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Comment by MadSudaca | Hacker News Reader

The progressives in HN downvote you, but the truth is that being able to use violence to protect your individual freedoms is instrumental to democracy. Few places can boast the level of stability that EEUU has had in the last 150 years. Many were taken over by tyrants and armed mobs, than eventually chose their tyrant. It's no coincidence that in Venezuela the regime disarmed the people with a law that according to them was meant to protect them.

The 2nd amendment is vital, don't let anyone make you think otherwise.

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What about the many, many other functioning democracies with incredibly strict gun control?

It is all well and good until they stop functioning.

Guns empower people to not sit down and just take it when governments consistentenly abuse their power over a long enough period of time.

Saying “it’s all fine and dandy until the democracy falls down” is a pretty circular argument to the fact that America stands uniquely in the democratic free world in its liberal control of guns, amoung peers who have lasted several times longer than America's total existance.

In fact it’s a completely nonsense response, and one might point out that America is also fairly unique in its seemingly ill-functioning and over reaching government. Nobody reached for their guns after any of the post-9/11 constitution slashing, nor over any of the hundreds of documented abuses of power, corruption or citizens-United bribery that happen all of the time.

But sure, if cradling your firearms at night imagining a time when you gloriously rise up in unison against some big-brother style figurehead (while your other freedoms are eroded bit by bit) is an effective coping mechanism I guess that’s a good thing for the controlling oligarchy.

I can see why the promote it so heavily.

All of the west is shaped by America's dominance. Without their influence I suspect many typically western countries would be far more tyranically run.

Do we really think that armed citizens would have a chance against the current US military? Weaponry has come pretty far since the days the 2nd amendment was created.

Maybe not, but the freedom to have that chance, no matter how small, is worth having. To me personally anyway.

The point isn't to win against the US military by overpowering it, but it is to cause enough damage, death, and collateral that you bring the US government to the negotiating table when supporters realize the cost of prolonged battle. You also want to make it look as brutal as possible to get foreign support and condemnation on the world stage.

Also we really don't know what would happen if the US military was asked to start fighting its own citizens. There is no guarantee those orders would be followed... people don't like killing their neighbors even if they're ordered to do it.

I don't think we should have no recourse against a tyrannical government, but I just don't see how anyone is going to realistically go up against the US military and make even a tiny dent.

To your latter point, there are constant human rights abuses/crackdowns on dissent in China, but does anyone intervene? Now consider that the US has military might many times China's. Who's going to intervene?

I, too, would hope for defection if the US military was told to start attacking US citizens. It's important to note, though, that the military goes to great lengths to break recruits down and rebuild them into "warriors" aka unquestioning killing machines.

>I don't think we should have no recourse against a tyrannical government, but I just don't see how anyone is going to realistically go up against the US military and make even a tiny dent.

See Vietnam

Fighting a war on foreign soil is much different from a conflict on home turf.

Sherman's March to the Sea is a nice example of how this plays out.

>Do we really think that armed citizens would have a chance against the current US military?

Would it surprise you to learn that the "US military" aren't a bunch of mindless drones, but are in fact family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and fellow citizens? And that they wouldn't necessarily feel great about slaughtering their fellow countrymen?

I don't think the military are mindless drones, but yes, it would surprise me to see large-scale defection because history is littered with incidences of military being used successfully to repress citizen populations. This happens, in my opinion, for two reasons: 1. Militaries spend a lot of time breaking down and rebuilding recruits into order-following killing machines. 2. Target populations are demonized to the point that your neighbors/friends can be made to look enough like an enemy "other". Add groupthink to that and you've got a deadly situation that's not really a moral failing on the part of the soldier but a corruption of their motives by propaganda.

This is the key point, more or less every revolution in human history happened when the military switched sides and didn't want to shoot at civilians anymore.

Trying to come with 2nd amendment is bullshit, you have to get the sympathy by the military. This could be by inflicting damage, but more likely by having high enough casualties that the military thinks it is too much.

You don’t have to overpower the military with their nukes. You just have to make your region ungovernable without the military doing something embarrassing, or that would make the region of no value. It’s the Northern Ireland strategy.

I used to think this way. Then I saw what our boys went through doing house-to-house fighting in Iraq. The rural areas of the US are way more heavily armed than the Iraqis were circa 2005. Not to mention the amount of ammo and guns that right-wingers have been stockpiling since the Obama administration. (Perhaps for misguided reasons but nonetheless it happened)

It would be a bloodbath.

The ratio of casualties would certainly be the closest in house-to-house combat, but who's to say that's how it would go down? Civilians don't have air power or much of anything that would be effective against armored vehicles. Theoretically a few tanks could cruise through a neighborhood and level it.

1) it's false Venezuela disarmed people;

2) to say armed people can stop dictators, it's a totally braindead assumption.

Please, go understand how the world works.

Of course it's false. You still see lots of armed people, usually criminal gangs, both regime sponsored and independent. However, legally they were prohibited several years ago, I remember this. On your second point, please read the other comments on the thread spawned by my comment, and you'll see why your point is false.

I don't claim to know how the world works, but I've seen and learned enough to understand the importance violence has in our society. In most developed nations we're sheltered from it because its application has been made incredibly efficient. However, we shouldn't be fooled to believe that it doesn't play an important role in maintaining our societies.

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