4 ms·

I guess I wasn't clear about the assumptions that I'm talking about. The power balance between citizens and government has shifted drastically in favor of the g

I guess I wasn't clear about the assumptions that I'm talking about. The power balance between citizens and government has shifted drastically in favor of the government, and there isn't any citizen-controlled, organized force. The police are militarized, and I'd expect them to be on the side of enforcing the status quo. My point was that I think that maintaining citizens' gun rights wouldn't be sufficient to allow the people to overthrow the government, giving its overwhelming advantage in resources.

olivermarks 9y ago
What other option is there in that checkmate situation though? The US constitution was framed expressly to overthrow the colonial rulers and keep them out... The Swiss are all armed for the same reason 'the long-standing practice of a militia organization of the Swiss Army in which soldiers' service rifles are stored privately at home' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Switzerland
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > The US constitution was framed expressly to overthrow the colonial rulers and keep them out... No, it wasn't, throwing out the colonial rulers was done under the Articles of Confederation. The US Constitution was framed several years after that effort was completed, to deal with the problem that that the government under the AoC was too weak to get anything done outside of the imminent life-or-death struggle of the Revolution.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> My point was that I think that maintaining citizens' gun rights wouldn't be sufficient to allow the people to overthrow the government Nor was that the intent. Gun rights were viewed as a necessarya sufficient condition for that; the sufficient condition was the dependency of the government on the citizen militia to enforce its will; the Constitution presupposed (but did not mandate, which led to this presupposition becoming invalid) the absence of large permanent standing armies and permanent professional paramilitary police forces at the federal and state level, and they both federal and state government would be dependent on mobilizing the armed citizenry to deal with internal threats to order and external security threats. The guaranty of liberty wasn't “the people have smallarms to fight the government's armies of professional troops with the weapons of large scale warfare”, it was “the government may have stockpiles of weapons of large scale warfare, but absent mobilizing the armed citizenry can't actually effectively employ them and has very few troops to do anything”. The envisioned asymmetry in effective power was the reverse of what it is now, with or without gun rights.

olivermarks 9y ago

What other option is there in that checkmate situation though? The US constitution was framed expressly to overthrow the colonial rulers and keep them out... The Swiss are all armed for the same reason 'the long-standing practice of a militia organization of the Swiss Army in which soldiers' service rifles are stored privately at home' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Switzerland

dragonwriter 9y ago
> The US constitution was framed expressly to overthrow the colonial rulers and keep them out... No, it wasn't, throwing out the colonial rulers was done under the Articles of Confederation. The US Constitution was framed several years after that effort was completed, to deal with the problem that that the government under the AoC was too weak to get anything done outside of the imminent life-or-death struggle of the Revolution.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> My point was that I think that maintaining citizens' gun rights wouldn't be sufficient to allow the people to overthrow the government Nor was that the intent. Gun rights were viewed as a necessarya sufficient condition for that; the sufficient condition was the dependency of the government on the citizen militia to enforce its will; the Constitution presupposed (but did not mandate, which led to this presupposition becoming invalid) the absence of large permanent standing armies and permanent professional paramilitary police forces at the federal and state level, and they both federal and state government would be dependent on mobilizing the armed citizenry to deal with internal threats to order and external security threats. The guaranty of liberty wasn't “the people have smallarms to fight the government's armies of professional troops with the weapons of large scale warfare”, it was “the government may have stockpiles of weapons of large scale warfare, but absent mobilizing the armed citizenry can't actually effectively employ them and has very few troops to do anything”. The envisioned asymmetry in effective power was the reverse of what it is now, with or without gun rights.