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Comment by axguscbklp | Hacker News Reader

Officials being democratically elected does not necessarily mean anything - in theory, a majority of the population could vote to literally enslave a minority of the population. I think that it is fair for a minority of the population to have some threshold beyond which they are willing to use force if necessary even if by doing so they are going against the wishes of the majority.

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51% of a population having a say over their own lives is better than any other system I know of, because every other system I know of ends up with substantially less than 51% of the population having a say over their own lives. It's far from perfect, but I do think we should realize the comparison is to other forms of government, not some abstract ideal.

And I'm not suggesting that there's never a reason to act violently towards a government, I'm suggesting the people who talk about guns in response to legislation don't understand what it is they're saying.

To use firearms against your government means killing patriots, definitionally. People need to realize this, because they generally don't.

Yes, it likely means killing people who think of themselves as patriots. However, many people who work for oppressive governments genuinely think of themselves as patriots. I do not see why it matters whether using firearms against a government means killing patriots or not. Many of the people who worked for Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union to oppress their fellow citizens were patriots by the standard meaning of the word.

It often matters to the people making these statements, is my point.

I haven't expressed my opinion about it, I'm just saying that the folks suggesting using firearms to "stop tyranny" very rarely know what they're actually saying.

Some do.

Psychologically I think it is very easy to resolve any possible contradictions. "My side are the real patriots - their side are false patriots who are actually bootlickers/oppressors/occupiers/traitors/etcetera."

I think you're getting wrapped up in the word choice here. Someone espousing these beliefs is supporting the killing of cops and soldiers, an act which is very often reprehensible in the same circles.

I think that most people who generally support cops and soldiers but who also contemplate violent resistance against the US government have already thought through this issue and their usual resolution is "I generally support cops and soldiers for now but if they cross certain lines then I am fine with fighting against them". I do not think that there is nearly as much cognitive dissonance or hypocrisy on this topic among those people as you might think there is.

I disagree, I believe the vast majority of people (including the person I replied to here) who believe in using firearms to "prevent tyranny" don't understand that what they're saying means they'd have to kill cops and soldiers.

They tend to believe the threat is enough and that they'd never have to act on their threat (rendering it meaningless), or that all of the cops/soldiers will just let them kill the politicians (and killing a politician for a differing political belief is somehow generally okay for these folks).

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