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Comment by _airh | Hacker News Reader

It is strange that the same country which cherishes its 'right to bear arms' on the grounds that it gives them a level of protection that the government is unable to provide is 'happy' to build the infrastructure which allows the same government to peek into their lives.

On the one hand, we don't trust the government with the basics (physical security). On the other, we trust them with information we don't want our parents to see (facebook profiles, etc). ...strange.

Edit: When I say 'the country' I mean the people in aggregate. Obviously, some people are outraged about this issue, just as some people were outraged when a gunman killed 30 children. Techies seem to be particularly concerned about this issue but, on the whole, most people are indifferent.

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The right to bear arms is also, explicitly, a protection against tyranny BY the government. Thomas Jefferson: ""When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

No offense to Thomas Jefferson but a government that is afraid of its own people is a pretty peculiar definition of "liberty."

Governments have to be kept in check. They're granted great power and people who have power tend to abuse it. My understanding is that the founding fathers were realists and recognised this very early on.

Having guns does little to hold government in chech. A well educated, well informed, and politically active populace on the other hand is a strait jacket. Which is why free assembly and free speech are so important.

I agree a well educated and informed society is the best deterrent to keeping governments serving the best interest of the people. Yet recent events have shown that we are not that well informed by our media and government on purpose.

Guns are not a deterrent in as much as a means to allow the people to defend themselves against an abusive government when and if needed.

When you say 'the people,' which people do you mean? Because it doesn't serve everyone's interests to threaten civil war in the US - only certain people's interests. These people don't represent all people, listen to what they say closely, but are rather prioritizing their own interests so far above others that they maintain a right to threaten and kill people they disagree with.

>These people don't represent all people, listen to what they say closely, but are rather prioritizing their own interests so far above others that they maintain a right to threaten and kill people they disagree with.

Are you talking about our government?

To play the other side...

Look at what happens to every group of well-educated, well-informed, politically active people when they go up against an authority. Look at the Prague Spring (speaking of holding the government in Czech), at Occupy Oakland, and what's happened in Turkey most recently. Free speech and free assembly merely mean that you can call the jackbooted thugs names as they crack open the heads of you and your friends.

Further, consider that the trends in education, mass media, and overall American culture have very nearly destroyed the ability to field a group of people meeting any of the three criteria for your 'strait jacket'. We've done such a bangup job of driving social networks and short action-reward loops in our advertising and communication that we have a populace with such a low attention span that it's hard to stay angry long enough to cause trouble.

On the other hand, the 2nd amendment speaks for itself. At the risk of being particularly cynical, I imagine that it is far, far easier to find a hundred thugs who can be talked into taking potshots at the Man than it is to find one who can carefully and consistently explain why the government is doing wrong, what the exact nature of the wrong is, and how to fix it.

We cherish the 2nd precisely because, at the end of the day, you get a lot further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.

If you don't believe me, ask the men in Washington.

What? It's easier to find inbred retards who want to shoot at "the Man" than actually maintaining an educated populace, so therefore we "cherish" the 2a?

That is quite a novel interpretation of the 2a.

No, parent was saying that it easier for an educated subset of the populace to shoot at the Man than to educate her "inbred, retard" (to use your phrase) peers.

Exhibit A: the American Revolution.

Erm, again, not quite.

I am suggesting that while the 1st and 4th amendments are very important, they alone are insufficient against jackbooted thugs; moreover, they appeal and are useful only to the relative intellectual elite of a country--if them.

The 2nd amendment, by contrast, expands the availability of force to the common man, and in so doing allows even the dullest and slowest hooligan to contribute to the process of political reform. Indeed, should the Man come calling, I would rather have a dozen armed rednecks and coon-asses standing with me than a few score of the best-spoken orators of our time.

It's unfortunate that things seem to be suggesting that this sort of calculus is becoming reasonable again.

Hey man, there's a jack-booted thug right behind you!!

"A well educated, well informed, and politically active populace"

Observation shows a media oligopoly merged with .gov, makes a effective exploit against that set of conditions.

A right, never used, may as well not exist.

Even better: A well educated, well informed, and politically active populace, with guns.

These things aren't mutually exclusive, ya know...

It's one based on examining the history of governments.

So is the 4th amendment, and look how much that one is abused. In the end the Constitution really is "just a piece of paper", if not the government, not the judges, not the media, and ultimately not even the people respect it, live by it, and try to protect it as soon as it's endangered by people trying to accumulate too much power. Where are all the street protests?!

I also fail to understand people who so viciously defend the 2nd amendment "because of potential tyranny", but don't try to defend the 1st and 4th amendments with the same aggressiveness, when in fact those amendments are the first line of defense against that encroaching tyranny, and if they fail, it's the first clue the country is slipping into tyranny. Would you rather wait until the very last moment, until people can't take it anymore but to rise up against the government with violence and starting a massacre, all just to remove the government? Or would you try to fix things while you still can do it peacefully, by protecting the 1st and 4th amendments, so it doesn't have to come to "using the 2nd amendment right to defend against the government with guns"?

Or maybe it all comes down to who has more money to raise the awareness about it. NRA is a powerful lobby. ACLU and EFF less so.

I don't disagree with you on the importance of the 1st and 4th amendments.

I think the ACLU and EFF will indeed become stronger. I don't know of any 2nd amendment supporters who are also not strong 1st and 4th supporters, the issue comes down to how their voice is heard. Also I don't know any of them who who wouldn't rather change things peacefully, it is a much better solution.

> I don't know of any 2nd amendment supporters who are also not strong 1st and 4th supporters

Are you sure? For instance, on cultural grounds, I'd guess that there are plenty of 2nd amendment supporters who would be happy to ban flag-burning...

Unfortunately, there are significant amounts of people on both sides of any debate, much less this one, with either blinders on or have selective vision.

As a strict constructionist, I affirm the right of anyone to burn any flag, anyone to "protest" at a funeral, as well as PRISM being unconstitutional. Further, I believe that there is not an explicit "right to privacy" and therefore there is not a right to privacy. Them's my blinders!

Further, I believe that there is not an explicit "right to privacy" and therefore there is not a right to privacy.

So are you saying that a "right" has to be explicitly spelled out in the BoR in order to be a right? If that's what you mean, then how the heck does a "strict constructionist" get that to jibe with the 9th Amendment?

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people

Yeah, that's the funny thing about the Ninth. It pretty much says, you shall not construe the other amendments strictly.

Kinda puts strict constructionists in a bind -- which was clearly its purpose.

Not really; strict constitutionalists can still say that the government should never infringe on amendments 1...8,10, and if it can intrude even less (ie. add more rights) then that's great. In fact, I think that was the whole point of writing the constitution that way.

>So are you saying that a "right" has to be explicitly spelled out in the BoR in order to be a right?

