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Comment by ta988 | Hacker News Reader

How do gun control laws make a country authoritarian? For the rest yes it is not sounding good for UK citizens and residents.

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I’m not a 2nd Amendment zealot in any way but an armed population is, among many many other (mostly bad) things, a real counterweight to government overreach.

An armed population would not improve the UK government in any way.

I would even suggest that despite the USA having guns, their government is just as bad. I'm not sure that plans to develop a new airport runway would be 'stopped' by civilians turning up armed.

The US obviously has much, much, much stronger free speech protections. The extent to which that’s preserved by threat of an armed populace seems pretty tricky to figure out.

I agree I wouldn’t propose arming the UK public as a solution here.

> The US obviously has much, much, much stronger free speech protections.

Does it? I don't know enough about the subject to say one way or another.

People are frequently jailed in the UK for saying mean things on the Internet. This does not happen in the US. Even cases of people making specific threats against government officials are incredibly hard to act on.

> People are frequently jailed in the UK for saying mean things on the Internet.

I'm not sure that's true.

That's ridiculous, or scary. Are you one of those people who would shoot the police if they came to your door to enforce the law?

I can't think of any lawful way a gun can help you with dealing with a disagreement with the government.

> I can't think of any lawful way a gun can help you with dealing with a disagreement with the government.

No rebellion is lawful. The American Revolution was highly illegal and the American Founders were traitors to the British crown. Even the possibility of one puts a check on government overreach. For an extreme example, a government is probably not going to routinely shoot protestors if they will start getting return fire (though they can probably get away with it once or twice before retaliation starts).

> Are you one of those people who would shoot the police if they came to your door to enforce the law?

I suppose it depends on the law, doesn’t it? If you can’t imagine a law that would justify such a response, you’re lacking both in imagination and historical knowledge.

But no, as far as the meme version of an anti-government hick, or whatever you have in your head now, no I am not one of them. My comment history will reveal that I’m generally very pro-government (the secular, western, liberal democratic versions at least).

> you’re lacking both in imagination and historical knowledge.

Apparently, but the real problem is you don't actually give us an example, then I wouldn't need those elusive skills. It's hard to get to the point without something concrete.

Besides the moral question of killing someone doing their job due to an unjust law, there are the practical matters. If you kill one person, there are others who do the same job. Governments hire thousands of people. There is the question of subjectivity. If you think that's justifiable, what about if you're delusional or just wrong? Once you cross that moral line you're killing people just because you think

But maybe you're talking about the government coming to kill you and acting in self defence. This definitely happens, but it has practical issues. We've seen black people more or less executed by police more than once. Should black people shoot police defensively? At what point do they know it's justified? What if they're just scared and over-reacting?

Maybe you're talking about something broader, then that's armed rebellion, or civil war. That may be justified, and doesn't have the subjectivity so much, but then you're up against an enemy that is well armed. How are you going to get your hands on jets, tanks and nukes?

Maybe you don't present an example because you don't have one. You then just have an amorphous concept that sounds good in theory but makes no sense. Thus my comments and the danger of actually being one of those people you mention.

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

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

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)

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

> but there are practical matters

You're arguing as if I said this is a good solution. It's not.

> but then you're up against an enemy that is well armed. How are you going to get your hands on jets, tanks and nukes?

How did the Taliban succeed? How did the Viet Cong succeed?

> the danger of actually being one of those people you mention

Lol. I don't think my views being willfully misrepresented by a stranger on the Internet is "dangerous."

The second you'd take up arms against the government you'd be labeled a terrorist and taken out with a drone. Being a counterweight against the government only works if you have the same arms as the government.

> Being a counterweight against the government only works if you have the same arms as the government.

I'm all for relative strict weapon and gun laws, but I think ^ this might be false.

IRA ~troubles~, Myanmar / Burma, French Indochina War maybe?, Cuban Revolution, Wounded Knee 73 all got results while being undergunned. Burma still pending.

Afghanistan is an empirical disproof of this claim. I used to believe it too though!

There is zero evidence an armed polulation does achieve that goal. It is a nice narrative so.

would a firearm have helped this man?

Not sure there is much evidence for that historically.

wounded knee 1973 and .. mhh .. "the troubles" maybe?

Also not sure if it "counts" if they got the weapons from other means. I think IRA got tons of weapons from Gaddafi. Which would make it a counter points as you can resist even with stronger weapons laws?

What exactly do you think the IRA achieved?

The first thing authoritarian governments do is take away citizens’ weapons.

It doesn’t mean that disarmament means that the government means to turn authoritarian, but in the last century, we have yet to see a case where it didn’t.

You can own guns in the UK, but few people do as there is no need. There is a shooting range no far from me, but it's simply not poplar here. I guess that why the US has approximately 160 times the gun death rate of the UK!

>there is no need

I'll be the judge of that, not you.

People think that guns give them protection, or power, but in reality they mostly increase your chances of getting shot.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/07/guns-handgun...

To be fair it's not difficult to get a firearms licence in the UK. That people (generally) don't show there are very few people who care about it enough to go through the faff to get one.

Nope. You want to live in a society, then you abide by that society's collectively decided rules. You're not the only one impacted by your decisions.

It's too bad it's between you and them, you'd really think the general voting population of the UK would get a say.

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