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> a starving populace can't revolt It has nothing to do with starving. It has everything to do with having all their personal firearms confiscated by the gover

> a starving populace can't revolt It has nothing to do with starving. It has everything to do with having all their personal firearms confiscated by the government a few years ago.

vkou 8y ago
How exactly did Eastern Europe revolt during the fall of the iron curtain? The first thing that the communists did, when they sized power after WWII, was take away everyone's guns. And yet, as soon as the USSR stopped guaranteeing the security of the Warsaw pact states, their regimes fell like dominoes.
- sverige 8y ago
  By that point, though, the people who had guns (i.e., the military) supported the overthrow of the existing order. It certainly wouldn't have happened with their active opposition.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Elites lost the will to use violence to suppress dissent. Back when that wasn't the case, things worked like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre
tormeh 8y ago
Ordinary civilians with guns don't have a great track record in modern history. They lack logistics and organization, so they are usually just slaughtered. Admittedly it's a bit better when the army is domestic, because domestic armies have sympathizers and has less appetite for killing, but the odds are not great.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  I think the examples provided by the Vietcong and Taliban would disagree. Picking the irregulars out of a city of civilians is really damn hard, and 'kill all the civilians' is not typically an acceptable solution, for better or worse. (There's some evidence from Russia that 'kill a bunch of the civilians in the area housing terrorists while going after the terrorists' reduces total casualties by removing cities as safe areas)
  - rebuilder 8y ago
    The viet minh and taleban were hardly ordinary civilians dusting off their rifles from their closets.

> a starving populace can't revolt It has nothing to do with starving. It has everything to do with having all their personal firearms confiscated by the government a few years ago.

vkou 8y ago

How exactly did Eastern Europe revolt during the fall of the iron curtain? The first thing that the communists did, when they sized power after WWII, was take away everyone's guns. And yet, as soon as the USSR stopped guaranteeing the security of the Warsaw pact states, their regimes fell like dominoes.

sverige 8y ago
By that point, though, the people who had guns (i.e., the military) supported the overthrow of the existing order. It certainly wouldn't have happened with their active opposition.
int_19h 8y ago
Elites lost the will to use violence to suppress dissent. Back when that wasn't the case, things worked like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre

tormeh 8y ago

Ordinary civilians with guns don't have a great track record in modern history. They lack logistics and organization, so they are usually just slaughtered. Admittedly it's a bit better when the army is domestic, because domestic armies have sympathizers and has less appetite for killing, but the odds are not great.

DuskStar 8y ago
I think the examples provided by the Vietcong and Taliban would disagree. Picking the irregulars out of a city of civilians is really damn hard, and 'kill all the civilians' is not typically an acceptable solution, for better or worse. (There's some evidence from Russia that 'kill a bunch of the civilians in the area housing terrorists while going after the terrorists' reduces total casualties by removing cities as safe areas)
- rebuilder 8y ago
  The viet minh and taleban were hardly ordinary civilians dusting off their rifles from their closets.