5 ms·

Good luck with that. There are basically two scenarios here to consider in a popular violent revolution: 1) The army sides with the people. In this case, the

by omgsean 13y ago

Good luck with that. There are basically two scenarios here to consider in a popular violent revolution: 1) The army sides with the people. In this case, the right to keep and bear arms is basically irrelevant as you have the backing of the world's most powerful army. 2) The army sides with the government. In this case, even the militia types with huge munitions caches don't stand a chance against the world's most powerful army. This is not 1776, it wouldn't be musket vs. musket.

hga 13y ago
"Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics."
jivatmanx 13y ago
False dichotomy, it's not likely that every single regiment of every single branch of the armed forces and police are all going to choose a single side.
- hga 13y ago
  One thing that's quite unusual about our system is that policing power is smeared across the local, state and Federal levels, with the vast majority of it at the first. This imposes massive constraints on a would be Federal level tyranny.
- ihsw 13y ago
  Don't be so sure about that, the Federal government (or more specifically, the DHS) has been currying favor with local and state LEO orgs through funding and equipment distribution programs. The relatively recent militarization of various police forces is evidence of that, and, much like the USG exerted pressure over west European allied countries to ground Bolivia's presidential plane, they will exert similar control over state and local police forces through "greater cooperation" policies.
  - hga 13y ago
    Certainly a worry, but one bottom line is who do the local police answer to? Who pays them, who can fire them and make them outlaws with all the latter entails?
pacmon 13y ago
If it helps - I happen to know two ex-Marines who believe most of the armed forces would never take up arms against American civilians.
notahacker 13y ago
The other issue is the "rights to bear arms" has never been a factor in any civil rights dispute in the US, whether it was systematically oppressing black people for generations or one-off riots or strike-breaking in which cops fired on crowds without causing wider conflicts as a consequence. (arguably the one area in which citizen-owned firearms have actively affected the history of US civil liberty is in carrying out the occasional assassination of people adjudged to have been bit too keen on civil liberties)
- jivatmanx 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
- hga 13y ago
  Lots of liberals were famously armed when they went into the South, like Eleanor Roosevelt, many blacks kept themselves alive or less repressed with personal firearms, like Condoleezza Rice's father and his friends, and then there's the Deacons for Defense and Justice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice . jivatmanx in the other reply right now covers a bit of what happened prior to and during the Civil War; I hail from the southern edge of what you might call Bleeding Missouri and have studied it a bit, guns were most certainly a very important factor. As for strike-breaking and all that, while it's not an area I've studied, it's well established that both sides were armed and used their guns.
  - notahacker 13y ago
    I'm not saying many liberals, strikers and black people weren't armed and prepared to fight where it favoured them. I'm saying they were, and people got oppressed in a far more direct, blatant and universal manner than anything that is likely to emerge from PRISM or the present US government's policy goals. Citizen-owned firearms might have been handy in the odd skirmish, but they didn't cause legislators or law enforcement to back down. Black people sat in the back of the bus and grudgingly accepted there wasn't much they could do about their neighbour getting lynched. Strikes were bust in a blaze of gunfire and millions of other members of the trade union movement went to work as normal the next day. Even as determined a revolutionary as John Brown failed where the Union military succeeded a year later. Concern that the oppressed could potentially gain access to firearms neither dissuaded administrations from enacting oppressive laws nor accelerated the pace of their removal. Why would it be different next time round?
nthj 13y ago
3) The civilian force holds out long enough that a significant portion of the army becomes sympathetic towards the civilians and gradually switches sides. Our armed forces are made of individuals. It would not be a boolean operation by any means.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  4) n sided civil war unconstrained by old notions of geographically aligned forces.
JohnnyBrown 13y ago
That's certainly one way to look at it. On the other hand, the same powerful army has struggled on several occasions recently to put down insurgencies from determined, armed local populations in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, and several other places. Of course, in a Civil War II situation, there might not be the same constraint to wrap up the operation before popular support dwindles. Occupying a hostile United States could possibly be the quagmire to end all quagmires.
- hga 13y ago
  Then again, in all those cases you cite they had a secure rear area, one reason I cite the "Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics" maxim. That's a much, much sticker proposition; as you posit, "the quagmire to end all quagmires", we're an ornery people.

