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But this war in Ukraine showed one simple truth: if you arm the population, the invasion can only destroy the infrastructure. You can't win over people's minds by killing their loved ones, their neighboors. And you can't keep it under control if every citizen has a gun. You install a puppet government, they will be dead within a week.

This is the only way to protect Taiwan. Give them guns and ammo. And teach them that killing invaders is the only way to keep their freedom and not fall under the totalitarian communist regime of China.

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> But this war in Ukraine showed one simple truth: if you arm the population, the invasion can only destroy the infrastructure.

There are no simple conclusions about what is happening right now in Ukraine, and it is a fool's errand to declare any kind of conclusion 10 days into an invasion which already displaced millions of people and in which almost every major Ukrainian city is under siege teetering on the edge.

Russia's economy destroyed? Ukraine successfully resisted the invasion? All Russia can do is destroy infrastructure?

All those jumping to conclusions regarding the Ukraine situation remind me of Bush standing in front of a Mission Accomplished banner after 20 days of the Iraq invasion.

>the Ukraine situation remind me of Bush standing in front of a Mission Accomplished banner after 20 days of the Iraq invasion.

So your response to others jumping to conclusions is to do so yourself? Your analogy doesn't make a lot of sense either, Bush was the invader claiming victory, not the local population saying they would resist until death(which seems to be fairly accurate in the case of Ukraine so far.)

It's such a weird situation right now everybody went from virus and vaccine expert to geopolitical expert within 10 min.

It took the West like a year of sanctions and aerial bombardment, then 3 weeks of "Shock and awe" to take over an Arab nations. If there is one thing modern day arabs are known for is they cant do modern warfare.

Now take Ukraine its like 40% bigger than Iraq so i think its save to say it should take Russia like 5 weeks to beat the West without sanctions on Ukraine without months of Aerial bombardment. If at the end of this months no peace deal is agreed on between Russia and the Ukraine then it's should be seen as a hick up.

But it might also become a multi year invasion every thing is possible in war.

> If there is one thing modern day arabs are known for is they cant do modern warfare. > It's such a weird situation right now everybody went from virus and vaccine expert to geopolitical expert within 10 min.

The "population" hasn't been armed. A small amount of people in some areas were armed. And fighting age men have been conscripted. If the goal of the invasion was to destroy infrastructure, that would have happened last week. Armed population or not.

Taiwan is completely different from Ukraine culturally, and I don't think simply blanket arming people is a solution there either. Big difference being that the Ukrainian standard of living, even under Zelensky has been bad. If you are simply surviving, taking up arms is a much easier sell. If you are comfortable and well off, you have a lot more to lose. If Xi is smart, which he is- he will attempt to take over Taiwan via political means. I don't think he will attempt to repeat the Hong Kong approach with an entire country, when he already has pro Chinese political entities within Taiwan.

> teach them that killing invaders is the only way to keep their freedom and not fall under the totalitarian

First you need to convince people that the value of freedom is actually worth the cost. Based on what I've seen for the past two years, many people do not value freedom, even in the United States. They'd rather be comfortable than free. The cost of freedom is often everything for those that actually choose it. The benefits are only realized by the next generation.

> Based on what I've seen for the past two years, many people do not value freedom, even in the United States.

I suspect this is a universal truth.

People value stability, wealth, quality and ease of life and peace.

Freedom is the vehicle that maintains these things.

But that, apparently, requires education to remember.

Yes, but apparently the price of that vehicle is preferably paid by others. And I believe that is not how it works.

> ease of life

Given the amount of covid alarmism even now, I'm not so sure. There are people out there protesting to re-instate mask mandates.

People like being governed. Life is hard on your own.

It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do anything against a country with drones and nukes." I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right.

I'm someone you would describe as "anti 2A". I still think the "defense against home invasion" style argument is mostly nonsense. It's super rare, and I don't think the benefits of guns outweigh the downsides for that kind of self defense. (Having been a victim of exactly such a crime, I'm glad neither I nor the burglar had a gun.)

However, seeing Ukrainians take up arms to fight an invasion has caused me to re-evaluate my position in general, and I actually think an armed population is likely better than the alternative. I'm sure Finland isn't unhappy that they're heavily armed right now.

> It's super rare

Is it? How do you define super rare? I live in a low crime US suburb and still personally know 3 homes that have been invaded: friend's next door neighbor, a house 200ft away, and the literal across the street neighbor.

Home invasion means forcefully breaking into someone's house where there are people in it. It's very different than a burglary. Burglaries are common, but the former is rare.

