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Is the "keep the government in line" thing really a reason that anybody actually believes anymore? Like, if things got so bad that the government was "turning o

Is the "keep the government in line" thing really a reason that anybody actually believes anymore? Like, if things got so bad that the government was "turning on its own people" with weaponry, somebody really thinks some guys with guns from Wal-Mart are going to be what stops them?

philwelch 12y ago
Honestly? It's not a far step away from the kind of firepower they lost to in Vietnam and Iraq.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ashark 12y ago
  A US government worth overthrowing by armed insurrection and that couldn't be overthrown some other way would practically by definition be willing and able to engage in some really nasty practices to put down a domestic rebellion. Like, filling-mass-graves nasty. Shooting at them wouldn't help. Sympathy from the armed forces and various forms of political pressure, foreign and domestic, would be far more helpful than a few deer rifles, and if you've got that your private arms aren't really necessary. A domestic rebellion wouldn't win by shooting enough people, it'd win when the tactics necessary to stop it were beyond what the government and/or military were willing to do. Guns are much more useful when: 1) the enemy is foreign (killing enough people actually might make them go away), and/or 2) your position doesn't actually have popular support so other means are unavailable to you, and/or 3) foreign powers have the will and capacity to bomb the shit out of your country if the government goes too far in its attempts to suppress your uprising (this, or loss of military support for the government, are basically the only reasons authoritarian states fail to stop revolutions in the modern world)
  - jnbiche 12y ago
    >Sympathy from the armed forces and various forms of political pressure, foreign and domestic, would be far more helpful than a few deer rifles, and if you've got that your private arms aren't really necessary. Actually, having closely studied the dissolution of a modern European country (the former Yugoslavia) and seen the fallout from up close, it's not that simple (at least not always). What happened in that case was that although the Yugoslav government [1] retained control of most of the heavy weaponry (artillery, tanks), and although the succeeding republics (Croatia and Bosnia) were initially limited to small arms belonging to local militia and hunters, the republics did have an abundance of active and retired officers with loyalty to their ethnic homelands who were quick to raise and lead battalions of troops into the field [2]. Those troops then went on to capture some heavy arms from the Yugoslav army, and scored lots of small arms, and eventually heavy arms and aircraft, from overseas allies. Eventually, after lots of brutal warfare, ethnic cleansing, and in Bosnia, genocide, the republics did gain their independence from Yugoslavia (with significant help from the U.S. and other countries). What was key in this case were the experienced military leaders who quickly assumed charge in the succeeding republics. I suspect a worst-case, nightmare U.S. scenario would look much the same, with experienced military leaders taking control of ad hoc forces in their respective states and/or regions, and then fighting with small arms until they were able to capture heavy arms, receive outside help, or were defeated/captured. 1. Essentially, Serbia and Montenegro, plus ethnic Serbs elsewhere 2. Slovenia's succession was a different story than that of Bosnia and Croatia, for a variety of geographical, cultural, and historical reasons.
  - philwelch 12y ago
    Nonetheless, it isn't going to reach the point of the government dropping atom bombs on their own country. The US has forests, cities, and mountains; good partisan country. Heavy weapons aren't effective in these terrains. Even the actual Nazis were held at bay for weeks and months by armed urban uprisings. The more realistic scenarios don't actually involve the military itself turning against the people. It's far more likely that police will overstep their bounds a little and try to go house to house, and one reason they don't do that, outside of exceptional circumstances that the public will back them up on, is the fact that doing so is actively dangerous.
icegreentea 12y ago
America's inability to really win in Afghanistan and Iraq, and South American states inability to even militarily defeat drug cartel forces is ample proof that it's not that simple to just beat 'some guys with guns'.
geoelectric 12y ago
It's not about winning so much as about making your loss costly enough for the other party to deter the conflict in the first place.
juliangoldsmith 12y ago
A few thousand guys in the Middle East with guns have given the U.S. government a lot of grief over the past decade. A few million people in the U.S. with guns would give them a lot more grief.
yebyen 12y ago
So are you saying you think they stand a better chance at defending themselves from the oppressive government without the guns?
- apetresc 12y ago
  I guess I'm saying, by the time guns are actually involved, I think they have 0% chance either way.
carsongross 12y ago
Armed peasantry have been beating western armies since WW2, and are pulling away in terms of effectiveness. So, yes, I believe it. Because I'm seeing it happen.
kevinskii 12y ago
Yes. "Guys with guns from Wal-Mart" could wreak havoc against a larger, better-equipped, and better-trained army. History is abound with examples.
refurb 12y ago
Look at how the resistance in Iraq stymied the US army for months/years. Also, look at the Nazi invasion of the Island of Crete. A ton of local farmers with gun took a huge toll on the Nazi paratroopers.
jnbiche 12y ago
Yes, there's little doubt that a rural population that has grown up using guns and hunting can wreak havoc on a larger, conventional force using guerrilla warfare tactics. History abounds with examples of this. As for "guys with guns from Wal-Mart" in the US, let's not forget that we have tens of thousands of experienced returned officers and NCOs, who are very knowledgeable about guerrilla warfare and who identify very strongly with that rural population base here in the US.
jauer 12y ago
There are people that believe that's already happened. The Waco & Ruby Ridge incidents of the 90s fueled the "government out to get you" mindset and started people talking about "not letting it happen again". And by talking I mean openly in mainline churches in the midwest-not gun shop boasting. Since then it seems like federal law enforcement has taken a softer touch with their sieges. This could be simply a change in doctrine to avoid bad press but enough people believe it's more than that. Also, these days it isn't so much about guys with guns from Wal-Mart as it is country boys that did a couple tours in IQ/AF as a 11something and their friends. <digression> That's also why the NRA is touchy about funding for studies on things--there's a perception that "the powers that be" want to diagnose everyone who served with PTSD and then use that as a reason to take away their guns. This is compounded by some despair over disarming IQ villagers so they are easy pickings for ISIS and the perception that "they were training us to do it back home". </digression>
johngalt 12y ago
> Is the "keep the government in line" thing really a reason that anybody actually believes anymore? If they don't, they should (I'm not a gun owner or an NRA member). If you look at history, it is exceptionally rare to find a 100 year stretch where governments and militaries didn't kill more civilians than any amount of murderers. Not always domestic governments, but that only adds to the point. > if things got so bad that the government was "turning on its own people" with weaponry, somebody really thinks some guys with guns from Wal-Mart are going to be what stops them? I'm not going to speculate, but it might not be as one sided as you'd think. Put all the hunters in the U.S. together and you have the largest army in the world by a factor of five. Regardless it doesn't have to be that bad. Government apathy or corruption can be enough to justify retaining the right to self defense. Consider the police work slowdown in NYC turning into a thinly veiled version of protection money. Local LEOs that ask for more money every year or 'gee I guess we will have to just let everyone out of jail'. Or consider something like that judge that sold children into private prisons. Imagine that despite protests and uproar, they sweep it under the rug and continue? History is rife with examples of people being exploited simply because they were dependent or defenseless. Someone who has your best interests in mind won't demand that you be defenseless or dependent upon them.

