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I don't see why you're being downvoted, but: trained and well-equipped people with hunting rifles can form an effective guerrilla. However, whether they could d

I don't see why you're being downvoted, but: trained and well-equipped people with hunting rifles can form an effective guerrilla. However, whether they could do much in the US today other than harass the civilian population, much in the same way as violent gangs in the inner cities already do, is highly questionable.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago
The guy in Dallas got a pretty good body count with zero local support. Local support counts for a lot, just look at Vietnam, Iraq and so on.
- hga 10y ago
  The guy in Dallas is a very interesting example, much less "crazy" than the usual, he had close quarters combat (CQC) skills substantially greater than the cops who engaged him (or mine, for that matter). It's something that should sober up a lot of gun controllers; what if non-crazy people, lots of whom are able to train themselves up to his level (something the IRA did not have the ability to do, BTW), decide they've "had enough"? (The tide has been going the other way for a long time in most of the country, so we aren't even vaguely close to that, but, it should be thought about, just like some Democrats had second thoughts on gun control after the Saturday Night Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre (scary times, those were).)
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Yet another threat of mass murder. It's pretty hard to have sensible discussions with someone who resorts to threatening to kill his opponents. There are a bunch of these. Here are just three: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6280963#6283297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6280963#6283297 > You're demonstrably wrong about "no one's going to take our guns" when it comes to slave states like New York and California that have confiscated them in recent memory, and in the latter's case is poised to do another round, but in general correct ... because in most of the US we won't tolerate it, one way or another. Keep pushing, though, if you want a second Civil War with the half or so of the nation that's "the fanatical right wing". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11558752#11563587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11558752#11563587 > In return, we've made it clear that we know our 20th Century history, if they get very far in this, we'll kill them, wholesale and retail. No common ground possible there. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9835655#9838781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9835655#9838781 > I don't see how you and wisty deny that people on my side would turn our current cold civil war into a hot shooting war. We've read our 20th Century history, we know the potential end games for us and our families. We haven't been buying guns and ammo at historically unprecedented rates just to bury them.
    - hga 10y ago
      Nope, you're thinking of noble freedom fighters, as alluded to by mgarfias in this sub-thread, not mass murderers. As for your additions including "It's pretty hard to have sensible discussions with someone who resorts to threatening to kill his opponents." Well, we "conservatives" do that all the time, it's not like our opponents don't implicitly or explicitly threaten that all the time, certainly for all my life (our current president started his political career in the home of a man who quite explicitly planned to murder me and mine as people not amenable to reeducation, once the revolution succeeded). What do you think the general campaigns against my kind, the inhabitants of flyover country, backed with the full force of the law, imply? They reduce to enforcement by harsh men with guns. That I sometimes reify this in these discussions lends clarity to just what we're really talking about. If you don't like that, if you find it so alarming that your favored policies have such nasty backlash potential, might it not be better to reconsider them, as opposed to shooting the messenger?

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

The guy in Dallas got a pretty good body count with zero local support. Local support counts for a lot, just look at Vietnam, Iraq and so on.

hga 10y ago
The guy in Dallas is a very interesting example, much less "crazy" than the usual, he had close quarters combat (CQC) skills substantially greater than the cops who engaged him (or mine, for that matter). It's something that should sober up a lot of gun controllers; what if non-crazy people, lots of whom are able to train themselves up to his level (something the IRA did not have the ability to do, BTW), decide they've "had enough"? (The tide has been going the other way for a long time in most of the country, so we aren't even vaguely close to that, but, it should be thought about, just like some Democrats had second thoughts on gun control after the Saturday Night Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre (scary times, those were).)
- DanBC 10y ago
  Yet another threat of mass murder. It's pretty hard to have sensible discussions with someone who resorts to threatening to kill his opponents. There are a bunch of these. Here are just three: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6280963#6283297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6280963#6283297 > You're demonstrably wrong about "no one's going to take our guns" when it comes to slave states like New York and California that have confiscated them in recent memory, and in the latter's case is poised to do another round, but in general correct ... because in most of the US we won't tolerate it, one way or another. Keep pushing, though, if you want a second Civil War with the half or so of the nation that's "the fanatical right wing". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11558752#11563587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11558752#11563587 > In return, we've made it clear that we know our 20th Century history, if they get very far in this, we'll kill them, wholesale and retail. No common ground possible there. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9835655#9838781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9835655#9838781 > I don't see how you and wisty deny that people on my side would turn our current cold civil war into a hot shooting war. We've read our 20th Century history, we know the potential end games for us and our families. We haven't been buying guns and ammo at historically unprecedented rates just to bury them.
  - hga 10y ago
    Nope, you're thinking of noble freedom fighters, as alluded to by mgarfias in this sub-thread, not mass murderers. As for your additions including "It's pretty hard to have sensible discussions with someone who resorts to threatening to kill his opponents." Well, we "conservatives" do that all the time, it's not like our opponents don't implicitly or explicitly threaten that all the time, certainly for all my life (our current president started his political career in the home of a man who quite explicitly planned to murder me and mine as people not amenable to reeducation, once the revolution succeeded). What do you think the general campaigns against my kind, the inhabitants of flyover country, backed with the full force of the law, imply? They reduce to enforcement by harsh men with guns. That I sometimes reify this in these discussions lends clarity to just what we're really talking about. If you don't like that, if you find it so alarming that your favored policies have such nasty backlash potential, might it not be better to reconsider them, as opposed to shooting the messenger?