So the battle against tyranny would be defensive, then? You’d wait for them to come for you (as opposed to the socialists, trade unionist, and jews, say), and only when you heard their heavy tread outside your entryway would you take the safety off the bazooka you have aimed at the door?
Wouldn’t this approach require a bit of foresight? Predicting which group of approaching cops represents tyranny, as opposed to just the ones delivering you a summons to non-tyrannical civil court?
Good luck against that well-regulated militia.
Red Dawn? Although, at least with this fantasy they tried to keep it real…after all, the US military was helping the plucky freedom fighter types. Seems a bit more realistic than the liberal fantasy I’ve seen in threads like this where the military (and police) are in lock step, crushing the hopelessly outmatched civilians with gunz.
Basically, in between the rabid 2nd Amendment types who think that ALL it will take is private gun owners to defeat the greatest military on earth and the rabid anti-2nd Amendment types who think that such a rebellion would just be some stupid civies coming out with their AR-15s and probably dressed in bad camo and lining up for the military and police, in lock step to crush them there is what would actually happen if things ever spun out of control that far…that it would be a mess, with conflicting sides and divided loyalties, brother fighting brother. This is what would have happened if a tyranny had unfolded in the early US, and it’s what would happen today.
Or you just end up with Waco again.
You do realize your example is a situation where the government is defending itself from outside invaders, right? Not super-comparable to a situation where there are no outside invaders.
Nah. It’d be a bunch of little independent terrorist cells sniping at the the monolithic government.
What sort of tyranny are you actually imagining, by the way? Because to get the sort of reaction you describe, they’d pretty much have to be rounding up conservative white people and putting them to the sword. Anything less than that seems unlikely to tear the military apart at the seams.
I like this question. I still haven’t seen anyone who will be fighting against tyranny defining what they mean by “tyranny”
And who is doing the tyrants bidding - who’s pointing guns at the rest of the people because they presumably come from within the community.
Only if someone wants to be completely pedantic and look for only a 1 for 1 correlation, nothing else will do! If not, then the comparison would be basically armed civilians fighting the greatest military on earth today to a virtual standstill for years using the larger population for cover.
And the greater correlation is that the core of the Iraqi insurgents were the previous Iraqi army and paramilitary. I’m not sure what some of you think, but there isn’t a US military garrison in every village and town across the US, with, well equipped and provisioned formations in every state ready to go forth to crush the civilian population. Even assuming that said military would be in lock step, they just aren’t concentrated that way.
Yeah, I get that…and you aren’t alone. Many others in this thread think similarly. You kind of have to, in order for your narrative to work, just like the hard core conservatives have to think that they and the other civilian gun owners can just do it on their own and beat the gubbermint all on their lonesome.
A realistic one. And I think you are really doing the military a disservice here. I think that any crisis actually bad enough to get real people out on the street with their personal firearms and willing to shoot at the government is going to have the military split. Again, none of you seem to realize this and I’m probably talking to a wall here, but the military? They ARE the citizens. So are the police. And the firefighters. Even the government has good and bad people in it, not some sort of goosestepping monolith, but real people. If real people are riled up enough in the real world US to start shooting, then it’s fantasy that the military is just going to be in lock step.
Yes…exactly. That is exactly what would happen in any realistic scenario where you have more than a few nuts shooting at the general population. Which is why such a conflict wouldn’t be nearly as one sided as a lot of you seem to think.
I think I understand why the actual tyranny cannot be directly named: If it is, then others with different definitions of the word are no longer compadres-in-arms. If fact, some of them may be forced to label each as part of the “tyranny” itself. As long as it is only described in very vague terms with no specific examples given they can pretend that the are on the same side.
Sorry, but I think you are doing the military a disservice here.
Imagine some sort of election and SC Justices dying and new ones being appointed, and oh uh, they rule that personal gun ownership is illegal, and the government is going to go door to door and confiscate weapons. Do you really think the military is going to stop government agents from doing that?
That’s because the people who think they need guns to fight tyranny would only fight tyranny if tyranny meant “taking my guns” And they don’t want to admit that.
“Narrative”? I don’t have a narrative. I’m looking at the facts and attempting to find ANY way that some dude with a shed full of rifles will find them materially useful in “fighting tyranny”.