philwelch 12y ago

Honestly? It's not a far step away from the kind of firepower they lost to in Vietnam and Iraq.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ashark 12y ago
A US government worth overthrowing by armed insurrection and that couldn't be overthrown some other way would practically by definition be willing and able to engage in some really nasty practices to put down a domestic rebellion. Like, filling-mass-graves nasty. Shooting at them wouldn't help. Sympathy from the armed forces and various forms of political pressure, foreign and domestic, would be far more helpful than a few deer rifles, and if you've got that your private arms aren't really necessary. A domestic rebellion wouldn't win by shooting enough people, it'd win when the tactics necessary to stop it were beyond what the government and/or military were willing to do. Guns are much more useful when: 1) the enemy is foreign (killing enough people actually might make them go away), and/or 2) your position doesn't actually have popular support so other means are unavailable to you, and/or 3) foreign powers have the will and capacity to bomb the shit out of your country if the government goes too far in its attempts to suppress your uprising (this, or loss of military support for the government, are basically the only reasons authoritarian states fail to stop revolutions in the modern world)
- jnbiche 12y ago
  >Sympathy from the armed forces and various forms of political pressure, foreign and domestic, would be far more helpful than a few deer rifles, and if you've got that your private arms aren't really necessary. Actually, having closely studied the dissolution of a modern European country (the former Yugoslavia) and seen the fallout from up close, it's not that simple (at least not always). What happened in that case was that although the Yugoslav government [1] retained control of most of the heavy weaponry (artillery, tanks), and although the succeeding republics (Croatia and Bosnia) were initially limited to small arms belonging to local militia and hunters, the republics did have an abundance of active and retired officers with loyalty to their ethnic homelands who were quick to raise and lead battalions of troops into the field [2]. Those troops then went on to capture some heavy arms from the Yugoslav army, and scored lots of small arms, and eventually heavy arms and aircraft, from overseas allies. Eventually, after lots of brutal warfare, ethnic cleansing, and in Bosnia, genocide, the republics did gain their independence from Yugoslavia (with significant help from the U.S. and other countries). What was key in this case were the experienced military leaders who quickly assumed charge in the succeeding republics. I suspect a worst-case, nightmare U.S. scenario would look much the same, with experienced military leaders taking control of ad hoc forces in their respective states and/or regions, and then fighting with small arms until they were able to capture heavy arms, receive outside help, or were defeated/captured. 1. Essentially, Serbia and Montenegro, plus ethnic Serbs elsewhere 2. Slovenia's succession was a different story than that of Bosnia and Croatia, for a variety of geographical, cultural, and historical reasons.
- philwelch 12y ago
  Nonetheless, it isn't going to reach the point of the government dropping atom bombs on their own country. The US has forests, cities, and mountains; good partisan country. Heavy weapons aren't effective in these terrains. Even the actual Nazis were held at bay for weeks and months by armed urban uprisings. The more realistic scenarios don't actually involve the military itself turning against the people. It's far more likely that police will overstep their bounds a little and try to go house to house, and one reason they don't do that, outside of exceptional circumstances that the public will back them up on, is the fact that doing so is actively dangerous.

