Also, anyone think that a US civilian militia has more than a snowball's chance in hell against any committed government-deployed force?
Tell 'im 'e's dreamin'
I do think that in case of armed resistance, US government will step back instead of nuking Oklahoma City.
Also, search "chechen wars". Large well-equipped Russian army with tanks, artillery and air force lost to people armed with AK's, determination and grassroots support from locals.
For more recent example see what happened in Afghanistan. The best the most powerful army on the planet could do is sitting inside their bases with multiple security perimeters.
I'd welcome any evidence that they're of much use for that. I see too many mixed outcomes (private arms aiding in the installation of tyrannical government, notably, of which I'm aware of way more examples than the reverse) and cases that are too different to compare—every single example I'm aware of involves extensive foreign intervention and/or resistance to a foreign occupier, which is very different.
I think the odds of an armed US militia resisting tyranny being popular enough not to end up being opposed by even more armed militia who are pro tyranny, in a situation in which the military is not also mostly on the anti-tyranny side, is effectively zero. I think the reverse is far more likely (private arms supporting tyranny). I'd welcome evidence that would change this view, but as far as I can tell the scales strongly lean toward my take.
…
> I'm aware of involves extensive foreign intervention and/or resistance to a foreign occupier, which is very different.
You say they are different, but you don’t say why.
Effectively all you are doing is dismissing the evidence without reasoning.
Sorry, didn't occur to me to note the differences. The incentives, motivations, goals, costs, and resources for a foreign government fighting on your soil are all very from your own government fighting a civil war or dealing with a domestic, guerrilla resistance, are the main things.
I remain unconvinced that private arms are likely to be any kind of useful factor in resisting tyranny in a developed country, and also unconvinced that they're more likely to be used to that end than in service of the precisely the opposite purpose, even if they were useful for tyranny-resistance to begin with.
That really doesn’t explain anything at all. It’s another way of saying they aren’t the same in various ways.
> also unconvinced that they're more likely to be used to that end than in service of the precisely the opposite purpose
This is an interesting political idea that bears a lot more elaboration, but seems unconnected in principle to the other point.
Yes, I guess I just... figured it was extremely obvious that a foreign occupation resisted by locals and a civil war or domestic insurgency are very different, largely on those categories. I feel like I'm being asked to defend the statement that bicycles and airplanes are, though both modes of transportation, quite different in a bunch of important ways.
I’m not asking you to arbitrarily explain how they are different. I’m asking you to explain how and why the differences you are thinking of make guns useless for civilians to own.
Aggregating the differences, part of it is that the stakes are so much lower in a foreign occupation and that withdrawal to save any of several sorts of costs involved is an option that won't result in the toppling of the occupying state's government or loss of any of the occupying state's core territory or sovereignty, and the other part (also mentioned in my post) is that it's very common for a successful insurgency or rebellion [edit: against foreign occupiers, I mean, in this case] to have foreign aid, which often exceeds the benefit of private arms to such a degree that it's not clear a few folks having AKs mattered at all, so even in such cases–which are already quite different from a domestic conflict—it's usually not clear-cut that private arms made much difference.
It'd help for the analysis if a state with a modern maneuver-focus equipped-and-trained army had faced a realistic domestic threat from rebels bearing private small arms... like, ever. There've been revolutions in such states (Russia, mainly—I'm actually struggling to think of another, since even the ones with maneuver-focus equipment usually hadn't managed the training for it, so fight very differently), but they've not really been the result of civil wars or armed insurrections. Such militaries have lost abroad, but not domestically, and usually against an enemy with one or more foreign state backers—and not by actual, outright defeat on the battlefield, but by convincing the occupier (the political leadership, not the military—they're usually not routes due to loss of morale) to cut their losses and go home. I strongly suspect that the circumstances that would render private arms enough to be any meaningful part of successful resistance against such a state in a civil war or insurrection, would also mean they weren't necessary for that success in the first place—that is, the circumstances would include such overwhelming and enthusiastic support from the populace, and/or enough support from the military, that a bunch of civilian-owned rifles wouldn't much matter for the outcome. There may be some narrow, unlikely set of circumstances in which they're really be the deciding factor, but at that point the cost/risk of keeping them around would have to be incredibly low to justify doing so specifically on the grounds that they're very important for resisting tyranny (there are other justifications for firearms ownership, of course).
Your argument is that during an occupation civilians owning guns already in the occupied country doesn’t matter because another country will come in and arm them?
You seem to be restating your position a few times in more words - I.e. that examples of resistance to foreign opposition are not relevant, and that guns wouldn’t be relevant in then scenarios you can imagine.
Can you try condensing the actual argument into a short paragraph?
It’s not clear what scenario you are imagining in which the weapons wouldn’t help. How about just outlining the scenario you are thinking about clearly?
>I think the reverse is far more likely (private arms supporting tyranny)
They would need to overpower gov AND the privately armed non-supporters. Compared to only the gov if the people would not be armed. (unless you assume the tyranny group is actually unarmed because they follow the law but this seems weird highly tyrannical and criminal groups all over the world always find a way to arm themself even in places where private people dont have guns.)
