bent as Hitler on total eradication (Sherman is credited with originating the term Final Solution). The difference is the gun stood in the way of Sherman's goals. If we are specifically talking about the recent issues with Black America that is a different debate all together as their are cultural implications that go along with it as well. One could blame institutional racism and I am sure it plays a factor but simple narratives are rarely the whole picture. Many of those shot have embraced a faction of US black culture that is fatalistic and backwards at best, therefore it is hard for them to gain broader sympathy beyond their own group who tend to see the world thru black perspective. That being said, they still have the right to self determination and self defense, if they truly are being oppressed then they should take up arms and fight that oppression. But they will have a hard time gaining broad support if the action carries the banner of an individual like Michael Brown, who had just robbed a store and was charging the officer. There are systemic problems in the black community such as the individuals who told the truth about Brown's shooting at the grand jury now being targeted by criminal groups that act as thugs for powers in the black community. The point being is, the dynamics of a handful of killings of blacks by the government does not constitute genocide and the circumstances of many of the cases would be hard pressed to garner broad support outside of their community. The black perspective is that this is racism and it could be, but I don't personally believe that racism paints the whole picture. Regardless of that fact, the black killings and American Indian genocide are completely different examples where one is clearly self defense while the others have questionable criminal activity and police actions associated with them and where further reviewed by independent committees such as Grand Juries. A constant is that bad men are always willing the use force and will go to any length to gain power of force. Another constant is that bad men are not going away. If this flame thrower was some how the end all be all, you can bet whether legal or not, the bad will get it, build it, do what they have to do to acquire that power. Ignoring reality by trying to ban items only furthers the problem because a man hell bent on power is going to, via whatever means possible, gain that power and the balancing factor has been removed. An example of this was the LA shoot out, where an entire force of cops what outgunned because policy up until that point prohibited regular police organizations from carrying military style weapons. Is there a practical civilian application for this device, who knows? I personally doubt it, other than a really cool camp fire lighter, but that is not the point. The point is severely punishing wrongdoers does far more to prevent evil than parenting grown ups. For some reason as a society we have trended more towards the latter and gotten far more soft on the former. Yet a guy in France where civilian guns are all but outlawed, shows up with another AK but we somehow think banning this thing will make it go away.
- hga 11y ago
  But they will have a hard time gaining broad support under if the action carries the banner of an individual like Michael Brown, who had just robbed a store and was charging the officer. After trying to grab the officer's handgun and getting shot in the hand at contact range for his troubles. One note about our sad history with American Indians is that you can't separate that history with a number of them deciding to side with the French in what we call the French and Indian Wars, the American theater of the Seven Years war (which among other things trained a core of officers who lead in the American Revolution, including Washington; it's not generally realized that the men opposing the British at Lexington and Concord were vastly more experienced). After that there was no way it wouldn't end in tears.
  - kls 11y ago
    Yes agreed don't read my narrative as a cart blanche cover over Indian atrocities, there are a steady stream of raped white woman and dead pioneers in their wake as well. Their savagery gained them the nickname as well as gave Sherman the support he needed to set upon his genocidal plans. But as always Sherman prayed upon the actions of a few to dehumanize the faces of many. Their actions did not justify genocide though it invited it, nor does the genocide at Sherman and the US military hands negate the savage actions of some Indian factions nor does it leave the US population at large accountable for those actions.

leoedin 11y ago

Do you seriously think that having a few guns is going to make a difference when the government come knocking at your door? The idea that the government will somehow turn suddenly into the enemy and millions of Americans will seize their arms and rise up against it, toppling it and replacing it with some new, better government is a complete fantasy. A fantasy which costs 30,000 lives a year.

hga 11y ago
At bare minimum it'll make a difference when they come to my neighbor's door and I and other neighbors shoot them from the flank. The rest of what you said is part strawmen, part a testament to passivity in the face of evil and a severe lack of imagination, part a lumping of suicides with homicides, which statistics from other nations with severely anti-gun regimes suggests would only result in substitutions if guns were magically removed from American hands. And let me add this thought from a man who saw many of his fellows die in labor camps: 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? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. 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! That's from Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his GULAG Archipelago. Again, number matter. Make mass murder too expensive, and it can't even be conceived of. Sort of like how you can't conceive of it "happening here." Which neither can I, seeing how well we are armed, not to mention quite capable of offensive counter attacks. Note well how the mostly clueless nutcase Chris Dorner, in a state where I'll note most people are not allowed to bear arms, caused the police to completely lose their shit. Imagine that multiplied 10 million times over (the so called "3%").