Comment by ixtli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ixtli | Hacker News Reader

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From experience, people who are able to live their lives casually collecting weapons here are also able to live pretty disconnected from the reality of these types of situations. We're long, long past a world where a rag tag band of ideologically enfranchised citizens could oppose the police.

The fantasy of standing up to The Gubment comes from two things:

1) a rambo fantasy. a serious overestimate of your own skills where now YOU are the one in charge

2) a supposition that "if it ever came to that" the military and the police wouldn't actually pull the trigger.

We know this is nonsense from historical analysis. From the other side you can look at how the Vietnamese people defended themselves from invasion and if you really think those conditions exist here then you've never been to, say, arizona where this sort of thinking is prevalent.

Edit: I wanna be clear that i don't think this is a good thing. I wish there was some way citizenry could hold their government to account directly like in the 1700s but I think we live in a different world now. One where people enjoy not having a random street war kick off on a tuesday when they'd rather be at a coffee shop.

I categorically disagree with this. Look at the enormous damage small groups of armed people have imparted on the government even recently. Two delusional guys in Boston shut down the entire city for multiple days and necessitated a state-wide response by blowing up a few pipe bombs, killing a police officer, and going on a car chase. This response cost millions and millions of dollars and resulted in millions of dollars more in lost productivity. The Waco Texas debacle necessitated a huge federal response which we are still feeling the effects of to this day. The Oklahoma City bombing was perpetrated by two guys who didn't even use firearms.

I'm certainly not endorsing any of these actions and I believe the government responses were warranted, but there is a clear history of rebellious armed civilian groups being huge problems for governments.

I wonder how much that has to do with those incidents being (relatively) small, isolated shocks to an otherwise mostly stable, mostly "peaceful" system. Some combination of the government not being "used" to dealing with such activity (unintentional inefficiency), and a desire to "keep the gloves on", as it were, and not raise some kind of optically disproportionate response, like bringing in the national guard (intentional inefficiency).

I wonder what a government response might look like after a few continuous years of dealing with clearly-organized civil unrest and violence. After it, perhaps, decides that waging direct war on its own citizenry is acceptable for the sake of the State. Or that such agitants have forfeited their right to citizenship.

The Arab Spring and resulting aftermath is illustrative of what happens in such a situation.

3) a supposition that "if it ever came to that" a meaningful subset of the military and the police would join (and lead) the revolution.

This is the most often overlook aspect. Yes, the government might even lob a few nukes at its own territory of push came to shove, but that would only increase the defections.

A US civil war would be incredibly messy, but it would not be easy to predict any sort of outcome. Everyone would interpret for themselves what "sworn to the constitution" meant for them and pick a side. There would certainly be more than 2 sides too, given how different the 50 states are.

yeah thats basically what i was going for here. ammo-fetishists and people who cant tell the difference between reality and movies are rampant in america, imo.

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