Reagan banned open carry because people he disagreed with politically (Black Panthers) started marching down streets with AR15s…
I’ve still never seen police escalte to violence when protesters open carry rifles, even if they’re ordered to, they won’t because they’re outnumbered.
And before someone brings up MOVE, that’s what happens when police isolate one group alone and surround them.
To quote Boots Riley:
They got the TV, we got the truth
They own the judges and we got the proof
We got hella people, they got helicopters
They got the bombs and we got the, we got the…
We got the guillotine
But no oligarch ever just threw in the towel, without an armed populace a guillotine is just performance art.
Historically, untrained peasantry is no match for a professional army. I’m not saying arming the population is worthless, but the armed masses rising up against a non-figurative army of disciplined professional kills has essentially never panned out. That is a pipe dream, which, at least in my country, has historically been parroted by right-wing morons. They can make subduing them costly through guerilla tactics, but without regulars, it’s just not a winning proposition. Every successful revolution has trained up a professional army as soon as they could, armed with something a bit more uniform than “whatever weapons people happen to own”. The National Guard in France, the Red Army in Russia, the Continental Army in America, the People’s Liberation Army in China, literally no revolution succeeds by just having randos with guns overthrow the government. A revolution will need either resources and training from the outside, or a man on the inside who can turn the state’s resources against it. That is, respectively, (1) a civil war, or (2) a coup d’état.
The goal in such a scenario isn’t to fight the army. It’s to kill the people in charge of the army. We don’t send all the soldiers to the guillotine during a revolution, just the king and his court.
That doesn’t really do much, does it? Sure, you can get your revenge against those in charge, but all it does is create a power vacuum. And now instead of fighting one army, you’re fighting ten. Good luck even having a country after that. This is a lesson the Americans learn the hard way in the Middle East, over and over again.
And now instead of fighting one army, you’re fighting ten. Good luck even having a country after that.
Pretty easy in fact, just ask china. Well there was one Island that cried to mommy and was a fascist dictatorship protected by the US for half a century before “democratic” reforms came in (incidentally after all the natives of that island died and the only people left were descendants of the fascist dictatorship that fled there.
This is a lesson the Americans learn the hard way in the Middle East, over and over again.
No, the lesson Americans keep learning is there is no revolution without popular support. You cannot coup your way to a popular and favorable government. Because popular governments never align with American interests outside the quite literally evil west. Popular governments in the rest of the world are socialist or communist, because they actually are democracies and care about the quality of life of their populace, while also caring about all other humans. Unlike all western governments.
It’s not that a trained military is stronger than a makeshift opposition it’s that a trained military isn’t 100% effective.
Well, what do you mean by “100% effective”? Effective in doing what?
I’m not really contradicting what you said. I’m just adding more to it.
but the armed masses rising up against a non-figurative army of disciplined professional kills has essentially never panned out.
There’s a lot that can be done with guns without overthrowing the government, but also I can name Syria and Yemen in the 21st century alone, and beyond that this is basically what Latin American Caudillos did.
The National Guard in France, the Red Army in Russia, the Continental Army in America, the People’s Liberation Army in China, literally no revolution succeeds by just having randos with guns overthrow the government.
I don’t know about China, but Russia’s Red Army and France’s National Guard both started out as randos with guns. Any rebel army will have to organize itself like an army, but what does that have to do with your argument?
That is, respectively, (1) a civil war, or (2) a coup d’état.
Revolutions can intersect with both of these things.
Also the red army kinda came after the revolution. The randoms with the guns are what pulled it off first.
“But no oligarch ever just threw in the towel, without an armed populace a guillotine”
I can only think of one revolution where this happened where it wasn’t just one wealthy side killing the other like during the French revolution, American Revolution, Chinese Revolution, etc.
That is the Haitian revolution. The only truly revolutionary revolution. It now has one of the largest wealth gaps in the world and is extremely corrupt soooo…
You love your commie fantasies of heroically killing each other when all you ever do is kill the peaceful productive academic liberals. Same old authoritarian lies
Weird how democracy and even socialism can exist in other countries that don’t need to keep guns around toddlers?
There are also countries where the population are armed and don’t have the same issues (Switzerland, Finland, Greenland, Germany). The US really is the worst of both worlds: an armed populace with no culture of gun safety & training.