And having a firearm to protect your life in that rare situation is still important…

The police are the cleanup crew, those first 5-10 minutes you’re on your own.

The danger of owning a firearm, especially if it is always armed for such an occurrence, is more dangerous to the household than the risk of home invasion (which again, is rare). It is an idea that people defend using the concept of "safety", but in reality is motivated by fear or hypermasculinity as the main cause.

You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0]. You may disagree with many of them, but some are absolutely defensible, like an ex-boyfriend breaking into woman's apartment and beating her until she is able to shoot him[1][2] (from the front page of that subreddit).

My point is, become familiar with the frequency that these reports happen before you make the claim that it's rare.

  0. https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu
  1. https://kfor.com/news/local/oklahoma-woman-shoots-and-kills-ex-boyfriend-during-break-in/
  2. https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/wickliffe-woman-shoots-boyfriend-after-being-struck-multiple-times-boyfriend-later-arrested

I get the feeling you have that problem in reverse. All defensive gun use is very rare. Certainly, rarer than the opposite (offensive gun use). Combined with suicide risk and accidental deaths or injuries, it is rarely justifiable. Study on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2848468/

The CDC reports 60,000 to 2.5M instances of defensive gun use per year[0]

0. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm....

The numbers regarding defensive gun use is very likely to end up being a classic example of commercial interests affect scientific research. Nearly all of the high numbers come from a handful of sources that have connections with the firearm industry. There are many methodology problems with their numbers too.

In the relatively small amount of research on this subject that is not influenced by commercial interests, the numbers suggest that defensive gun use is very rare: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00917...

So the evidence linked on the CDC website is compromised because of commercial interests? Please post evidence of this specific example.

> You don't seem very open to changing your perspective, but if you care to peruse a subreddit dedicated to reporting defensive gun use in the news, it contains a ton of stories that you've likely never encountered[0].

Of course there are cases of defensive gun use. But there are also cases of idiotic gun use:

> Deputies with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office arrested three people after one man was shot. Investigators said the shooting victim was shot after an argument about the victim’s alleged littering.

* https://www.wkrg.com/northwest-florida/escambia-county/man-s...

> Houston man accused of shooting restaurant workers over BBQ sauce

* https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/02/26/houston-...

> A Utah father was taken into custody after police said he told his 4-year-old child to fire at officers following a dispute over an order at the McDonald's drive-thru in Midvale.

* https://kutv.com/news/local/suspect-in-custody-after-shootin...

Examples taken from:

* https://twitter.com/well_regulated_

Right across the US border Canada manages to have a safe society without everyone packing heat. And it's not like gun ownership is unheard of in Canada, given it's 7th in per capita ownership:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

For tracking mass shootings, the US has a separate Wikipedia page for each calendar year:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

Meanwhile the list of massacres (not even all being shootings) fits on one page for Canada:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Canada

The idea that firearms make one safer, either at home:

* https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M13-1301?articleid=1...

or in public:

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/

does not seem to be borne out by the statistical data.

You seem to not understand that gun owners train how to use firearms, and a proper one will practice high levels of gun safety in a home. Sure, there's going to be morons who own them and make the news. But it's not a toy or for fun. Just as they find out.

No worries, the “hyper-masculine” men with badges will come save you. I have no problem with you wanting to take your chances and let someone with evil intent to have their way with you or your loved ones. Just don’t try and take the ability to defend, from others, because you have a problem with masculinity.

> And having a firearm to protect your life in that rare situation is still important…

Firearms in the home actually increase your odds of death:

> Access to firearms is associated with risk for completed suicide and being the victim of homicide.

* https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M13-1301?articleid=1...

Specific examples of domestic violence against women:

* https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000522/guns-domestic-violenc...

There's one study that showed that even carrying a gun on your person increases your likely hoot of being shot:

> Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P < .05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P < .05).

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/

Generally, the idea that firearms make one safer in the home does not seem to be borne out by the statistical data.

Okay... that doesn't change a thing though. People still have the right to defend themselves. I don't care if someone is stupid with a weapon. You can find occurrences of a weapon, tool, vehicles, any object, being used improperly and in an unsafe manner that can cause harm or death.

All you illustrate is that being a responsible gun owner is important (which is not debated whatsoever in any firearms community.) The vast majority of law abiding gun owners are responsible with their weapons.

> Okay... that doesn't change a thing though. People still have the right to defend themselves.

The numbers seem to indicate that having a gun is actually more detrimental, on a 'net' basis, to one's well-being than not having a gun. Having a gun is more dangerous for you and yours:

> But about 30 careful studies show more guns are linked to more crimes: murders, rapes, and others. Far less research shows that guns help.

