6 ms·

It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do

by daenz 5y ago

It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do anything against a country with drones and nukes." I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right.

windpower 5y ago
I'm someone you would describe as "anti 2A". I still think the "defense against home invasion" style argument is mostly nonsense. It's super rare, and I don't think the benefits of guns outweigh the downsides for that kind of self defense. (Having been a victim of exactly such a crime, I'm glad neither I nor the burglar had a gun.) However, seeing Ukrainians take up arms to fight an invasion has caused me to re-evaluate my position in general, and I actually think an armed population is likely better than the alternative. I'm sure Finland isn't unhappy that they're heavily armed right now.
- throwaway_4ever 5y ago
  > It's super rare Is it? How do you define super rare? I live in a low crime US suburb and still personally know 3 homes that have been invaded: friend's next door neighbor, a house 200ft away, and the literal across the street neighbor.
  - _hypx 5y ago
    Home invasion means forcefully breaking into someone's house where there are people in it. It's very different than a burglary. Burglaries are common, but the former is rare.
    - zthrowaway 5y ago
      And having a firearm to protect your life in that rare situation is still important… The police are the cleanup crew, those first 5-10 minutes you’re on your own.
      - _hypx 5y ago
        The danger of owning a firearm, especially if it is always armed for such an occurrence, is more dangerous to the household than the risk of home invasion (which again, is rare). It is an idea that people defend using the concept of "safety", but in reality is motivated by fear or hypermasculinity as the main cause.
        daenz 5y ago
        You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0]. You may disagree with many of them, but some are absolutely defensible, like an ex-boyfriend breaking into woman's apartment and beating her until she is able to shoot him[1][2] (from the front page of that subreddit). My point is, become familiar with the frequency that these reports happen before you make the claim that it's rare. 0. https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu 1. https://kfor.com/news/local/oklahoma-woman-shoots-and-kills-ex-boyfriend-during-break-in/ 2. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/wickliffe-woman-shoots-boyfriend-after-being-struck-multiple-times-boyfriend-later-arrested
        _hypx 5y ago
        I get the feeling you have that problem in reverse. All defensive gun use is very rare. Certainly, rarer than the opposite (offensive gun use). Combined with suicide risk and accidental deaths or injuries, it is rarely justifiable. Study on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848468/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848468/
        daenz 5y ago
        The CDC reports 60,000 to 2.5M instances of defensive gun use per year[0] 0. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html#:~:text=Estimates%20of%20defensive%20gun%20use,defensive%20gun%20uses%20each%20year https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm....
- _hypx 5y ago
  It's not that hard to arm a society when war breaks out. That is the same mentality that countries like Switzerland has. The "2A argument" is quite a bit different, and has very few similarities with what is going on at the start of a war.
  - Etherlord87 5y ago
    If you give out guns to people who never used them, they won't be as effective. Also I think you're underestimating the logistic difficulty of storing and transporting tens of millions of weapons (and ammunition) before blitzkrieg cuts you off. You could have a storage in each city, but you still need to move the guns to smaller towns and villages, as well as enemy spies could sabotage such transports...
    - _hypx 5y ago
      You're trying to rationalize the situation in the US, not looking at it objectively. You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts. You will need to store a vast amount of military equipment anyways. Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue.
      - gruez 5y ago
        >You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts. 1. It took months to vaccinate the US population. Training them to use guns would most certainly take longer. 2. Your previous comments seem to suggest you're anti-2A. What's your position here then? Are you against gun ownership, but think that if some enemy wants to invade us, there's going to be enough advance warning that we can train and arm everyone? >Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue. And what about transportation?
        _hypx 5y ago
        You need close to 100% vaccination rates for vaccines to really work. Not so much for creating a makeshift army. This is an example of framing of the issue, and in this case it is deeply misleading. Nearly everyone wants what makes us safe. The problem is that certain groups in America have transformed that into something dangerous while disguising it as a form of safety. At some point, society will move away from this kind of thinking regardless of how it is perceived today.
- bufferoverflow 5y ago
  It's not super rare. We see how it plays out all the time. Protestors protest, government comes down on them hard - mass arrests, mass killings, mass civil destruction of liberties. We literally saw a version of this in Canada a month ago, where actually peaceful protesters were declared terrorists and got arrested and their money seized. It's not always about some other country's government coming on you hard, your own can be just as rotten.
throw0101a 5y ago
> It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do anything against a country with drones and nukes." The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a Luftwaffe is a good guy with a Luftwaffe and a bunch of SAMs. A bunch of randos with AKs have little chance against the Russian-equivalent of Hellfire missiles IMHO. It's just that the Ukraine military seems to have been underestimated. Further, Russian SEAD seems to suck: * https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/russian-air-force-actually-incapable-complex-air-operations/ https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defe... and their logistics, once they start getting far from their railheads, seems to deteriorate quite quickly: * https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/ https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-... If there is political will and logistical support, a mainstream army can keep an insurgency down as shown by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The main recourse coupe to wait out the patience of the 'occupier' (which is what the Taliban did). Whether Russia/Putin has the will and/or resources is another question. > I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right. Even with the threat of Russian invasion, especially after 2014 and Crimea, Ukraine seems to disagree, as licenses are still needed for gun ownership: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine Though UA has mandatory military service to an extent: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Ukraine

by daenz 5y ago

windpower 5y ago

I'm someone you would describe as "anti 2A". I still think the "defense against home invasion" style argument is mostly nonsense. It's super rare, and I don't think the benefits of guns outweigh the downsides for that kind of self defense. (Having been a victim of exactly such a crime, I'm glad neither I nor the burglar had a gun.) However, seeing Ukrainians take up arms to fight an invasion has caused me to re-evaluate my position in general, and I actually think an armed population is likely better than the alternative. I'm sure Finland isn't unhappy that they're heavily armed right now.

