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Armed against the government? Maybe in the past that was true, but not any more, the government has far bigger guns than you ever will. If you got into a true s

Armed against the government? Maybe in the past that was true, but not any more, the government has far bigger guns than you ever will. If you got into a true shooting match, they can destroy your house or car from a helicopter miles away, you literally won't even see it coming.

derping_hacker 8y ago
You should probably tell the US military, they've spent 20 years and 6 trillion dollars trying to stop some goat herders with 70s era Soviet gear with no success.
- thousandautumns 8y ago
  And how is that going for the goat herders? The US may not be "winning" in Afghanistan, but they certainly aren't losing as much as the Afghan people are. Their nation has been utterly decimated. The idea that the American people could make an armed stand in conflict with the US military is about as foolish of a notion as can be dreamt up.
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greymeister 8y ago
Isn't it strange how in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, people don't just give up with those same odds?
- Johnny555 8y ago
  They've successfully overrun their well armed government armed only with guns that an individual can afford to purchase?
  - greymeister 8y ago
    Through a great number of sacrifices and many different weapons, all resisted pacification to varying degrees by a much better armed government. Being able to purchase the weapons individually is irrelevant to the idea of asymmetrical resistance.
chaostheory 8y ago
That's why Mao pioneered modern guerilla warfare using William Wallace as his primary subject of study. Mao's theory of guerilla warfare was designed for dealing with an enemy with bigger numbers, better supplies, and better weapons. Please refer to Vietnam and Afghanistan.
GVIrish 8y ago
There are 100 million gun owners in the United States. The US military has tried and failed for years to snuff out the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that group is literally 1,000 to 10,000 times smaller than the number of gun owners in the United States. An armed uprising in the United States would be a terrible, horrible outcome for all involved, but it certainly would not be easily crushed.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
You're missing the point. The government of the US is still beholden to public opinion on issues where the public is mostly in agreement and power is distributed among enough different entities with competing interests that you can't just make a unilateral decision to use military force internally and at scale. The point of being armed is not to rise up against the government, it's to make government abuse on a small level more difficult, risky and costly for the government than just not acting like jerks in the first place. By greatly occasional abuse it's much harder for abuse to become more normalized. The Waco Siege is a good example. If those people hadn't shot back there would never have been a standoff, the media would never have shown up and the public would never have been able to scrutinize the government's actions. Another example is police no-knock warrant abuse. In places where many people have the capacity to shoot at you if you kick down their door in the middle of the night the police generally don't abuse no-knock warrants because everyone knows that if you hand them out like candy you'll eventually get a dead cop and public scrutiny. In places where the vast majority of people cannot shoot back you see all sorts of sloppy behavior (e.g. swat team kicks down a door based on a driver's license address without even checking with the landlord if that tenant is still renting that unit) because the risk of abusing people like that is low.

derping_hacker 8y ago

You should probably tell the US military, they've spent 20 years and 6 trillion dollars trying to stop some goat herders with 70s era Soviet gear with no success.

thousandautumns 8y ago
And how is that going for the goat herders? The US may not be "winning" in Afghanistan, but they certainly aren't losing as much as the Afghan people are. Their nation has been utterly decimated. The idea that the American people could make an armed stand in conflict with the US military is about as foolish of a notion as can be dreamt up.
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greymeister 8y ago

Isn't it strange how in places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, people don't just give up with those same odds?

Johnny555 8y ago
They've successfully overrun their well armed government armed only with guns that an individual can afford to purchase?
- greymeister 8y ago
  Through a great number of sacrifices and many different weapons, all resisted pacification to varying degrees by a much better armed government. Being able to purchase the weapons individually is irrelevant to the idea of asymmetrical resistance.

chaostheory 8y ago

That's why Mao pioneered modern guerilla warfare using William Wallace as his primary subject of study. Mao's theory of guerilla warfare was designed for dealing with an enemy with bigger numbers, better supplies, and better weapons. Please refer to Vietnam and Afghanistan.

GVIrish 8y ago

There are 100 million gun owners in the United States. The US military has tried and failed for years to snuff out the Taliban in Afghanistan, and that group is literally 1,000 to 10,000 times smaller than the number of gun owners in the United States. An armed uprising in the United States would be a terrible, horrible outcome for all involved, but it certainly would not be easily crushed.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

You're missing the point. The government of the US is still beholden to public opinion on issues where the public is mostly in agreement and power is distributed among enough different entities with competing interests that you can't just make a unilateral decision to use military force internally and at scale. The point of being armed is not to rise up against the government, it's to make government abuse on a small level more difficult, risky and costly for the government than just not acting like jerks in the first place. By greatly occasional abuse it's much harder for abuse to become more normalized. The Waco Siege is a good example. If those people hadn't shot back there would never have been a standoff, the media would never have shown up and the public would never have been able to scrutinize the government's actions. Another example is police no-knock warrant abuse. In places where many people have the capacity to shoot at you if you kick down their door in the middle of the night the police generally don't abuse no-knock warrants because everyone knows that if you hand them out like candy you'll eventually get a dead cop and public scrutiny. In places where the vast majority of people cannot shoot back you see all sorts of sloppy behavior (e.g. swat team kicks down a door based on a driver's license address without even checking with the landlord if that tenant is still renting that unit) because the risk of abusing people like that is low.