Read the links: “We contacted Donald M. Goldstein, sometimes called ‘the dean of Pearl Harbor historians.’ … He is a professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. He told us the supposed Yamamoto quote is ‘bogus.’”
Hahaha. I promise to give your opinion all the consideration it’s due.
In the mean time, I’ll continue to decide what I want to post. 
What is Goldstein called the rest of the time?
I can play this game too
I want a list of bad guy who were not dissuaded from attempting a military coup because we have private ownership of firearms.
The business plot comes to mind ;). Smedley Butler didn’t turn the whole thing over to Congress because he was scared of going through with it - he thought the idea was wrong on ethical grounds. Evidently, the conspirators themselves didn’t think armed civilians would be an insurmountable obstacle to a veterans’ march on Washington.
The Civil War might also count, if you squint right - AFAIK Confederate and Union troops alike had few qualms (nor faced significant civilian opposition) when scorching the other side’s ground or seizing population centers.
That being said, I’m not well versed at all in that part of history so I might well be wrong about that.
Please provide cites where the actors in the Business plot stated it was not a concern?
If you are claiming the US didn’t have issues with irregular warfare in the civil war I would think it would be best if you do a bit more research.
I would have thought it rather self-evident. Had they thought it was a major concern, they wouldn’t have planned on seizing Washington with just half a million WW1 vets, would they ? Whether or not the plan ever had a chance of actually succeeding even in dream is neither here nor there. My point is that* they *thought it would/could work, and didn’t “think twice” about trying to set it in motion.
I didn’t say that.
But I’m not aware of it ever stopping offensives or military operations outright, no more than similar “people’s wars” (in the words of von Clausewitz) ever really prevented European military powers from achieving their strategic goals.
The people of Atlanta couldn’t stop Sherman from tearing it to pieces, for example. If you have a specific counter-example, I’d be interested in reading more about it.
IME Guerilleros, partisans, irregulars, raiders, fifth columnists or however you want to call them certainly can be a serious pain in the ass to deal with and severely weaken regular armies, leaving them vulnerable to other regular armies.
But on their own, they’re rather hopeless adventures. That’s what I’m saying.
It is convenient that your unsubstantiated assumptions are valid but you will not accept the same from others.
So what you are saying is that in your world view this is true but you have no evidence to prove it is true.
How do you explain the considerable amount of effort countries have put forward to disarm the politically unpopular groups?
Why would they waste so much time and money if it was of no risk?
Was the entire British home guard program in WWII a complete waste?
In order for you to “play this game”, you have to find an assertion I made and respond to it. I suggest you read the posts I was responding to.
I feel no need to fight fallacious arguments.
But…
Did I miss something there? you didn’t “respond” you asked a loaded question and didn’t even address the post you quoted.
Why don’t you address his post vs. trying the old “Argument by Question” trick.
200+ years of peaceful transfers of power is evidence the balance of powers is working fairly well.
You don’t have to have read the thread, or even be fully awake, to see that I was addressing the post I quoted. He made an unsupported assertion. I called him on it. I didn’t even ask for a citation, just an example.
Do you know of a list of potential criminals who didn’t commit crimes because of any issue?
You were asking for the unknowable.
However the McMinn County Waris an example of citizens using rifles to fight tyranny in this country.
Well, there’s always good old logic.
Had they thought armed civilian resistance was an insurmountable barrier, they wouldn’t have gone ahead and risked setting the plan in motion by contacting Butler and whoever they wanted to head the fascist government (I don’t remember his name off hand), yes ?
Again, this seems self-evident to me. Which part of the reasoning do you object to ?
Reducing the incidence of armed criminals seems a worthwhile goal to pursue regardless of other considerations. Small arms might not be a gigantic threat to the determined conqueror, but cops are another matter.
Besides, you say that like the British or the French governments only confiscated the weapons of known anarchists or something.
What time and money ? Writing a law saying, in effect, “guns are hereby forbidden, you have X weeks to turn yours in, and anyone caught with one from then on is going straight to the big house” doesn’t sound like much effort is involved on the part of the government or the police. Especially when the laws are issued by democratic governments, which generally imply the majority of the people agree with the new restrictions.
Do you figure Scotland Yard had to kick every door in London to find every last one of them pesky Colts, pry them from cold dead hands ? 
Beyond that, “of no risk” is not the same as “absolutely harmless”. The IRA never had a chance of kicking out the British by force, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t kill a whole lot of people, military and civilians alike. The FARCs have been failing to overthrow the Columbian government for 60+ years, but they still have made the place wholly unsafe.
shrug. Like scrap drives, I’d say it was more of a feel-good morale effort than anything. And, once again, it didn’t cost the British government much since they were issued surplus or outdated stuff for the most part (when they even were issued anything).
