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And British people don't want to make that trade off. It's odd to use our gun laws to say we're oppressed by an undemocratic system when the vast, vast majority

And British people don't want to make that trade off. It's odd to use our gun laws to say we're oppressed by an undemocratic system when the vast, vast majority of people simply don't want the person standing next to them at the till in Tesco to have a pistol under their coat.

NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
The timescale at which a disarmed populace becomes a problem is decades to centuries. It's all fine and dandy while you like your government. How long do you think it'll stay that way? There are people alive who remember being herded into boxcars in Germany, in 2023 a well-run social-democratic beacon of progress and industry in Europe.
- joe463369 4y ago
  I'm not sure what the point is here. We all agree in the UK that we don't want guns to be legal, so they aren't. An American's view that we'd be better off if they were is neither here nor there.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > It's all fine and dandy while you like your government. I don't like our government. I don't think owning guns would improve the situation, though. What good do you think you owning a gun will do you?
  - NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
    Heh, I think the level of dislike we're talking about here is different. You may not like them but it's nothing like being a Jew under the Third Reich or, perhaps, living in eastern Ukraine right now. The point at which "power comes from the barrel of a gun" becomes relevant someplace like the U.K. is a ways off for almost everyone living there, thankfully. The worry is twofold: first, not having an armed populace now might allow things to get really bad in the future, whereas in the case where everyone's reasonably well-armed, or has the option to be, it wouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place. Second, if things are really bad at present, bad to the point that fighting seems reasonable, you want to be able to fight. Disarming now means you'll likely be disarmed in an uncertain future, too. Our modern social democracies seem really stable, but from the perspective of a historian there is no reason to believe they are. They're infants. There's a war in Europe right now, and there are people alive who remember the Holocaust.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      Okay, again, what do you think you and your supermarket own-brand assault rifle are going to do about that?
      - NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
        The rifles that Americans own themselves are just fine. Average quality is better than military, though the military does get features that are illegal for civilians (like full auto). 330,000,000 potentially armed people (or about 260,000,000 armed adults) is something to be reckoned with. A bunch of goat-herding peasants in Afghanistan fended off not one but both superpowers, and at that mostly with small arms. The fact that the U.S. chooses to arm its population is definitely relevant for the direction its politics goes. Whether that's good or bad, net...well, we never get to know because we never see the counterfactual situation.
        Gordonjcp 4y ago
        > The rifles that Americans own themselves are just fine. Average quality is better than military, though the military does get features that are illegal for civilians (like full auto). And that's going to protect you from a drone strike how, exactly?
        kortilla 4y ago
        Why are you talking about drone strikes? Those don’t work for insurgency, which is what you’ll get in a civil war.
    - ClapperHeid 4y ago
      >>it's nothing like being a Jew under the Third Reich or, perhaps, living in eastern Ukraine right now... >>not having an armed populace now might allow things to get really bad in the future, whereas in the case where everyone's reasonably well-armed, or has the option to be, it wouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place... Again, this is a chalk & cheese comparison. People like to forget that the Third Reich was democratically elected. The German people read "Mein Kampf", listened to Hitler's "Make Germany Great Again" speeches and put their cross next to the Nazi party. And, up until the tide of war started to turn against them, most were pretty happy with the outcome. It's also convenient to forget that, in those times, hatred of the Jews wasn't an exclusively Nazi, or even German, sentiment. In many other parts of the world, Hitler was initially seen as being a "good thing" and giving the Jews what they richly deserved. Of course, with history being written by the winners, these facts tend to be glossed over now. So Hitler seized power and plunged an oppressed and terrified people into a war they didn't want And the rest of the world was always horrified by the Nazis' treatment of the Jews. This is what I meant, when I said above that "Oppression is incremental". By the time you realise that you're living under fascism, it's too late to do anything. And you'll be in for a shock if you're depending on your fellow citizens to rally to your "Let's throw off our oppressors!" flag. Most of them will be quite happy to see you dragged off in the night, instead --you stinking Jew-Lover! [replace "Jew" with "Commie", "Terrorist", "Paedo"... etc. as required by zeitgeist] And re your point about Ukraine: The irony is that Russia's justification for seizing areas such as the Donbass in the East is precisely because they say ethnic Russians there were being oppressed by the Ukrainian government. And that was in spite of those ethnic Russians having well-armed militias already in existence. So having an armed population didn't really help there, did it? And, in the wider context, the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion is being fought by the existing Ukrainian well-trained, professional armed forces, who are being supplied with billions of £££s worth of advanced weaponry. And they're still taking a pounding. So the idea that a handful of untrained civilians with their Wal-Mart rifles could have prevented any of this is delusional fantasy.

NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago

The timescale at which a disarmed populace becomes a problem is decades to centuries. It's all fine and dandy while you like your government. How long do you think it'll stay that way? There are people alive who remember being herded into boxcars in Germany, in 2023 a well-run social-democratic beacon of progress and industry in Europe.

joe463369 4y ago
I'm not sure what the point is here. We all agree in the UK that we don't want guns to be legal, so they aren't. An American's view that we'd be better off if they were is neither here nor there.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> It's all fine and dandy while you like your government. I don't like our government. I don't think owning guns would improve the situation, though. What good do you think you owning a gun will do you?
- NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
  Heh, I think the level of dislike we're talking about here is different. You may not like them but it's nothing like being a Jew under the Third Reich or, perhaps, living in eastern Ukraine right now. The point at which "power comes from the barrel of a gun" becomes relevant someplace like the U.K. is a ways off for almost everyone living there, thankfully. The worry is twofold: first, not having an armed populace now might allow things to get really bad in the future, whereas in the case where everyone's reasonably well-armed, or has the option to be, it wouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place. Second, if things are really bad at present, bad to the point that fighting seems reasonable, you want to be able to fight. Disarming now means you'll likely be disarmed in an uncertain future, too. Our modern social democracies seem really stable, but from the perspective of a historian there is no reason to believe they are. They're infants. There's a war in Europe right now, and there are people alive who remember the Holocaust.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Okay, again, what do you think you and your supermarket own-brand assault rifle are going to do about that?
    - NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
      The rifles that Americans own themselves are just fine. Average quality is better than military, though the military does get features that are illegal for civilians (like full auto). 330,000,000 potentially armed people (or about 260,000,000 armed adults) is something to be reckoned with. A bunch of goat-herding peasants in Afghanistan fended off not one but both superpowers, and at that mostly with small arms. The fact that the U.S. chooses to arm its population is definitely relevant for the direction its politics goes. Whether that's good or bad, net...well, we never get to know because we never see the counterfactual situation.
      - Gordonjcp 4y ago
        > The rifles that Americans own themselves are just fine. Average quality is better than military, though the military does get features that are illegal for civilians (like full auto). And that's going to protect you from a drone strike how, exactly?
        kortilla 4y ago
        Why are you talking about drone strikes? Those don’t work for insurgency, which is what you’ll get in a civil war.
  - ClapperHeid 4y ago
    >>it's nothing like being a Jew under the Third Reich or, perhaps, living in eastern Ukraine right now... >>not having an armed populace now might allow things to get really bad in the future, whereas in the case where everyone's reasonably well-armed, or has the option to be, it wouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place... Again, this is a chalk & cheese comparison. People like to forget that the Third Reich was democratically elected. The German people read "Mein Kampf", listened to Hitler's "Make Germany Great Again" speeches and put their cross next to the Nazi party. And, up until the tide of war started to turn against them, most were pretty happy with the outcome. It's also convenient to forget that, in those times, hatred of the Jews wasn't an exclusively Nazi, or even German, sentiment. In many other parts of the world, Hitler was initially seen as being a "good thing" and giving the Jews what they richly deserved. Of course, with history being written by the winners, these facts tend to be glossed over now. So Hitler seized power and plunged an oppressed and terrified people into a war they didn't want And the rest of the world was always horrified by the Nazis' treatment of the Jews. This is what I meant, when I said above that "Oppression is incremental". By the time you realise that you're living under fascism, it's too late to do anything. And you'll be in for a shock if you're depending on your fellow citizens to rally to your "Let's throw off our oppressors!" flag. Most of them will be quite happy to see you dragged off in the night, instead --you stinking Jew-Lover! [replace "Jew" with "Commie", "Terrorist", "Paedo"... etc. as required by zeitgeist] And re your point about Ukraine: The irony is that Russia's justification for seizing areas such as the Donbass in the East is precisely because they say ethnic Russians there were being oppressed by the Ukrainian government. And that was in spite of those ethnic Russians having well-armed militias already in existence. So having an armed population didn't really help there, did it? And, in the wider context, the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion is being fought by the existing Ukrainian well-trained, professional armed forces, who are being supplied with billions of £££s worth of advanced weaponry. And they're still taking a pounding. So the idea that a handful of untrained civilians with their Wal-Mart rifles could have prevented any of this is delusional fantasy.