4 ms·

I've always found talking about firearms in response to a legislative body acting to be reactionary and shortsighted, but also a little humorous, in a sad kind

I've always found talking about firearms in response to a legislative body acting to be reactionary and shortsighted, but also a little humorous, in a sad kind of way. I wonder if you realize you're intimating, even obliquely, that you'd be willing to kill cops, soldiers, and democratically elected officials for performing their duties because you individually don't agree with their decisions. In other words, you're mad at the government for being too authoritative, so your reaction is to take the most authoritarian step possible and literally murder them for their political beliefs.

nemo44x 5y ago
It’s not about shooting them but rather deterring them from totalitarian government. That our ruling bodies understand there are lines and boundaries.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Yes it is about shooting them, as that's what your deterrent is. Your threat is that you'll murder them if they don't do things you like.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    No you’re missing the point I think. The point is that a gun let’s you defend yourself from tyranny. And that is a sufficient number of people find a government tyrannical they can choose to organize against them by not following their tyrannical laws which are illegitimate. And the tyrannical government would have to take up arms against these people to enforce their power with the knowledge these people can defend themselves. Guns rights are about defense not coercion per-se. The knowledge that the public is already armed is a deterrent in even trying to create or enforce law that meets this criteria. Thankfully we aren’t there and I hope we never will, but as they chip chip chip away you start to wonder what will be tried next.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      I am not missing the point, you are. Guns aren't some abstract concept you get to hand-wave away, they have exactly one function -- to kill things. You "defend yourself from tyranny" by killing patriots of your own country. That's literally the only way to do it, so when you say things like "defend yourself from tyranny" you are saying, "I'm willing to murder cops and soldiers." because that's who you'll have to "defend yourself from tyranny" against. There is no way around this, it is the direct meaning of the words and phrases you're using. What you are doing is using the threat of murder to try and get your way in a society.
      - nemo44x 5y ago
        Nah, you’re missing the point entirely I think and you’re trying to use language devices to create a straw man. You wouldn’t be defending yourself from patriots. Patriots wouldn’t take up arms against an oppressed citizenship they swore to protect. You’re logic says the SS were patriots. They were not (even if their government found them to be lawful) and anyone who shot them as they raided an innocent persons home is a hero. There are innumerable examples of this throughout history and I’d argue is the default state of power historically. Machiavelli wrote hundreds of years ago that liberty can only be secured by the passion of a citizenry. That a paid militia can never secure it in the long run. This type of philosophy is in part what 2a is premised on. I don’t think most anyone says we need to be armed so we can threaten violence if we don’t get our way on an arbitrary issue. I’m not saying Australia doesn’t pass this particular law if society is armed. But I do think I’d feel better about the direction the government is going if I knew my neighbors were armed.
        TameAntelope 5y ago
        Patriots would be the soldiers and cops you'd have to murderin order to "escape from tyranny". It doesn't matter what word you use, you're still advocating for the murder of police and military members. I'm not missing the point because I disagree with you, it'd be nice if you stopped trying to suggest that to be the case.
- krapp 5y ago
  And yet American gun owners also tend to be the Americans who most believe their government is already totalitarian. Maybe they think waving their guns around just stops things from getting worse?
  - hajile 5y ago
    Brianna Taylor's boyfriend shot a cop breaking into their residence. It was classified as self defense. Gun laws in California were pushed decades ago to keep black people from owning weapons as a tacit acknowledgement that they knew they were mistreating people and didn't want those people to be able to resist. No matter what a country dictates, for it to mean something, they have to send someone out to your house to enforce it. Guns quite literally put a very hard hold on how far they will go -- maybe not in passing laws, but definitely in enforcing them.
    - krapp 5y ago
      >Guns quite literally put a very hard hold on how far they will go -- maybe not in passing laws, but definitely in enforcing them. No they don't. Let's be real - Some American cops won't hesitate to shoot a black person, armed or unarmed. The only thing private gun ownership guarantees WRT the state is an escalation of force on its part. Remember Waco and Ruby Ridge? The government will send tanks and flamethrowers at you if they want you bad enough. As far as Breonna Taylor and police violence against the black community goes, political action and protest seem to have been more effective at raising awareness and putting pressure on government to change policy and culture than the ever-present threat of private guns and populist violence, and changing culture is how you get to police not willing to step over the line. I'm not saying (since this is bound to be a touchy comment) that black people shouldn't arm themselves or are never justified in defending themselves against police brutality, but I am saying that doing so has no effect on the system at large.
  - axguscbklp 5y ago
    It possibly does stop things from getting worse, but it is hard to know whether it does or it does not because there is no way to make a copy of the United States, remove private gun ownership in the copy, and then see how things play out.
axguscbklp 5y ago
Officials being democratically elected does not necessarily mean anything - in theory, a majority of the population could vote to literally enslave a minority of the population. I think that it is fair for a minority of the population to have some threshold beyond which they are willing to use force if necessary even if by doing so they are going against the wishes of the majority.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  51% of a population having a say over their own lives is better than any other system I know of, because every other system I know of ends up with substantially less than 51% of the population having a say over their own lives. It's far from perfect, but I do think we should realize the comparison is to other forms of government, not some abstract ideal. And I'm not suggesting that there's never a reason to act violently towards a government, I'm suggesting the people who talk about guns in response to legislation don't understand what it is they're saying. To use firearms against your government means killing patriots, definitionally. People need to realize this, because they generally don't.
  - axguscbklp 5y ago
    Yes, it likely means killing people who think of themselves as patriots. However, many people who work for oppressive governments genuinely think of themselves as patriots. I do not see why it matters whether using firearms against a government means killing patriots or not. Many of the people who worked for Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union to oppress their fellow citizens were patriots by the standard meaning of the word.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      It often matters to the people making these statements, is my point. I haven't expressed my opinion about it, I'm just saying that the folks suggesting using firearms to "stop tyranny" very rarely know what they're actually saying. Some do.

nemo44x 5y ago

It’s not about shooting them but rather deterring them from totalitarian government. That our ruling bodies understand there are lines and boundaries.