by omgsean 13y ago

hga 13y ago

"Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics."

jivatmanx 13y ago

False dichotomy, it's not likely that every single regiment of every single branch of the armed forces and police are all going to choose a single side.

hga 13y ago
One thing that's quite unusual about our system is that policing power is smeared across the local, state and Federal levels, with the vast majority of it at the first. This imposes massive constraints on a would be Federal level tyranny.
ihsw 13y ago
Don't be so sure about that, the Federal government (or more specifically, the DHS) has been currying favor with local and state LEO orgs through funding and equipment distribution programs. The relatively recent militarization of various police forces is evidence of that, and, much like the USG exerted pressure over west European allied countries to ground Bolivia's presidential plane, they will exert similar control over state and local police forces through "greater cooperation" policies.
- hga 13y ago
  Certainly a worry, but one bottom line is who do the local police answer to? Who pays them, who can fire them and make them outlaws with all the latter entails?

pacmon 13y ago

If it helps - I happen to know two ex-Marines who believe most of the armed forces would never take up arms against American civilians.

notahacker 13y ago

The other issue is the "rights to bear arms" has never been a factor in any civil rights dispute in the US, whether it was systematically oppressing black people for generations or one-off riots or strike-breaking in which cops fired on crowds without causing wider conflicts as a consequence. (arguably the one area in which citizen-owned firearms have actively affected the history of US civil liberty is in carrying out the occasional assassination of people adjudged to have been bit too keen on civil liberties)

jivatmanx 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
hga 13y ago
Lots of liberals were famously armed when they went into the South, like Eleanor Roosevelt, many blacks kept themselves alive or less repressed with personal firearms, like Condoleezza Rice's father and his friends, and then there's the Deacons for Defense and Justice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice . jivatmanx in the other reply right now covers a bit of what happened prior to and during the Civil War; I hail from the southern edge of what you might call Bleeding Missouri and have studied it a bit, guns were most certainly a very important factor. As for strike-breaking and all that, while it's not an area I've studied, it's well established that both sides were armed and used their guns.
- notahacker 13y ago
  I'm not saying many liberals, strikers and black people weren't armed and prepared to fight where it favoured them. I'm saying they were, and people got oppressed in a far more direct, blatant and universal manner than anything that is likely to emerge from PRISM or the present US government's policy goals. Citizen-owned firearms might have been handy in the odd skirmish, but they didn't cause legislators or law enforcement to back down. Black people sat in the back of the bus and grudgingly accepted there wasn't much they could do about their neighbour getting lynched. Strikes were bust in a blaze of gunfire and millions of other members of the trade union movement went to work as normal the next day. Even as determined a revolutionary as John Brown failed where the Union military succeeded a year later. Concern that the oppressed could potentially gain access to firearms neither dissuaded administrations from enacting oppressive laws nor accelerated the pace of their removal. Why would it be different next time round?

nthj 13y ago

3) The civilian force holds out long enough that a significant portion of the army becomes sympathetic towards the civilians and gradually switches sides. Our armed forces are made of individuals. It would not be a boolean operation by any means.

moocowduckquack 13y ago
4) n sided civil war unconstrained by old notions of geographically aligned forces.

JohnnyBrown 13y ago

That's certainly one way to look at it. On the other hand, the same powerful army has struggled on several occasions recently to put down insurgencies from determined, armed local populations in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, and several other places. Of course, in a Civil War II situation, there might not be the same constraint to wrap up the operation before popular support dwindles. Occupying a hostile United States could possibly be the quagmire to end all quagmires.

hga 13y ago
Then again, in all those cases you cite they had a secure rear area, one reason I cite the "Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics" maxim. That's a much, much sticker proposition; as you posit, "the quagmire to end all quagmires", we're an ornery people.