Comment by Meekro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Meekro | Hacker News Reader

Reading the Soviet Bill of Rights is pretty instructive because it'll show you how much such a thing is worth on its own.

Here is just a subset of the rights guaranteed by the USSR Constitution: speech; press; religion (both to profess and refuse to profess); assembly (including a specific right to demonstrate); participation in lawmaking; inviolability of the person (from warrantless arrest) and of the home (from unlawful entry or search); privacy of all correspondence (including phone conversations); right to challenge actions of government officials and bodies in court; right to a job; work week limited to 40 hours; free medical care; welfare payments in old age, sickness, or disability; free housing; free education; academic freedom for scientists.

It's a very good list, and what I listed above isn't even half of it [1]. Precisely none of those were actually respected by the government. Having a Bill of Rights is great, but having a tradition of limited government, checks and balances, and rule of law is what gives those guarantees any weight.

[1] https://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/77cons02....

Remember that the bill of rights didn’t prevent slavery. There is a common trick for enlightened democracies: you can always call some groups of people non-citizens and do horrible stuff to them. The trick is as old as democracy, the Greeks were doing it already.

(Modern day America has an entire manual to strip citizenship from people, don’t believe you’re like a native just because you got a piece of paper and a flag, the beast might turn against you)

Try to look up how the concept of human "race" was made to support the right to have slaves. Is strange how some countries have taken it even longer by siding "race" and ethnicity

Note that the rights in the Soviet Constitution have an important explicit limitation in Article 39: “Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state, or infringe the rights of other citizens.”

This sort of thing is common in well run democratic countries too. European constitutions are full of provisions that say "Such and such a right is inviolable, except when it's not". Or "except when it is violated according to the law".

And it works! That's because (in recent decades) the political reality in Western Europe has been basically in favour of democracy in freedom -- and so they limited basic rights only in corner cases like Holocaust denial. Constitutional texts can help people focus on what is needed for democracy and freedom (and US the Bill of Rights does a good job of this), but what really counts is how people live out the text, rather than the mechanics explicit in the text.

Still, the fact that these exceptions exist is a clear sign that the authors of the document did not see these as rights at all, but rather revocable privileges. In practical terms, you don't need a written constitution to uphold rights, and having one does not guarantee that rights are upheld—but if you're going to go to the trouble of defining rights in a written constitution, you shouldn't include an insidious "escape hatch" which undermines those rights by claiming that they can legitimately be infringed "for a good cause". Rights, as opposed to privileges, are unconditional and cannot legitimately be infringed under any circumstance.

This is what scares me about the current attitude (nationally) towards gun control. The right to bear arms is a basic civil right, unambiguously encoded in the Bill of Rights alongside speech, assembly, religion, due process, etc. Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights. Just because it's unlikely to happen here -- that we think it can't happen here -- doesn't mean it will not. That's what everyone in all of history has thought, but in fact by the time anyone realizes what's happening, it's usually too late.

"All political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party." -- Mao Zedong

So you've never seen the movie Tombstone? You think there's no legitimate history of measured gun control in this country, and that any departure from the current trend is a slippery slope to a dictatorial state?

Let's talk in practical terms for a second, though. Do you truly believe that gun ownership in the US could result in a bunch of citizens overthrowing the US government should it become tyrannical? I just don't see it happening. The US military is far too well-trained and -armed, and of course a hypothetical tyrannical US government would turn the military against its citizens if there was an armed uprising. And they would win so laughably easily.

Now sure, there's the possibility that factions in the military would turn against this tyrannical government and save the day, but you don't need the 2nd Amendment for that to work out.

In my opinion, it is not about overthrowing the government, it is about a right to self-defense. Not just from the government, but also from your average criminal.

It's true that a citizen or even a group of citizens is no match for the military. But the difference is between citizens being able to try defending themselves, and being completely defenseless.

It is the difference between soldiers being ordered to fire their own citizens, and the citizens being defenseless. It is the difference between individuals who swore to defend their countrymen having to reconcile killing them in battle. It is the difference between a confidence that you can do something and a feeling that you can be easily intimidated.

China, Russia, Iraq, Germany, in all of these places the general population was disarmed as one of the first steps towards totalitarianism. It is not a coincidence.

> Not just from the government, but also from your average criminal.

And yet the US has one of the highest homicide rates for developed countries in the world, while sporting the highest (by far) firearm per capita in the world.

So something with that nice argument you, and others, have is not working.

