A QUARTER of Americans say they are ready to take up arms against the government | Hacker News Reader

A QUARTER of Americans say they are ready to take up arms against the government

dailymail.co.uk

13 pointsmardiyah32 comments

Polling is the phrenology of our time. Sane people don't have time for pollsters. Revolutionaries don't tell pollsters. Gun owners mostly won't tell pollsters.

Mostly, I agree, but I do think gun owners are all to willing to talk to anyone about guns. I'm not sure they'd answer direct questions about the guns they own, but I do think that carefully worded pollster type questions about "taking up arms" would get ready answers, especially from Meal Team 6 or Gravy Seal types. The answers wouldn't bear any relationship to the reality of armed conflict, but there would be answers.

"Sane people don't have time for pollsters."

Can you explain this and show some quantative studies showing this? Broad sweeping statements are "crazy".

> Broad sweeping statements are "crazy".

Can you explain this and show some quantitative studies showing this?

"Only Sith deal in absolutes."

>Can you explain this and show some quantative studies showing this?

How about a poll, would that suffice?

The paper's title

"A QUARTER of Americans say they are ready to take up arms against the government"

compared to the cited report from University of Chicago's Institute of Politics

"And 28 percent of voters, including 37 percent who have guns in their homes, agree that “it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government.” "

The tone and meaning are not the same. Paper's headline is sensational by design (it's media for clicks)

no chance of this, the era of armed insurrection is over in the United States.

The country is simply too big, population centres too dispersed and the only institutions able to operate in a sustained, coordinated fashion nation wide are the military, the police and the national security apparatus - each of which extraordinarily well funded, and therefore will be powerful forces in suppressing any kind of citizens revolt.

Palace coup is plausible, a street revolution? No chance

I have a feeling that 25% is probably where it is always sitting. lol

Good. The government should be afraid of the people 100% of the time. Because when the people are afraid of the government, that's called tyranny. Also, it would do a lot of good for the politicians to be afraid a little, just to remind them that they're SERVANTS not RULERS and that they provide a service not to the government, but to the public.

Good? Isn't that why we have frequent, regular elections? Or is it so far gone that the whole thing needs to be replaced... with some_one_ outside the "system"? Imo discarding democratic process and violently overthrowing an elected gov't is the fastest way TO tyranny.

The Founders, through the Declaration of Independence[1], explicitly answer your question:

> But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Your argument assumes that the people have discarded democratic processes, but this is not guaranteed to be the case; in fact, nearly every time this happens, it's a corrupt government fixing elections. The definition of "elected" is not as pure as your statement implies.

[1] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...

You know what happens when the government is afraid of it's people? You get police with military gear and efficient mass surveillance.

I feel like the author is trying to shock the reader by writing that 37% of the people who supported armed insurrection have guns. Another way to read that statement however is that almost two thirds of those in favour of this do not own guns, and therefore are probably talking the talk without having the intention of walking the walk.

Most of the ones that are gun owners won't "walk the walk" either. It's one thing to bitch or give an answer to a pollster, but a completely different thing to leave everything you care about and march off to civil war. I bet even some of the ones that think they are serious right now might buckle when the reality sets in.

Maybe more people would vote before taking up arms?

Voting doesn’t matter. Between the “small state bias” in the electoral college - which has allowed the the President to be chosen without winning the popular vote twice in the last 30 years, gerrymandering which allows Republicans to be over represented in Congress and the continuous erosion of the separation of church and state, the majority doesn’t stand a chance.

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

You forgot voter registration laws, the fact that voting is done on a regular working day, and the lack of density of polling stations in some areas.

Not all for the same reasons, tho. I wonder how many are ready to start shooting neighbors over "national politics" questions; vs the usual fence disputes.

however, a quarter of Americans could be full of shit bigmouths

And a whole other quarter may be people willing and capable of taking action and are not willing to tell anyone about it.

Even if this ridiculous poll was true, and somehow the attack materialized; I think the Federal Government would make quick work of them -- with sonic crowd control weapons, tanks, fighter jets and who knows what else. Its kind of a libertarian fantasy that a modern government can be overthrown.

You mean that same group(s) that could not even handle Afghanistan?

We are lucky in the US there is not violent sectarian groups. They would be very hard to deal with despite your feelings otherwise.

The reality of it would not be boomers wondering around the capital building. It would be a hard to identify group that conducts attacks and then goes back to looking like a regular suburban Joe. It would be a total nightmare.

Does not belong on HN.

Just in case the HN crowd aren't aware, you should probably ignore anything the Daily Mail publishes.

Should we also ignore the University of Chicago Institute of Politics which the article links? https://uchicagopolitics.opalstacked.com/uploads/homepage/Po...

Somewhat surprisingly, it's a well sourced article for what is presumed to be a low quality source. From what I can tell, they even summarized the poll correctly.

I'm very skeptical of this poll and (especially) the article:

1. Only 1000 people? I'm not a trained statistition, but is that really enough to generalize about the American public as a whole?

2. The question is worded way more softly than the headline would make you think (actually, to be more specific, the headline is a straight up lie - the poll asks nothing about respondents 'readiness')

3. Any crazy answer will always get some minimum number of responses, whether it be from people filling in the poll at random or intentionally trolling - I highly doubt the true number is 25%

4. Who was even surveyed? Was it all college students? I read through the entire release from UChicago but all it said was "voters".

5. Are there any other polls backing this up? You can often find a poll for almost anything, I would love to see what other polls asking a similar question show.

1. A thousand people is enough if they are well chosen. A million people is not enough if their choice is not random. It's hard to know which is the case here, but the general presumption should probably be that there is significant bias. They describe their methodology a bit here: https://uchicagopolitics.opalstacked.com/uploads/homepage/Di...

2. The wording of that question seems to be "It may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government." (https://uchicagopolitics.opalstacked.com/uploads/homepage/IO...) I'd call that softer, but not way softer. It would definitely alarm me if it was true.

3,4,5: Yes, it would be useful to know the answers here. They describe some of this in the Methodology page I linked in 1, but more detail would be helpful. Probably the best use of this poll result is to suggest ways for someone else to perform a better poll. But I did find it to be pleasantly well sourced for a newspaper with a poor reputation for accuracy.

I think the statement “It may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government.” is way, way softer than “Are you ready to take up arms against the government?”

Isn’t the former taught about every kid in the US when they learn about the constitution?

It's maybe better than I'd expect from the Daily Mail, but I still conclude the headline is an intentional lie. Nowhere does the poll ask respondents if they are "ready" to take up arms, which would imply some level of active preparation (such as buying a gun and ammo). I would find that much much more concerning than the actual question posed, even if the poll is 100% accurate.

Most importantly, what was the percentage 10 years ago? 20 years ago? 50 years ago?

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