Comment by Throwawayaerlei | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Throwawayaerlei | Hacker News Reader

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Throwawayaerlei

Furthermore, i find US fascination with their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided.

So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban. Who immediately started seizing the people's guns upon capturing Kabul.

not even counting accidents and suicides which are also made worse by the high availability of guns for everyone

The suicide statistics from some countries with effective total bans on civilian gun ownership do not support your claim for those, and for accidents we're at 500/year out of a population of 330 million people. There were years when more very young kids were accidentally drowning themselves by getting stuck upside down in 5 gallon (19 L) plastic buckets that are are ubiquitous here.

If Americans didn't fight against the Patriot act, wars, torture, what will they fight for? Mask mandates?

Are any of these, the middle ones not directly affecting us, worth starting a civil war that would take hundreds of thousands to millions of lives?

(I might argue yes for the wars, but it's not the sort of thing I suspect has ever happened in human history.)

> So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban. Who immediately started seizing the people's guns upon capturing Kabul

I sincerely doubt the average first world person has what it takes to sacrifice their comfortable life and go live in caves to resist a tyrannical occupation. And there's no need for them to do that, realistically.

> I sincerely doubt the average first world person has what it takes to sacrifice their comfortable life and go live in caves to resist a tyrannical occupation.

Why are you talking about the "average first world person"? IIRC, Afghanistan is a country of ~30 million people, and the most recent estimates I saw said the Taliban only had ~75 thousand fighters. That's 0.25%. So not even the average Afghan did that.

Also, guerilla warfare isn't so much about living in caves as melting into the population.

>melting into the population.

Or, as in Afghanistan, actively supported by the population who hated both the occupiers and the VICE (Vertically Integrated Criminal Enterprise) known as the government.

Still, one of the first signs of a society approaching tyranny is the government cracking down on guns. So if nothing else, it serves as a great canary in the mine.

> Still, one of the first signs of a society approaching tyranny is the government cracking down on guns

In a dictatorship, yes.

Australia?

Do Australians have Freedom of Movement back yet?

Exactly how do you think you wind up in a dictatorship?

That is not actually true historically. That is popular talking point.

On the other hand, quite a few authoritarian tyrannical movements started by arming themselves and taking it on themselves to get power. Both nazi and communists started as private citizens arming themselves and causing fights in the streets or robbing people.

One example close from home, Belarus and Russian governments have gone to lengths in order to limit gun ownership. It is actually very difficult, at least legally. Perhaps when you are trying to stir a revolution you might speak to the nation arming itself. Once you have taken power, peacefully or otherwise, your next steps regarding gun control are still highly illuminating.

Partially true.

"On Nov. 11, 1938, the German minister of the interior issued "Regulations Against Jews Possession of Weapons." Not only were Jews forbidden to own guns and ammunition, they couldn’t own "truncheons or stabbing weapons."

In addition to the restrictions, Ellerbrock said the Nazis had already been raiding Jewish homes and seizing weapons.

"The gun policy of the Nazis can hardly be compared to the democratic procedures of gun regulations by law," Ellerbrock told us. "It was a kind of special administrative practice (Sonderrecht), which treated people in different ways according to their political opinion or according to ‘racial identity’ in Nazi terms.""[0].

[0] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/oct/26/ben-carson...

Amusingly, Einstein's home got raided and they confiscated a kitchen knife or something.

Australia doesn't seem that tyrannical to me.

Haven't really been paying attention to the news out of Australia over the past year and a half, have you?

Have you not heard of Gladys?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLTGXblgUoc

Sure, it won't happen if everyone's life is still comfortable, that's the point. It's a safeguard against life becoming so extremely uncomfortable that the people started fighting.

> I sincerely doubt the average first world person has what it takes to sacrifice their comfortable life and go live in caves to resist a tyrannical occupation.

I think the people seizing those weapons should be less concerned about "average" gun owners, and more worried about fringe citizens willing to die to detonate a high yield explosive in the centers of power.

The crazies are always the first off the porch. They're a canary.

I sincerely doubt the average first world government has what it takes to sacrifice its comfortable bureaucracy and inspire even a tiny fraction of 330,000,000 citizens to fight back against tyranny.

That’s why federal legislators freaked out when a few thousand pissed off voters simply walked into the Capitol without permission - and without weapons. Every one of those mostly peaceful demonstrators represented a thousand equally angry, and well-armed, citizens not visible on security cameras.

> So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban.

It takes a lot more than a Glock and a few boxes of ammunition from the sporting goods store to befuddle the US military. It takes fuel, food, medicine, training camps, and other infrastructure necessary to survive and fight back. You’re not going to get that in appreciable quantities in the middle of the US without Uncle Sam and several three letter agencies noticing. You would need the help of a foreign power and/or seizing land to tax... at which point the Second Amendment is moot. Might save you a few bucks to have all these small arms laying around, but it’s only a small piece of the puzzle.