The role they play is usually as part of a deniable dirty-work militia, or in cases in which the military sits out the conflict (usually a very bad sign for whoever's in power, tyrannical or not). In some cases in which the government is very ineffective and has a shit army, they can help—but again, I'm aware of that working in cases like the Cuban revolution, which wasn't exactly a blow struck for liberty, and it requires that the government has poor support and is very weak to begin with.
When push comes to shove, guns allow normal people to escalate violence to the point the government stops MUCH quicker and faster than without guns.
I don't really understand what you mean here?
You pull your gun out and threaten a government representative, and you will be dead or in handcuffs within 30 minutes.
Maybe your idea of civilian government overthrow could come true if you could somehow gather thousands of people with guns who are against the government simultaneously, but other than that, it's over. And even if you do manage to gather those people, it's over when the national guard arrives.
Escalating violence doesn't work when you're massively outgunned, or do you have your own Apache helicopters, armed drones and tanks? Do you think they will hesitate to attack armed terrorists trying to overthrow the "democratically elected" government?
I'm not American so please explain what I'm missing here.
If there was a tyranny and a rebellion, the cops are going to think twice about going out and about without full force since they might be ambushed.
Alot of this sort of situation: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54137838
It does not work like in the movies. If you're in your house and someone is trying to kill you with a weapon, it will take the cops 15 minutes to your door ... and 30 minutes before they come in, minimum. If a unit has been lost (meaning a cop already got hurt), it will take hour before they come to the door, minimum. Some places (such as the court house) have different rules.
As soon as a unit has been lost, they will FIRST do a cost-benefit analysis of retaliating at all. And, especially in large cities, that analysis will regularly come up with something akin to "just let them deliver the drugs and do ... nothing" or "just let them go". Even when non-lethal (and "non-lethal" as in a knife) weapons are used they may refuse. You see, not getting maimed (even a little bit) is a thoroughly essential part of having any sort of career, and the treatment wounded cops get certainly does not justify self-sacrifice. The kinder logic is that criminals don't stop after one crime. If it's needed to stop them, there will be another chance.
Working this way means that for even a large metro area they can maybe handle 5 to 10 serious situations at any one time. Police weapons, even the big ones, do not defeat even relatively small determined militias. And the police will abandon neighbourhoods long before it comes anywhere near this point.
If they truly the think the situation will escalate without end, they may go in. That, by the way, generally means snipers, not knocking down the door. If they don't think the situation will escalate, or if there's too many people, or ... they will just let it be.
The government order is acted on by a person, at the end of the day. During the lockdowns my City authority closed all public parks including the one across the street from my house. They also retasked all Parks & Recreation employees to sit in the parks and yell at anyone using the parks. Many citizens, myself included, outright ignored the P&R staff and continued to make use of the park under the threat of "calling the police." Even after the lockdown ended and parks re-opened, the staff at our local park continued with their own "closure."
However, at no point did officers respond let alone use state-sanctioned violence against citizens. That a government flunky gives an order does not mean it will be enforced let alone result in violence from authorities.
Ultimately, this is a continuous function rather than a boolean as you're implying. Citizen ownership of arms helps juice that function in our favor.
The guns are there for when the legal way to solve stuff no longer works and laws are no longer of any meaning. Saying its against the law to use them or that law enforcement will enforce any law no matter what is pure ignorance. Civil wars happens and if there is one you better hope both sides have guns because else its not a war its a takeover.
And depending on the relations the US has with 2-3 particular nations we would likely see an invasion thrown on top.
I am not taking sides in the underlying argument.
I am simply astonished that you can make this statement in the face of U.S. forces running away from Afghanistan.
[1]: https://www.the-sun.com/news/3448281/taliban-grabbing-girls-...
A government is a parasitic organism. Quashing resistance only makes sense if it's cost-effective. E.g. nuking your own country is insane; at some point, it's just cheaper to compromise.
Remember that bin Laden fought off the Soviets using an MBA, an inherited construction company, and billions of dollars of foreign funding. Militias don't exist in isolation from the world.
Ask the Taliban.
It is, until it isn't.
> Also, anyone think that a US civilian militia has more than a snowball's chance in hell against any committed government-deployed force?
See: Middle East
That's always tricky because the most successful examples of a guerilla army winning like that are all a foreign army coming into a local rebelling population. They mostly work by just wearing down the invaders until the cost and time requirements wear heavy enough that the foreign army decides to just go home, that same dynamic doesn't map as well when it's the state fighting for it's own survival to me.
My biggest point is that all the often cited success stories of a guerilla army winning against any modern military are all on a home turf vs invading army (and the guerilla forces are often heavily backed by outside forces or backed up by an actual regular army like in Vietnam). There are completely different incentives there, on the extreme end of things losing means you might be killed
Also don't be so sure about Cuba if you're talking about the current situation, it's far from over and they're not exactly a peer comparison to make to a theoretical US insurgency.
Do you think the guns in civilian ownership are to be used for foreign wars? They are exactly for homeland invasion.
And who will back the US with arms? In the examples you gave it’s a richer country, or multiple, helping a poorer country. Who’s going to help the richest country in its death throes? What will be the benefit for all that aid should that nation fall? It’s better to pre-stage the weapons as that also serves to deter those that think the US is inadequately armed.
When presented with historical events supporting these claims your response is “cannot say with certainty”…
The interesting and terrifying part is, if I were China or Russia, I would be online trying to convince the US to disarm itself too.