Afghanistan. 16 years, still haven't won.

And us citizens have more weapons than the taliban; longer harder to protect borders than Afghanistan; and a population that would be sympathetic to the cause. I wouldn’t be so sure the us military would win.

According to current military doctrine[0], counterinsurgency requires a minimum of 1 counterinsurgent per 50 people in the population. If you assume ALL us military personnel can serve in combat simultaneously (ie: no troops required for supply lines, paperwork, management, etc), and you included all police forces in the US, you would only get to 1 per 100.

So you say they would "win so laughably easily".. but according to the military itself, it does not have enough troops to handle an insurgency in the US.

0. As written in the Army and Marine Corps field manual (and this doctrine was based on research of past (us and non-us) conflicts)

Also, 99 percent of the US military will defect to protect their own country against a rogue federal government. These are normal, good people who signed up to protect us.

Are you sure about that?

History shows us that typically, soldiers will fight for whoever guarantees their pay.

Combined with this;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

it shows that money, orders and chain of command are powerful motivators.

These are normal, good people who signed up to protect us.

I wouldn't put that number anywhere near 99%. Probably closer to 50%. Maybe even lower.

I'm sure the people in any given totalitarian regime once thought the same way about their armed forces.

> The US military is far too well-trained and -armed, and of course a hypothetical tyrannical US government would turn the military against its citizens if there was an armed uprising. And they would win so laughably easily.

I doubt it. The US failed in Vietnam and has been struggling in Afghanistan since 2001. Tanks and planes do not win wars. Small arms do.

EDIT: Dystopian follow-on thought. I wonder if this paradigm changes as drones improve? Would civilians have any defense? Perhaps history just repeats itself.

> drones

this is why it's tough (for me) to listen to the courts say "that doesn't mean a right to carry any weapon at any time for any reason".

a decent resistance will need drones.

fortunately they're cheap

I wouldn't count on the US military necessarily siding with a tyrannical government that has stripped its populace of its Constitutional rights.

Here's the Oath of Enlistment with a few points of emphasis:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

As someone who formerly served in the US military, you would be hard pressed to find anyone in it that still remembered the oath they took, much less nuanced details like what you pointed out, while half asleep at MEPS that one fateful day after hours of testing and medical prodding.

I think there's also a very subtle line here as well in that guns don't necessarily have to defeat the military, but that guns can help protect citizens against corrupt local government. This happened during the civil rights era, in that armed African Americans were able to prevent attacks in many cases or even just police brutality simply by the presence of guns in the hands of the victims.

I think a complete government meltdown is often used as the defense for gun ownership, but given how our government is structured (more control given to states and local communities while trying to balance it with centralized power in the federal government), guns can help keep order when in the hands of citizens.

Of course, like the constant balance of local and centralized government, we will forever need to balance the rights of individuals vs. the safety of the collective.

> Do you truly believe that gun ownership in the US could result in a bunch of citizens overthrowing the US government should it become tyrannical?

no. it's not about overthrow. it's about meaningful #resistance in the face of braindead authoritarian pepperspray cops without the spine to think for themselves.

gun owners aren't at the range practicing political science, and international business, and and learning to be lawyers (though some probably are)...

they're protecting their inalienable right to resist authoritarians

It scares me that there are people who think any type of resistance against the government would be hopeless, and would prefer to disarm the public for a false sense of security.

One thing I don't get is that those who are anti-gun don't seem to have much faith in the government to begin with, what makes them think that they won't continue to take away rights as soon as the public is disarmed, given that it has happened time and time again all over the world.

So you are suggesting we just accept enslavement? Can you explain to me how that isn't stockholm syndrome? I'm sorry but even if the odds are zero, I among many others would rather go down fighting to protect our liberties. These are rights given to us by our creator, not government.

We should not need to rely on the morals of the military.

>Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights.

Only in places/eras where having weapons mattered.

It's not like anybody's gonna take on the feds with their guns.

>This is what scares me about the current attitude (nationally) towards gun control.

The current attitude stems from a desire for civility and public safety. Why would that scare you?

>The right to bear arms is a basic civil right, unambiguously encoded in the Bill of Rights alongside speech, assembly, religion, due process, etc.

It's not unambiguously encoded. If it were, there would not be entire debates over the meaning of the punctuation. People are unambiguous in their interpretations because of political ideology.

>Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights.

