9 ms·

What I don't understand about the want to have freedom to bare arms (aside from moral arguments about what high levels of gun ownership does to society, but let

What I don't understand about the want to have freedom to bare arms (aside from moral arguments about what high levels of gun ownership does to society, but let's not go there) is that the only time I can imagine needing a gun in life is during a time of civil war or some similar sort of uprising. It would not make any difference to me what the law was in this regard if lawlessness had already broken out and I feared for my life.

lisper 11y ago
By then it would almost certainly be too late.
jliptzin 11y ago
What I don't understand about it is that the right to bear arms was rooted in the desire to allow citizens to arm themselves against an oppressive government so they could organize an effective overthrow if the need ever arose again (after the revolutionary war). Today, the government's military is so advanced that they'd quickly squash any kind of uprising even if you somehow managed to obtain every legally purchased firearm in the country. The right to privacy and encrypted communication would go a lot farther in that respect than the right to bear arms, putting aside self defense arguments, yet you don't hear much about that from the right wing groups touting this argument in favor of gun rights.
- 67726e 11y ago
  That argument always presumes it is the entire military against civilians. One would think if things got that bad, there would be some manner of defections from the military into the rebelling side.
  - 13years 11y ago
    The other check and balance was also that each state were to have militias. So it wouldn't be just citizens against 1 federally controlled military.
- sebastianconcpt 11y ago
  The political cost would be too high for the oppressing side. The military will not be homogeneously obedient to repress its own people that much
  - douche 11y ago
    That was a big issue for the North in the early years of the Civil War. Southerners were disproportionately represented in the small pre-war standing army and West Point alumnae. So the war starts, and they mostly go home and switch sides; at the same time the northern armies are massively expanding, with a gutted officer pool.
    - aaronem 11y ago
      Linguistic quibble: "Alumnae" is the nominative feminine plural of the noun "alumnus", and thus refers specifically to a female graduate of some institution of higher learning, &c. In 1860, there was no such thing as an alumna of West Point, a school which at that time had only alumni (which is the nominative masculine plural, and the correct usage in this case).
- joonoro 11y ago
  >Today, the government's military is so advanced that they'd quickly squash any kind of uprising even if you somehow managed to obtain every legally purchased firearm in the country. You'd be surprised at how effective guerrilla warfare is.
  - reagency 11y ago
    Guerilla warfare can change who wins, but it won't stop you from losing. A war has more than two sides.
    - leereeves 11y ago
      > it won't stop you from losing One counter-example: the Taliban
      - thaumasiotes 11y ago
        Not Vietnam?
        vacri 11y ago
        Guerilla warfare in Vietnam was a major component, but the major gains on the ground were made by the North Vietnamese Army.
  - aaronem 11y ago
    Only against an occupier unwilling to meet it with measures harsh enough to be effective. Historically speaking, I'd say it is more likely for US military forces to employ such measures against Americans, than against occupied foreign polities; as far as I can think of, we've actually never done the latter, while US history exhibits at least two instances of the former -- the Indian relocation, on the one hand, demonstrating the effectiveness of mass resettlement, and Sherman's March to the Sea, on the other, doing likewise for "scorched earth" techniques and reprisal killings of civilian hostages in response to guerrilla attacks.
- freshhawk 11y ago
  "Today, the government's military is so advanced that they'd quickly squash ..." Would they? They should try doing that now in all the various wars and police actions they are involved in.
  - partisan 11y ago
    1. They can't, at least not as plainly as stated here. The wars being fought today are asymmetrical and, in many cases, ideological. You can take out a pocket of resistance here or there, but there are no huge battles like in a war between two nations. Victories are small, cost more, are not decisive, but are guaranteed due to the overwhelming strength of the weapons. 2. More importantly: they don't want to. long drawn out wars are profitable, numbing, and demoralizing. Most people don't care about them anymore. They just happen in the background. No thumbs up, no thumbs down. Go on about your business. That's the best type of reaction a government could ask for when pushing the agenda of lobbyists and the corporations they represent.
    - baddox 11y ago
      > The wars being fought today are asymmetrical and, in many cases, ideological. Yep, and an attempted takeover in the USA would also be asymmetrical and ideological.
      - partisan 11y ago
        People will beg the government to come in and save them from themselves. So the question, I suppose, is what could trigger the actual occupation? My guess is that it will be austerity measures that will come through widespread municipal bankruptcies. Pensions and disability checks will stop coming. Services will stop being provided. There is a whole section of the population that subsists on government provided benefits. Multiple generations, below the poverty line, directed acyclical graphs of income where the last person to have worked is a generation or two ago. When that lifeline goes away, then we will see unrest. Then the government will come in and occupy, providing basics. Give us your guns and we will protect you. Take this rice and this water and go home and watch TV.
- calebrichardson 11y ago
