8 ms·

> Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing,

> Isn't this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk? It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. Also, yeah, the "don't tread on me" folks mostly aren't very principaled and don't mind authoritarian actions so long as they're dressed up right. Obama wants a public healthcare option? How dare the government institute Death Panels to decide who live or dies! ICE shoot random protestors? That's what they deserve for "impeding" and "assaulting" law enforcement. The Second Amendment was written so that the US could avoid having a standing federal army and quickly gather up defense forces from States as necessary when attacked. It was thought that having a standing army would lead to bad incentives and militarism. Just like the Executive branch only has enumerated powers, with all main governing functions belonging to Congress. The founders were worried about vesting too much power in one man, so made the President pretty weak. Of course, we've transmogrified ourselves into a nation primed for militarism and authoritarianism by slowly but surely concentrating power into one station. Exactly what the Constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job.

pseudohadamard 9mo ago
As a footnote, it was also written at a time when a bunch of guys with muskets could face down another bunch of guys with muskets. When one side has tanks and attack helicopters and training and outnumbers you a hundred to one it doesn't really work any more.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
  That would explain why it was so easy for the US to suppress insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan... It's actually rather difficult to think of tyrannical regimes which persisted against an armed citizenry in the long term.
  - moi2388 9mo ago
    That however is a political issue, not a military one. Given free rein the military absolutely can do that.
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
      If the US military wasn't willing to simply flatten cities all over Iraq and Afghanistan, why would you expect them to do that in their own country to their own homes and family members?
      - asksomeoneelse 9mo ago
        Because Iraq or Afghanistan weren't threatening the man in power. Just take a look at what is currently happening in Iran if you wonder what happens when the local authority fears the crowd.
        0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
        I would say Iran is a much better illustration of what happens when your citizenry is disarmed. The crowd isn't very scary. They don't pose a real threat. There's little risk in crushing them. They can't fight back meaningfully.
      - moi2388 9mo ago
        Are you sure the military wasn’t willing, as opposed to the politics not willing to issue this command?
  - vintermann 9mo ago
    Is armed with knives enough? Presumably it isn't, and you'd need a certain minimum level of technological parity with your tyrants. Presumably that also isn't fixed. So even if rifles might have been sufficient in the early US even though the government had cannons, rifles may not be sufficient when the government has chemical weapons and armored cars. So where's the industrial base which makes the weapons? Or the money to buy the weapons? For Iraq, Afghanistan, and for that matter in lots of conflicts the US weren't involved in (or were involved in on the anti-government side!) the answer seems straightforward enough: in foreign countries which also don't like your government. Without a bunch of neighbors and rival powers which really didn't want the US in Iraq/Afghanistan, could the insurgents have done much? Who do you propose should arm the resistance in the US, if government supported "police" paramilitaries run amok? (Let's for the sake of argument not get into whether that has happened yet). It's going to have to be quite an impressive level of support, too, to stand up against systems developed precisely against that sort of eventuality and battle-tested in the US' sphere of influence.
    - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
      > Is armed with knives enough? It depends on the numbers. Do they have 100,000 guys with guns but you have a hundred million with knives? Then you have a chance. But your chances improve a lot if your side is starting off with something more effective than that. > Presumably it isn't, and you'd need a certain minimum level of technological parity with your tyrants. You don't need parity, you need a foothold to leverage into more. > So where's the industrial base which makes the weapons? Or the money to buy the weapons? In a civil war, you take the domestic facilities and equipment by force and then use them. But first you need the capacity to do that. Can 10,000 guys with knives take a military base guarded by a thousand guys with guns? Probably not. Can they if they all have guns? Yeah, probably. Then the government has to decide if they're going to vaporize the facility when you do that. If they don't, you get nukes. If they do, now you have a mechanism to make them blow up their own infrastructure by feigning attacks. And so on.
      - vintermann 9mo ago
        > Can they if they all have guns? Yeah, probably. Heck no, they can't. Even if they could, the government's advantage isn't just in weapons. Long before you'd get your 10000 people with their gun safe stash together, they'd know exactly who you were and what you were planning. I think your proposal reads like bad power fantasy fiction. You can resist a powerful authoritarian/occupying government with force, but not without a lot of foreign backing - like in Iran right now - and I don't think you are prepared to ask the Russians for help. It would of course open a huge can of worms if you did, and you'd be right to ask if the world where you win with such support will even be better than the world where you lose.
  - renewiltord 9mo ago
    If you don’t care about how many you kill, these kinds of insurgencies can be ended. I don’t think the US Armed Forces could be convinced to attack their fellow Americans but if they did it would be worth remembering that the Warsaw Uprising ended poorly for the uprisers. This is not like Ukraine where there are lots of underground manufacturing facilities. If you tried building drones to stop US tanks and IFVs then the Californians would tell you that your factory needs to first go through environmental review. By the time the review is done the war will be lost.
    - 8note 9mo ago
      > If you tried building drones to stop US tanks and IFVs then the Californians would tell you that your factory needs to first go through environmental review. By the time the review is done the war will be lost. this would very obviously not be the case if California needed them for war, or had been in on again off again war already for a decade
      - renewiltord 9mo ago
