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have you seen modern riot control technology? Dude, they have 50 years of tech advantage over the pitchfork wielders. We are truly fucked if the military and p

have you seen modern riot control technology? Dude, they have 50 years of tech advantage over the pitchfork wielders. We are truly fucked if the military and police do not mutiny

krschultz 17y ago
Have you seen what proportion of Americans own firearms? If we are talking about treason - which hanging politicians from a lamp post would be - it won't be crowd control with tear gas and riot shields. It will be some police/military with guns vs citizens/police/military with guns. Fortunately this law will not require that level of trouble. It is so draconian that it will not pass - so long as it is made public. The only way the government can control us is through secrecy. When something is so obviously against the public interest it won't be passed if enough people fight against it. The reason the Patriot act and others stood was because they just didn't effect enough people. If you start talking about losing your internet because your son posted a YouTube clip, voters will get mad.
- forensic 17y ago
  You've made it clear that you haven't been acquainted with modern riot control technology. tear gas and shields is the OLD stuff. The new stuff hasn't been widely utilized, but it IS widely in place and police and military have been trained on it. The purpose of these non-lethal riot control methods is to destroy the power of assembly without losing the hearts and minds of the masses. LRAD is one of the most widely known riot control technologies that is totally TV-friendly. The TV can't even tell that it is being used - in fact unless it is used on you you don't even realize it is being used. This can be deployed from all kinds of platforms that impersonalize it. If the public doesn't complain about waterboarding they aren't going to complain about LRAD. And yet LRAD will totally destroy a peaceful demonstration. You're right that we should be able to get former military and police on our side, but we better hope they mutiny and are able to steal technology.
  - krschultz 17y ago
    I don't think you've been acquainted with the business end of a large rifle. Shoot whatever ray you want at a large crowd of people, if it comes to treason I'll be with my brother and cousin at night in the woods with some high power rifles and shotguns. Considering both have been military trained I don't think we're too far behind the curve. I'm not the kind of person who believes in conspiracies or has a bomb shelter, but the patriot act made me think that maybe I'd use the gun in my house against the government just as easily as I would against someone breaking and entering. I'm not talking about carrying a gun to a rally, I'm talking about defending myself. Look at that nut job in Buffalo who took out a bunch of swat team members last year. He was crazy and it certainly was a terrible tragedy, but it shows that it IS possible. Sometimes engineers forget not every problem has a technological solution. Picking the right out cropping of rocks to defend yourself from has more value than millions of dollars in tech if you can extract the right price from the people attacking you. But if you are going down that road, it is just a matter of how many people you take out before they get you. I won't be getting that enraged about copyright law, ever. If they start infringing on my right to complain about the copyright law, then we're getting warmer but even then not so much. People over react to the problems we have today, when you start infringing on the average person's rights a lot more than this people like me who are generally calm and don't freak out about small infractions will start getting mad, and thats when it will boil over and either a political or violent adjustment to the direction of the country will happen.
    - forensic 17y ago
      There is a big difference between Al Qaeda style resistance and collective resistance. Sure, Hamas and Al Qaeda exist but... they are losing and they will inevitably lose. They can hold out for a long time with their low tech, but they still take losses at a 50:1 ratio. You have AR-15s but do you have UAVs? Do you have tanks? Do you even have nukes, for that matter, that ancient 60 year old tech? You can't win as a collective which means you can't win. Unless you can deploy an army that will actually DEFEAT the opposing army you are talking about Hamas-style resistance. The Palestinians are not winning. They are conquered. It's already over. They are bad people to take advice from.
- jonny_noog 17y ago
  ... It will be some police/military with guns vs citizens/police/military with guns I agree that it won't get to that. but if it did, barring massive police/military mutiny, who do you think is going to win that one? If both sides have guns, I'd say it will likely be the side with more training, experience, body armour, huge ammo stock piles and armoured vehicles. Unless the majority of the police/military mutiny I don't think even the US civilian population with your ridiculous amount of guns could prevail.
  - krschultz 17y ago