  Tell that to the Mujahideen, the Viet Cong, and the 2003- Iraqi Insurgency. You could make the case that in the latter two conflicts, the more mighty power was unwilling to commit total war [1], but I would like to believe that the US military would not commit total war against its own people. At some point there is nothing left to rule. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war
  - aaronem 11y ago
    There's a difference between "total war" and "nothing left to rule"; indeed, there's a difference between total war and merely executing civilian hostages in reprisal for acts of insurrection, although the taking of civilian hostages is often a feature of total warfare -- as, indeed, it was when Sherman employed the strategy against Confederate civilians, who had so recently been his fellow citizens and yet remained his fellow Americans, during his famous "March to the Sea". In fact, Sherman not only engaged in total war, but originated the idea that it should be used in that conflict; he had to sell it to Lincoln before he could get permission to employ it. I really don't think it's that much of a stretch to imagine such a thing happening again in the United States; all it'd need would be, on the one hand, another sufficiently bloodthirsty general, and on the other, another sufficiently widespread perception that those on the dirty end of the total-war stick had it coming.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
67726e 11y ago
Or when someone breaks into your apartment and the police have an average response time of, what, 10 minutes or so? How about when you pull over to assist a crashed motorcyclist and it turns out he's a DUI-case and attempts to car-jack you? How about when you see someone waltz into your neighbors backyard and kick in the door? All things that have happened to either myself, or a coworker in the past year. Is it unreasonable to have a firearm for those needs? I'm not Dirty Harry over here, and I'd rather not have to draw, let alone use a firearm, but I'm not also naive enough to think that the police can save me from all of the bad things that might happen. In a nation with as many firearms as people, the cat's out of the bag.
- lern_too_spel 11y ago
  Nothing like that has ever happened to me. In fact, I have never been in a situation where I would have been better off with a gun on me. Funny how people who own guns seem to end up in dangerous situations so often.
  - mondoshawan 11y ago
    Correlation is not causation.
    - lern_too_spel 11y ago
      Who said it was?
      - mondoshawan 11y ago
        "Funny how people who own guns seem to end up in dangerous situations so often." You implied it.
  - pkaeding 11y ago
    I'd be careful implying causation here. Another way to look at it is that people who often find themselves in dangerous situations feel the need to have guns to protect themselves. When you think about it that way, it doesn't sound so 'funny'.
nnutter 11y ago
Maybe in that future you'll be able to 3D everything but if we lose the right to bare arms don't you think that would limit the supply of arms when that time came?
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  $7 homemade shotgun. No 3D printing. Ammunition supply would be the biggest issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wV3lmbSv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wV3lmbSv4
playworker 11y ago
Down with long sleeves!
walru 11y ago
Ownership of guns or a citizenry with guns does not degeneracy make. Education, or lack there of, is the ill to the mention you made. Take Switzerland. http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-culture-that-works/ http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-...
- baddox 11y ago
  I think that America's urban poverty and drug war are bigger factors.
  - rorykoehler 11y ago
    It's all about poverty. All the problems discussed here are due to poverty.
Taek 11y ago
The original right to bear arms is about being able to stand up to an oppressive government. It's not something you are supposed to need in daily life, it's something you are supposed to need when your government decides that tax rates are 85%, curfew is 8pm, all electronic communication is banned, and any soldier is allowed to live in your home and rape any civilian. The right to bear arms is ideally one you never need, but it's essential as a contingency plan. We've yet to see a government that didn't exercise horrible abuses of power and the right to bear arms hopefully keeps some of that in check.
- anon4 11y ago
  That sounds a bit odd. If you're standing up to the government, why would the laws matter to you. Or is it a bit like "Here's a gun, if we ever go too bad, shoot us". Which in turn raises the question why has no-one massacred Wall Street yet.
  - lwhalen 11y ago
    Wall Street are, ostensibly, private citizens doing their private jobs, not elected officials who are supposed to be acting in the public's best interest.
  - MereInterest 11y ago
    The framer's intent, as far as I know, was to make it such that the populace would be well-armed before it gets to that point. You are correct that laws would mean little to someone standing up to the government, but availability of firearms would mean a great deal at that point.
  - dylanjermiah 11y ago
    Who enabled Wall St?
baddox 11y ago
And that's exactly the same type of argument as "I don't care about privacy because I have nothing to hide."
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  I do care about guns and having weighed up the pros and cons I have decided I would prefer to live in a society where they are not readily available.
  - baddox 11y ago
    What about living in a society where guns are readily available, but with low gun violence? Presumably it's the gun violence that bothers you, not the availability of guns.
  - pm 11y ago
    Come to Australia. We got rid of most the guns.
isaacremuant 11y ago
Well... Not everyone thinks like you. Some people feel safer being able to defend themselves if need be. The possession, even if it's never used is tranquilizing. It's clear enough that the police and security systems are not perfect and won't always have your back. Also, entertainment purposes.
deciplex 11y ago
So, in other words: "I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have a gun."

