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We just need to reduce the number of guns. I've not met a 2nd amendment supporter who understands this basic idea. They are always convinced one of the followin

We just need to reduce the number of guns. I've not met a 2nd amendment supporter who understands this basic idea. They are always convinced one of the following retorts should be the end of the conversation (they also proudly think you've never heard these cliched arguments): - They have knife stabbings in China. (Yes. A gun is more lethal.) - A bad guy can still get a gun. (Yes.) - Hand guns are more dangerous than rifles. (This means let's reduce both.) - The gun doesn't kill people. People kill people. (This means let's reduce how many people have guns.) - Mass shootings aren't the majority of gun deaths. (Let's reduce the total gun deaths and mass shootings then.) Come up with as many ridiculous retorts as you like. If you had reduced the total number of guns, most of the shootings could not have happened.

_menelaus 10mo ago
Don't you think the populace needs to be armed though? I think its a given that eventually the government will be intolerably corrupt and a revolution will be necessary. Nobody denies that less guns -> less shootings. The logic is that some amount of shootings are tolerable to preserve democracy, and that if our goal is to reduce mass shootings, social reforms intended to improve mental health are the correct choice. Imagine you are in charge of a monkey enclosure. The monkeys sometimes go crazy and kill each other with rocks. You can: A: Remove all rocks. Monkeys stay suicidally miserable but can't inflict harm as easily. Problem solved? B: Mitigate conditions that make them suicidally miserable. Some say its impossible, but then again, just a generation ago the monkeys had rocks without frequent violence.
- WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
  Why is it that only our country needs to be armed, but none of the others do? Do Germans need to be armed? Do Indians need to be armed? Maybe you could argue that Chinese people need to be armed, but every Chinese person I've met seems to like their government right now and is content with the levels of surveillance. Maybe arming the Uyghurs could have helped but somehow I doubt it.
  - _menelaus 10mo ago
    All populations should be armed. The current democratic, liberal order in Europe is just a side effect of America's dominance, the same America that is the product of the revolution of a well armed population. Your counterpoint might be the U.K., which has arrested 12,000 people for social media posts recently. The catch is, it only works with an enlightened, well educated population with philia and a sense of civic duty. Arming inner city Chicago has been a disaster. That's tough to maintain that state, but we have to try, because if a population doesn't fit that description the country turns to shit and you won't want to live there. To disarm is to admit we can't be an enlightened country anymore and we won't try, and after that its just a matter of time until there is nothing special about America and its just another mediocre third world dump.
    - WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
      If a government were run by quakers, should the population require the same level of armament as if it were run by Attila? Perhaps by creating better governments we could reduce the need to arm populations. I just don't see what arming citizens is going to do against a militaristic government.
      - _menelaus 10mo ago
        Yes, because the idea is to establish an armed populace before society succumbs to tyranny, not in response to it. The central tenet is that even if a society is run by Quakers now, it won't always be, because in the absence of proper inputs societies tend to decay to their stable basal state which is despotism. When that happens, the population must be armed in order to revolt and restore a democratic system. I would even say its better to arm the populace while the government is still Quaker because that would establish the proper cultural mores surrounding gun ownership in an enlightened environment - e.g. knowing that gun ownership is a responsibility and right, connecting it with ideas of liberty and civic duty, viewing them as a last resort, learning about guns from your father and not your homie on the corner. You need to have the population armed beforehand. Its not practical to try to dynamically adjust how armed the populace is in proportion to perceived governmental Attila-ness. To your last point, an armed populace makes revolt feasible, and there is a spectrum here. The key is that the oligarchy will need to convince the army to stay on its side and punish the revolting populace. The more sacrifice and violence that is required, the harder it is to keep convincing them. Also, look at the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan: an armed, hostile populace is just much harder to control than an unarmed one. It dramatically increases the cost of every excursion from a military base, the number of soldiers required to subjugate an area, etc, and the grand lesson from those conflicts is that boots on the ground are still needed to control an area, and that technological solutions like drone strikes still don't scale well enough and aren't cleanly targeted enough to change that. Perhaps that will change in the future, but I actually suspect that the prevalence of consumer drones will maintain the power of the public to resist the military. Look at Ukraine and Russia; the dominant weapon system now is the consumer drone, eclipsing even artillery, which has democratizing implications for the future of the tug-of-war between societies and their governments.
stephenhuey 10mo ago
This list is spot on, and the biggest fuel on the fire is the problem of huge financial incentives. I can assure you there are some supporters out there who do understand. Some who do not understand have certainly been fed talking points by entities who may or may not care about the intent of the 2nd Amendment exactly, but definitely do care about making money.