throwaway_4ever 5y ago
> It's super rare Is it? How do you define super rare? I live in a low crime US suburb and still personally know 3 homes that have been invaded: friend's next door neighbor, a house 200ft away, and the literal across the street neighbor.
- _hypx 5y ago
  Home invasion means forcefully breaking into someone's house where there are people in it. It's very different than a burglary. Burglaries are common, but the former is rare.
  - zthrowaway 5y ago
    And having a firearm to protect your life in that rare situation is still important… The police are the cleanup crew, those first 5-10 minutes you’re on your own.
    - _hypx 5y ago
      The danger of owning a firearm, especially if it is always armed for such an occurrence, is more dangerous to the household than the risk of home invasion (which again, is rare). It is an idea that people defend using the concept of "safety", but in reality is motivated by fear or hypermasculinity as the main cause.
      - daenz 5y ago
        You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0]. You may disagree with many of them, but some are absolutely defensible, like an ex-boyfriend breaking into woman's apartment and beating her until she is able to shoot him[1][2] (from the front page of that subreddit). My point is, become familiar with the frequency that these reports happen before you make the claim that it's rare. 0. https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu 1. https://kfor.com/news/local/oklahoma-woman-shoots-and-kills-ex-boyfriend-during-break-in/ 2. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/wickliffe-woman-shoots-boyfriend-after-being-struck-multiple-times-boyfriend-later-arrested
        _hypx 5y ago
        I get the feeling you have that problem in reverse. All defensive gun use is very rare. Certainly, rarer than the opposite (offensive gun use). Combined with suicide risk and accidental deaths or injuries, it is rarely justifiable. Study on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848468/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848468/
        daenz 5y ago
        The CDC reports 60,000 to 2.5M instances of defensive gun use per year[0] 0. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html#:~:text=Estimates%20of%20defensive%20gun%20use,defensive%20gun%20uses%20each%20year https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm....
_hypx 5y ago
It's not that hard to arm a society when war breaks out. That is the same mentality that countries like Switzerland has. The "2A argument" is quite a bit different, and has very few similarities with what is going on at the start of a war.
- Etherlord87 5y ago
  If you give out guns to people who never used them, they won't be as effective. Also I think you're underestimating the logistic difficulty of storing and transporting tens of millions of weapons (and ammunition) before blitzkrieg cuts you off. You could have a storage in each city, but you still need to move the guns to smaller towns and villages, as well as enemy spies could sabotage such transports...
  - _hypx 5y ago
    You're trying to rationalize the situation in the US, not looking at it objectively. You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts. You will need to store a vast amount of military equipment anyways. Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts. 1. It took months to vaccinate the US population. Training them to use guns would most certainly take longer. 2. Your previous comments seem to suggest you're anti-2A. What's your position here then? Are you against gun ownership, but think that if some enemy wants to invade us, there's going to be enough advance warning that we can train and arm everyone? >Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue. And what about transportation?
      - _hypx 5y ago
        You need close to 100% vaccination rates for vaccines to really work. Not so much for creating a makeshift army. This is an example of framing of the issue, and in this case it is deeply misleading. Nearly everyone wants what makes us safe. The problem is that certain groups in America have transformed that into something dangerous while disguising it as a form of safety. At some point, society will move away from this kind of thinking regardless of how it is perceived today.
bufferoverflow 5y ago
It's not super rare. We see how it plays out all the time. Protestors protest, government comes down on them hard - mass arrests, mass killings, mass civil destruction of liberties. We literally saw a version of this in Canada a month ago, where actually peaceful protesters were declared terrorists and got arrested and their money seized. It's not always about some other country's government coming on you hard, your own can be just as rotten.

throw0101a 5y ago

> It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do anything against a country with drones and nukes." The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a Luftwaffe is a good guy with a Luftwaffe and a bunch of SAMs. A bunch of randos with AKs have little chance against the Russian-equivalent of Hellfire missiles IMHO. It's just that the Ukraine military seems to have been underestimated. Further, Russian SEAD seems to suck: * https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/russian-air-force-actually-incapable-complex-air-operations/ https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defe... and their logistics, once they start getting far from their railheads, seems to deteriorate quite quickly: * https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-look-at-russian-army-logistics/ https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-... If there is political will and logistical support, a mainstream army can keep an insurgency down as shown by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The main recourse coupe to wait out the patience of the 'occupier' (which is what the Taliban did). Whether Russia/Putin has the will and/or resources is another question. > I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right. Even with the threat of Russian invasion, especially after 2014 and Crimea, Ukraine seems to disagree, as licenses are still needed for gun ownership: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine Though UA has mandatory military service to an extent: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Ukraine