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> we've retained the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Puts a ceiling on the tyranny the state can exercise I'm confused by this outdated meme. A hypothetical moder

by doktrin 13y ago

> we've retained the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Puts a ceiling on the tyranny the state can exercise I'm confused by this outdated meme. A hypothetical modern totalitarian regime with the resources of the US isn't likely to be too intimidated by the large blustering egos of amateur militias and their (largely) civilian firearms. Without the appropriate organization and infrastructure, simply having _guns_ isn't going to do anyone a whole lot of good. The government can still, at will, exercise control over the media and most channels of communication (including the internet, obviously). It can fairly easily win the war of public opinion if it really needs to. Any pockets of armed insurrection, at that point, merely constitute a series of aggravating nuisances. Guns are just a tool, and one that will only become relatively less relevant and menacing in the modern age.

hga 13y ago
You can't imagine how the people in such a "hypothetical modern totalitarian regime" would be intimidated by their being assassinated at all levels but the very top which can afford really good protection, but would have to stay mostly bunkered down anyway? That's just one example of how widespread gun ownership can be a bit more than an "aggravating nuisance". Another is this classic from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The GULAG Archipelago: And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  He goes on ( http://archive.org/details/Gulag_Archipelago_I http://archive.org/details/Gulag_Archipelago_I ) to say: If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more — we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! :/
- leot 13y ago
  As if guns are the only things that can provide this kind of protection or have this kind of influence. Yes, guns are powerful. So are four people with long knives. So are traps. So are the "half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, ...". The statement seems to be saying more about people's will to resist, not the necessity of firearms. I suppose one might make the argument that guns increase people's willingness to resist, but this might not simply be because they make it easer ... in this case, the most ironically hilarious role that guns play is to provide a concrete freedom that guns, themselves, might be used to protect. That is, the best reason to have guns as a protected right might not be because they are a means by which to resist tyranny, but a right that's so painful to lose to so many that it motivates resistance.
ToothlessJake 13y ago
"the US isn't likely to be too intimidated by the large blustering egos of amateur militias and their (largely) civilian firearms" Why on earth has the US issued a global terror alert? Is there some global terror network that can really hit 21 diplomatic facilities or is the threat more local focused than that? The US is a scared, self-defensive beast. It fears anyone with a lathe.

by doktrin 13y ago

hga 13y ago

You can't imagine how the people in such a "hypothetical modern totalitarian regime" would be intimidated by their being assassinated at all levels but the very top which can afford really good protection, but would have to stay mostly bunkered down anyway? That's just one example of how widespread gun ownership can be a bit more than an "aggravating nuisance". Another is this classic from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The GULAG Archipelago: And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

PavlovsCat 13y ago
He goes on ( http://archive.org/details/Gulag_Archipelago_I http://archive.org/details/Gulag_Archipelago_I ) to say: If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more — we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! :/
leot 13y ago
As if guns are the only things that can provide this kind of protection or have this kind of influence. Yes, guns are powerful. So are four people with long knives. So are traps. So are the "half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, ...". The statement seems to be saying more about people's will to resist, not the necessity of firearms. I suppose one might make the argument that guns increase people's willingness to resist, but this might not simply be because they make it easer ... in this case, the most ironically hilarious role that guns play is to provide a concrete freedom that guns, themselves, might be used to protect. That is, the best reason to have guns as a protected right might not be because they are a means by which to resist tyranny, but a right that's so painful to lose to so many that it motivates resistance.

ToothlessJake 13y ago

"the US isn't likely to be too intimidated by the large blustering egos of amateur militias and their (largely) civilian firearms" Why on earth has the US issued a global terror alert? Is there some global terror network that can really hit 21 diplomatic facilities or is the threat more local focused than that? The US is a scared, self-defensive beast. It fears anyone with a lathe.