lisper 11y ago

By then it would almost certainly be too late.

jliptzin 11y ago

What I don't understand about it is that the right to bear arms was rooted in the desire to allow citizens to arm themselves against an oppressive government so they could organize an effective overthrow if the need ever arose again (after the revolutionary war). Today, the government's military is so advanced that they'd quickly squash any kind of uprising even if you somehow managed to obtain every legally purchased firearm in the country. The right to privacy and encrypted communication would go a lot farther in that respect than the right to bear arms, putting aside self defense arguments, yet you don't hear much about that from the right wing groups touting this argument in favor of gun rights.

67726e 11y ago
That argument always presumes it is the entire military against civilians. One would think if things got that bad, there would be some manner of defections from the military into the rebelling side.
- 13years 11y ago
  The other check and balance was also that each state were to have militias. So it wouldn't be just citizens against 1 federally controlled military.
sebastianconcpt 11y ago
The political cost would be too high for the oppressing side. The military will not be homogeneously obedient to repress its own people that much
- douche 11y ago
  That was a big issue for the North in the early years of the Civil War. Southerners were disproportionately represented in the small pre-war standing army and West Point alumnae. So the war starts, and they mostly go home and switch sides; at the same time the northern armies are massively expanding, with a gutted officer pool.
  - aaronem 11y ago
    Linguistic quibble: "Alumnae" is the nominative feminine plural of the noun "alumnus", and thus refers specifically to a female graduate of some institution of higher learning, &c. In 1860, there was no such thing as an alumna of West Point, a school which at that time had only alumni (which is the nominative masculine plural, and the correct usage in this case).
joonoro 11y ago
>Today, the government's military is so advanced that they'd quickly squash any kind of uprising even if you somehow managed to obtain every legally purchased firearm in the country. You'd be surprised at how effective guerrilla warfare is.
- reagency 11y ago
  Guerilla warfare can change who wins, but it won't stop you from losing. A war has more than two sides.
  - leereeves 11y ago
    > it won't stop you from losing One counter-example: the Taliban
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      Not Vietnam?
      - vacri 11y ago
        Guerilla warfare in Vietnam was a major component, but the major gains on the ground were made by the North Vietnamese Army.
- aaronem 11y ago
  Only against an occupier unwilling to meet it with measures harsh enough to be effective. Historically speaking, I'd say it is more likely for US military forces to employ such measures against Americans, than against occupied foreign polities; as far as I can think of, we've actually never done the latter, while US history exhibits at least two instances of the former -- the Indian relocation, on the one hand, demonstrating the effectiveness of mass resettlement, and Sherman's March to the Sea, on the other, doing likewise for "scorched earth" techniques and reprisal killings of civilian hostages in response to guerrilla attacks.
freshhawk 11y ago
"Today, the government's military is so advanced that they'd quickly squash ..." Would they? They should try doing that now in all the various wars and police actions they are involved in.
- partisan 11y ago
  1. They can't, at least not as plainly as stated here. The wars being fought today are asymmetrical and, in many cases, ideological. You can take out a pocket of resistance here or there, but there are no huge battles like in a war between two nations. Victories are small, cost more, are not decisive, but are guaranteed due to the overwhelming strength of the weapons. 2. More importantly: they don't want to. long drawn out wars are profitable, numbing, and demoralizing. Most people don't care about them anymore. They just happen in the background. No thumbs up, no thumbs down. Go on about your business. That's the best type of reaction a government could ask for when pushing the agenda of lobbyists and the corporations they represent.
  - baddox 11y ago
    > The wars being fought today are asymmetrical and, in many cases, ideological. Yep, and an attempted takeover in the USA would also be asymmetrical and ideological.
    - partisan 11y ago
      People will beg the government to come in and save them from themselves. So the question, I suppose, is what could trigger the actual occupation? My guess is that it will be austerity measures that will come through widespread municipal bankruptcies. Pensions and disability checks will stop coming. Services will stop being provided. There is a whole section of the population that subsists on government provided benefits. Multiple generations, below the poverty line, directed acyclical graphs of income where the last person to have worked is a generation or two ago. When that lifeline goes away, then we will see unrest. Then the government will come in and occupy, providing basics. Give us your guns and we will protect you. Take this rice and this water and go home and watch TV.
calebrichardson 11y ago
Tell that to the Mujahideen, the Viet Cong, and the 2003- Iraqi Insurgency. You could make the case that in the latter two conflicts, the more mighty power was unwilling to commit total war [1], but I would like to believe that the US military would not commit total war against its own people. At some point there is nothing left to rule. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war
- aaronem 11y ago
  There's a difference between "total war" and "nothing left to rule"; indeed, there's a difference between total war and merely executing civilian hostages in reprisal for acts of insurrection, although the taking of civilian hostages is often a feature of total warfare -- as, indeed, it was when Sherman employed the strategy against Confederate civilians, who had so recently been his fellow citizens and yet remained his fellow Americans, during his famous "March to the Sea". In fact, Sherman not only engaged in total war, but originated the idea that it should be used in that conflict; he had to sell it to Lincoln before he could get permission to employ it. I really don't think it's that much of a stretch to imagine such a thing happening again in the United States; all it'd need would be, on the one hand, another sufficiently bloodthirsty general, and on the other, another sufficiently widespread perception that those on the dirty end of the total-war stick had it coming.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

