Finn, I’m glad you brought this up. I think it is spot on, and I agree with it totally.
It seems the Iraqi Insurgency has been doing this since '03, and we’ve had citizens and politicians screaming “The cost in blood is too high!” since early '04.
And yet, when the mere idea that something similar might take place in the good ol’ US of A if, by some bizzare twist of politics, some crazy cabal of the Legislative and Executive brancher were to take place, and then declare The Old Republic is swept away and a New Order is established, that gun owners would be not only helpless but totally ineffective.
DO I personally feel the need for firearms to defend me from my gub’mint?
No.
DO I think that, because I don’t think I need guns to defend myself from my gub’mint, the TRTKB should be abolished as “superfluous?”
Indeed. As pointed out upthread, a guerilla insurrection with civilians who know their surroundings well is a worrisome concept for any tyranny. But likewise common sense will tell you that if you have on your side those same civilians - who can bring not only their knowledge of surroundings but of the people being fought against, too - in organised, armed mobs with the support and backing of the military, you’re going to make that selfsame guerilla force lose quite a significant amount of their effectiveness.
An armed guerilla force on one side means the same on the other - and they’ll have better communication, superior supplies, and the ability to work out in the open. Whatever benefit having an already armed populace gives to a resistance movement, it gives to the tyranny, and gives so proportionally greater.
That’s a rather arbitrary and speculative claim posed as a definite truth.
How do you know that collaborators would give greater benefits to the occupying tyranny, rather than being executed in the middle of the night by their own neighbors?
French partisans, for example, did quite well despite Vichy collaboration. Warsaw Jews did quite well despite kapo Jews’ treason.
The benefit of a guerrilla insurrection isn’t limited to the fact that they’d be armed and know the terrain, and so any collaborators would be able to neutralize them by saying “That crazy militia guy down the road has a sniper rifle, and he’ll probably be holed up in the wooded area over the hill”. It lies in the fact that civilians become indistinguishable from military opponents and all territory becomes potentially lethal ground even once an army has dug in. And as Iraq has taught us, even collaborators are rendered pretty much useless if the military rolls in to kill insurgents and then rolls back out, leaving the tipsters to the tender mercies of their pissed off neighbors.
Recently in other threads on lighter subjects I found myself in agreement with some of your posts DT, but I knew sooner or later you’d say something asinine like this:
You don’t like the military. We get it. but on the whole I’ve met more civilized, caring and genuinely good people in the military than out of it. I’m pretty sure I have more experience in it than you do, but I don’t expect you to change your opinions any time soon, if at all.
The idea that we’d just turn around fire on our own citizens in the blink of an eye is ridiculous. It would have to be the Apocalypse or something before something like that happened.
but if the government somehow rewrote the law allowing for such a despicable thing, it wouldn’t just be them and the miltary with shit on their hands. It would be everyone that voted them into power or by inaction allowed them to gain it.
I could say the same for your assertion that an armed populace would fight back in the cunning and sneaky ways you’ve outlined.
French partisans had the benefit of support from outside the country, and moreover the tyrannical force was the result of invasion, not an inside coup. It’s a considerably different case than one where the dictator has already gained the support of a majority of the national army beforehand. And the Warsaw Jews didn’t have to contend with an armed civilian population - and they still lost anyway.
But the point here is that an army might not even have to dig in. Provide local anti-resistance units with training, supplies, introduce them into a communications network so they can easily talk with neighbouring cells, and you have yourself a ready-made and superiorly-equipped and organised force, with greater potential for propaganda spreading, if necessary. Plus, by tying together civilian and armed forces, attacks on either can be used to bolster support against the insurrection. Instead of the guerilla force executing assassinations or bombings on local army officials, now they’re having to do so on civilians, increasing their potential infamy.
But i’m not talking about the odd tipster against a mob of pissed off neighbours. I’m saying that for every gun-owner one one side, you’ll have one on the other, likely enough. I’m saying that the tipsters would have the advantage of being set up with help and with continued support from that military. And this is if the military needing to roll in becomes necessary.
You could, but history is on my side and supposition gainsaid by history is on yours.
The first objection you raise is spurious. Whether or not an armed group can get arms from outside the country or from the tooth fairy, doesn’t change the fact that having an armed insurrection makes governing anywhere from difficult to impossible.
The second objection you raise is spurious. Whether the occupying force is foreign or domestic still results in an occupying force opposed by a percentage of the occupied. There is no functional difference between being occupied by a puppet regime and foreign troops and being occupied by a tyrannical regime and domestic troops, except of course that domestic troops would have an even greater chance of defecting to their countrymen’s side.
