Nominally off-topic for the thread as well, although I'd argue that both "gun control" and "SDR control" are two points on the same continuum.
(Don't worry about the downvotes -- you'll get the karma back in a few hours, as soon as the Europeans start waking up.)
I've heard this line of reasoning often when discussing this topic and never really understood.
I'm curious - the government/military have tanks, aircraft, nuclear weapons etc. There is a massive imbalance of power regardless of whether citizens have guns. In what scenarios with respect to the government/military/police do you see being armed as providing an advantage?
I can see the advantage from the police side in terms of more easily justifying shooting people ("he had a gun / I thought he had a gun"), but not from the citizens' side.
I'm not advocating either side, I'm just curious to understand the genesis of this argument.
Tanks, planes etc are for force on force warfare, not asymmetric scenarios like a "government turned evil, we need to rise up"
Well look at lessons from history - which of those weapons end up actually being used against rebelling citizens of a country?
From my limited knowledge it's hand weapons plus armored vehicles, and rarely, very rarely, tanks.
Against that an armed populace can stand. Plus don't forget the populace would be a guerrilla force, while the government would be visible.
A typical scenario: The government wants to arrest someone. What weapons would they use? Not heavy ones! If the citizens have no weapons the government doesn't need any weapons at all, but if the citizens have someone as simple as hand guns suddenly things are not so simple for the government.
In short: The government doesn't want to wipe out its own citizens (nuclear weapons? seriously?) they want to selectively remove undesirables. And against that, personal weapons are quite effective.
But they didn't get away scot free, did they? Among other consequences, the governments' actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco inspired a couple of psychos (McVeigh and Nichols) to commit an atrocity of their own to take revenge. [1]
Fast-forward to the occupation of the Malheur refuge by the Branch Dildonians several years later. This time, the government waited them out. They knew better than to take a third swing at the hornet's nest. They were arguably afraid to go up against US citizens using violence as a first resort.
You can see that as a good thing -- and I do -- without having any sympathy at all for the beliefs and actions of the Malheur occupiers, with McVeigh, or with Randy Weaver for that matter.
[1] https://www.history.com/news/how-ruby-ridge-and-waco-led-to-...
No one was charged or convicted as a result of Ruby Ridge or Waco. No one involved was fired or demoted. No one paid any personal price for killing people who need not have died, or for destroying and tampering with evidence. Everyone involved got away Scot free.
Police chiefs. Mayors. Governors. District attorneys. Tax collectors. Etc.... You don't need tanks and aircraft to render these people incapable of performing their functions. Small arms (and maybe some improvised explosives) are sufficient. That's the true leverage and power of an armed citizenry backed by a supportive population. Afghanistan has repeatedly (and continues) to prove this.
"Guns are necessary in case we want to turn the US into an impoverished patchwork of warlords" is a hell of a take.
It wouldn’t work in the US anyway. The gloves would come off in a long running civil war as they always do and there would be collective punishment, population resettlement and other war crimes. The US is as likely to follow international law in a war it genuinely feels is an existential threat as anyone else, not at all.
Every argument the "Guns will protect us from the government" crowd claims was already proven false over 100 years ago, and that was when the average citizen was still on equal footing in terms of firepower.
There's also the fact that in the past 120 years, there has not been a concerted effort to "Rise up" despite many actual atrocities. So, gun owners, what would it take for you to attempt to march on Washington with your arms readied? The only time it ever happened was because people were denied the "right" to own other human beings. What is finally the breaking point that gets people willing to die against the might of the war machine?
Even then, it is better to go out with at least a little bit of a fight if you're attacked. In the end I suppose it doesn't matter whether you're carrying or not, because even if you are able to defend yourself from an attack by the collective, that is only a momentary win. They'll get you in the end anyway.
One typical scenario in the suppression of the free speech is the (illegally) armed brownshirts breaking down the door of the family house where the wrongthink assembly is taking place and lynching the people inside. The police shows up in the morning and -- wow, another one of the unsolvable crimes by the unknown perpertrators with the unknowable motives. Add guns and suddenly this is impossible. Storming a firearm-defended position is not something a brownshirt mob is able to do.
The second scenario is the police overreach. The shocktroopers in blue show up at the ghetto and load up the whole households of 'undesirables' into the black cars to never be seen again. Again, this all falls apart if the population is armed. Once it is clear to the masses that the purge is going to take place, the ghetto becomes a killing field because every window is a gun port and the stopped cars are the perfect targets.
The point of the armed populace in 21st century is not to win the war with the tyrant's standing army. It's to make sure that the tyrant cannot disappear the large swathes of population without taking casualties and without making what's going on obvious to the public.
Scenario two doesn't work that way. They firebomb the offending houses. We've seen it before. Multiple times.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Africa
Of course, that's not the best example to cite when trying to argue that the police, government, and military should have a monopoly on the tools of violence.
In what scenarios with respect to the
government/military/police do you see
being armed as providing an advantage?
The Black Panthers decided to 'observe the police' by following police cars with shotgun-carrying armed patrols. That motivated things like the Mulford Act [2] - a Republican act banning carrying loaded guns in public.
So in other words, part of the genesis of the individual rights interpretation of the second amendment, and the notion of using personal guns to oppose an oppressive state, is literally one white cop in a car being followed by six black panthers who are keeping an eye on him.
I can see the advantage from the police
side in terms of more easily justifying
shooting people
(Incidentally, the podcast also says the NRA in that era was a sports-shooting magazine that barely had a political arm, and didn't oppose gun control)
[1] https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/gun-show [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
Since these are not my words but I agree with them I'll leave a link to the original post here
> Arreguín-Toft was analyzing conflicts in which one side was at least ten times as powerful—in terms of armed might and population—as its opponent, and even in those lopsided contests the underdog won almost a third of the time.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/11/how-david-beat...
It's also a logical implication of standard liberal (e.g. Locke) thought. Since all men are equal before the law and are innocent until proven guilty, and have the right to protect themselves and their property, why should anyone be denied a weapon when others can be?