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Comment by lispit | Hacker News Reader

There's some weird cognitive dissonance going on where many of the people that love to point out that the US military can't possibly succeed against guerrilla combatants in the Middle East are the same people that laugh at "gun nuts" for "thinking their small arms would do anything against the military's tanks, artillery, airstrikes, etc."

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There's also a failure to acknowledge that some of the military would fight with the gun nuts, not against them.

Also, being sent against the populace is terrible for military morale -- making your guerrilla force slightly more dangerous can end up having really large knock-on effects as soldiers get pushed into things they're not comfortable with.

A lot of people have no problem rounding up a mob, maybe beating them up, and tossing them in jail; a lot of those same people will think twice before saying "We can't go in on the ground... I want to be a part of clearing that mob by bombing it to pulp".

Actually, looking at the demographics of the branches of the military that would be most involved in attempting to suppress a home-grown rebellion of gun-owners, it's more than likely that there would be wide-spread mutiny.

Or else an exodus of the leadership and rank-and-file soldiery on par with the Southerners that resigned in '61.

And the fact that if the military started slaughtering their own citizens with tanks and bombs, um that kinda might not be seen as too positive to the rest of the world.

That's another good bit of cognitive dissonance. I'd wager that many of these same people are aware of and support movements like #BlackLivesMatter, that use social media to spread awareness of instances of police brutality to massive audiences. Yet they never stop to consider how effective those same tactics could be in a theoretical armed resistance. Imagine someone recording a group of teenaged American rebels being slaughtered by the military, the media running with it and getting statements from the bereaved families, further polarizing would-be rebels while sparking dissent amongst the other side, growing lack of respect with the military, etc.

"the media running with it and getting statements from the bereaved families"

I wouldn't hold my breath expecting, say, MSNBC to give extensive sympathetic coverage to domestic "insurgents" who don't share their political views. The vast majority of the Tea Party did nothing more than yell at congressmen and hold rallies where they got all the official permits and cleaned up after themselves, and yet they were uniformly regarded in the news media as the second coming of Timothy McVeigh. Imagine how the media would treat them if they did anything more with their guns than the occasional dumb open carry stunt in Texas.

I don't think the average liberal underestimates the effectiveness of social media, least of all when it comes to publicising the slaughter of American teenagers.

It's just the incidences of slaughter they - perhaps optimistically given the US status quo - believe may be reduced through gun controls are actually happening on a not infrequent basis, whereas the Second Civil War scenarios are wildly unlikely fantasy.

People believe social media campaigns might work precisely because they don't think that the only thing keeping the US from turning into a fascist police state is consumer weaponry.

>It's just the incidences of slaughter they - perhaps optimistically given the US status quo - believe may be reduced through gun controls are actually happening on a not infrequent basis, whereas the Second Civil War scenarios are wildly unlikely fantasy.

That's a reasonable opinion, but one I disagree with. A second secession movement and full-blown Civil War will probably never happen, but martial law ordered in response to protest or active resistance of a law is not unthinkable. The risk of death by gun violence in the United States is dwarfed by the risk of death by automobile accident, heart disease, and so on. I would absolutely rather live in a country of ~320 million with a few thousand deaths per year due to gun violence, than in one with no weapons to deter martial law. I'll take a small (blown out of proportion by the media) threat over an existential threat any day.

And that's even assuming that you could make gun violence disappear entirely overnight. Revoking access to registered firearms could very well reduce the number of spree shootings, but would do little to affect the black market supply used by criminals in robberies and turf wars, and probably increase the amount of gun violence used in robberies (as criminals would then be sure that no one would be able to resist them).

And that's also overstating the fictitious "gun violence", which is conflating public shootings with suicides. Factor that out, and police shootings of felons, and you find auto deaths dwarf shootings, accidental or otherwise

The US is a police state. Just look at the % of people in prison and compare it with say North Korea vs Europe or even South America.

The troubles in northern Ireland suggest you can have a long term insurgency without losing a country. Of note it was not defeated with military power, but it was also failed in it's long term goals.

As such there is no cognitive dissonance as propping up a country is different from crushing all opposition.

Indeed. These people who seem to want violent insurgency as a political right should take a look at how that works out in situations other than the US war of independence. It's usually indecisive with a lot of people getting killed more or less at random.

Mind you, last time I ran the numbers, it was safer to be in Belfast during the troubles than in Detroit over the same period.

Personally I don't see any cognitive dissonance in thinking that a messy decades-long guerrilla war would represent both a failure to "export democracy" when taking place overseas and a failure to "defend democracy" if taking place in one's own neighbourhood.

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