This is why Madison thought the Bill of Rights was a mistake. The rest of the document was written as a list of delineated powers - "this is what the federal government can do". That's much, much more restrictive than "this is what the federal government can't do". He thought the BoR would lead people into thinking the federal government is allowed to do anything it isn't prohibited from doing.

I think history has born him out, too. I'd much rather see courts asking the question "is this on the list of things the federal government can do?" rather than "does it pass muster on 2A or 4A grounds?" Of course if that were the case 2/3 the federal government would go away. Not a bad thing, IMO.

I'd guess there are plenty of 2nd amendment supporters, on cultural grounds, would have no problem with flag-burning. They may not like it and publicly disagree with it, but they wouldn't stop it.

What's your point?

I'd guess that there are plenty of 2nd amendment supporters who would be happy to ban flag-burning...

There are indeed, and I know more than a few of them. They post on the same gun forums I do. What you see among the "pro gun" crowd is a pretty clearly ideological divide between Libertarians and traditional Conservatives. The Libertarians take the 1A, 4A, 5A, etc. just as seriously as the 2A, whereas the more traditional Conservatives tend - in my experience - to be a bit more narrowly focused. It's unfortunate, but real.

That said, I take it as encouraging that I feel like I'm seeing more libertarian thought and less of the "yee-haw, let's kill that fag" kind of stuff on one of the NC centric gun forums I post on. And lots of people take a fairly moderate approach, offering up strong defenses of the 2A, without doing the full-on "captain redneck" thing.

On a semi-related note... it's kinda sad how prevalent stereotyping - and making broad assumptions based on those stereotypes - is. For example, many people seem to assume that most active 2A advocates are, indeed, "redneck" types: from the South, with CSA flag stickers on their trucks, a Bible in their hip pocket, and a mouthful of chewing tobacco. But, while those people exist, most of the pro gun folks I know are actually well educated, level-headed, reasonable and rational.

> many people seem to assume that most active 2A advocates

What's a 2A advocate? I don't think there's any substantial opposition to the 2nd amendment itself. The main discussion surrounding 2A tends to come up any time any sort of restrictions surrounding gun control are raised. Then the crowd of people who view any sort of gun control (background checks!!) as an attack on the 2nd amendment start coming out of the woodwork.

I believe that's the crowd that gets stereotyped and I don't believe they're representative of the majority of gun owners.

Well, it is an attack to restrict firearms ownership. Remember the original purpose of the 2ed was to arm the citizenry against tyrrany. So if government can restrict your access or avaiability of firearms (especially those said government actively uses in its military) they are restricting your ability to arm yourselves against them.

It doesn't hurt that the framers didn't conceptualize nuclear weapons or ICBMs, though. Back in 1800, it was perfectly reasonable to expect if the US military could have a mortar, a citizen could. Though I'm more of the opinion if you wouldn't trust your neighbor with some destructive tool than you shouldn't trust the US military with it.

Most of your stereotyped gun owners do not have a categorical opposition to gun control laws. For example, most are not particularly upset with the ban on new machine guns that has been in place for many years. Rather most of the opposition that you see is against pointless laws that target particular cosmetic features of some guns ("assault weapon" laws) or actually overreaching gun laws that pop up in particular cities in particular states.

There is little focus on the national laws that are already in place, laws that particular states have or are trying to have are what get the attention of the gun lobbyists.

Can you explain to me why it makes sense to ban machine guns? If I take a rifle that can shoot as rapidly as I can pull the trigger, and modify it to waste bullets as fast as possible, is it in any significant way more dangerous? Why is the second banned solely based on firing mechanism?

> Can you explain to me why it makes sense to ban machine guns?

No.

I don't think there's any substantial opposition to the 2nd amendment itself.

Your experiences may differ from mine, but when I get into debates about gun-control / 2A issues, I find it to be very commonplace for people to insist that the 2A is useless, outdated, and state that it should be repealed. Believe it or not, there is a not-insignificant number of people out there who are for total civilian disarmament.

And then there are the bulk of people who seem to be more or less ambivalent, or apathetic about it all. They aren't out to attack the 2A, but they aren't interested in going to any great length to fight for it either.

What's a 2A advocate?

In my book, somebody who identifies "gun rights" as an issue of specific importance to them, and takes some specific action: donating to the NRA/GOA/2AF/JPFO/etc., voting, campaigning, running for office, or something of that nature, with an intent to defend gun rights.

I don't think this is true. There are many on the right who detest the ACLU as liberals trying to undermine the country.

No doubt. That reminds me of the old joke "If you get stuff in the mail from the ACLU and the NRA, you're probably a libertarian".

As somebody who is an NRA member and who has donated to the ACLU, that rings true to me. :-)

Many as in raw # or as in percentage? To be honest I haven't met many of those, all the ones I know are more libertarians then conservatives so they don't take strong issue with the ACLU or EFF.

I just did some searching to try to find what percentage of the Republican Party identifies as libertarian as opposed to conservative, and I didn't have much luck. But, considering the party's platforms on gay marriage and immigration, I think the percentage of libertarians is small.

Threatening to take up arms is a way to pressure for political concessions as an end-run around representative democracy, when you aren't getting what you want (for example, when the populace elects the 'wrong' President).

I would suppose it's possible for the populace to threaten to take up arms when the representative democracy isn't so representative anymore. An opposing viewpoint doesn't always fit so cleanly within a partisan view.

You have the order wrong. Voting is an end run around war. An election is a civilized war, meant to get the same outcome as war without bloodshed.

The 4th amendment is strong as it has ever been, and the 1st is much stronger.[1] Are police knocking down your door without a warrant? If not that's the 4th amendment working as intended.

What we have here is a system:

1) Clearly designed to pass a 4th amendment analysis;

2) Enabled to to pass such scrutiny be the unprecedented access Americans give corporations to the details of their private lives.

For what its worth I think the NSA programs are bad ideas, in an administration that has had a lot of them.[2] But not every bad idea is unconstitutional, that is to say not every bad idea can be fixed in court rather than in Congress.

[1] In light of this story, who is still mad at the Supreme Court for holding that Congress couldn't shut down the speech of corporations (like the ACLU?)

[2] Menacing over the Supreme Court justices during the state of the union probably being the worst.

>The 4th amendment is strong as it has ever been […] Are police knocking down your door without a warrant?

Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_v._King

Justice Ginsburg , dissenting.

The Court today arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the Fourth Amendment ’s warrant requirement in drug cases. In lieu of presenting their evidence to a neutral magistrate, police officers may now knock, listen, then break the door down, nevermind that they had ample time to obtain a warrant. I dissent from the Court’s reduction of the Fourth Amendment ’s force.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/09-1272.ZD.html

You're haggling over the definition of "reasonable", probably based on your views of the drug laws. Do you think that in 1800, the framers would have considered it an unreasonable search to enter a home they could hear being burglarized? No. That's why the 4th uses the wiggle word "unreasonable."

