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Comment by frgtpsswrdlame | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the gun debate has been so muddied here in the United States. The Constitution allows us to have guns so we can overthrow a tyrannical government. Evidence from other countries shows us that if we decreased the amount of guns, we would probably expect less violence/murder. So then the question is, how much violence do we put up with in society so that we can preserve our ability to make a meaningful stand against the government?

If we can settle that we can have a better guide when trying to draw these lines in the sand.

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Faulty premise. The most violent areas in the USA have practically banned guns outright; areas which have liberalized gun possession by the law-abiding have seen violence plummet.

I know this sounds silly at first, but it's not if you are the one involved: the right to be armed allows you to protect 1/300,000,000th of the USA - you. That's pretty serious if you're being attacked and in fear of your life.

About 15 years ago, the US government started showing signs of wanting to ratchet up violent assault against dissidents of a certain stripe, executing SWAT/commando-type raids against citizens for paperwork violations (failure to document & pay a $200 tax). In two high-profile instances of such raids, the citizens fought back; many died, but the government agents suffered such losses that in the decades since, such "Gestapo tactics" have not been used. As such, armed citizens took a meaningful stand against the government, teaching it to use its police powers tactfully & sparingly,

What you, and many like you, fail to discern is the difference between armed law-abiding citizens vs armed criminals. The former aren't a problem, proven by the fact they have >200,000,000 firearms + trillions of bullets yet aren't a problem above statistical noise. The latter ARE a well-documented problem, and are by-definition quick to violate ANY law to obtain & retain the ability to kill as they see fit. The "line in the sand" is between those two groups; disarming the former only enables the latter by presenting no resistance.

I know I've done well when I've got both sides mad at me. Here is where I see the similarity between you and those guys on the other side who are also arguing with me: you want a perfect solution. My initial comment poses gun rights as a tradeoff between violence and the limitations on governmental power. This makes your side start commenting about how guns are a perfect solution, they'll lower violence. And it causes the gun-controllers to start talking about how gun control is a perfect solution because it will lower violence and it's pointless to try to overthrow the government.

Now it's hard to have a fact-based debate about guns considering the polarized discourse. I ask three things.

1) Consider that just maybe, access to a device which allows you to kill quickly, cleanly and with lessened emotional involvement (versus say a knife) leads to more people murdering.

2) Consider that people are not cleanly seperated into law-abiders and criminals, people move back and forth all the time and there are various degrees of law-breaking and criminality. When you turn people who commit gun crimes into an other, it's a lot easier to seperate yourself from their actions. I would also say that saying that criminals are all these extreme monsters who will violate ANY law to be able to kill however they want is just a complete mischaracterization.

3) Consider that I support the bill this thread is about and reread my initial comment.

According to [1] law enforcement went door to door after Hurricane Katrina and collected all the guns. So, here is your line in the sand: there is no way you you can make a meaningful stand against the government with guns:

- police cannot ever lose, especially not in the US

- there is no organized resistance that decides when to resist, and what to (potentially) die for

- the current system is entrenched and standing on an enormous foundation, politics, economic interest, institutions, the media etc. will not easily yield

TODO:

- reorganize military and law enforcement, introduce the concept of "citizen in uniform", focus on deescalation etc; the military would have to be on the side of a hypothetical revolution for it to work, obviously?

- develop an actual alternative political concept and start from the ground up: Instead of trying to run for president or deface websites, try running for mayor or do some honest journalism

- don't hold on to your guns for hope - you could gradually lose ground without ever getting to that confrontation (which you'd surely lose anyway). Instead address injustice immediately, be prepared to take tiny steps.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-taU9d26wT4

>- there is no organized resistance that decides when to resist, and what to (potentially) die for

This will easily form if government begins doing too much that people disagree with.

>- police cannot ever lose, especially not in the US

Police will lose if people did organize a resistance movement.

>- the current system is entrenched and standing on an enormous foundation, politics, economic interest, institutions, the media etc. will not easily yield

Of course, that is the point of violent overthrow.

I feel like the point has been missed. Organized people with guns stood up to the US government in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. I would say that those were "meaningful stands" (in terms of effectiveness, I don't condone those beliefs). The first amendment is there to prevent tyrannical government, and the second is there to address that issue if the first fails.

EDIT: Furthermore, I would say, is your opposition really due to effectiveness? Let's say hypothetically we live in a world where guns do allow you to match the combat ability of government. Do you support it then? It seems to me that when I make this argument I run into people saying, "but you can't win anyway" when what really bothers them is some deeper political belief. What is that? What bothers you about the way I've framed the debate?

A revolution is not going to happen in western countries: It's easy to appease the masses and provide for basic needs and entertainment, birthrates are too low to really fill the streets with angry people, surveillance enables the powers that be to identify and isolate agitators and monitor movements.

At the same time western countries are still democratic enough so that things can be changed.

This is just another twist of an effectiveness argument, it does nothing to address the real issue here, so I'm just going to repeat this because I'd really like an answer.

>It seems to me that when I make this argument I run into people saying, "but you can't win anyway" when what really bothers them is some deeper political belief. What is that? What bothers you about the way I've framed the debate?

Most people wouldn't want to fight and die. Sucks. Also you could end up with some dictator when the dust settles.

This is just more effectiveness stuff... Here let me pose a situation:

The year is 2011, the Arab Spring is starting up and by some weird quirk of history or legal loophole, the Syrians will be having a referendum on gun control. They are debating about whether they should have gun control. One side says they need guns in order to oppose their tyrannical government, the other that they need to ban guns so as to prevent violence from spreading through city streets. You are called in as an advisor, what do you say?

Isn't this a faulty premise in the first place? To overthrow a tyrannical government without (large part of) the army on your side seems infeasible in the age of cluster bombs and armored vehicles. So before armed civil war it seems logical to use alternative approaches:

* Non-violent resistance (cripple the economy).

* Appeal to dissident factions in the army and have them do the fighting, after all the US army is pretty closely connected to the populace, and if you can't get them on your side you've already lost.

* Have a sufficiently pluralistic system in the first place so that concentration of power to an extent that extreme becomes impossible.

There just seems to be such a mismatch between goals and means when it comes to small arms and prevention of tyranny.

Given the amount of money the government has for defense and domestic intelligence spending, its utterly ridiculous to think just having the right to bear arms would give us the ways and means to forcefully abolish the state.

Yes. This law would make some sense a century and a half ago. But is anyone actually delusional enough to think that a population armed with some fireguns is able to presently abolish a state that has a major military force armed with jet fighters, tanks, rocket launchers and nuclear weapons?

We also have some modern examples of a tyrannical government being stood against by an armed population.

Would you suggest that this is a good thing to have happened to Syria?

War is never a "good thing." But if you're asking if I think standing up to al-Assad is wrong? Of course not, it's a terrible regime. What would you have Syrians do?

At the same time, the regions with the strictest gun controls have the highest rates of gun violence. It's almost like the two factors are completely unrelated and there might just be deeper reasons...

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