        I don’t think it’s that obvious. The US was delayed in building shells for Ukraine because they couldn’t scale up production at a factory on account of it being historically listed. It’s been 10 years since Ukraine was first attacked in Crimea and we’ve been involved on again off again. Californians frequently will tell you that we’re in a housing “crisis” and then oppose all housing. I’m sure when another crisis arrives it’ll be different. What’s the other “crisis” popular as a cause in California? Climate change? Man, this state must be at the forefront of fighting it then. Oh what’s that? Ah, wind and nuclear opposed by local homeowners. I see, I see. Oh yes, when the next crisis arrives I’m sure it’ll be different. We’re just waiting for a real crisis, guys. Any second now.
  - AngryData 9mo ago
    Especially when you consider the US citizenry have direct access to logistics and infrastructure. You can't bomb a city or factory into producing more fuel or bombs or any of the million other things that are required to keep the US economy working well enough to fund any military operations. It would be hell on earth to be in the US, but the US military/ICE/cops/courts don't work if the citizenry aren't being productive and playing along nicely.
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
      Yeah realistically if there was actual mass repression of citizens (i.e. things like "courts" have essentially ceased to be a factor in much of anything), simply going on strike would be a pretty good start. You demonstrate peacefully, and carry arms as a deterrent so they can't crush the demonstrations the way they did in Iran.
  - 8note 9mo ago
    the insurgencies in Afghanistan at least were difficult to suppress because they based of out pakistan, a supposed american ally and notable nuclear power. to actually do the job of taking out the taliban would require going into pakistan to stop them in their bases. in iraq, the insurgency was the former iraqi military, not just random citizens with small arms
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
      >in iraq, the insurgency was the former iraqi military, not just random citizens with small arms We are quite far from a situation of mass repression of citizens in the United States like you see in Iran. But if it came to that, I imagine the 15 million+ veterans in this country might have something to say about it. They outnumber active duty military personnel by a factor of 5. And even Iran had to pull in outsiders because their military wasn't willing to fire on their own people.
  - pseudohadamard 9mo ago
    People in Iraq and Afghanistan were willing to eat grass and blow themselves up to resist the foreign invaders. How long do you think Meal Team Six will keep going if they can't get to a Burger King?
- DeepSeaTortoise 9mo ago
  It also applied to other things existing at that time, like warships, canister shot in cannons or machine guns.
- kislotnik 9mo ago
  Have you seen expensive tanks and helicopters being taken out by 500$ drones? No? I have a surprise for you
- 8fingerlouie 9mo ago
  Ukraine is taking out tanks and helicopters, as well as infrastructure daily, using 3D printed drones and AliExpress electronics. Not suggesting anyone tries it, but modern warfare has evolved. Just like the tanks changed warfare in WW1, and tanks/planes changed warfare in WW2, drones are changing warfare once more. a $10000 drone took out a multi million dollar Russian warship, and while not exactly 3D printed (at least not all of it), drones are cheap enough to manufacture to be expandable, especially if they can target and destroy things that are not that. For comparison, a single cannon/mortar shell fired on the Ukrainian front costs €3500, and they fire up to 10000 of them per day. Making a few hundred $10000 drones is cheap compared to that, and while they likely don't hold the same "barrage level" destructive power, they are focused weapons and can destroy much more with less.
0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
I see a lot from the left about how right-wingers are supposedly hypocritical on gun control. However, concrete examples of hypocrisy are rarely provided. In terms of actual concrete statements, what I'm seeing from gun rights people like Thomas Massie and the NRA is consistent with previous stances: https://xcancel.com/NRA/status/2015227627464728661#m https://xcancel.com/NRA/status/2015227627464728661#m https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/2015571107328184810#m https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/20155711073281848... I'd say the left is actually much more hypocritical. Just a few years ago they had essentially no issue with the government taking everyone's guns. Now suddenly they understand the value of an armed citizenry as a final last resort against tyranny, something the right has understood for years, and then they start calling the right "hypocritical"...
- guelo 9mo ago
  Massie is the odd man out out of 1000s of Republican politicians in being willing to publicly criticize his own party. He is very not typical. Everybody else marches in lockstep with whatever insanity trump puts out.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
    PBS: "Republican calls are growing for a deeper investigation into fatal Minneapolis shooting of Alex Pretti" https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/republican-calls-are-growing-for-a-deeper-investigation-into-fatal-minneapolis-shooting-of-alex-pretti https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/republican-calls-are-gro...
- wsatb 9mo ago
  It's not hard to find examples. "You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple." - Kash Patel “I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign." - Kristi Noem “With that being said, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.” -Donald Trump
  - 9mo ago
onjectic 9mo ago
> The Second Amendment was written so that the US could avoid having a standing federal army and quickly gather up defense forces from States as necessary when attacked. Too narrow. It secures an individual right, not a federal mobilization clause. > Isn’t this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk? Only if you think the second amendment is an on demand partisan defense force. It is not. It is a personal guarantee and a reserve of capacity, not a subscription service where “second amendment supporters” are obligated to show up on cue. > It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. “Latent” is largely the point. Deterrence is not measured by constant use, and a right is not refuted by the fact that strangers do not take on extreme personal risk to prove it to you. The first line checks are still speech, courts, elections, oversight. This right exists for when those fail. > Exactly what the constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job. If power has drifted, enforce the constraints. It is the second amendment, placed immediately after speech and assembly, not the third or the tenth. Do not redefine the right into irrelevance and call that proof it failed.

