4 ms·

I've never been clear why people think "guns" will protect them from a government that has massive technological and economic resources at their disposal. I'm

I've never been clear why people think "guns" will protect them from a government that has massive technological and economic resources at their disposal. I'm not saying you won't be alive. And I know guerrilla techniques can keep these kinds of conflicts going for decades. But what will you really have besides some quasi-freedom? To me, the much more important weapons of (using your example) the Revolutionary War here in the U.S. were the intellectual weapons sharpened by the Enlightenment that were used to create the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the first place.

noarchy 13y ago
>I've never been clear why people think "guns" will protect them from a government that has massive technological and economic resources at their disposal. Those economic resource, of course, were taken from the population. Cutting off the oxygen in this area, so to speak, might be far more effective than guns. Guns, as it happens, are what implicitly lay behind the government's ability to take your money.
- drhayes9 13y ago
  Do you mean, "Let's not pay taxes" as a revolutionary tactic? Would that really work in the world of complex financial instruments, deficit spending, international aid, etc? The implicit violence argument behind taxes never held a lot of water with me. I pay taxes because I like interstates, Pell grants, enforcement of certain federal regulations (environmental, labor, etc), among other things.
  - gohrt 13y ago
    Do those other things include Farm Bill, foreign wars, Gitmo, interntional aid to all the various regimes that receive it...?
    - drhayes9 13y ago
      If the Farm Bill supported welfare, then yes. The others... not so much. But those things aren't direct effects of taxes, they're the direct result of legislative and executive action that can be, in part, enabled by taxes. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
noonespecial 13y ago
Simply knowing that citizens are armed will curtail the most egregious of police behavior. The 2nd amendment isn't about going to war on a national scale, its about the last line of defense against petty local thugs with badges.

noarchy 13y ago

>I've never been clear why people think "guns" will protect them from a government that has massive technological and economic resources at their disposal. Those economic resource, of course, were taken from the population. Cutting off the oxygen in this area, so to speak, might be far more effective than guns. Guns, as it happens, are what implicitly lay behind the government's ability to take your money.

drhayes9 13y ago
Do you mean, "Let's not pay taxes" as a revolutionary tactic? Would that really work in the world of complex financial instruments, deficit spending, international aid, etc? The implicit violence argument behind taxes never held a lot of water with me. I pay taxes because I like interstates, Pell grants, enforcement of certain federal regulations (environmental, labor, etc), among other things.
- gohrt 13y ago
  Do those other things include Farm Bill, foreign wars, Gitmo, interntional aid to all the various regimes that receive it...?
  - drhayes9 13y ago
    If the Farm Bill supported welfare, then yes. The others... not so much. But those things aren't direct effects of taxes, they're the direct result of legislative and executive action that can be, in part, enabled by taxes. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

noonespecial 13y ago

Simply knowing that citizens are armed will curtail the most egregious of police behavior. The 2nd amendment isn't about going to war on a national scale, its about the last line of defense against petty local thugs with badges.