The third objection you raise is spurious, as the Warsaw Jews were the armed civilian populace, and it was the Germans who had to contend with them. The Nazis were also put to the test and had to engage in brutal fighting to pacify one single camp. If that was repeated at every single camp, or even a significant number of them, it is doubtful that the Nazis could have dealt with all of those uprisings without significant, perhaps prohibitive costs. You have pointed to one specific battle where an armed civilian populace did indeed make a massive difference to how effective tyranny was, and argued somehow as if that one battle invalidates the strategy for an entire war.
Again, history is on my side. Americans have shown time and time again that the more you squeeze, the more people will fight back. Prohibition saw Americans drink more than ever before. The drug war has seen the explosive growth of drug use and the organized crime that goes along with it.
The chance that America would dissolve into a military dictatorship and there would be a significant “pro-tyranny” faction is remote, in the extreme. And collaborators would still be easily identified and would be obvious targets for resistance fighters, especially if the government troops weren’t protecting them. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. They can’t be organized into covert cells resistant to being killed by pissed off partisans, and openly allied with the government at the same time.
If we’re already at the point where there’s been a military coup, you’d have to posit a parallel universe America where there would be a significant number of pro-tyranny partisans. I’d wager that the only thing that 99.9% of all liberals, conservatives, independents, greens, libertarians, republicans and democrats would agree upon is that America should never become a dictatorship. The idea that American gun owners would skew evenly for pro/anti-dictatorship is not supported by the facts.
I’m not simply talking about arms, though. I’m talking about intelligence, communication, and assistance with organisation and information being traded.
There is a significant fundamental difference, and that difference is that at the least the majority of the armed forces have been persuaded to support the tyrannical force. Unless the average soldier is immensely different in thought and viewpoints than the average civilian, a majority of the army being persuaded means a pretty large section of the civilian population being persuaded, too. An tyranny as the result of invasion requires no such level of support from the armed forces or populace.
My point is that the Warsaw Jews did not have to contend against the rest of the civilian populace, armed and against them. If the Nazis had equipped German civilians on their side - and likely they would have been able to do so to a considerably greater extent than were the Jews equipped - then I suspect it would have been a rather different story, and not only in that particular situation. You’ve pointed to one specific battle where an armed civilian populace on one side made a massive difference - unless it is your belief that, come a dictatorship, all the people with guns will immediately turn to the side of the resistance, it is not a good analogy.
I concur. Yet, to posit an armed dictatorship is to posit a majority of the armed forces - quite a lot of Americans - that it is acceptable. You cannot at the same time say that Americans will not accept dictatorships while at the same time claiming that guns are required so that Americans will not attempt a dictatorship. Either such a dictatorship is possible - in which case Americans are persuadeable to that cause, as the American soldiers have been - or said dictatorship is not possible, in which case guns are not required towards defeating it.
I’m not claiming covertness; to the contrary, i’m claiming overtness as their significant weapon. Certainly that would make them targets, but as I said that means the targets are now civilians, and attacks would tie them ever closer to the dictatorship. And while they’re obvious targets, they’re also significantly better protected, and if necessary backed up by rather overwhelming force. A resistance force of reasonable size means an anti-resistance force of reasonable size, and superior in many ways.
See my point a few bits ago. I agree with this point. The idea that the American military would skew majorly for pro-dictatorship is not supported by the facts either, and I don’t consider it very likely to occur at all. Apparently some think otherwise.
To date I’ve pretty much ignored you, but you really are a lying commie sack of shit. If the Heller decision had gone the other way, leftist mouthpieces like your miserable self would be trumpeting it as the Law of the Land.
I understand where you’re coming from, though. Your Bolshevik and Stalinist forefathers were great believers in concentrating the power of violence exclusively in the hands of the state.
When the last of you red fucks fades into history the world will be better for it.
I think I have to point out yet again that this wildly imaginative hypothetical situation regarding our government “turning on us” is so unlikely to happen that it’s ridiculous.
Yeah, and I’ve seen “V For Vendetta”, too.
People like to claim that the average American is a sheep, and stupid. Maybe in some instances, but under the guise of this absurd hypothetical situation, we would rise to the occaison. Always have.
As a point of fact, the CNR was organized and run by folks like De Gaulle. Even the aid of outside experts merely made them more effective. Communist groups still managed to serve as a thorn in the Nazis’ side, for instance.
You think the kapos all decided to nap, instead?