pseudohadamard 9mo ago

As a footnote, it was also written at a time when a bunch of guys with muskets could face down another bunch of guys with muskets. When one side has tanks and attack helicopters and training and outnumbers you a hundred to one it doesn't really work any more.

0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
That would explain why it was so easy for the US to suppress insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan... It's actually rather difficult to think of tyrannical regimes which persisted against an armed citizenry in the long term.
- moi2388 9mo ago
  That however is a political issue, not a military one. Given free rein the military absolutely can do that.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
    If the US military wasn't willing to simply flatten cities all over Iraq and Afghanistan, why would you expect them to do that in their own country to their own homes and family members?
    - asksomeoneelse 9mo ago
      Because Iraq or Afghanistan weren't threatening the man in power. Just take a look at what is currently happening in Iran if you wonder what happens when the local authority fears the crowd.
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
        I would say Iran is a much better illustration of what happens when your citizenry is disarmed. The crowd isn't very scary. They don't pose a real threat. There's little risk in crushing them. They can't fight back meaningfully.
    - moi2388 9mo ago
      Are you sure the military wasn’t willing, as opposed to the politics not willing to issue this command?
- vintermann 9mo ago
  Is armed with knives enough? Presumably it isn't, and you'd need a certain minimum level of technological parity with your tyrants. Presumably that also isn't fixed. So even if rifles might have been sufficient in the early US even though the government had cannons, rifles may not be sufficient when the government has chemical weapons and armored cars. So where's the industrial base which makes the weapons? Or the money to buy the weapons? For Iraq, Afghanistan, and for that matter in lots of conflicts the US weren't involved in (or were involved in on the anti-government side!) the answer seems straightforward enough: in foreign countries which also don't like your government. Without a bunch of neighbors and rival powers which really didn't want the US in Iraq/Afghanistan, could the insurgents have done much? Who do you propose should arm the resistance in the US, if government supported "police" paramilitaries run amok? (Let's for the sake of argument not get into whether that has happened yet). It's going to have to be quite an impressive level of support, too, to stand up against systems developed precisely against that sort of eventuality and battle-tested in the US' sphere of influence.
  - AnthonyMouse 9mo ago
    > Is armed with knives enough? It depends on the numbers. Do they have 100,000 guys with guns but you have a hundred million with knives? Then you have a chance. But your chances improve a lot if your side is starting off with something more effective than that. > Presumably it isn't, and you'd need a certain minimum level of technological parity with your tyrants. You don't need parity, you need a foothold to leverage into more. > So where's the industrial base which makes the weapons? Or the money to buy the weapons? In a civil war, you take the domestic facilities and equipment by force and then use them. But first you need the capacity to do that. Can 10,000 guys with knives take a military base guarded by a thousand guys with guns? Probably not. Can they if they all have guns? Yeah, probably. Then the government has to decide if they're going to vaporize the facility when you do that. If they don't, you get nukes. If they do, now you have a mechanism to make them blow up their own infrastructure by feigning attacks. And so on.
    - vintermann 9mo ago
      > Can they if they all have guns? Yeah, probably. Heck no, they can't. Even if they could, the government's advantage isn't just in weapons. Long before you'd get your 10000 people with their gun safe stash together, they'd know exactly who you were and what you were planning. I think your proposal reads like bad power fantasy fiction. You can resist a powerful authoritarian/occupying government with force, but not without a lot of foreign backing - like in Iran right now - and I don't think you are prepared to ask the Russians for help. It would of course open a huge can of worms if you did, and you'd be right to ask if the world where you win with such support will even be better than the world where you lose.
- renewiltord 9mo ago
