6 ms·

It's one of the reasons the 2nd Amendment was written; to avoid tyrannical rule, and to allow the "peasants" (regular people) to revolt if a tyrant ever took po

by kebman 6y ago

It's one of the reasons the 2nd Amendment was written; to avoid tyrannical rule, and to allow the "peasants" (regular people) to revolt if a tyrant ever took power.

romanoderoma 6y ago
You don't need the right to bear arms to revolt to tyrants. There is no similar right in any other part of the World, in every other part of the World there have been revolts, sometimes much larger than US has ever witnessed. Many countries have also revolted against USA, that more often than not has been the tryrant.
- prepend 6y ago
  It’s not a requirement, but it certainly helps.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    it depends on who gets the arms. there is no "the people" as a single entity and interests when there is a revolt. if everybody is armed, the supporters of the tyrant are going to be armed as well. But with better equipment.
    - prepend 6y ago
      That would be true if it was just civilians fighting, but the military is usually on the side of the tyrant. It’s mathematically better, I think that armed populace has a higher chance of revolt vs armed loyalist populace + armed military than unarmed populace vs unarmed loyalist + armed military. And I also think the reasoning is that the anti-tyrannical populace will be much larger than the pro-tyrannical populace since if the tyrant has the support of the people then are they really a tyrant.
      - romanoderoma 6y ago
        > It’s mathematically better, I think that armed populace has a higher chance of revolt US is the only country in the western World who only made one real revolution. And it was to not pay taxes, not against a true tyrant. > And I also think the reasoning is that the anti-tyrannical populace will be much larger The only thing that will be larger is the anti everybody else populace (tribalism, to give it a name). USA had one major civil war and they keep killing each other like nowhere else in the World (like ten times more than the west average). It's mathematically provable.
        bluGill 6y ago
        The civil war in the US was different. The last war fought with the old swords tactics, but using modern rifles. After it was over everyone looked in horror and decided that new ways for fighting were needed before they went to war again.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  To be fair, unarmed revolts have always been crushed unless they were supported by foreign militaries (like the US.) I'd like to see a citation of a single unarmed revolution that succeeded. edit: the armed right wing of the US could easily decide that they didn't like the outcome of the election, and change it. The volunteer military and national police forces entirely constructed to prosecute the drug war are overwhelmingly right wing. Second amendment warriors tend to own more guns than they have fingers and toes. That the civil service and the majority of patrician-generals at the top support the result of the election would be no hindrance. The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you. A right-wing revolution as described above would probably have fewer than a couple of thousand casualties. It's very easy to still feel like the good guy if the only casualties of your revolution were a few of your most deeply committed archenemies (i.e. a few lefty militia types.) It's a lot more difficult when you're hurling artillery into normal civilian neighborhoods. There were plenty of Northern Irish neighborhoods into which UK military and the police simply couldn't operate without negotiating with a representative of that neighborhood.
  - romanoderoma 6y ago
