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Using private weapons to fight against the government to protect your rights is a laughably-low-probability-of-success scenario. Even when insurrections or rebe

Using private weapons to fight against the government to protect your rights is a laughably-low-probability-of-success scenario. Even when insurrections or rebellions succeed they often end up... not so great. We have seen what you get when you have an armed populace. Highly armed cops. Highly armed federal agents. Military equipment for civilian forces. All necessary in order to compete in the arms race against the "bad guys." All cheered for by conservatives, of course! All that make it that much more easy to start cracking down. Maybe as a first step, issuing pardons for the rebels on your side while increasing the use of force against those protesting you. Guns are not defensive tools. If you have a gun, but the government shoots first, you still lose.

int_19h 1y ago
Either way, so long as it's legal to have guns, but they are disproportionally distributed along political lines, it makes sense to try to counterbalance that. As it is, with gun ownership leaning firmly right, Trump has a massive number of armed paramilitaries that he could lean on. In any large-scale suppression of political dissent, those would be the people breaking your door at night, not uniformed feds (there simply isn't enough of the latter). Thus even if you're anti-gun in principle, it still makes sense for left-leaning people in this country to arm given the overall political climate.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  If for no other reason than to disabuse right wingers of the notion, as much as possible, that the left wing isn't armed. Which FWIW I think left-wingers are actually quite a bit more armed than the ammosexuals would presume.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    There's more of us than conventional wisdom would have you believe, but the disparity is still very large.
- majormajor 1y ago
  You're gonna have better luck leaving the country before the civil war than you are shooting the people trying to break into your house in that scenario. There are at least a couple million "regular" US soldiers + feds; if we're worried about millions more private citizens on top of that, what exactly is the gameplan to win in any meaningful sense regardless?
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    The gameplan is for people to quickly realize that it's not just a "rape and pillage whatever you want" type of mission they're embarking on. The vast majority of people have little appetite for actual resistance (as your comments reveal), and so a little resistance will very likely go a long way. There are far more people willing to defend their homes than there are people willing to get shot in the face breaking into someone's home.
stickfigure 1y ago
Hitler's SA (the brownshirts) weren't government officials, nor were Mussolini's blackshirts. Nor are the Proud Boys. There are many more modern examples of pro-government militias in Venezuela and the mid-east. You never know who's going to deputize themselves as "law enforcement", with the quiet encouragement and plausible deniability of the ruling political party. Guns are unquestionably useful defensive tools against these people.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  Correct. This is the actual use case. It’s a pretty established pattern of non-governmental actors like those mentioned being the tip of the authoritarian spear. Those people should be shot in the face upon entering their first few homes or businesses, while courts and juries will still have the wherewithal to acquit anyone defending themselves.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- majormajor 1y ago
  Listing a bunch of examples of militias causing problems is not changing my opinions on the dangers of having easily-accessible arms... (This is also something I was alluding to with "issuing pardons for the rebels on your side" which is already happening, of course.) And so then it just falls back to "the good guys just need to shoot the fascist armed militia members before they shoot the good guys" which is... difficult to guarantee...
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Who said anything about guarantees?

int_19h 1y ago

Either way, so long as it's legal to have guns, but they are disproportionally distributed along political lines, it makes sense to try to counterbalance that. As it is, with gun ownership leaning firmly right, Trump has a massive number of armed paramilitaries that he could lean on. In any large-scale suppression of political dissent, those would be the people breaking your door at night, not uniformed feds (there simply isn't enough of the latter). Thus even if you're anti-gun in principle, it still makes sense for left-leaning people in this country to arm given the overall political climate.

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
If for no other reason than to disabuse right wingers of the notion, as much as possible, that the left wing isn't armed. Which FWIW I think left-wingers are actually quite a bit more armed than the ammosexuals would presume.
- int_19h 1y ago
  There's more of us than conventional wisdom would have you believe, but the disparity is still very large.
majormajor 1y ago
You're gonna have better luck leaving the country before the civil war than you are shooting the people trying to break into your house in that scenario. There are at least a couple million "regular" US soldiers + feds; if we're worried about millions more private citizens on top of that, what exactly is the gameplan to win in any meaningful sense regardless?
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  The gameplan is for people to quickly realize that it's not just a "rape and pillage whatever you want" type of mission they're embarking on. The vast majority of people have little appetite for actual resistance (as your comments reveal), and so a little resistance will very likely go a long way. There are far more people willing to defend their homes than there are people willing to get shot in the face breaking into someone's home.

stickfigure 1y ago

Hitler's SA (the brownshirts) weren't government officials, nor were Mussolini's blackshirts. Nor are the Proud Boys. There are many more modern examples of pro-government militias in Venezuela and the mid-east. You never know who's going to deputize themselves as "law enforcement", with the quiet encouragement and plausible deniability of the ruling political party. Guns are unquestionably useful defensive tools against these people.

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
Correct. This is the actual use case. It’s a pretty established pattern of non-governmental actors like those mentioned being the tip of the authoritarian spear. Those people should be shot in the face upon entering their first few homes or businesses, while courts and juries will still have the wherewithal to acquit anyone defending themselves.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
majormajor 1y ago
Listing a bunch of examples of militias causing problems is not changing my opinions on the dangers of having easily-accessible arms... (This is also something I was alluding to with "issuing pardons for the rebels on your side" which is already happening, of course.) And so then it just falls back to "the good guys just need to shoot the fascist armed militia members before they shoot the good guys" which is... difficult to guarantee...
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  Who said anything about guarantees?