  If you don’t care about how many you kill, these kinds of insurgencies can be ended. I don’t think the US Armed Forces could be convinced to attack their fellow Americans but if they did it would be worth remembering that the Warsaw Uprising ended poorly for the uprisers. This is not like Ukraine where there are lots of underground manufacturing facilities. If you tried building drones to stop US tanks and IFVs then the Californians would tell you that your factory needs to first go through environmental review. By the time the review is done the war will be lost.
  - 8note 9mo ago
    > If you tried building drones to stop US tanks and IFVs then the Californians would tell you that your factory needs to first go through environmental review. By the time the review is done the war will be lost. this would very obviously not be the case if California needed them for war, or had been in on again off again war already for a decade
    - renewiltord 9mo ago
      I don’t think it’s that obvious. The US was delayed in building shells for Ukraine because they couldn’t scale up production at a factory on account of it being historically listed. It’s been 10 years since Ukraine was first attacked in Crimea and we’ve been involved on again off again. Californians frequently will tell you that we’re in a housing “crisis” and then oppose all housing. I’m sure when another crisis arrives it’ll be different. What’s the other “crisis” popular as a cause in California? Climate change? Man, this state must be at the forefront of fighting it then. Oh what’s that? Ah, wind and nuclear opposed by local homeowners. I see, I see. Oh yes, when the next crisis arrives I’m sure it’ll be different. We’re just waiting for a real crisis, guys. Any second now.
- AngryData 9mo ago
  Especially when you consider the US citizenry have direct access to logistics and infrastructure. You can't bomb a city or factory into producing more fuel or bombs or any of the million other things that are required to keep the US economy working well enough to fund any military operations. It would be hell on earth to be in the US, but the US military/ICE/cops/courts don't work if the citizenry aren't being productive and playing along nicely.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
    Yeah realistically if there was actual mass repression of citizens (i.e. things like "courts" have essentially ceased to be a factor in much of anything), simply going on strike would be a pretty good start. You demonstrate peacefully, and carry arms as a deterrent so they can't crush the demonstrations the way they did in Iran.
- 8note 9mo ago
  the insurgencies in Afghanistan at least were difficult to suppress because they based of out pakistan, a supposed american ally and notable nuclear power. to actually do the job of taking out the taliban would require going into pakistan to stop them in their bases. in iraq, the insurgency was the former iraqi military, not just random citizens with small arms
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
    >in iraq, the insurgency was the former iraqi military, not just random citizens with small arms We are quite far from a situation of mass repression of citizens in the United States like you see in Iran. But if it came to that, I imagine the 15 million+ veterans in this country might have something to say about it. They outnumber active duty military personnel by a factor of 5. And even Iran had to pull in outsiders because their military wasn't willing to fire on their own people.
- pseudohadamard 9mo ago
  People in Iraq and Afghanistan were willing to eat grass and blow themselves up to resist the foreign invaders. How long do you think Meal Team Six will keep going if they can't get to a Burger King?
DeepSeaTortoise 9mo ago
It also applied to other things existing at that time, like warships, canister shot in cannons or machine guns.
kislotnik 9mo ago
Have you seen expensive tanks and helicopters being taken out by 500$ drones? No? I have a surprise for you
8fingerlouie 9mo ago
Ukraine is taking out tanks and helicopters, as well as infrastructure daily, using 3D printed drones and AliExpress electronics. Not suggesting anyone tries it, but modern warfare has evolved. Just like the tanks changed warfare in WW1, and tanks/planes changed warfare in WW2, drones are changing warfare once more. a $10000 drone took out a multi million dollar Russian warship, and while not exactly 3D printed (at least not all of it), drones are cheap enough to manufacture to be expandable, especially if they can target and destroy things that are not that. For comparison, a single cannon/mortar shell fired on the Ukrainian front costs €3500, and they fire up to 10000 of them per day. Making a few hundred $10000 drones is cheap compared to that, and while they likely don't hold the same "barrage level" destructive power, they are focused weapons and can destroy much more with less.