icegreentea 12y ago

America's inability to really win in Afghanistan and Iraq, and South American states inability to even militarily defeat drug cartel forces is ample proof that it's not that simple to just beat 'some guys with guns'.

geoelectric 12y ago

It's not about winning so much as about making your loss costly enough for the other party to deter the conflict in the first place.

juliangoldsmith 12y ago

A few thousand guys in the Middle East with guns have given the U.S. government a lot of grief over the past decade. A few million people in the U.S. with guns would give them a lot more grief.

yebyen 12y ago

So are you saying you think they stand a better chance at defending themselves from the oppressive government without the guns?

apetresc 12y ago
I guess I'm saying, by the time guns are actually involved, I think they have 0% chance either way.

carsongross 12y ago

Armed peasantry have been beating western armies since WW2, and are pulling away in terms of effectiveness. So, yes, I believe it. Because I'm seeing it happen.

kevinskii 12y ago

Yes. "Guys with guns from Wal-Mart" could wreak havoc against a larger, better-equipped, and better-trained army. History is abound with examples.

refurb 12y ago

Look at how the resistance in Iraq stymied the US army for months/years. Also, look at the Nazi invasion of the Island of Crete. A ton of local farmers with gun took a huge toll on the Nazi paratroopers.

jnbiche 12y ago

Yes, there's little doubt that a rural population that has grown up using guns and hunting can wreak havoc on a larger, conventional force using guerrilla warfare tactics. History abounds with examples of this. As for "guys with guns from Wal-Mart" in the US, let's not forget that we have tens of thousands of experienced returned officers and NCOs, who are very knowledgeable about guerrilla warfare and who identify very strongly with that rural population base here in the US.

jauer 12y ago

There are people that believe that's already happened. The Waco & Ruby Ridge incidents of the 90s fueled the "government out to get you" mindset and started people talking about "not letting it happen again". And by talking I mean openly in mainline churches in the midwest-not gun shop boasting. Since then it seems like federal law enforcement has taken a softer touch with their sieges. This could be simply a change in doctrine to avoid bad press but enough people believe it's more than that. Also, these days it isn't so much about guys with guns from Wal-Mart as it is country boys that did a couple tours in IQ/AF as a 11something and their friends. <digression> That's also why the NRA is touchy about funding for studies on things--there's a perception that "the powers that be" want to diagnose everyone who served with PTSD and then use that as a reason to take away their guns. This is compounded by some despair over disarming IQ villagers so they are easy pickings for ISIS and the perception that "they were training us to do it back home". </digression>

johngalt 12y ago

> Is the "keep the government in line" thing really a reason that anybody actually believes anymore? If they don't, they should (I'm not a gun owner or an NRA member). If you look at history, it is exceptionally rare to find a 100 year stretch where governments and militaries didn't kill more civilians than any amount of murderers. Not always domestic governments, but that only adds to the point. > if things got so bad that the government was "turning on its own people" with weaponry, somebody really thinks some guys with guns from Wal-Mart are going to be what stops them? I'm not going to speculate, but it might not be as one sided as you'd think. Put all the hunters in the U.S. together and you have the largest army in the world by a factor of five. Regardless it doesn't have to be that bad. Government apathy or corruption can be enough to justify retaining the right to self defense. Consider the police work slowdown in NYC turning into a thinly veiled version of protection money. Local LEOs that ask for more money every year or 'gee I guess we will have to just let everyone out of jail'. Or consider something like that judge that sold children into private prisons. Imagine that despite protests and uproar, they sweep it under the rug and continue? History is rife with examples of people being exploited simply because they were dependent or defenseless. Someone who has your best interests in mind won't demand that you be defenseless or dependent upon them.