I'd bet the reason you think Kentucky is different is that you think drugs are a non crime. I do too, but lots of people do. I grew up in "just say no" suburbia. My mom and lots like her (see the reddit meme: scumbag suburban mom) thinks drugs are the worst thing ever.

In any case, Kentucky is an affirmation of the very simple principle that a warrant is not required. For better or worse, the framers did not give us a 4th amendment that admitted no compromises. They gave us one that asked us to analyze whether a search was "reasonable", asking us to reach compromises.

I hate to use the slippery slope argument but once you allow police to enter a residence with evidence as simple as something they might have heard through the door then there's no need to ever worry over warrants at all. How do you even prove what they heard or if they heard something in the first place?

If the officer witnesses someone break into the residence then sure, but just hearing something? That doesn't pass the smell test to me, regardless of whether it was about drugs or not.

What are the sounds of a house being burglarized anyway? The homeowner could just be moving stuff around in the living room when the cops bust down the door without knocking. That's property damage that the homeowner is likely stuck with and in some cases it ends badly with someone getting shot.

This whole no-knock attitude that's been in place for decades is a sad joke.

> I hate to use the slippery slope argument

Slippery slope reasoning is completely incompatible with 4th amendment interpretation, because the 4th amendment is all about what is "reasonable" (or rather, what is "unreasonable.") It's about compromising the legitimate needs of the police with the legitimate privacy interests of the people. You can't make compromises when your retort to everything becomes: "but if we keep going in this direction..."

Consider that the legal definition of "legitimate" is what's changed.

That's the whole point to 'reasonable' though. It allows the effect of the law to change without changing the law itself.

This has worked against the government as often as it's worked for the government. And on the whole it has been instrumental in driving social change for the better.

The same Supreme Court that voted that equality could exist with "sepatate-but-equal" facilities later voted that separate-but-equal was not reasonable and full integration was required instead.

This drives "strict Constitutionalists" batty but I find it's one of the key benefits of our system of government.

Not sure I follow why this is a valid retort... grandparent comment was not arguing against the flexibility of "reasonable," but rather the direction the interpretation is being taken in. I agree that creating future-proofed laws with wiggle room can be beneficial, but that does not mean we have no need to be vigilant against that same wiggle room being used against us.

The problem with "reasonableness" is that there's no single definition of what's reasonable, so you'll get different courts giving different verdicts in similar cases. Instead, couldn't we define things very strictly, but require them to be revised every n years with the current needs and expectations of society?

Dude, I can't even get my computer program to not crash on malformed MP3 files, and the computer program + computer does exactly what I tell it to do.

There's no way to get a legal code that is both very exact and useful in the face of humans who have to implement it.

And even if we could, I don't think revising it every n years is good policy. We should change the law when it's broken, but more importantly changes to the law must necessarily lag several election cycles behind the needs and expectations of society. A court can actually make the change quicker if need be.

Sure, there needs to be a low pass filter of some kind to prevent wild oscillations in the law due to delayed feedback, but we're getting oscillations now in the form of party swapping every 4-8 years. There must be some way to make the law less like a moving average filter and more like an adaptive Kalman filter so it can react quickly when necessary without throwing out the entire USC every election (though I have, in the past, proposed rewriting the entire body of laws from scratch once per generation, with a generational opt-in-based transition from the old set to the new set). Courts should be a last measure, IMO, due to the insane costs of facing one, rather than an integral process of deciding what the law actually is.

I'd like to know what the cops are doing on your curtilage in the first place? Put up an 8ft fence!

An interpretation of the word "reasonable" is literally all discussions of the 4th Amendment have ever come down to, you can't pretend like someone with a narrower scope or "reasonableness" is just haggling over semantics and nitpicking tiny details.

My point is that he's arguing about precisely where the line should be drawn, not offering an example of the police engaging in clearly unreasonable conduct. You can't claim that the 4th amendment has fallen by the wayside just because you disagree about precisely where the courts have drawn the lines in edge cases. You need some stronger evidence than that.

I think, looking at the facts of Kentucky vs. King, that's pretty clearly a concise example of the police engaging in unreasonable conduct.

Actually, I'm not so sure, after reading this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance_in_United_...

Of course, it all comes down to how reasonable you think our current criminal law policies are.

He's haggling over your objectively incorrect claim that the police are not knocking down doors without warrants. They clearly are.

Whether these cases fits the reasonability test is another matter.

>You're haggling over the definition of "reasonable", probably based on your views of the drug laws.

I'm not haggling over anything. You asked "Are police knocking down your door without a warrant?" I provided the answer, additionally evidencing that the debate over the 4th amendment is not as static as you seemed to be implying.

>Do you think that in 1800, the framers would have considered it an unreasonable search to enter a home they could hear being burglarized? No.

Do you think that in 1800 the framers would have considered hearing the sound of a flushing toilet or people moving to be exigent circumstances?

>I'd bet the reason you think Kentucky is different is that you think drugs are a non crime.

I am not somebody who obsesses over drug law[1]. My reasons for disagreeing with the ruling are better expressed by Ginsburg which is why I provided the link to her dissent, which I recommend you read.

[1] although it's pretty clear that many current drug laws in the US are broken and highly destructive to society. Personally I don't and have never used any illegal drugs so I have no 'skin in the game' so to speak and fear of getting (legitimately) busted by the police over drugs is not a concern I have. So if you are picturing some pothead who spends all day reading the High Times and proselytising about the benefits of weed that isn't me

"anything but google" this: "indiana no knock search without warrant"

I'm serious about "anything but google" "anything but google" this too if you don't believe me: "google search providing different results to different people"

> Are police knocking down your door without a warrant? If not that's the 4th amendment working as intended.

Damn right they are. Exigent circumstances. [1]

Police routinely coerce people into consenting to searches during traffic stops when there is no RAS. If there's a K9 unit around it's even easier; look at how often they just happen to trigger when there's no contraband at all [2]. Does a 56% false positive rate sound reasonable?

And, once they've gained access they've got wide leeway to seize whatever they want in the name of the war on drugs. At that point the owner must pay a bond to contest the seizure, and then has the burden of proving that they were not party to the crime. Note that no warrant is required for property seizure, merely probable cause [3].

[1] http://themoderatevoice.com/110361/supreme-court-expands-war... [2] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/06/false-positives-police... [3] BJA publication NCJ-137994 – CIVIL FORFEITURE FOR THE NON-LAWYER

Yes, because the house is guilty until proven innocent!

Where are all the street protests?!

The people who went to the streets protesting in 2011 got arrested. You're looking at the maturation of a tyrannical, authoritarian neoliberal regime.