0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago

I see a lot from the left about how right-wingers are supposedly hypocritical on gun control. However, concrete examples of hypocrisy are rarely provided. In terms of actual concrete statements, what I'm seeing from gun rights people like Thomas Massie and the NRA is consistent with previous stances: https://xcancel.com/NRA/status/2015227627464728661#m https://xcancel.com/NRA/status/2015227627464728661#m https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/2015571107328184810#m https://xcancel.com/RepThomasMassie/status/20155711073281848... I'd say the left is actually much more hypocritical. Just a few years ago they had essentially no issue with the government taking everyone's guns. Now suddenly they understand the value of an armed citizenry as a final last resort against tyranny, something the right has understood for years, and then they start calling the right "hypocritical"...

guelo 9mo ago
Massie is the odd man out out of 1000s of Republican politicians in being willing to publicly criticize his own party. He is very not typical. Everybody else marches in lockstep with whatever insanity trump puts out.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 9mo ago
  PBS: "Republican calls are growing for a deeper investigation into fatal Minneapolis shooting of Alex Pretti" https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/republican-calls-are-growing-for-a-deeper-investigation-into-fatal-minneapolis-shooting-of-alex-pretti https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/republican-calls-are-gro...
wsatb 9mo ago
It's not hard to find examples. "You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple." - Kash Patel “I don't know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign." - Kristi Noem “With that being said, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.” -Donald Trump
- 9mo ago

onjectic 9mo ago

> The Second Amendment was written so that the US could avoid having a standing federal army and quickly gather up defense forces from States as necessary when attacked. Too narrow. It secures an individual right, not a federal mobilization clause. > Isn’t this the exact scenario those arguments were talking about? Have all the second amendment supporters been employed by ice/agree with what they're doing, or was it just empty talk? Only if you think the second amendment is an on demand partisan defense force. It is not. It is a personal guarantee and a reserve of capacity, not a subscription service where “second amendment supporters” are obligated to show up on cue. > It was never really a practical idea, more a sort of latent threat that has proven to be ineffective. “Latent” is largely the point. Deterrence is not measured by constant use, and a right is not refuted by the fact that strangers do not take on extreme personal risk to prove it to you. The first line checks are still speech, courts, elections, oversight. This right exists for when those fail. > Exactly what the constitution was written to prevent. I guess they did a bad job. If power has drifted, enforce the constraints. It is the second amendment, placed immediately after speech and assembly, not the third or the tenth. Do not redefine the right into irrelevance and call that proof it failed.