A realistic tyranny in America will have to have subverted the democratic government. This means, by necessity and unavoidably, they will have maintained popular support long enough to glide into power - and long enough for them to keep that support while they dismantle the democracy piece-by-piece. And for the gun-toting rebels to still be a player at the end of this, they will have to have kept their guns while all this is going on.
Which means that they tyranny is a conservative government that, at least until ten minutes ago, had wide popular support. And because Rome wasn’t dismantled in a day, they had more than enough time to prevent green card holders and gays and liberals and whatnot from entering the army, and enough time to take steps to remove troublesome members before anything went down. And again, all this went down while the populace was placidly standing by and watching it happen.
So yeah.
Let’s hear your definition of a “realistic scenario where you have more than a few nuts shooting at the general population”. How it comes to pass, its political stance, which groups support it and which oppose it. Go.
And of course, in a real situation, the brave civilian gun-owners wouldn’t all be on the same side, either. In fact, they might themselves be the goon squads that the tyrannical government uses to keep everyone else in line.
No. Like I said “I can think of more effective tactics and techniques”. Waiting for them to arrive at the front door of your home doesn’t strike me as terribly effective.
I’ve probably said this about 4 times now, but, you know, continue to say the same thing.
So, while saying you don’t have a narrative you, well, spout your narrative. Here, it’s this part: “attempting to find ANY way that some dude with a shed full of rifles will find them materially useful in “fighting tyranny””. See? That’s a narrative. And that’s the narrative you need it to be, because anything else means, A) there will be more than ‘some dudes with a shed full of rifles’…it would be millions of people, and B) it would certainly involve a percentage of the population that includes some military, police and even government. Because in the US, if enough people are mad about whatever it is enough to ACTUALLY take up arms against the government then they won’t be all alone.
I guess it depends on how it plays out. I can’t see any such government coming to power in such a rock solid way that they could not only take over but that they could subvert the military and police (not to mention all the key branches of the government) to such an extent that they would fight the general population in lock step.
You are right, of course, that such a government would have as it’s goal a way to disarm the populace, but as with the efforts of the anti-gun types for decades now it’s not going to be an easy thing to do, especially if they use similar confiscatory tactics. Basically, any effort to take the guns by fiat is going to be met with people basically hiding the majority of guns. We are talking about hundreds of millions of guns and 10’s of millions of citizens, with 10’s of millions more who wouldn’t be happy about it even if they don’t actually own a gun. The logistics of trying to do something like that boggles the mind if you actually stop to think about it.
At some point a potential Napoleon is going to cross a line…they will have to. And this will be long before they have such a total grip on the population as you are positing. I actually do think a conservative government would be the most likely candidate for such a tyranny, and that it would have as broad a popular support as, say, Trump does today (what’s he at now? 35%? Maybe 40%? :p)…until they start doing the big gubbermint things you are proposing. At that point people are going to start to resist. And by ‘people’ I mean the opposing party, the state and local governments, the military, the police…some percentage of all of them are going to resist.
Let me spin one small scenario here. Let’s say a Trump (but one with a clue and two working brain cells) wants to take control. And he uses party partisanship to try and get rid of the other party. How many actual citizens are going to go along with that? How many in the military and police? Now, let’s say he wants to set aside the election. Again, what numbers do you think would support that? Now, he wants to start systematically going after the guns? Or taking more control at the state and local levels? Or…or…or…?
Do you see? At some point he’s going to cross a line and people will start to resist. And this goes for a left wing government as well. At a certain point, 30% of the population (at least) is going to resist such direct attempts…and that resistance is going to ramp up. And that 30%? They are in the military, in the police, in the government…and many of them on BOTH SIDES HAVE GUNS.
So, no. 
See the above. Honestly, I don’t think it could happen very easily in our system as it stands today or in the past. It would take some sort of epic disaster that would allow someone to gain this sort of power that you are positing, and at that point this isn’t the US anymore.
I find it interesting that the same pro-2nd Amendment gun owners who speak of standing up to tyranny are typically the same ones who are pro-military/police and anti-groups that stand up to tyranny. Who do they think the “enemy” is going to be?