There were groups who have protested who had no serious arrests to report. There were some groups that had a heavy amount of arrests. If one were to look at all the groups protesting recently with an objective eye I'm sure examples can be found that show why one group had such results.

Could you clarify that?

I wish I could but it would likely turn into an argument over partisan politics and name-calling. I'd rather not to do that.

What I would suggest is look into major political protests over the past few years and draw your own conclusions from their outcomes.

If I were to bet on the most significant predictor of arrests during a protest, my money would be on size. The fewer people present in a protest, the more likely that it will be left alone and no arrests will be made. The more people there are, the more likely that those in charge will try to "contain it" through actions that lead to altercations and arrests. I'd say that it's pretty much impossible to have a Tiananmen Square size protest in the US (or any other country with sufficiently advanced surveillance systems for that matter)

That may be in the case in some situations, but I can recall several major, i.e. large, protests that resulted in very few arrests or problems with the police. In fact, some of them were a quite pleasant crowd if the reports were to be believed.

Sadly, you just generally don't hear much of them in the news.

> tyrannical, authoritarian neoliberal

One of those adjectives has an almost oposite meaning to the other two.

Please, don't just throw "bad" words in a setence if you are trying to make a point. Understand what you are saying, and if you don't completely grasp the meaning of a word, either look it up, or not use it.

The way you wrote it, you sound like a South America neofacist (and yes, I just made up a label). And I'm quite sure you are not proposing creating a facist government hidden behind populist policiy, thus you should not speack like one.

It only sounds contradictory. In actual fact, neoliberal regimes everywhere have been "libertarian" only in their business laws, and authoritarian in nearly everything else. The US is becoming rather like Pinochet's Chile: money can do what it wants, everyone else has orders to follow.

>> I also fail to understand people who so viciously defend the 2nd amendment

The definition of "viciously" at: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/viciously

"Having the nature of vice; evil, immoral, or depraved."

What was vicious about newbie12's comment which was a direct quote from an American President?

http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fea...

He was clearly using sense 6, meaning "forcefully"

> Where are all the street protests?!

I'm going to interpret that question literally. A key thing you have to keep in mind is that in almost all of the US outside of a few very large cities, the "street" is not a useful public place. People don't gather and interact on streets in the US. They are merely channels for cars. Protesting on the streets would be as useful in most cities in the US as wandering around next to a shipping lane on the open ocean. The only people "there" are driving vehicles at full speed.

That of course raises the question of where Americans do congregate together. Churches are the answer for many, although I believe those are dwindling. Some go to bars. Neither of those is a particularly good venue for dissent.

One unfortunate consequence of the US being so car-centric is that we've destroyed public space, and consequently made public assembly much harder.

You bring up a good point. Maybe the best form of protest these days is not to take to the streets but rather take to the highways. Blocking a interstate highway going into/out of a large city might get more attention.

This would be remarkably effective at getting attention, but I'm not sure how beneficial to a cause it would be.

If the purpose is to disrupt travel or commerce, it would most likely achieve it's goal almost immediately. If the purpose is to bring attention to some other issue and the disruption of the highway system is unrelated (or only tangentially related), then the attention would have to be weighed against the negative impression it creates for the many affected.

I don't have the relevant experience in this area to know under what circumstances protests that negatively impact average people succeed in their goals.

This would be a bad idea, tacically and economically. In a protest, at least in the U.S., you can take measures to protect your identity and not carry any documentation, along with the ability to flee on foot in any direction. You also have no tangible assets on you that the government can seize.

In a vehicle protest you forfeit anonymity (lincense plates), ability to split since road-blocks can easily stop you, and most importantly your vehicle might be impounded.

OH it would work. And it's nearly impossible for you to get into trouble. If all the protesters just drove in a circle such as getting on the highway at a specific ramp and getting off at a specific ramp just to get back on. They would create a massive bottle neck not only for those 2 ramps but for the roads that connect to them. There's no law that says you can't joy ride or that you must avoid congested traffic. A group of only 100 people could very easily find a bottle neck on their local highway and exploit it.

In some places, "Disrupting the flow of traffic" is illegal. For example, driving at 55 mph on the highway is legal. However, driving next to someone, both going 55 mpg, would be illegal, as it disrupts the flow of traffic.

Hence the protest signage posted in the fences of bridge overpasses of divided carriageways (I don't want to involve myself in an east coast/west coast debate on terms)

They do this already in SF.

It's the worst. You're not demonstrating anything. You're just pissing off commuters.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't care if you're protesting to support feeding starving kids, if you actually block traffic on a highway I will vote against your pet issue 100% of the time.

You point out an additional problem with protests: the methods that don't piss people off are ineffective at getting attention, and the methods that get attention just piss people off.

I really appreciate this viewpoint, because I was trying to understand the apparent disconnect between my American and European friends on the suggestion of protesting, and now I do think the function of public space has much to do with it (also overall size of the country).

Squares or city centres are a good place, the Times Square being probably the best.

Most cities in the US don't have squares or city centers. Even ones that do exist are often empty, or inhabited more by the homeless than anyone else.

I believe the culture is improving here, but for a long time, cars were such important symbol of wealth that being a pedestrian gained a small but real social stigma. Large cities that were already thriving and had very affluent people who didn't drive bucked the trend, but in your average city in the US, if you're on a street and not driving, you look poor, mentally unstable, or homeless.

This is so sad and true. I've driven all over the US and there's such a lack of community and culture when compared to other places (Canada and other car cultures are the same though). Lots of town without a center, where everyone knows each other but lives a mile away from each other. It' like individuality taken to an extreme.

We were in Union Square at noon today for exactly the reasons this thread exists.

Look up "501(c)3 governmental control" in a search engine other than Google.

Where are all the street protests?!

Over the digital privacy / 4A issue specifically? I don't know. But protests in general are still quite alive, here in North Carolina.[1][2][3]

[1]: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/05/13/2890544/nc-moral-mond...

[2]: http://www.wral.com/-mega-moral-monday-protests-heat-up-outs...

[3]: http://www.thenation.com/article/174679/protesters-shake-nor...

It takes awhile for a protest movement to actually mobilize, particularly if you're trying to bring in more than the professional protest group everyone ignores without a second thought.

We won't know for a month or two whether this has legs or not.

When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

It's pretty clear from the last couple of days that the balance in the US is pretty firmly tipped towards tyranny by that definition. Certainly I doubt anyone in the government is at all worried about the people being able to do anything about this scandal. There have been several comments on here and elsewhere from people who are thinking twice about publicly supporting Snowden, or are at least aware that that support is probably logged somewhere and might have repercussions in the future. This would have been ridiculous paranoia not that long ago.