    In equal numbers the military prevails. I'm not worried about the police force. They have shotguns and pistols just like everybody else, and in most cases the enthusiasts have just as much skill as the police. And the military is tiny, less than 1% of the population. About 50% of the population owns at least 1 gun, and most who own at least 1 own several. If they can barely secure Iraq, there is no way they will secure the USA.
    - SapphireSun 17y ago
      Well, they still kill something like 10-100 enemies for every soldier felled. I'm all for preventing it from getting to that point in the first place (not that I'm implying you are). Side note: While I agree this particular article is relevant to HN, its starting to bring out the crazy a bit. Can we have a moratorium on political articles for a day or two to cool it off?
      - jeromec 17y ago
        I totally disagree with a moratorium on anything that threatens liberty in the USA, especially when resulting discourse is among intellectual minds.
        SapphireSun 17y ago
        Um, I meant this article is okay, but we need to restore balance to the force afterword.
- regularfry 17y ago
  Please stop assuming this is just about America. One of the reasons people are so worked up about this is that the US is trying to force its idea of expression control on the rest of the world.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - Maktab 17y ago
    And what makes you think this is driven only by the US?
    - narag 17y ago
      I guess it's the citizens owning lots of firearm part.
  - khafra 17y ago
    Perhaps the rest of the world should find out who's supporting this (shouldn't be too hard) and perform a distributed denial of service by sending spurious copyright-notice takedown demands to all the ISPs hosting all their pages; especially revenue-oriented pages.
kls 17y ago
This is not true, Guerrilla style warfare is one of the few styles of warfare where technical superiority does not equal a total advantage on the battlefield. The reasons being is that you general negate mechanized infantry and air superiority. Even the advantages of selective fire assault rifles are somewhat muted. The number one advantage in these situations is familiarity with the terrain. It was the deciding factor in the revolutionary war, Vietnam, Soviet / Afghanistan, and if something does not change US / Afghanistan. Time and time again some of the poorest nations beat the most powerful nation of that time by simply drawing them into a Guerrilla war.
- forensic 17y ago
  You're missing the point. Guerillas don't win wars, at best they ensure that no one wins.
  - kls 17y ago
    Tell that to Castro or Nguyen Huu Tho or Washington all of which won their struggles via guerrilla warfare. Note: I am not advocating the use of insurgency as a means of resolving political dispute, just pointing out that it does in fact win against superior numbers, resources and technology. To claim it does not ignores centuries of evidence to the contrary.
    - philwelch 17y ago
      Washington won his struggles with conventional warfare combined with a shitton of direct military intervention from France. The role of guerrilla warfare in the American Revolution is popularly overstated.
      - kls 17y ago
        If we are talking about Washington directly then yes he won his battle via conventional warfare but when we talk about the war that he symbolizes as the leader, there is little denying that guerrilla warfare is what disheartened the British troops and emboldened the militias and locals. The following article highlights how important small skirmishes and hit and run tactics where to the revolutionary war. http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1489 http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1489
anamax 17y ago
> have you seen modern riot control technology? Yes I have. That's why I didn't mention riots. I also didn't mention massed assaults on govt installations. There are ways to lose against a modern military. Don't use them. (BTW - If you think that tanks are decisive, you need to spend some time with Marines.)
- eru 17y ago
  Tell me more about the Marines.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > Tell me more about the Marines. Don't you know anyone in the armed forces? The US Marines (I assume that other countries have similar forces) practice killing tanks with individual weapons. I assume that it's nasty work, but their slogan is something like "Killing tanks is easy and fun." Tanks have problems in cities and other places with limited visibility and mobility. They can get stuck. Yes, tanks can blow holes in walls and they have machine guns. However, if they're not moving fast, doctrine says that they require infantry support. I assume that that's because of vulnerabilities. Militaries "leak" in civil wars, so some of the smaller weapons will be available.
    - eru 17y ago
      Thanks for your write-up. > Don't you know anyone in the armed forces? No. I am a governmentally recognized pacifist. (That's true. You have to get that recognition if you don't want to serve in the military in Germany (and you happen to be male, healthy and educated).)
      - anamax 17y ago
        > No. [I don't know anyone in the armed forces.] I am a governmentally recognized pacifist. Is there a connection between not knowing anyone in the armed forces and being a pacifist?