Forget the talk of A-10s strafing patriots. How do you differentiate between a group of American freedom fighters resisting tyranny, militias, hate groups, terrorists, criminal gangs and random lunatics when it comes to using guns to “fight tyranny”? Timothy McVey thought he was fighting tyranny. So does Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and Anonymous. As did the Branch Davidians and the Weaver family.
When does one have legitimacy to use their guns to fight the government?
:rolleyes:
I’ll take this as agreement that I’m not twisting anything into a narrative.
We currently have people taking up arms against the government. Bundy did in fact occupy a federal building. If your logic was sound, a rouge government faction has already nuked the Pentagon.
I admit I don’t follow the news that closely. Has that happened?
The thing to keep in mind here is that as far as the cops and military are concerned, they’re not fighting the general population. They’re fighting a rogue terrorist occupation that has been blowing up buildings and shooting at their brothers in arms. You’re the IRA. The government doesn’t defect and join the IRA.
Actually I don’t assume that the tyranny would attempt to confiscate guns. I think they’d want to deputize guns. I think they’d take those Nazi protester assholes and publicly endorse them. (Well, more.) I think they’d tell everyone that their liberal neighbor is a drug dealer and now the cops will look the other way when a drug dealer is killed. I think that they would only take the guns out of the cold dead hands of people who they identified as terrorists and drone-struck the houses of.
Which big gubbermint things am I proposing, specifically? Dismantling democracy? I’m quite confident that most Trump supporters won’t blink if the government starts gerrymandering and doing other things to rig elections - they also probably won’t blink if term limits are revoked --not that that would be strictly necessary; it could be the tyranny of a party of people who rotate their next guys in.
Honestly I’m not entirely sure what big gubbermint things you think will happen, because you refuse to say what your position is.
So you’re saying that if Trump started writing an assload of executive orders, the trumpsters would rebel?
So you’re saying if Trump arranged to alter the candidate vetting process in a way that transparently favors republicans, the trumpsters would rebel?
So if you’re saying that if Trump secretly rigged elections and informed everyone that it hadn’t happened, the Trumpsters would rebel?
I would say that at a bare minimum, 35% would continue to support Trump (or Trumplike fellows) as long as he continued to transparently xenophobic and racist. And another 40% (at least) would resist trying taking up arms against the government, be it because they are still loyal to the country, or because they fear the reprisals of the government/secret police/roving bands of armed nazi goons.
Between the racists and the loyalist nationalists, that will be the vast majority of gun owners.
Within the military I would expect that 35% count of racists/xenophobes to be maintained, and a large enough number of these trained military men to be nationalistic that I would expect open rebellion in no greater than 1% of them. Passive rebellion, a refusal to shoot innocent-seeming citizens, would be more common, but would not generally escalate to the level of treason, court martial, an imprisonment.
The thing you have to remember here is the republican party is currently already really xenophobic and authoritarian. This isn’t bothering people. It’s a very short step from where we currently are: “liberals and foreigners are evil” to where we’d need to be to support a republican tyranny: “liberals and foreigners are evil”.
Until you actually clarify what type of actions you imagine the tyranny will take that people will want to resist, this is all just noise.
I agree that the Palpatine approach would probably be about the only way to justify the overt and explicit transformation from our good old american republic to some sort of empire. (Not that you need to formally dismantle the republic to institute a tyranny - just tweak it some and subvert the elections.) And I fully agree that the US is relatively unlikely to become a tyranny, probably. (I’m hallucinating Trump’s persistent 30-something percent support, right?)
In Constitutional terms, they are, though - they’re all part of the kind of insurrection that the military is established to suppress. If they ever do more about it than post bravely but anonymously on message boards, that is. Or take over a damn bird sanctuary and pretend they’re the true patriots.
I think the fundamental reason they won’t define tyranny is that any attempt to do so will result in establishing that *they *are the Bad Guys who have to be defended against, as the Constitution provides.
Since this seems directed at me, which groups am I supposedly against that are anti-tyranny?
I have no idea who the enemy might be. What I’ve been talking about is an event that has more than a few nuts like McVey willing take-up arms against the government. What might trigger that? As I’ve said, perhaps an attempt by some future government to set aside the Constitution and democracy and become a totalitarian dictator.
When they win.