67726e 11y ago

Or when someone breaks into your apartment and the police have an average response time of, what, 10 minutes or so? How about when you pull over to assist a crashed motorcyclist and it turns out he's a DUI-case and attempts to car-jack you? How about when you see someone waltz into your neighbors backyard and kick in the door? All things that have happened to either myself, or a coworker in the past year. Is it unreasonable to have a firearm for those needs? I'm not Dirty Harry over here, and I'd rather not have to draw, let alone use a firearm, but I'm not also naive enough to think that the police can save me from all of the bad things that might happen. In a nation with as many firearms as people, the cat's out of the bag.

lern_too_spel 11y ago
Nothing like that has ever happened to me. In fact, I have never been in a situation where I would have been better off with a gun on me. Funny how people who own guns seem to end up in dangerous situations so often.
- mondoshawan 11y ago
  Correlation is not causation.
  - lern_too_spel 11y ago
    Who said it was?
    - mondoshawan 11y ago
      "Funny how people who own guns seem to end up in dangerous situations so often." You implied it.
- pkaeding 11y ago
  I'd be careful implying causation here. Another way to look at it is that people who often find themselves in dangerous situations feel the need to have guns to protect themselves. When you think about it that way, it doesn't sound so 'funny'.

nnutter 11y ago

Maybe in that future you'll be able to 3D everything but if we lose the right to bare arms don't you think that would limit the supply of arms when that time came?

rorykoehler 11y ago
$7 homemade shotgun. No 3D printing. Ammunition supply would be the biggest issue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wV3lmbSv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1wV3lmbSv4

playworker 11y ago

Down with long sleeves!

walru 11y ago

Ownership of guns or a citizenry with guns does not degeneracy make. Education, or lack there of, is the ill to the mention you made. Take Switzerland. http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-culture-that-works/ http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-...

baddox 11y ago
I think that America's urban poverty and drug war are bigger factors.
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  It's all about poverty. All the problems discussed here are due to poverty.

Taek 11y ago

The original right to bear arms is about being able to stand up to an oppressive government. It's not something you are supposed to need in daily life, it's something you are supposed to need when your government decides that tax rates are 85%, curfew is 8pm, all electronic communication is banned, and any soldier is allowed to live in your home and rape any civilian. The right to bear arms is ideally one you never need, but it's essential as a contingency plan. We've yet to see a government that didn't exercise horrible abuses of power and the right to bear arms hopefully keeps some of that in check.

anon4 11y ago
That sounds a bit odd. If you're standing up to the government, why would the laws matter to you. Or is it a bit like "Here's a gun, if we ever go too bad, shoot us". Which in turn raises the question why has no-one massacred Wall Street yet.
- lwhalen 11y ago
  Wall Street are, ostensibly, private citizens doing their private jobs, not elected officials who are supposed to be acting in the public's best interest.
- MereInterest 11y ago
  The framer's intent, as far as I know, was to make it such that the populace would be well-armed before it gets to that point. You are correct that laws would mean little to someone standing up to the government, but availability of firearms would mean a great deal at that point.
- dylanjermiah 11y ago
  Who enabled Wall St?

baddox 11y ago

And that's exactly the same type of argument as "I don't care about privacy because I have nothing to hide."

rorykoehler 11y ago
I do care about guns and having weighed up the pros and cons I have decided I would prefer to live in a society where they are not readily available.
- baddox 11y ago
  What about living in a society where guns are readily available, but with low gun violence? Presumably it's the gun violence that bothers you, not the availability of guns.
- pm 11y ago
  Come to Australia. We got rid of most the guns.

isaacremuant 11y ago

Well... Not everyone thinks like you. Some people feel safer being able to defend themselves if need be. The possession, even if it's never used is tranquilizing. It's clear enough that the police and security systems are not perfect and won't always have your back. Also, entertainment purposes.

deciplex 11y ago

So, in other words: "I don't care about freedom to bear arms because I don't have a gun."