have you seen modern riot control technology? Dude, they have 50 years of tech advantage over the pitchfork wielders. We are truly fucked if the military and police do not mutiny

krschultz 17y ago

Have you seen what proportion of Americans own firearms? If we are talking about treason - which hanging politicians from a lamp post would be - it won't be crowd control with tear gas and riot shields. It will be some police/military with guns vs citizens/police/military with guns. Fortunately this law will not require that level of trouble. It is so draconian that it will not pass - so long as it is made public. The only way the government can control us is through secrecy. When something is so obviously against the public interest it won't be passed if enough people fight against it. The reason the Patriot act and others stood was because they just didn't effect enough people. If you start talking about losing your internet because your son posted a YouTube clip, voters will get mad.

forensic 17y ago
You've made it clear that you haven't been acquainted with modern riot control technology. tear gas and shields is the OLD stuff. The new stuff hasn't been widely utilized, but it IS widely in place and police and military have been trained on it. The purpose of these non-lethal riot control methods is to destroy the power of assembly without losing the hearts and minds of the masses. LRAD is one of the most widely known riot control technologies that is totally TV-friendly. The TV can't even tell that it is being used - in fact unless it is used on you you don't even realize it is being used. This can be deployed from all kinds of platforms that impersonalize it. If the public doesn't complain about waterboarding they aren't going to complain about LRAD. And yet LRAD will totally destroy a peaceful demonstration. You're right that we should be able to get former military and police on our side, but we better hope they mutiny and are able to steal technology.
- krschultz 17y ago
  I don't think you've been acquainted with the business end of a large rifle. Shoot whatever ray you want at a large crowd of people, if it comes to treason I'll be with my brother and cousin at night in the woods with some high power rifles and shotguns. Considering both have been military trained I don't think we're too far behind the curve. I'm not the kind of person who believes in conspiracies or has a bomb shelter, but the patriot act made me think that maybe I'd use the gun in my house against the government just as easily as I would against someone breaking and entering. I'm not talking about carrying a gun to a rally, I'm talking about defending myself. Look at that nut job in Buffalo who took out a bunch of swat team members last year. He was crazy and it certainly was a terrible tragedy, but it shows that it IS possible. Sometimes engineers forget not every problem has a technological solution. Picking the right out cropping of rocks to defend yourself from has more value than millions of dollars in tech if you can extract the right price from the people attacking you. But if you are going down that road, it is just a matter of how many people you take out before they get you. I won't be getting that enraged about copyright law, ever. If they start infringing on my right to complain about the copyright law, then we're getting warmer but even then not so much. People over react to the problems we have today, when you start infringing on the average person's rights a lot more than this people like me who are generally calm and don't freak out about small infractions will start getting mad, and thats when it will boil over and either a political or violent adjustment to the direction of the country will happen.
  - forensic 17y ago
    There is a big difference between Al Qaeda style resistance and collective resistance. Sure, Hamas and Al Qaeda exist but... they are losing and they will inevitably lose. They can hold out for a long time with their low tech, but they still take losses at a 50:1 ratio. You have AR-15s but do you have UAVs? Do you have tanks? Do you even have nukes, for that matter, that ancient 60 year old tech? You can't win as a collective which means you can't win. Unless you can deploy an army that will actually DEFEAT the opposing army you are talking about Hamas-style resistance. The Palestinians are not winning. They are conquered. It's already over. They are bad people to take advice from.
jonny_noog 17y ago
... It will be some police/military with guns vs citizens/police/military with guns I agree that it won't get to that. but if it did, barring massive police/military mutiny, who do you think is going to win that one? If both sides have guns, I'd say it will likely be the side with more training, experience, body armour, huge ammo stock piles and armoured vehicles. Unless the majority of the police/military mutiny I don't think even the US civilian population with your ridiculous amount of guns could prevail.
- krschultz 17y ago
  In equal numbers the military prevails. I'm not worried about the police force. They have shotguns and pistols just like everybody else, and in most cases the enthusiasts have just as much skill as the police. And the military is tiny, less than 1% of the population. About 50% of the population owns at least 1 gun, and most who own at least 1 own several. If they can barely secure Iraq, there is no way they will secure the USA.
  - SapphireSun 17y ago
    Well, they still kill something like 10-100 enemies for every soldier felled. I'm all for preventing it from getting to that point in the first place (not that I'm implying you are). Side note: While I agree this particular article is relevant to HN, its starting to bring out the crazy a bit. Can we have a moratorium on political articles for a day or two to cool it off?
    - jeromec 17y ago
      I totally disagree with a moratorium on anything that threatens liberty in the USA, especially when resulting discourse is among intellectual minds.
      - SapphireSun 17y ago
        Um, I meant this article is okay, but we need to restore balance to the force afterword.
regularfry 17y ago
Please stop assuming this is just about America. One of the reasons people are so worked up about this is that the US is trying to force its idea of expression control on the rest of the world.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- Maktab 17y ago
  And what makes you think this is driven only by the US?
  - narag 17y ago
    I guess it's the citizens owning lots of firearm part.
- khafra 17y ago
  Perhaps the rest of the world should find out who's supporting this (shouldn't be too hard) and perform a distributed denial of service by sending spurious copyright-notice takedown demands to all the ISPs hosting all their pages; especially revenue-oriented pages.