_menelaus 10mo ago

Don't you think the populace needs to be armed though? I think its a given that eventually the government will be intolerably corrupt and a revolution will be necessary. Nobody denies that less guns -> less shootings. The logic is that some amount of shootings are tolerable to preserve democracy, and that if our goal is to reduce mass shootings, social reforms intended to improve mental health are the correct choice. Imagine you are in charge of a monkey enclosure. The monkeys sometimes go crazy and kill each other with rocks. You can: A: Remove all rocks. Monkeys stay suicidally miserable but can't inflict harm as easily. Problem solved? B: Mitigate conditions that make them suicidally miserable. Some say its impossible, but then again, just a generation ago the monkeys had rocks without frequent violence.

WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
Why is it that only our country needs to be armed, but none of the others do? Do Germans need to be armed? Do Indians need to be armed? Maybe you could argue that Chinese people need to be armed, but every Chinese person I've met seems to like their government right now and is content with the levels of surveillance. Maybe arming the Uyghurs could have helped but somehow I doubt it.
- _menelaus 10mo ago
  All populations should be armed. The current democratic, liberal order in Europe is just a side effect of America's dominance, the same America that is the product of the revolution of a well armed population. Your counterpoint might be the U.K., which has arrested 12,000 people for social media posts recently. The catch is, it only works with an enlightened, well educated population with philia and a sense of civic duty. Arming inner city Chicago has been a disaster. That's tough to maintain that state, but we have to try, because if a population doesn't fit that description the country turns to shit and you won't want to live there. To disarm is to admit we can't be an enlightened country anymore and we won't try, and after that its just a matter of time until there is nothing special about America and its just another mediocre third world dump.
  - WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
    If a government were run by quakers, should the population require the same level of armament as if it were run by Attila? Perhaps by creating better governments we could reduce the need to arm populations. I just don't see what arming citizens is going to do against a militaristic government.
    - _menelaus 10mo ago
      Yes, because the idea is to establish an armed populace before society succumbs to tyranny, not in response to it. The central tenet is that even if a society is run by Quakers now, it won't always be, because in the absence of proper inputs societies tend to decay to their stable basal state which is despotism. When that happens, the population must be armed in order to revolt and restore a democratic system. I would even say its better to arm the populace while the government is still Quaker because that would establish the proper cultural mores surrounding gun ownership in an enlightened environment - e.g. knowing that gun ownership is a responsibility and right, connecting it with ideas of liberty and civic duty, viewing them as a last resort, learning about guns from your father and not your homie on the corner. You need to have the population armed beforehand. Its not practical to try to dynamically adjust how armed the populace is in proportion to perceived governmental Attila-ness. To your last point, an armed populace makes revolt feasible, and there is a spectrum here. The key is that the oligarchy will need to convince the army to stay on its side and punish the revolting populace. The more sacrifice and violence that is required, the harder it is to keep convincing them. Also, look at the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan: an armed, hostile populace is just much harder to control than an unarmed one. It dramatically increases the cost of every excursion from a military base, the number of soldiers required to subjugate an area, etc, and the grand lesson from those conflicts is that boots on the ground are still needed to control an area, and that technological solutions like drone strikes still don't scale well enough and aren't cleanly targeted enough to change that. Perhaps that will change in the future, but I actually suspect that the prevalence of consumer drones will maintain the power of the public to resist the military. Look at Ukraine and Russia; the dominant weapon system now is the consumer drone, eclipsing even artillery, which has democratizing implications for the future of the tug-of-war between societies and their governments.

stephenhuey 10mo ago

This list is spot on, and the biggest fuel on the fire is the problem of huge financial incentives. I can assure you there are some supporters out there who do understand. Some who do not understand have certainly been fed talking points by entities who may or may not care about the intent of the 2nd Amendment exactly, but definitely do care about making money.