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This argument is absurd. Most of the time, Americans can't organize enough to start a union, or even join one. The idea of Americans organizing an insurgency is

This argument is absurd. Most of the time, Americans can't organize enough to start a union, or even join one. The idea of Americans organizing an insurgency is ridiculous. The idea of Americans winning an insurgency, against the largest army in the world - an army that has more counter-insurgency experience than anybody except perhaps the IDF, is still more ridiculous. Guns will never check anything because the only thing that checks power is another powerful organization - a protest movement, or a union. Guns are what happen when a protest movement fails, and if you're relying on civilian-grade stuff at this point, your protest movement is screwed anyway.

malvosenior 9y ago
There’s more to the government than the army. Go talk to some people from an ethnic group over represented in prison and ask them if the idea of police being armed while citizens are forcibly unarmed sits well...
fapjacks 9y ago
This argument is absurd. Any "reasonable, intelligent person" who's read basically any history book ever written would know that the United States would not descend into civil war with its military intact.
stale2002 9y ago
I guess Iraq and Vietnam didn't get the message on this. "Defeating" the military isn't the goal, in the same way that the goal of Iraqi and Vietnam insurgents was not the goal. The goal is to make the conflict so expensive and costly that they decide not to continue it. For example, imagine if those hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians that died in Iraq were instead innocent Americans caught in the crossfire of a war. This would be an extremely high cost to the ruling government. Yes, even if the government is "evil", because real life entities are not comic book villains. They are rational entities with rational motivation. And presumably one of those motivations of any government, even an evil one, is to not rule over a desolate wasteland of ashes. Or in other words, sure the government could launch hundreds of nukes and kill all of its enemies. But it would do that, because the government is not a literal doomsday cult. The point of an armed citizenry is to act as a DETERRENCE. It is to increase the costs to the government by saying "yes, you can win this... But only by killing millions, and since you are not a doomsday cult, this is a high cost". It is a deterrence in order to stop the government from becoming an evil dictatorship in the first place, kinda like have a nuke pointed at your own country.
jackaroe78 9y ago
Guessing you've never been to Idaho

malvosenior 9y ago

There’s more to the government than the army. Go talk to some people from an ethnic group over represented in prison and ask them if the idea of police being armed while citizens are forcibly unarmed sits well...

fapjacks 9y ago

This argument is absurd. Any "reasonable, intelligent person" who's read basically any history book ever written would know that the United States would not descend into civil war with its military intact.

stale2002 9y ago

I guess Iraq and Vietnam didn't get the message on this. "Defeating" the military isn't the goal, in the same way that the goal of Iraqi and Vietnam insurgents was not the goal. The goal is to make the conflict so expensive and costly that they decide not to continue it. For example, imagine if those hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians that died in Iraq were instead innocent Americans caught in the crossfire of a war. This would be an extremely high cost to the ruling government. Yes, even if the government is "evil", because real life entities are not comic book villains. They are rational entities with rational motivation. And presumably one of those motivations of any government, even an evil one, is to not rule over a desolate wasteland of ashes. Or in other words, sure the government could launch hundreds of nukes and kill all of its enemies. But it would do that, because the government is not a literal doomsday cult. The point of an armed citizenry is to act as a DETERRENCE. It is to increase the costs to the government by saying "yes, you can win this... But only by killing millions, and since you are not a doomsday cult, this is a high cost". It is a deterrence in order to stop the government from becoming an evil dictatorship in the first place, kinda like have a nuke pointed at your own country.

jackaroe78 9y ago

Guessing you've never been to Idaho