    > To be fair, unarmed revolts have always been crushed To be fair the US has a tendency to side with tyrants, dictators, oppressors, not exactly with the peasants, at least in the past 80 years. To name one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... But I see your point, my objections are to: 1 - you don't need to be armed, you nede to be able to, in case you;re going to need it (for example through external support) 2 - you prove my point, there is no armed revolt that succeeded only because people were armed, you need international support (at least from your neighbours) > I'd like to see a citation of a single unarmed revolution that succeeded. here's one for you, my friend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution > The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you exactly. that's the point. and that's why you don't point a gun to a policeman. being armed has always been a disadvantage for regular people. That's why the comment bringing up the 2nd amendment is completely off topic in this context, 10 centuries ago if you traveled armed you had to be ready to fight, because everyone armed like you was going to try to kill you: you represented a danger. it's the same thing that happens today in US, a lot of people are armed, they have guns on them, the police patrolling is even more heavily armed that the gangsters, they take a look a round, see something fishy, they see a gun, they shoot. No question asked. So, to go back on topic, being unarmed for the peasants of the Carolingian era most of the time made the difference between being killed and being simply robbed.
WJW 6y ago
As a European I've always thought that this bit of US law has not aged all that well. Imagine a tyrant takes hold of the US armed forces and uses that to overthrow the rest of government so they can rule alone. The US armed forces have equipment going up to tanks, fighter jets, bombers, drones and nuclear weapons. A militia is going to struggle to field even heavy machine guns, let alone an air force. I doubt they'd have the logistics either. In short, 2nd amendment militias don't seem a very realistic deterrent to a modern army.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  You don't have to win open battles. You just have to make it not worthwhile to keep fighting. Think Vietnam war. Also, in this scenario the army will not be united. In our civil war, many army units joined the rebels.
- blockmarker 6y ago
  I have saved a post about this from 4chan, they passed it around on some pro-gun rights forums. Will paraphrase it and spare you the expletives. "You cannot control an entire country and its people with tanks, jets, battleships and drone or any of these things you believe trump's citizen ownership of firearms. A fighter jet, tank, drone, battleship or whatever cannot stand on street corners. And enforce "no assembly" edicts. A fighter jet cannot kick down your door at 3am and search your house for contraband. None of these things can maintain the needed police state to completely subjugate and enslave the people of a nation. Those weapons are for decimating, flattening and glassing large areas and many people at once and fighting other state militaries. The government does not want to kill all of its people and blow up its own infrastructure. These are the very things they need to be tyrants in the first place. If they decided to turn everything outside of Washington DC into glowing green glass they would be the absolute rulers of a big, worthless, radioactive pile of [excrement]. Police are needed to maintain a police state, boots on the ground. And no matter how many police you have on the ground they will always be vastly outnumbered by civilians which is why is a police state it is vital that your police have automatic weapons while civilians are unarmed. BUT when every random pedestrian could have a Glock in their waistband and every random homeowner an AR-15 all of that goes out of the window because now the police are outnumbered and face the reality of bullets coming back at them. If you want living examples of this look at every insurgency that the US military has tried to destroy. They're all still kicking with nothing but AK-47s, pick-up trucks and improvised explosives because these big weapons you talk about are useless for dealing with them. ".