Yes, but regulation is not confiscation, and the commonly held assumption on the part of many gun owners that the former inevitably leads to the latter (or is merely a knowing pretense towards the latter) is an uncharitable interpretation of the opposing point of view. Americans maintain the right to keep and bear arms even if that right doesn't extend to all possible arms under all possible circumstances.

"All political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party." -- Mao Zedong"

The anti gun-control argument is, ironically, also that all political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, but that power is liberty when the guns are pointed at the state and tyranny when the guns are pointed by the state. And yet anyone who simply doesn't want themselves or their children getting shot by psychopaths are considered unreasonable, because it's also liberty by proxy when those guns are pointed by the people at the people, and Americans are expected not only to tolerate and accept it, but be wary to question it.

Is it not possible that there is a reasonable middle ground between the NRA and Stalinist gulags?

The current attitude stems from a desire for civility and public safety. Why would that scare you?

Regardless of the specific topic, lots of terrible things have been done "with the best of intentions". It's hardly a reason not to be scared.

>lots of terrible things have been done "with the best of intentions". It's hardly a reason not to be scared.

Are you referring to gun control or the 2nd Amendment, here?

It's a reason to be scared, if you're paranoid and believe the only thing keeping your government from killing you is the fear of your gun barrel against its heads. But I don't believe such a fear is reasonable, or worthy of the weight it seems to be given in American political discourse.

I have to wonder whether gun ownership is preventing totalitarianism government when the will of the people to resist or even recognise authoritarianism is lacking. As a European, facts such as the incarceration rate of the US being second only to the Seychelles strike me as oddly dystopian.

The incarceration rates of Europeans in America are similar to those of Europeans in Europe.

If by Europeans, you mean white, then that isn't true. The US incarcerates whites at the rate of 450 per 100k which is roughly double the rate of any European country except for Russia and equal to Russia's rate. It's triple or more the rate of incarceration in most of Western Europe.

If you are referring to people who are actually from European countries, then I haven't seen data on that, but Europeans in the US would be a very small non-representative sample of Europeans, so I fail to see the relevance.

Yes, Europe is sending us their best so the sample in the US is not representative. I think you are responding to someone talking about people who share the cultural upbringing of Europe rather than race. Unless you think race is a powerful indicator of criminality?

> Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights.

Only in retrospect: if you look at non-ephemeral totalitarian regimes, they don't typically allow dissenters to freely control effective weapons... but if you start from the other direction and examine states which do not allow their populace to freely control effective weapons, your examination pool is most of the states in the world, most of which are not (typically considered) totalitarian.

>The right to bear arms is a basic civil right, unambiguously encoded in the Bill of Rights

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

This tweet claims to describe the roots, early debate, and context of 2nd amendment's inclusion in the constitution. I found it interesting.

https://twitter.com/egavactip/status/967923256983420928

I wonder what bias author Mark Pitcavage brings to the discussion. According to twitter profile he is connected to https://www.adl.org/who-we-are which claims to be some kind of anti-semitism group. (Which I have never heard of before)

ADL is decidedly not an anti-Semitism group, and certainly does not claim to be one.

The only info I have to go on is their about page. The second sentence of which is "We fight anti-Semitism and all forms of hate."

Perhaps you're thinking of some other organization with the same name?

Anyway, the core point of my comment was that I liked getting some background on the drivers that led to the 2nd amendment.

> The only info I have to go on is their about page. The second sentence of which is "We fight anti-Semitism and all forms of hate."

You realize that is describing the polar opposite of an anti-Semitism group, right?

Also the PRC Bill of Rights:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27...

Sure. But US governments also respect those rights selectively. Consider the War on Drugs.

And by extension, the issue of Civil Forfeiture.

Yes, how could I have neglected to cite that sucker!

Eh it's a fair omission. The war on drugs has only fueled the civil forfeiture issue, as it's a commonly pointed to reason by officers why they think someone carrying an excess of cash is up to no good: "We suspect this money is connected to a drug operation".

I don't know if there's a term for it, but if anyone knows or can coin something on the spot to describe the phenomenon where the Drug War and other aspects of American criminal law has invariably irritated smaller undressed wounds within the criminal justice system and caused them to open up as larger festering problems that probably wouldn't have seen as much widespread public attention otherwise-outside of specialized legal communities and advocacy circles.

Examples of what I mean are, as mentioned Drug War -> Civil Forfeiture, PATRIOT Act -> Due Process for War Detainees, Snowden -> Due process for surveillance investigations, etc.

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