That's not a definition of tyranny, it's a hypothesis about tyranny. But it's foolish. Pointing a shotgun at random government workers like the census taker or sending ricin to the President are not doing anything to improve our politics.

I think some politicians (supporters of this policy) are very worried about this, in that it could turn their base against them, and be vote out of office. We will have to wait and see how public sentiment turns.

"But when people fear each another they start to want tyranny." — anonymfus.

Which is useful only while tyranny is physical.

Look up the Battle of Athens. In a nutshell, some veterans returned home from fighting the war to find out that their local government had become oppressive - levying insane fees on speeding tickets, committing false arrests, taking bribes, etc.

On top of all that, the local Sheriff had rigged the ballot box to ensure that they stayed in power, denied some the right to vote, and overthrew poll-watchers through force.

The returned veterans recognized all of the above as tyranny, had put forth honest people for the election, and insisted that the election was done fairly be surrounding the Sheriff's office where the ballots where and mounting an armed resistance to ensure that tyranny wasn't done.

Interesting. But, how does owning a gun provide protection against the US military?

I think the folks in the Middle East have pretty much demonstrated how this works.

Gun ownership amongst individuals did not lead to the Arab Spring.

But it did lead to an insanely long battle that continued well after the official war was over in not one but two countries. The governments had given up fighting, but the civilians with guns kept US forces under constant attack for ten years.

Guns are an important tool, but it's Improvised Explosive Devices that are causing the majority of the casualties, over 63% of them in Iraq and 66% in Afghanistan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_explosive_device)

A lot of the guns in circulation in Iraq were liberated from the army and police, or acquired through corrupt channels, originally provided by the coalition forces themselves.

You credit a well armed populace as being the key here, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. They could've started with zero guns and simply acquired them as necessary.

Remember, a hostile government might shoot an unarmed individual in a conflict, but they will always shoot an armed one.

Doesn't that just illustrate that their odds would have been better had they started with arms instead of acquiring them as they went though?

This is somewhat similar to another argument I've had - there were some armed Jews in Germany who were able to leverage that firepower to hold off the SS and, eventually, escape. It certainly didn't stop the Nazis from committing the Holocaust, and communication / coordination are key to mounting a successful offense that the Jews didn't necessarily have time to mount, but while there were lots of Jews that died (some of them which might have even been armed), there were some that escaped (some of which were not armed); regardless, guns were demonstrably beneficial to those who fended off the SS.

As pertaining to the US Military, they have proven over and over that guerrilla warfare is not their strong suit, and especially so on foreign soil. Vietnam, Middle East, etc., have all shown that to be true. Also, as was mentioned earlier, many, if not most of the existing armed forces would have a very hard time mounting all out martial law against its citizenry. That isn't meant to imply that the situation couldn't be framed as such that it appeared to be necessary, but that also doesn't hold for long.

It's disrupting supply lines that does the real damage. Fuel trucks in Iraq were an extremely popular target for this reason.

You seem to think having piles of guns to start with puts you at an advantage. It doesn't. If anything, having piles of guns is a liability. In Libya they would just raid police stations and military depots and get all the guns they could ever want. I'm sure the same thing is going on in Syria.

Even in a place like Japan where firearms are heavily restricted, it would be only hours after some hypothetical civil war broke out before the resistance was armed.

Guns are an important tool in fighting, but there's billions of them in circulation around the world. If people want guns, they will get them. The amount of initiative lost in not having guns in the first few hours of a struggle is negligible. This kind of unrest takes years to resolve.

An advantage of an armed population is a large number of people skilled in the use of arms. Most people cannot reliably hit a person-sized target at several hundred meters the first time they pick up a rifle. Make that target a trained soldier who's moving and shooting back and the disadvantage grows much larger.

I doubt the average American that owns a gun could hit a tin can at twenty feet.

On the other hand, a random Israeli has probably participated in mandatory military service even if they don't own a gun.

In a way, it doesn't. There's really no way to arm yourself in a fashion to survive sustained attack from the U.S. military in this day and age.

But that's one of the reasons the military are sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution as the primary goal, not simply to obey orders. They even throw in the surreal weasel words "against all enemies, foreign and domestic" as a way of really punching that point home.

So it's not really possible to meet the full intent of the 2nd Amendment any longer but at the same time there are other safeguards.

It's somewhat fortunate that the actual military is, if anything, the least likely threat. Almost all of the veterans I've known would take the people's side. So if it came down to it, I could see large amounts of the military refusing orders or defecting.

The main risk is probably paramilitaries like the ATF or your local SWAT team. One of the neat ways the Second Amendment is self-enforcing is that, if you sent those guys house to house to confiscate people's firearms, they'd get shot at.

It also ends up being really handy to stand up to the local authorities from time to time: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946) http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret...

I was going to say almost exactly that, only instead of the ATF (who have very little in the way of tactical response capabilities), the DHS is the biggest threat on the whole.

Firstly, they are not bound by Posse Comitatus, but even moreso than that, they've been gearing up for awhile to have extremely tactical response capacity, including live-fire drills in and over major cities, purchase of armored urban vehicles, and massive ammunition purchases. At last count, DHS has approximately five bullets for every single American in the US borders. Only slightly scarier is that they've been purchasing 'hesitate no more' targets to train on designed to desensitize them to the killing of 'normal people', including pregnant women, children, etc. Also, the ammo they've been buying are illegal to use extra-nationally due to the Geneva convention.

Can you cite a source for this information?

Yes (this isn't meant to be sarcastic, but necessary because I had to move this post from where it was to where it is, and HN keeps marking it dead).

The DHS is not bound by Posse Comitatus[1].

The DHS has been buying massive amounts of ammo[2][3][4], and most recently, the House has voted to get justification on the quantity of hollow points it is purchasing[5].

It looks like the claim that they're buying large quantities of urban armored vehicles is wrong[4], though they do acknowledge that they possess them, though my Google-fu is on the fritz getting a source for that since all searches for "DHS armored vehicles" returns the wrong conspiracy theory.

The DHS was using 'no more hesitation' targets that look like citizens[6][7]. Of note, link 7 implies that the manufacturer took them off the site, but the manufacturer never claimed that they were no longer for sale, or that they were no longer being sold directly to DHS, even when asked that question directly. I have no direct knowledge either way.

The ammo they've been buying is hollow-point[2][3], and hollow point ammo is illegal per Geneva convention (is actually wrong, it's illegal based on the Hague convention, the point stands true either way... Hague just predates Geneva)[8]

I think that's all of it. Let me know if I missed anything.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

[2] - http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/the-ammo-cons...

[3] - http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/04...

[4] - http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/ssabullets.asp

[5] - http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/303803-house-vot...

[6] - http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/high-tid...

[7] - http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/25/law-enforcement-targets-in...

[8] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow-point_bullet#Legality

What style of ammunition is standard police issue? Hollowpoint? FMJ?