kls 17y ago

This is not true, Guerrilla style warfare is one of the few styles of warfare where technical superiority does not equal a total advantage on the battlefield. The reasons being is that you general negate mechanized infantry and air superiority. Even the advantages of selective fire assault rifles are somewhat muted. The number one advantage in these situations is familiarity with the terrain. It was the deciding factor in the revolutionary war, Vietnam, Soviet / Afghanistan, and if something does not change US / Afghanistan. Time and time again some of the poorest nations beat the most powerful nation of that time by simply drawing them into a Guerrilla war.

forensic 17y ago
You're missing the point. Guerillas don't win wars, at best they ensure that no one wins.
- kls 17y ago
  Tell that to Castro or Nguyen Huu Tho or Washington all of which won their struggles via guerrilla warfare. Note: I am not advocating the use of insurgency as a means of resolving political dispute, just pointing out that it does in fact win against superior numbers, resources and technology. To claim it does not ignores centuries of evidence to the contrary.
  - philwelch 17y ago
    Washington won his struggles with conventional warfare combined with a shitton of direct military intervention from France. The role of guerrilla warfare in the American Revolution is popularly overstated.
    - kls 17y ago
      If we are talking about Washington directly then yes he won his battle via conventional warfare but when we talk about the war that he symbolizes as the leader, there is little denying that guerrilla warfare is what disheartened the British troops and emboldened the militias and locals. The following article highlights how important small skirmishes and hit and run tactics where to the revolutionary war. http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1489 http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1489

anamax 17y ago

> have you seen modern riot control technology? Yes I have. That's why I didn't mention riots. I also didn't mention massed assaults on govt installations. There are ways to lose against a modern military. Don't use them. (BTW - If you think that tanks are decisive, you need to spend some time with Marines.)

eru 17y ago
Tell me more about the Marines.
- anamax 17y ago
  > Tell me more about the Marines. Don't you know anyone in the armed forces? The US Marines (I assume that other countries have similar forces) practice killing tanks with individual weapons. I assume that it's nasty work, but their slogan is something like "Killing tanks is easy and fun." Tanks have problems in cities and other places with limited visibility and mobility. They can get stuck. Yes, tanks can blow holes in walls and they have machine guns. However, if they're not moving fast, doctrine says that they require infantry support. I assume that that's because of vulnerabilities. Militaries "leak" in civil wars, so some of the smaller weapons will be available.
  - eru 17y ago
    Thanks for your write-up. > Don't you know anyone in the armed forces? No. I am a governmentally recognized pacifist. (That's true. You have to get that recognition if you don't want to serve in the military in Germany (and you happen to be male, healthy and educated).)
    - anamax 17y ago
      > No. [I don't know anyone in the armed forces.] I am a governmentally recognized pacifist. Is there a connection between not knowing anyone in the armed forces and being a pacifist?