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-...

> We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.

* https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...

> Results. We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019).

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4167105/

Riding a car will greatly increase the odds of your death. So what?

Also all the studies you've cited don't prove causality, they prove correlation. Maybe it's the other way around? Maybe living in a more dangerous place increases the likelihood of people owning guns?

> Riding a car will greatly increase the odds of your death. So what?

If you don't want you or a family member to become a firearms statistic don't own a gun, especially since owning one doesn't seem to be useful against strangers:

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4167105/

It's not that hard to arm a society when war breaks out. That is the same mentality that countries like Switzerland has. The "2A argument" is quite a bit different, and has very few similarities with what is going on at the start of a war.

If you give out guns to people who never used them, they won't be as effective. Also I think you're underestimating the logistic difficulty of storing and transporting tens of millions of weapons (and ammunition) before blitzkrieg cuts you off. You could have a storage in each city, but you still need to move the guns to smaller towns and villages, as well as enemy spies could sabotage such transports...

You're trying to rationalize the situation in the US, not looking at it objectively. You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts. You will need to store a vast amount of military equipment anyways. Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue.

>You can quickly train people to use a firearm, including long before fighting starts.

1. It took months to vaccinate the US population. Training them to use guns would most certainly take longer.

2. Your previous comments seem to suggest you're anti-2A. What's your position here then? Are you against gun ownership, but think that if some enemy wants to invade us, there's going to be enough advance warning that we can train and arm everyone?

>Storage is highly unlikely to be an issue.

And what about transportation?

You need close to 100% vaccination rates for vaccines to really work. Not so much for creating a makeshift army.

This is an example of framing of the issue, and in this case it is deeply misleading. Nearly everyone wants what makes us safe. The problem is that certain groups in America have transformed that into something dangerous while disguising it as a form of safety. At some point, society will move away from this kind of thinking regardless of how it is perceived today.

Dude, I don't live in the US and I know little about american problems with guns, so no, your guess is a big miss. I'm not trying to rationalize anything, apparently you're the one being heavily biased here, to rush into such conclusions.

Not to mention that Switzerland is 15,940 mi², while USA is 3,797,000 mi².

Switzerland is a special case, as everyone who took up military service will be periodically trained until their 40s and keep their arms and equipment at home. In case of mobilization, only ammunition needs to be given out.

That does run counter to the "arming a society is easy" take, as specially in Switzerland it's a pretty safe bet that most households do possess weapons, are even required to by law you could say

The main issues I have with the (usually US right-wing talking point of) "All Swiss have arms at home!!1~" argument is that, yes, they do, except:

a) They don't have any ammo. So, i dunno.. throw your gun at an intruder...?

b) Ammo in any case is hard to procure

c) If you do your annual military training, the ammo handed out is checked/counted, and woe is you if you can't explain any missing ammo

d) You're seen as a near-sociopath weirdo if you brag about "weapons and ammo i have at home"

Citation: Spent my first 30 years in CH.

It's not super rare. We see how it plays out all the time. Protestors protest, government comes down on them hard - mass arrests, mass killings, mass civil destruction of liberties.

We literally saw a version of this in Canada a month ago, where actually peaceful protesters were declared terrorists and got arrested and their money seized.

It's not always about some other country's government coming on you hard, your own can be just as rotten.

> It's been mind boggling to see anti 2A people in my social circle cheer for normal Ukrainian citizens arming themselves with "weapons of war" that "wouldn't do anything against a country with drones and nukes."

The only thing that will stop a bad guy with a Luftwaffe is a good guy with a Luftwaffe and a bunch of SAMs. A bunch of randos with AKs have little chance against the Russian-equivalent of Hellfire missiles IMHO. It's just that the Ukraine military seems to have been underestimated.

Further, Russian SEAD seems to suck:

* https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defe...

and their logistics, once they start getting far from their railheads, seems to deteriorate quite quickly:

* https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/feeding-the-bear-a-closer-...

If there is political will and logistical support, a mainstream army can keep an insurgency down as shown by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The main recourse coupe to wait out the patience of the 'occupier' (which is what the Taliban did).

Whether Russia/Putin has the will and/or resources is another question.

> I hope a silver lining of this conflict is remembering that protecting your life and your family's lives with firearms is an inalienable right.

Even with the threat of Russian invasion, especially after 2014 and Crimea, Ukraine seems to disagree, as licenses are still needed for gun ownership:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine

Though UA has mandatory military service to an extent:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Ukraine

For now. It's absolutely possible to keep a territory under your control by force if you look at the historical record.