As with all things, it varies, but hollow points and sabot rounds tend to be popular due to their better record on overpenetration.

Frangible rounds provide a far lower likelihood than an errant shot will punch through the wall and kill whatever's on the other side of it (which is why they're also the preferred rounds for home defense and such too).

Thanks. I'm not being snarky or anything either. Just genuinely curious and would like to learn more on the topic. That said, I just looked at your first source and it doesn't support the conclusion that the DHS is exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act. It says that the US Coast Guard is exempt, and that the US Coast Guard operates under the DHS. But it does not follow from those statements that the DHS is exempt.

I could be wrong, or they could be bound by some other statute, but as I understand it, DHS is not exempt because it is neither a division of the Department of Defense, nor is it an "armed service" like the Marines.

The Coast Guard is not bound by Posse Comitatus despite being an 'armed force' because they are members of DHS, and not DoD.

The ATF and FBI are not bound by Posse Comitatus also, as they aren't armed forces (though both probably have some degree of armament; I know the ATF was playing around with getting a few armored cars the last time I was there, and they already had some 'surveillance' trucks based on ambulances), and that is why FBI, DHS and ATF are able to engage local police in an assistive fashion (or take over a case).

The Wikipedia page isn't very clear in either direction regarding DHS. Based on the description of the Posse Comitatus Act, it sounds like your interpretation would be correct. It says that Posse Comitatus (PCA) limits the federal government's powers to use federal military personnel for domestic law enforcement.

My interpretation of that is that it applies to military forces. The Coast Guard is a military force. DHS, I believe, is not. The reason the Coast Guard is exempt from PCA is not due to it being under DHS. (That's a side issue.) It's because the Coast Guard is charged with a law enforcement mission. It says that right in the Wikipedia article.

And that makes sense too. PCA says "don't use military for law enforcement." US Coast Guard has a law enforcement mission, so it must have an exemption in order to fulfil that mission. Likewise, ATF and FBI are law enforcement agencies (not military forces). So it makes sense that it doesn't apply to them as well.

The big question is whether DHS is a military force or not. I don't think they are. I could be wrong.

If they're not a military force, I don't see the problem with them not being bound by the PCA. The PCA is specifically for military forces.

Regarding the rest of your sources, [2,3,5] seem to confirm that DHS is buying a lot of ammo. But I don't see anything nefarious there. Note that [2] is an editorial (an opinion piece).

None of the sources mention that DHS is purchasing hollow-point bullets. The Snopes page [4] mentions that the SSA is purchasing hollow-point bullets, but not DHS. I wouldn't really have a problem with it if DHS was purchasing hollow-point bullets. The reason hollow-point bullets are banned in international warfare is because they increase the likelihood that a combatant is killed rather than just maimed. A full-metal jacket bullet will maim a combatant so that he is unable to continue fighting, but with a lower chance of killing him. Police forces tend to use hollow-point bullets because they reduce the risk to innocent bystanders (less chance of going through walls or ricocheting). Different tools for different jobs.

Regarding the "hestitate no more" targets, the sources [6,7] don't support the claim that DHS is using them. The first source [6], is an opinion piece. First, let's apply Betteridge's Law [] to the headline. The answer is probably, "No, 'DHS [is probably not] training with practice targets featuring children, pregnant woman [sic].'" Looking at the content of [6], all it really says is DHS buys targets from Law Enforcement Targets, Inc, and Law Enforcement Targets, Inc released a product line that features targets that display children, pregnant women, etc. It doesn't follow from those two statements that DHS is purchasing exactly* those products. They could be purchasing a different product line from the same company. The second source [7], just states that Law Enforcement Targets, Inc makes "hesitate no more" targets. It doesn't mention DHS. In fact, a quote from the company says that the product was designed based on requests from police forces.

One point that you didn't provide any sources for is the DHS practising "live-fire drills in and over major cities." Does "over" major cities imply they have military aircraft? I'm not sure what you meant by that.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but the particular sources that you've chosen don't support your conclusions. DHS isn't my favorite government agency either, but I see no conspiracy here.

[*] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

I'm not necessarily suggesting that there is a conspiracy, but if you were looking for one with DHS, it isn't a big leap to imagine that they're gearing up for militaristic style operations despite their otherwise-stated LE mission. There have allegedly been statements made that they were gearing up for civil unrest and the possibility of martial law, but none of those statements were sources I consider credible, so I have done my best to mentally sequester them, and also did not posit them as evidence.

Regarding the purchases as being hollow point, that's probably not as 'newsworthy' an item for traditional news agencies, but the actual solicitation from DHS[1] illustrates that the majority of their purchases were hollow point, in 9mm and .40S&W. This was also covered by Forbes[2] and Foxnews[3]. That said, I also don't have a big problem with them being hollow point vs. FMJ as HPs are better in urban environments. Regardless, that does mean that they're dedicated to use in urban environments. The quantity itself might not be alarming to you, but considering that's the same amount of ammo used by the military each year, it seems excessive. I know that Breitbart insisted that the total doesn't account for what they might expend in training, but I've never known any LE or military agency to train with hollow point.

Regarding the "No More Hesitation" targets, the Examiner[4] linked those purchases to DHS, but the only other source I can find that says so definitively is Infowars, which I don't necessarily consider credible without corroboration.

One minor correction, at least from what I saw, is that you say it was requested from _police_ forces, but what I read indicated _law enforcement_ sources, of which DHS is. In one of their (now deleted) Facebook comments, LETargets acknowledged that DHS was their single largest customer, though I agree that is not definitive.

I'll have to come back to the live fire drills because it seems like those are being attributed to the 'military', but I know I saw something that collated that to DHS training, but I can't find it at the moment. This post has sat in my window overnight, so I'm just going to submit it for now.

[1] - https://marketplace.fedbid.com/fbweb/fbobuyDetails.do?token=...

[2] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billio...

[3] - http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/29/homeland-security...

[4] - http://www.examiner.com/article/company-selling-targets-with...

I've always thought the 2nd amendment wasn't necessarily totally aimed at the federal level of government, but at the state and local levels as well. One could say that it is almost aimed entirely at the state and local levels.

When the Constitution was written, the US didn't normally have a permanent standing army. It allowed for a navy, but an army was only intended for times of war and monies for it to be used for two years at a time. Of course, that changed over time.

The permanent military of several branches is a modern idea.

I agree with you, despite history, I would imagine there would be a serious morale problem if the military were ordered to open war against civilians. The Civil War comes to mind, many in the military left the North to fight for the South to defend their home states.

It's also somewhat aimed at foreign invasions. "The security of a free state" goes both ways--a free state securing itself, and securing the freedom of the state.