But since you mention them, the performance of their German counterpart, the Volksturm, certainly wasn’t anything to write home about despite being much better outfitted* than the average American citizen is today.
*you guys can’t buy Panzerfausts or grenades, right ? Not even in Texas ?
No, people go to war even against other armies…you are making unproven assumptions.
Yes as I provided in earlier cites they did take them away from socialists and the Germans took them from the Jews and under Sharia law non-muslims have no right to guns.
Yet the FMLN is in power…but you keep ignoring that.
You do realize that Ireland is a country because the old IRA won a guerrilla war in 1921?
Destructive Devices are legal, there is a tax to keep them away from the poor.
Without thinking twice, perhaps ? 
They took them away from everybody, was my point. Well, I wouldn’t know about the Brits admittedly. But here in France, they don’t ask you who you vote for when you apply for a gun permit
Fair enough, but then you keep ignoring that Saddam stayed in power in spite of ubiquitous AKs, RPKs and RPG-7s. Let’s call it a draw 
That is an excellent point.
I would tentatively counter it by pointing that firstly the British government was not, in fact, altogether tyrannical in its prosecution of the war (e.g. they could have shelled Dublin to the ground, but didn’t ; they could have threatened to murder civilians indiscriminately but didn’t, etc…) ; and secondly that the War of Irish Independence was fought at a time where small arms still *were *an actual equalizer. The Black & Tans didn’t have much more than that themselves.
I’m not sure I could tell you which technological advance in particular gave standing armies a defining, irreducible edge - ubiquitous portable HMGs ? self-tracked artillery ? lethal gas ? Tanks and APCs ? Air force ? Satellite surveillance ? Portable IR & night vision ? Little bit of each ?
Combat helicopters would be my best guess though - US Apaches & Cobras were crucial in combating insurgents during the Iraq War for example, and that was against dudes with a near unlimited supply of RPGs. They were also the best, most successful tools the Russians had against the Afghans (at least until the US shipped them crates of Stinger missiles).
These days, drones prove even better since they can accomplish the same constant surveillance cum ad hoc murderizing role at a fraction of the cost and no human risk. There really isn’t much of a Second Amendment answer to a Hellfire missile out of nowhere.
No it wasn’t, it was to dominate Europe and depopulate Poland and Western Russia and replace them with German colonists.
You’re completely misinterpreting what he meant by this. It’s not that surprising; it was bandied about during wartime propaganda to mean that the Japanese wanted to conquer the US. The sentence I bolded does not mean it was Yamamoto or Japan’s intention to do so; marching on Washington was clearly beyond the capabilities of Japan even in the eyes of their most wild eyed optimists. Yamamoto was very fatalistic (or rather realistic) about Japan’s chances in the coming war. The point he was making with his march on Washington comment was that Japan was going to be unable to achieve victory over the United States. Japan’s war plan was to occupy the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, which would only co-prosper in the sense that Japan would take what it wanted, and occupy islands in the central and south Pacific to form a defensive perimeter. The hope was the US would grow weary trying to break the perimeter and accept peace with Japan keeping its conquests.
No, unsubstantiated means there is no evidence that he actually said it. There is no evidence that Yamamoto ever said any such thing.
The UK does not have the right to bare arms because…our legal system doesn’t work that way. It’s based on presedent, not a constitution.
People in the UK are allowed to own shotguns and rifles (although not carry them around in public).
We do not, however, have the right to own handguns. The reason for this being the day a chap walked into a primary school in a small town called Dunblane. Look it up, all you’ll need is the name.
There is a difference between “false” and “unsubstantiated”.
Substantiated means to show something to be true or to support a claim with facts. “They” haven’t found anyone who remembers hearing Yamamoto say, “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”
That doesn’t mean he never said it. The person(s) who might have heard it could have all been dead by the time “someone” tried to verify the story. One of the downsides of war.
In order to prove that Yamamoto never said this, “someone” would have to prove that someone else said it. No one else has come forward to claim ownership of this quote. It hasn’t been proven that someone else actually said it.
That is why this quote is considered to be “unsubstantiated” instead of “false”.
Of course. :smack: Why wouldn’t the so-called “master race” be satisfied with only controlling Europe and Russia. Especially after they develop an atomic bomb and intercontinental rockets. The Nazi really only wanted to live in peace with their neighbors.
:rolleyes:
Unfortunately for them, the war ended much, much sooner than Hitler envisioned.
Of course not. That’s why I am not asserting that there is a list of potential criminals who didn’t commit crimes because of any issue. That’s why I told you to read the posts I was responding to, because you clearly don’t understand the conversation you’re butting in to.
[QUOTE=doorhinge]
Private ownership of firearms makes the bad guys think twice (or maybe a dozen times) before they would attempt a violent takeover in the U.S.. What happens in other countries varies by how their civil or not so civil society.
[/QUOTE]