by kebman 6y ago

It's one of the reasons the 2nd Amendment was written; to avoid tyrannical rule, and to allow the "peasants" (regular people) to revolt if a tyrant ever took power.

romanoderoma 6y ago

You don't need the right to bear arms to revolt to tyrants. There is no similar right in any other part of the World, in every other part of the World there have been revolts, sometimes much larger than US has ever witnessed. Many countries have also revolted against USA, that more often than not has been the tryrant.

prepend 6y ago
It’s not a requirement, but it certainly helps.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  it depends on who gets the arms. there is no "the people" as a single entity and interests when there is a revolt. if everybody is armed, the supporters of the tyrant are going to be armed as well. But with better equipment.
  - prepend 6y ago
    That would be true if it was just civilians fighting, but the military is usually on the side of the tyrant. It’s mathematically better, I think that armed populace has a higher chance of revolt vs armed loyalist populace + armed military than unarmed populace vs unarmed loyalist + armed military. And I also think the reasoning is that the anti-tyrannical populace will be much larger than the pro-tyrannical populace since if the tyrant has the support of the people then are they really a tyrant.
    - romanoderoma 6y ago
      > It’s mathematically better, I think that armed populace has a higher chance of revolt US is the only country in the western World who only made one real revolution. And it was to not pay taxes, not against a true tyrant. > And I also think the reasoning is that the anti-tyrannical populace will be much larger The only thing that will be larger is the anti everybody else populace (tribalism, to give it a name). USA had one major civil war and they keep killing each other like nowhere else in the World (like ten times more than the west average). It's mathematically provable.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        The civil war in the US was different. The last war fought with the old swords tactics, but using modern rifles. After it was over everyone looked in horror and decided that new ways for fighting were needed before they went to war again.
pessimizer 6y ago
To be fair, unarmed revolts have always been crushed unless they were supported by foreign militaries (like the US.) I'd like to see a citation of a single unarmed revolution that succeeded. edit: the armed right wing of the US could easily decide that they didn't like the outcome of the election, and change it. The volunteer military and national police forces entirely constructed to prosecute the drug war are overwhelmingly right wing. Second amendment warriors tend to own more guns than they have fingers and toes. That the civil service and the majority of patrician-generals at the top support the result of the election would be no hindrance. The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you. A right-wing revolution as described above would probably have fewer than a couple of thousand casualties. It's very easy to still feel like the good guy if the only casualties of your revolution were a few of your most deeply committed archenemies (i.e. a few lefty militia types.) It's a lot more difficult when you're hurling artillery into normal civilian neighborhoods. There were plenty of Northern Irish neighborhoods into which UK military and the police simply couldn't operate without negotiating with a representative of that neighborhood.
- romanoderoma 6y ago
  > To be fair, unarmed revolts have always been crushed To be fair the US has a tendency to side with tyrants, dictators, oppressors, not exactly with the peasants, at least in the past 80 years. To name one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... But I see your point, my objections are to: 1 - you don't need to be armed, you nede to be able to, in case you;re going to need it (for example through external support) 2 - you prove my point, there is no armed revolt that succeeded only because people were armed, you need international support (at least from your neighbours) > I'd like to see a citation of a single unarmed revolution that succeeded. here's one for you, my friend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution > The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you exactly. that's the point. and that's why you don't point a gun to a policeman. being armed has always been a disadvantage for regular people. That's why the comment bringing up the 2nd amendment is completely off topic in this context, 10 centuries ago if you traveled armed you had to be ready to fight, because everyone armed like you was going to try to kill you: you represented a danger. it's the same thing that happens today in US, a lot of people are armed, they have guns on them, the police patrolling is even more heavily armed that the gangsters, they take a look a round, see something fishy, they see a gun, they shoot. No question asked. So, to go back on topic, being unarmed for the peasants of the Carolingian era most of the time made the difference between being killed and being simply robbed.

WJW 6y ago

As a European I've always thought that this bit of US law has not aged all that well. Imagine a tyrant takes hold of the US armed forces and uses that to overthrow the rest of government so they can rule alone. The US armed forces have equipment going up to tanks, fighter jets, bombers, drones and nuclear weapons. A militia is going to struggle to field even heavy machine guns, let alone an air force. I doubt they'd have the logistics either. In short, 2nd amendment militias don't seem a very realistic deterrent to a modern army.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
travisoneill1 6y ago
You don't have to win open battles. You just have to make it not worthwhile to keep fighting. Think Vietnam war. Also, in this scenario the army will not be united. In our civil war, many army units joined the rebels.
blockmarker 6y ago
I have saved a post about this from 4chan, they passed it around on some pro-gun rights forums. Will paraphrase it and spare you the expletives. "You cannot control an entire country and its people with tanks, jets, battleships and drone or any of these things you believe trump's citizen ownership of firearms. A fighter jet, tank, drone, battleship or whatever cannot stand on street corners. And enforce "no assembly" edicts. A fighter jet cannot kick down your door at 3am and search your house for contraband. None of these things can maintain the needed police state to completely subjugate and enslave the people of a nation. Those weapons are for decimating, flattening and glassing large areas and many people at once and fighting other state militaries. The government does not want to kill all of its people and blow up its own infrastructure. These are the very things they need to be tyrants in the first place. If they decided to turn everything outside of Washington DC into glowing green glass they would be the absolute rulers of a big, worthless, radioactive pile of [excrement]. Police are needed to maintain a police state, boots on the ground. And no matter how many police you have on the ground they will always be vastly outnumbered by civilians which is why is a police state it is vital that your police have automatic weapons while civilians are unarmed. BUT when every random pedestrian could have a Glock in their waistband and every random homeowner an AR-15 all of that goes out of the window because now the police are outnumbered and face the reality of bullets coming back at them. If you want living examples of this look at every insurgency that the US military has tried to destroy. They're all still kicking with nothing but AK-47s, pick-up trucks and improvised explosives because these big weapons you talk about are useless for dealing with them. ".