The Japanese were pretty worried about landing on the West Coast because they'd have to fight through miles of woods, filled with Americans who knew the land, carrying hunting rifles.

But, how does owning a gun provide protection against the US military?

I don't understand why people keep asking this question, and variations of it, or offering up the argument "the 2A is useless for allowing rebellion since you can't defeat the US military".

Bands of rebels armed with mostly light weapons have caused superpowers all sorts of issues: See Afghanistan, from the Soviet era through today.

And if a full fledged rebellion did break out in the US, here are a few points to consider:

1. It's likely that at least some military units would side with the rebels. So you're already not talking about a case of just "you and your AR-15 versus tanks and F-16's".

2. Nukes are effectively "off the table" since there wouldn't be much point in nuking your own country, as there wouldn't be anything left to rule.

3. A hypothetical rebellion would not be limited to just AR-15's and what-not... factor in IEDs and various kinds of improved weapons.

4. And factor in stolen / captured military weapons.

5. And factor in military weapons provided, illicitly, to the rebels by the manufacturers, distributors, foreign groups, and gosh knows who else.

6. The population of the US is somewhere north of 300 million people, right? And a significant portion of the population own firearms. How many members are in the standing US military? According to Wikipedia, there are 1,429,995 active duty members of the US armed forces. IF a rebellion had sufficient popular support, consider, as they say, that quantity has a quality all it's own.

Anyway, the point is to say that it's not as simple as "you and a gun versus the US military" if you look at the big picture. I mean, sure, if it's just you and you take on a tank with an AR-15, they're just going to run you over, game over. But if an actual, massed rebellion, with lots of popular support were to break out, those guns do matter.

If you've got the popular support you're eluding to you'd be fine with baseball bats and molotov cocktails. You'd also be fine to steal the guns and other weapons of military/police forces as you have victorious encounters. You wouldn't actually need the guns in the first place.

Maybe not, but I'd prefer not to handicap myself right out of the gate.

It is much harder to start a revolution with steak knives than hunting rifles. I mean, consider why you don't actively participate in violent revolution right now (assuming you are dissenting against your government for some reason). Usually, it is because of the risk of injury and death.

You do reduce it when you bring a gun to a tank / plane / automatic weapons fight, rather than a knife. It isn't meant to provide all the armaments you need, but it leaves you a starting point.

You're making a couple of unfortunate assumptions.

An already economically-weakened ConUS can expect the following: A domestic military with hardware that is failing left and right. A domestic military that has no ammunition because the "domestic security forces" bought it all. A domestic military that has no fuel. Foreign Fighters that are well stocked and equipped with advanced weaponry.

The real "rulers" don't consider this to be their own country. They are citizens of the world. ConUS contains several million nuisances that would be best killed in an expedient manner, such as by plague or nuclear attack.

In that kind of environment, it is less likely that having an AR or an AK in the attic will help the typical USian.

The purpose of owning a gun is not to start a war, but to protect the peace.

Anyone with nitrogen fertilizer or many, many other household items can "start a one-man war," but they likely will die just as quickly.

At the risk of quoting Yoda, wars don't make you great. But more to my point: the best offense is a good defense in politics.

How does owning a gun provide protection against meteors? It doesn't; the question itself is invalid.

If you think the US military will deploy against even one million Americans on American ground, for the sake of shredding the US Constitution, well...you may as well believe orange is violet.

The US military has already said, as have the multitudes of its members under its control, that it will not be marching on the US civilian population. They would throw down their arms and join the other side, that of their friends and families, long before they'd betray everything they'd sworn an oath to.

Now, you might find one or two people, with a handful of soldiers who, for the thirty seconds it would take before they'd be executed (not even court martial-ed) with such an intent. And they'd be buried in a common grave, stripped of name and rank, for their actions.

> Thomas Jefferson: ""When governments fear the people, there is liberty.

Looks like false attribution according to wikiquote. (Why do people feel the need to use proof by authority anyway? Either a thing is right, or it is insightful, but attributing it to dead 18th century rebels does not bolster the case.)

________________________________

When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. Falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson; first attributed to Jefferson in Gyeorgos C. Hatonn, It's All in the Game: Butterflies, Mind Control--The Razor's Edge‎ (1994), p. 214. A 1912 issue of The American Anti-socialist attributes the re-ordered form, "Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty", to John Basil Barnhill.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_...

> Why do people feel the need to use proof by authority anyway? Either a thing is right, or it is insightful, but attributing it to dead 18th rebels does not bolster the case.

There's at least one completely made up Orwell quote that gets kicked around quite a bit by conservatives. ("rough men") That one is weird: you'd think those people would be happy to NOT quote Orwell if they knew anything about his politics.

I assume it's less about argument from authority and more about just a lack of eloquence or confidence on the part of the person relying on quotations to make their point.

> I assume it's less about argument from authority and more about just a lack of eloquence or confidence on the part of the person relying on quotations to make their point.

That's probably right. Hell, it's part of the reason that Hallmark greeting cards will always have a viable business model.

I really don't mind it when it's just meant to amuse people or send a nice message. When people try to engage in a battle of ideas and they rely so directly on borrowed wisdom, it can make for a boring time.

> it can make for a boring time.

Agreed. I also doubt that we'll ever see: John Basil Barnhill: ""When governments fear the people, there is liberty., since poor John Basil had the misfortune of not being as well known as Thomas Jefferson.

Misattribution corroborated by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fea...

Back then having to bear arms against your government was a much more likely scenario than it is now. Of course it would lead to something like the civil war. The democratic system is supposed to prevent that anyways.

However in modern times we've moved quite a bit away from the possibility of armed rebellions. It's something that happens in less developed countries like Iraq.

Fake Thomas Jefferson quote alert:

http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fea...

The world Jefferson lived in is infinitely different from ours. There is absolutely no chance that the government of the US will turn tyrannical. none. zero. if you think there is you're nuts.

There is all sorts of talk in this comment section about how people would fight the US military and stuff like that. There people are in la-la land. I'm not going to elaborate on this but: I think it's closely tied with the American obsession with the apocalypse (see zombie/post-apocalyptic movies)

People have very very different expectations from the government now than they did even 50 years ago. No first world country (even ones that don't cherish liberty as much as us) in the past 50 years has turned to tyranny. There are studies about how past a certain GDP tyranny becomes unsustainable - and we're well past that point.

I do what to clarify that I'm not against the second amendment at all. But the argument that it's to fight the government is absolutely absurd.

That's not really true any more.

When Thomas Jefferson was alive it was feasible for the people to protect themselves from tyranny by fighting the government because the technology available to "normal" people was the same as available to the military.

Today it would be impossible. Even the police are 10000x better equipped than any group of civilian can be. And then there's the military...

