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Comment by SquareWheel | Hacker News Reader

> (3) In the event of a battle with the police, protesters would also need to be armed to defend themselves against the police with similar type weapons as the police are deploying against protesters. For example, if the police are using their truncheons then it is only fair that protesters can avail themselves of similar type weapons - baseball bats, crowbars etc.

I can't imagine this making the situation better for either party.

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The basic problem with this theory is that the government will always send forces better armed than protestors are by several steps, unless the protesters are so well equipped (which usually means foreign state sponsorship of what is intended as an armed revolution, or just an internal armed revolution that has already gotten backing of a sizable chunk of the military and/or internal security forces) that this is impossible. So, of it's possible to implement this theory at all, you are already outside of the scope of mere protest and into civil war, or at least the imminent direct threat of it.

In cases where police are beating the shit out of protestors, what exactly is the alternative? Just sit there and take it?

any kind of arms race only leads to more and worsening violence.

so just give up on the right to protest and enjoy more of the following?

https://www.oocities.org/scotpeterdow2/police.htm

I was cracking a joke in another comment on the apparent fetish this guy seemed to have, but after reading that page you can kind of understand where he was coming from. He does put in the effort to reference relevant journalistic material (like the police officer in training that was abused and succesfully sued), not exactly what you expect from some prolonged teenage angst doomsday prepper...

so what is your advice? forget about your right to protest? give up democracy?

In the face of a repressive, undemocratic regime, is violent revolution not justified?

Peaceful revolution would be better, to be sure, but that depends on the regime being willing to step aside without being violently forced to.

Ghandi et.al. did it according to what ive read in history texts, exactly how it happened only ghandi knows, but history says non violent passive resistance with great sacrifice [allowing gov to beat the crap out of them] until everyone realized it was out of hand.

The alternatives are the police tasing portestors, the police shooting portestors, the military bombing portestors...

If you want to protest "police brutality" or an "oppressive regime", you might as well sit there and take it, as long as you make sure to get recorded by some journalists, and hope for public opinion to support you. At least you maybe won't die, which is better than the alternatives.

I don't see this going well in most US domestic scenarios, but the ongoing events in Hong Kong (where we see videos of police persuing fleeing prorestors) comes to mind as a use case.

> (where we see videos of police persuing fleeing prorestors)

Because in the US they'd just shoot them?

Actually, have there been cases of police opening fire on protestors? I know it happens in "regular" cases from time to time leading to much reported news stories (which I hope indicates it's uncommon enough to be newsworthy), but has it happened during protests?

Kent State Shootings - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

Does National Guard count?

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

these anti cuffs are also light armour [bracers] that can be used to defend yourself from baton strikes, or knife/sword slashes.

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