TameAntelope 5y ago
Yes it is about shooting them, as that's what your deterrent is. Your threat is that you'll murder them if they don't do things you like.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  No you’re missing the point I think. The point is that a gun let’s you defend yourself from tyranny. And that is a sufficient number of people find a government tyrannical they can choose to organize against them by not following their tyrannical laws which are illegitimate. And the tyrannical government would have to take up arms against these people to enforce their power with the knowledge these people can defend themselves. Guns rights are about defense not coercion per-se. The knowledge that the public is already armed is a deterrent in even trying to create or enforce law that meets this criteria. Thankfully we aren’t there and I hope we never will, but as they chip chip chip away you start to wonder what will be tried next.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    I am not missing the point, you are. Guns aren't some abstract concept you get to hand-wave away, they have exactly one function -- to kill things. You "defend yourself from tyranny" by killing patriots of your own country. That's literally the only way to do it, so when you say things like "defend yourself from tyranny" you are saying, "I'm willing to murder cops and soldiers." because that's who you'll have to "defend yourself from tyranny" against. There is no way around this, it is the direct meaning of the words and phrases you're using. What you are doing is using the threat of murder to try and get your way in a society.
    - nemo44x 5y ago
      Nah, you’re missing the point entirely I think and you’re trying to use language devices to create a straw man. You wouldn’t be defending yourself from patriots. Patriots wouldn’t take up arms against an oppressed citizenship they swore to protect. You’re logic says the SS were patriots. They were not (even if their government found them to be lawful) and anyone who shot them as they raided an innocent persons home is a hero. There are innumerable examples of this throughout history and I’d argue is the default state of power historically. Machiavelli wrote hundreds of years ago that liberty can only be secured by the passion of a citizenry. That a paid militia can never secure it in the long run. This type of philosophy is in part what 2a is premised on. I don’t think most anyone says we need to be armed so we can threaten violence if we don’t get our way on an arbitrary issue. I’m not saying Australia doesn’t pass this particular law if society is armed. But I do think I’d feel better about the direction the government is going if I knew my neighbors were armed.
      - TameAntelope 5y ago
        Patriots would be the soldiers and cops you'd have to murderin order to "escape from tyranny". It doesn't matter what word you use, you're still advocating for the murder of police and military members. I'm not missing the point because I disagree with you, it'd be nice if you stopped trying to suggest that to be the case.
krapp 5y ago
And yet American gun owners also tend to be the Americans who most believe their government is already totalitarian. Maybe they think waving their guns around just stops things from getting worse?
- hajile 5y ago
  Brianna Taylor's boyfriend shot a cop breaking into their residence. It was classified as self defense. Gun laws in California were pushed decades ago to keep black people from owning weapons as a tacit acknowledgement that they knew they were mistreating people and didn't want those people to be able to resist. No matter what a country dictates, for it to mean something, they have to send someone out to your house to enforce it. Guns quite literally put a very hard hold on how far they will go -- maybe not in passing laws, but definitely in enforcing them.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >Guns quite literally put a very hard hold on how far they will go -- maybe not in passing laws, but definitely in enforcing them. No they don't. Let's be real - Some American cops won't hesitate to shoot a black person, armed or unarmed. The only thing private gun ownership guarantees WRT the state is an escalation of force on its part. Remember Waco and Ruby Ridge? The government will send tanks and flamethrowers at you if they want you bad enough. As far as Breonna Taylor and police violence against the black community goes, political action and protest seem to have been more effective at raising awareness and putting pressure on government to change policy and culture than the ever-present threat of private guns and populist violence, and changing culture is how you get to police not willing to step over the line. I'm not saying (since this is bound to be a touchy comment) that black people shouldn't arm themselves or are never justified in defending themselves against police brutality, but I am saying that doing so has no effect on the system at large.
- axguscbklp 5y ago
  It possibly does stop things from getting worse, but it is hard to know whether it does or it does not because there is no way to make a copy of the United States, remove private gun ownership in the copy, and then see how things play out.

axguscbklp 5y ago

Officials being democratically elected does not necessarily mean anything - in theory, a majority of the population could vote to literally enslave a minority of the population. I think that it is fair for a minority of the population to have some threshold beyond which they are willing to use force if necessary even if by doing so they are going against the wishes of the majority.

TameAntelope 5y ago
51% of a population having a say over their own lives is better than any other system I know of, because every other system I know of ends up with substantially less than 51% of the population having a say over their own lives. It's far from perfect, but I do think we should realize the comparison is to other forms of government, not some abstract ideal. And I'm not suggesting that there's never a reason to act violently towards a government, I'm suggesting the people who talk about guns in response to legislation don't understand what it is they're saying. To use firearms against your government means killing patriots, definitionally. People need to realize this, because they generally don't.
- axguscbklp 5y ago
  Yes, it likely means killing people who think of themselves as patriots. However, many people who work for oppressive governments genuinely think of themselves as patriots. I do not see why it matters whether using firearms against a government means killing patriots or not. Many of the people who worked for Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union to oppress their fellow citizens were patriots by the standard meaning of the word.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    It often matters to the people making these statements, is my point. I haven't expressed my opinion about it, I'm just saying that the folks suggesting using firearms to "stop tyranny" very rarely know what they're actually saying. Some do.