Besides that, I'm skeptical there will ever be an issue where enough people are angry enough to start a revolt against the government. Right now people are outraged because the government is massively violating our rights, but nobody's talking about an armed revolution.

You also end up with people fearing the people unfortunately. Not sure how that was missing from the original equation.

Seriously HN, this is the top comment? Using a political controversy as an opportunity to dismiss some unrelated political topic is about as low brow as you can get and contributes nothing to mature discussion.

A lot of cypherpunk type people (who are generally pro 2a/guns to a great degree) believe anonymous and secure communication through cryptography is more of a 2A issue than a 1A or 4A issue.

A "CALEA 3", key escrow requirement, ban on the Internet, etc would cross my red line. Banning all guns would, too, although unclear exactly where the line is (a total handgun ban probably wouldn't be enough). Obviously legal and political challenges first.

Interestingly enough though, that 'right to bear arms' actually gives zero protection from the government as theorized- even if the gov't is acting in a corrupt manner.

If this guy was in Texas holed up with a small armory, the FBI would still bust in there and arrest him. If he tried to use that small armory (and wasn't killed) it wouldn't have just been him 'exercising his right' of course.

You know, you are on to something there.

What we really have in this country is literally a "right to bear arms". You have no right to fire or wield or use your arms.

I can think of no situation where you could fire upon an agent of the government that would not end badly for you, unless there was a total dissolution of Federal and probably State government. Even acting in self defense, even against a corrupt agent of the government, I can't imagine it ending any way but badly for you. You can't shoot the government a little to make a small change. Either you completely overthrow the government, so that there is no one left to hang you, or you go to jail in the best case, and be executed lawfully or gunned down in the street in the worst case.

I'm not up on my history as much as I should be, but I think some of the influence there conceptually is from the "right to overthrow the government", and the idea that many of the new governments at the time were only lasting a short period of time and then would need revised.

Well, in Texas (and other states), there's Castle Doctrine, that would have allowed him the right to fire, wield and use his arms with lethal intent if in fact those FBI agents didn't have a warrant, which provides some protection that the agents would at least have to prove to a judge that there was reasonable cause to arrest him.

Of course, they likely would have had a warrant, and if not, might possibly have gotten one from the FISA court (I'm not sure on the process there) which pretty much always issues a warrant, so it still wouldn't have been great for him.

I do believe there are sets of laws and circumstances which logically or even ethically permit it, but I think in the end The Man wins.

In this case, I suspect there are federal laws against shooting FBI agents, which would trump state law.

Even if there weren't, well, suspects aren't always taken alive to be vindicated in court.

I don't believe there are any laws against shooting federal agents actually, though I could well be wrong, but in the absence of a verifiable warrant, there's no guarantee that they are federal agents. Even if they are federal agents, that doesn't give them any right to enter your home without your consent, absent a warrant.

I don't otherwise disagree with the synopsis you've put forth, I'm just saying that our right to bear doesn't prohibit us from ever firing in the event that there is clear justification. People storming your home is such a justification, no matter what uniforms they're wearing.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1114

Fun fact: Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the murder of 8 federal agents who were in the Federal Building. They didn't bother to charge him with the other 160 counts of murder, because those weren't federal crimes.

Thanks for the correction, however it should also be noted that it uses the term 'murder', which by definition is different from homicide in that murder is unlawful, where homicide is not necessarily.

If I kill someone attacking me, I have committed homicide, but not necessarily murder. If I kill someone ala McVeigh, I have murdered them.

Since it is a federal charge, it's very likely that the 'intent' would be determined in a federal court, which does exist outside of state jurisdiction and is bound to uphold federal laws, but it isn't quite open and shut.

Still, your point stands, which is to say that he's almost certainly screwed.

Yeah, the definition of "murder" is tricky. Reading http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1111 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder it looks like the sticking point is "malice aforethought". I'm not remotely close enough to a lawyer, to be able to guess which way the court would fall on that in this hypothetical situation.

While the right to bear arms doesn't give one person the natural ability to resist overwhelming force, it does make imposing tyranny on larger numbers of people rather expensive for the tyrants.

Let's say the government wants to send my family to a death camp - perhaps for a racial, ethnic, or religious affiliation. (Historically, this does happen from time to time, even in countries that were 'liberal democracies' in the recent past.)

The government would absolutely be able to do so - I've got no fantasies about my ability to resist a government agency. However, I could certainly try to make it expensive for them, and I might succeed. If enough people are similarly inclined to make things expensive for them, the price may grow to be too high for the government to pay.

It's interesting to note that in neither case (physical security OR information security) has the government accepted responsibility to protect you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html

I think part of the issue is that this kind of electronic surveillance, and the corresponding awareness of the issue, is relatively new (compared to, say, the firearms issue). I mean, I don't think a lot of people were thinking about the government capturing emails and cellphone records, 100 years ago (or probably 50 years ago, or 20 years ago, or maybe even 10 years ago). But 200+ years ago, private firearms ownership was already a big deal.

There's another plausible explanation for what you have observed re: outrage.

Indifferent isn't the right word, it is outright drooling ignorance. That, and some of them may still not use any electronic means of communication, but those are pretty well dying off. The limit of their outrage would be to Echelon.

Encryption and modems. Oh, and anything to slow down those NLP MR jobs, like screwing with spelling and word boundaries. (Yes, immature and and likely ultimately futile)

Both laws are based on fear. Fear after 9/11 brought you (and many other western countries) those laws. Now your only chance is to turn the fear around so people fear the tools that have been brought in to fight their fear of terrorists. What is actually happening in some media and on the net.

I'm not sure if this will work out as a long time strategy...

People aren't happy about this. Most don't even know about it. The one's that do know about it can't do anything. There simply aren't enough politically active people in this country and far less young ones. Don't confuse what the media says with what people actually feel or want.

Imagine if with the simple act of buying a firearm, you agreed to increased government monitoring of your online activities.

a lot of the people that don't want to ban guns because of freedom do want to ban abortions.

you're looking for logic in this? buhaha.

Sure, guns protect life and provide a great equalizer to those who may not have physical strength.

IOW, give anyone who can legally sign a contract and wants one a gun, no matter where they live (notice, this also deals with mental instability). That provides a level playing field when it comes to physical force.

As to abortions, once they have a working brain stem, they kind of are human beings that can feel pain.

Not exactly. A lot of people voted for Obama because he promised more transparency. He appears to be breaking his promises. If he was smart, which he hasn't seemed lately, he would use this crisis to try to regain some credibility.

He is the president of the United States. He is smart. A lot of background characters love it when you question the intellect of your leaders because you see intended aggression and depravity as incompetance and stupidity. Never blame a goverments wrongs on incompetance, blame them on those responsible and expect them to have a functional brain, because to get into the positions they have, they do have working brains, and know exactly what they are doing.

So the reverse of never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Glass half empty.

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