> It takes a lot more than a Glock and a few boxes of ammunition from the sporting goods store to befuddle the US military

Which is exactly why we resist laws that ban rifles.

> You’re not going to get that in appreciable quantities in the middle of the US without Uncle Sam and several three letter agencies noticing.

I don't think you fully grasp the extent to which the US population is armed.

> Which is exactly why we resist laws that ban rifles.

s/Glock/AR-15/, point still stands regardless of what common legal firearm you want to replace Glock with.

> I don't think you fully grasp the extent to which the US population is armed.

You have entirely missed the point. The existence of small arms is not what lead the Taliban to success against the US. They had billions of dollars from the opium trade, donations, and foreign aid. This money was not just spent to purchase weapons; it was used to fund training camps, fund recruiting operations, buy off politicians and local warlords, maintain supply lines, and the other infrastructure you need to wage war. These are the things the three letter agencies would take note of.

tl;dr: Small arms (in any quantity) are a small piece of what you would need to wage an effective insurgency against ol' Uncle Sam.

> point still stands regardless

No it doesn't. The rhetoric of "remove weapons of war from America's streets" does not jive with the "small arms are not good enough weapons of war" argument.

> The existence of small arms is not what lead the Taliban to success against the US.

Okay, but Americans have more than that, they have everything you mentioned. They have the largest economy in the world from which to draw the wealth needed for those things. They have militias, they have state governments with treasuries, a significant portion of the population is trained by way of service in the military.

But even beyond all that, I think you're underestimating the importance of small arms in waging an insurgency. All of those other things exist only to ensure that bullets can be fired.

> The rhetoric of "remove weapons of war from America's streets" does not jive with the "small arms are not good enough weapons of war" argument.

I never mentioned removing or outlawing firearms. But by all means, continue to strawman.

> Okay, but Americans have more than that, they have everything you mentioned. They have the largest economy in the world from which to draw the wealth needed for those things. They have militias, they have state governments with treasuries, a significant portion of the population is trained by way of service in the military.

The functioning society of America has that, but a ragtag insurgency within the country does not. Do you think those state treasuries are physical things you can raid? Do you think corporate America isn't going to help keep the status quo? Do you think all of the anti-crime monitoring (especially in the realm of finance) won't notice any of this before it gets too big? Government gets a whiff of this and it's all too easy to paint the group as a bunch of right-wing nutjobs and sick the ATF on them.

The initiating event would have to be so catastrophic that a large percentage of the population "defects" in a very short timespan. And at that point things are so cataclysmic that the Second Amendment isn't even a factor any more.

> I think you're underestimating the importance of small arms in waging an insurgency.

And I think you're underestimating everything else. The successful insurgencies in history generally did not start out with a well armed population. Small arms are easy to smuggle in once everything else is going--especially when you have a foreign benefactor.

Comparing Taliban to individual gun owners is next level absurd.

why? The taliban is not like a nation state army, more like a bunch or militias and tribes, each of which is a “bunch of local guys with guns”. As the war has progressed, I imagine they have got more professional, but I’m guessing around 80-90% of their strength are non ideological tribal militias who are very good at figuring out which way the wind is blowing and changing sides. That worked in the US favor in 2001-2 when the northern alliance was winning, and against US interests now, that’s why resistance collapsed so quickly back in 2001 and now.

Supported by military arms from Pakistan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Russia.

And now $85 billion worth of American military arms as well.

Who do you think Pakistan, UAE, and Saudi Arabia by the arms from?

They are not local guys with guns. They were not local guys with guns years before last war. The region fighters started, long time ago, by being trained by army (American) and were sponsored by multiple governments over years.

They are trained, funded disciplined. They are also local guys and local guys join them often. But then become part of something bigger.

Blaming the Afghanistan War on the "Deep State" is a very odd choice to me. Does the Deep State ratify authorizations for the use of military force and approve military spending budgets?

>>> Furthermore, i find US fascination with their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided.

>> So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban. Who immediately started seizing the people's guns upon capturing Kabul.

> Blaming the Afghanistan War on the "Deep State" is a very odd choice to me. Does the Deep State ratify authorizations for the use of military force and approve military spending budgets?

You missed the point, which was the kind of thinking that says armed civilians stand no chance against a modern military also says the US should have prevailed in Afghanistan.

I believe "deep state" here is a tendentious term that refers to the permanent, unelected parts of the executive branch. Their expert analysis said the US was just about to "turn the corner" for 20 years. It's not about the decision to go in the first place.

I believe "deep state" here is a tendentious term that refers to the permanent, unelected parts of the executive branch. Their expert analysis said the US was just about to "turn the corner" for 20 years.

Exactly. See but the most recent controversy about Gen. Mark Milley, a complete abrogation of the principle of civilian control over the military, something that goes back to George Washington and one of the reasons we have so many places named after Cincinnatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus

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