And no, I showed a couple instances where an armed civilian populace had significant success against an armed occupier, even with collaborators having access to governmental/military aid. Off the top of my head we can expand from French partisans and Warsaw Jews to modern Palestinians and Iraqi insurgents, just as a start.
The idea that an armed citizenry resisting occupation can’t absolutely hobble their occupiers is simply not supported by history or current events.
First: a military dictatorship only requires that some officers support it, and the rest be ‘purged’. It also does not require that the military stay at its present size instead of shrinking, or that all the soldiers (or even officers) do not subvert the will of their commanders in any number of ways. History has shown that a small cadre of like-minded military members can pull off a coup. That doesn’t mean that the majority of the soldiers, let alone the citizenry agree or wouldn’t subvert that government.
I’d also point out that you’ve constructed a strawman. I never said that we need guns so that Americans will not attempt a dictatorship, but that having an armed populace would make any dictatorship difficult if not prohibitively so.
Again, reality shows this to be fiction. Palestinian citizens are routinely murdered for being collaborators, or suspected collaborators. And their murderers are hailed as heroes by many other Palestinians.
No, it doesn’t.
Otherwise, please show pro-Israel Palestinian forces of comparable size and/or power and/or impact and/or influence to Hamas.
So you’re saying that if German Jews had fought for their lives it could have gotten messy? I think the Nazis would have not dared spark the little civil war an attack on an armed population would have sparked.
I’m not sure it’s a relevant point to argue, since history is history and none of our hypotheticals will save or condemn anyone, but you have to keep in mind that the prosecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany wasn’t all a top-down order, but sadly very much in line with public opinion, therefore what could have easily been construed as a ‘Jewish uprising’ might well have been met by violence from the rest of the populace, leading indeed to things getting a bit more messy – i.e. more people ending up dead to no avail. Which, while probably ideologically preferable – I certainly would like to be able to look back at a German past in which my forefathers hadn’t been quite as complacent in accepting the Nazi rule – would, in the long run, just end up being more people dead.
No, you showed a couple of examples where an armed civilian populace put up more of a fight than otherwise. Significant success would imply, well, significant success. The Nazis in neither case appear to have been stopped in their goals by those populaces. And this is still without the aid of an armed populace supportive of the tyranny, which would be the natural expectation in cases of interior coups. As far as Palestinian insurgents go, i’m afraid i’m not aware of the respective gun laws affecting Palestinians as a whole. But I make note that in both the cases of Palestinian and Iraqi insurgencies these too are examples of a case of an outside enemy, and not a coup from within.
It’s a good thing i’ve been talking about armed citizens resisting a tyranny from within and not without, then, isn’t it? I have no problem believing an armed citizenry can hurt their occupiers - but as i’ve pointed out, a tyranny from within positing approval by the national military would likewise include approval by a similar amount of the civilian population. An occupation does would not.
Yes, yes, it does. A small group, certainly, may pull off the actual coup, but the soldiers must then deal with the results of it. If a majority of the actual armed forces don’t, then the occupation really isn’t likely to last long, what with the majority of the armed forces being on the opposite side to it. Show me examples in history of a coup from small cadres of like-minded military members lasting for a good time against a general soldiery disagreement, please.
This is correct, although I hope you’ll believe it wasn’t intentional. I apologise for suggesting you thought that guns were required so that a dictatorship will not occur. The point I was trying to make (and clearly putting it badly) was that your argument against my idea that there would be considerable amounts of people on the side of a national tyranny was that Americans as a whole are not supportive of tyranny, and indeed act against them; my point was that the existence of considerably amounts of people on the side of a national tyranny is probably just as likely as there is to be that national tyranny in the first place. So the idea that we need not worry too much about armed anti-resistance groups is also a good argument for not needing to have anyone armed at all - if dictatorship is your worry, which as you say it is not. Again, apologies for building that strawman.
Where does that show my argument to be fiction? I’m saying those collaborators will be drawn closer to the armed forces, not that the resistance will. Certainly the death of collaborators will be celebrated by resistance. Likewise it’ll be rued by other collaborators and the armed force.
…if the dictatorship is supported by those drawing from the same population. I’m not claiming that in every case of war, the two sides will be equally matched. I apologise for not being clear, but that’s pretty much the case in the topic of this thread.
If the Jews had guns, then everyone else would have had guns, too. So the question is; was the mood in Germany such that armed Jewish resistance would have been met by armed pro-Nazi attacks? I have to think there would be, and I don’t think it’s a leap of the imagination to say that attacks on Jews would have been larger in number than successful defenses.