German here: Most of us do not have guns. The ownership rate is ~19 out of 100, while in the US it’s 120 out of 100. And we’re also not allowed to carry it with us without good reason. Being scared of a blue haired Aldi cashier isn’t one of them.
Most people in the US do not have guns, either. But the people who do, tend to have a bunch. This is what drives up that ownership rate. They’ve turned it into their personality.
It’s weird how averages work for both countries. It’s not like one average is more indicative than another.
And they ones who do that are typically right wing and see its use as reasonable discourse. There’s a difference from someone owning a gun because they like to target shoot and see it as a tool as opposed to those who see it as a way to express their power openly.
120 out of 100?
More guns than people. Some people own lots of guns, most people don’t own any.
Oh. I thought it was just a binary “has a gun or doesnt”.
i wish. I’ve got like 60 living relatives on one side of my family who all have at least three firearms.
and like, living out in rural anywhere out here, three firearms is reasonable. a handgun for 1-5 feral hogs, a long gun for 30-50 feral hogs, and a shotgun for 30-50 feral geese.
then you gotta have spares and a child for reloading. why do you think their families so big. Gran was 2 of 11.
Yes. Some people have multiple guns.
Don’t forget Italy and Czechoslovakia and Poland and Ukraine
Germany is extremely harsh on gun control, even by European standards
That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.
George Orwell
I like living in a country where “will my nephews and nieces get shot at school today?” isn’t a worry.
Australia had a mass shooting, we got gun control. Nz had a mass shooting, they got gun control. Scotland had a mass shooting, they got gun control. America has, statistically, 1-2 A DAY? *crickets *
Thoughts and prayers 🙏
While I was reading the quotes I literally got to donald trump without realising who it was and went “who tf is this illiterate inarticulate rando” in my mind
One of the tenents of the Morman faith is that they will have to battle an evil American government.
Another is magic underpants. A broken clock is still right twice a day.
Mormon history includes periods of armed conflict against State and the Federal government. They had to renounce one of their doctrines (polygamy) for Utah to join the Union. So predicting future conflict with the government isn’t crazy at all.
Well, they did do that.
kind of self-fulfilling prophecy (i always knew this as the Mormon War, growing up in California. It was covered in (and the mormons went to war with the US government right before the Civil War) in middle school and that’s about it.
Lol, you mean they do that occasionally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War
They already did and then promptly backed down. Don’t worry though, they murdered settlers and blamed it on the Indians in the spirit of their forefathers.
https://mormonr.org/qnas/B3U7t/the_mountain_meadows_massacre
i mean, the fascists are already armed soo
Brought to you by the weapons manufacturers
And, you know, Karl Marx.
There is a dichotomy of gun owners. The real nuts who are right wing see it as a way to express and represent power. Those who are on the left a tool. THe right see is as a mean of displaying grievances with a system which they have wanted all this time but find themselves even more lost in. There’s a difference in the owners based on political ideology and people who are entirely opposed to guns don’t see that.
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Commies need to be armed and ready because they never know which side of the purge they’re gonna be on when it happens.
The Queen loaned me a rifle for work for a short while a few decades ago, and, weirdly, I haven’t felt the need for one before or since.
Heck, even if the Yanks invade as the Commander in Cheese (to quote his supporter Kelly-anne Conway) threatened numerous times, I’m foolishly confident I can get one from them. We have a history of winning wargaming exercises against them using just snowballs because we didn’t want to clean our boomsticks.
not feeling the need is a good way to notice the gov is doing just enough but not too much. here in america we have a need but not enough responsible actual people. it’s just right wings with massive amts of guns.
i inherited six. from my right wing boomer stepdad. out of his collection of 70. helped mom sell the rest. she could have used the cash while he was alive.
of the six it’s just very old historical pieces like original colts and a norinco sks.
if he ever realized i was an actual leftist i am sure he’d have written me out of the will.
So don’t vote far left then. Arming everyone to the teeth has made the US such a safe place and also so resistant to fascist tyranny, it is unbelievable.
Yeah. Americans will go on and on about their second amendment rights forever, but when there’s actual tyranny, crickets
Meh. The government has aircraft, tanks, drones, and missiles. Personal firearms won’t counter them.
Tank drivers have to come out to pee, poo, sleep
Funny how people riled up by extremist, racist, political and stochastic rhetoric violently use weapons like guns, bombs and vehicles, eh?