You can't extrapolate such a far fetched conclusion from one data point on how string the Ukraunian resistance seems in the first weeks of a war.

I don’t think they have the economic resources to sustain a prolonged engagement or occupation.

Isn't their capacity to maintain an ongoing assault about available meat sacks, ammunition, food and oil - none of which they lack - rather than money?

> food

There have been mentions that they're already short on food for their soldiers. Wonder if that's an actual thing, and if so, then how badly short they are?

Especially with that old phrase "an army marches on it's stomach" coming to mind. :)

The lack of food among the Russian invading forces (if real) is due to them outrunning their logistics, not a general food shortage in Russia. Russia’s army is not designed to operate more than about 50-100km from their rail network.

The Israeli's have managed to hold territory by force. The difference is that worldwide support was in favor of them instead of the Palestinians.

I would say that you cannot hold a region by force alone unless you commit to multiple generations of occupation AND manage to maintain when superpowers oppose it.

> The Israeli's have managed to hold territory by force. The difference is that worldwide support was in favor of them instead of the Palestinians.

what? My impression is that "worldwide support" was in favor of the Palestinians.

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

They have guns, the two parties warred before. In fact, there was never a formal peace agreement so the war is technically still going on.

The asymmetry is in the economics. Taiwan can realistically be strangled by China. This has seemed like the plan from Beijing. Once politically weak, you can take over with sock puppets.

So, more trade with Tawain from the west, and give them more guns.

Taiwan cannot be strangled as long as the rest of the world is willing to trade with them. A naval blockade of Taiwan would not be tolerated by the west, and the first US-flagged ship that gets sunk would start real war.

I hope we don't live to see China and the USA in a hot war.

I hope we live to see the conditions that make it plausible go away.

I do too, but how would that look like?

I'm not sure how likely it is to when the incumbent empire and the aspiring one are both armed to the tits, neither of which will give up on their claim or their military. Even without confrontation they'll both keep force projecting. I think we just gotta hope there's mutual resistance to any physical escalation, either direct or by proxy, and that the competition remains economical and technological. Turns out even tying the economies to the hip is not an insurance against fighting when those ties turn into weapons in an escalation.

Governments don't have power if the people just drift out of their power. That's one way. Alternatively, one or the other could go the way of Rome (400 and later). I don't think that's likely, but it's possible.

Or, most likely (of the options I've suggested), the next leaders care more about peace than the current ones.

Recognition from the PRC that Taiwan is an independent nation or the absorption of Taiwan as a province of the PRC.

The stalemate will probably last a long time.

This is a repeat of the same misleading narrative that Putin is trying to push. Ukraine is not "NATO vs Russia", it's "The Ukranians vs Putin".

Similarly, the Taiwan conflict is not "US vs China". It's "the people of Taiwan vs the CCP" (possibly "vs the people of China" though it's hard to say in a country without democracy). There's no question about how the Taiwanese feel; they vote on it every few years in free elections. Americans are mere supporting cast. We have our opinions, but if the Taiwanese all voted to embrace Xi, we'd shake our heads and walk away.

The status quo favors Taiwan. Xi knows this, but without actually going through the process of building a huge navy and launching a military invasion, the de-facto result is that Taiwan continues to be an independent nation. Another couple generations and even China will forget about the big island across the sea. I'm fine with that.

It's rather a repeat of Dalio's idea with regards to the cycle of empires or "world orders", but feel free to read into it what you want, NATO or otherwise. I just meant that I don't see how some form of implicit tension won't exist for as long as there are two competing superpowers flexing military and economic might, and I hope the tension never resolves thru military means.

It has been a week. I'm not sure we can be assured small arms to locals will do much at all.

What has happened in Ukraine seems to be that Ukraine's military was more capable / motivated and Russia's military MUCH LESS capable / motivated than anyone expected.

While this sentiment resonates with me, and probably many Americans, I'm not entirely sure that it would resonate with Taiwanese culture. Even if it did, any attempt to arm Taiwanese citizens is likely to draw a lot of opposition from China.

The situation in Taiwan is different. There are polls in the past indicating non-negligible amount of Taiwanese (I forgot the numbers, but IIRC it is closer to 50-50 split than only a small fraction) support “merging back” to China. (That was before 2019 Hong Kong incident though.)

The war in Ukraine hasn’t really shown anything so far. It’s been only a few days. Wait for a few months at minimum and then draw some conclusions.

This is naive. It's too easy to polarize any population during hard times. and now they are armed.

Feminists arm women

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