She probably had the fantasy that she was some super spy, putting her life in danger to protect the liberties of others.
Actually, she’s just a douchebag.
I think the idea with some of these folks is, they don’t want anyone to have guns. Unarmed police in places like Britain are often pointed out as a good model.
First, I think you may be misunderstanding or misrepresenting the politics of Mother Jones. Second, a progressive political magazine paying attention to the RW infiltration of a cause generally classified as “progressive” does not actually constitute an editorial policy WRT to that cause, and I see nothing in the article that actually takes an editorial stance on gun control. Third, honest leftists nowadays understand something that the kind of gun nuts who subscribe to the “insurrectionary theory” of the Second Amendment do not: For purposes of “freedom,” however defined, there is no point in having an armed citizenry. Small arms might be of some use in a disordered or failed state (such as contemporary Iraq), but you cannot effectively resist a well-established modern state (such as Hussein’s Iraq) with small arms. As we Americans ought to have learned, by know, from the example of every asstard who has tried it in the past 20 years.
When you recognize that it’s the Right that threatens people with guns and uses them it makes perfect sense. You are assuming that they beleive your gunwank fantasy of the FREEDOM ! loving gun lovers rising up against the evil oppressive government - instead of the more common reality of them pitching in with the oppression.
Because personal gun ownership isn’t any protection. And probably because the private citizens who own guns tend to be the pro-“fascist” ones.
It’s just an implementation of an excellent strategy.
Anyone want to claim there are no gun control activists seeded into the ranks and heirarchy of the NRA so that I can publicly laugh at your naivety?
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
Sun-tzu
Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)
There’s no necessary contradiction here. First, as BrainGlutton has already noted, your hysterical bleating is actually a disingenuous representation of Mother Jones’s politics.
More importantly, though, it’s possible to hold up an ideal of limited government, and to fight against particular government excesses, while still believing that, in many real-world cases, the government is the best way to deal with certain issues and problems.
Far left critic of American foreign policy, Noam Chomsky, has made this point on numerous occasions. Chomsky describes his own politics as “libertarian socialism,” very similar to old-style anarcho-syndicalism, a la Rudolph Rocker. Chomsky is also a big fan of classical liberal opponents of excessive government, people like Wilhelm von Humboldt (author of On the Limits of State Action).
Chomsky has said that his ideal society is one of citizen cooperation, in which government is minimal or even non-existent. He believes in the virtues of voluntary association, and is suspicious of hierarchies and authority. He believes that most systems of authority are unjustified, and should be dismantled, while conceding that certain types of authority (one example he gives is parents over children) are probably useful and necessary. Much of his writing is incredibly hostile to the power and authority of the United States government, and he is well known for his critiques of government tyranny.
And yet, in some cases, Chomsky also argues for greater government control over certain areas of life, such as regulation of corporations, for example. He argues that, while his ideal vision is a society in which government has been dismantled, in many real-world cases, vesting power in the government is the only way to ensure that structures of authority are even vaguely responsive to the needs of the people. While he concedes that government is imperfect, and tends to authoritarianism and/or bureaucratization, he believes that in some cases it provides the best alternative, and that removing it would replace one form of tyranny (government) with an even worse tyranny.
You might not agree with Chomsky’s position, but the fact is that one can be critical of, even hostile to, many aspects of government authority, while also believing that government sometimes provides the best available option.
On the particular issue of guns:
I’ve lived in the US for a few years now, and one area of politics where i have really re-evaluated my earlier beliefs is the area of gun ownership.
I arrived in the US from a country–Australia–where gun ownership is far more restricted (especially since the Port Arthur massacre) than the United States, and where the vast majority of the population is happy with that. When i arrived here, i was an adamant gun control advocate, believing that people don’t need guns, and that a strict policy like Australia’s the Britain’s was essential.
While most gun advocates might still consider me a gun control freak (i believe in mandatory registration, waiting periods, mandatory reporting of theft, and generally tighter controls over how quickly and easily people can get guns etc.), the fact is that my position on gun ownership has mellowed considerably, and that i really do believe that the majority of gun owners are law-abiding citizens who own and use their weapons responsibly. My next-door neighbor in Baltimore, where i lived until recently, owned 14 guns (hand guns, rifles, shotguns), and was clearly a conscientious and responsible owner. People like him have cured me of my knee-jerk opposition to private gun ownership.
That said, in my years in the US, no argument against gun control has seemed to me more laughable and specious than:
and similar “we need guns to defend us from the government” arguments.
I’m not sure if people realize this or not, but we’re no longer living in Jefferson’s ideal of a yeoman farmer republic, where the citizen militia would actually down tools and take up arms in defense of liberty. One of the very things early republican thinkers opposed–a standing army–is now firmly entrenched and constitutes the most formidable military machine ever created. Good luck using your Glock or M1A to fight government tyranny.
What’s even more bizarre about this argument, at least in my experience, is that many of the people who make it are often exactly the same people who seem happy to authorize more and more money for the military, and who consistently support policies that maintain the strength and the size and the importance of the American government’s firepower. I would have thought that, if these folks were really so worried about the government’s weapons, they might occasionally adopt a political position that would do something about the problem.
Just MHO.
This “formidable military machine” got thrown ass-first out of Vietnam by barefoot farmers, and is getting its head served to it on a silver platter by tribesmen in Iraq with weapons half a century old.
A civilian insurrection doesn’t need to completely obliterate the opposition, it just needs to make it so it’s not worth their while to keep fighting them. This can be accomplished without helicopters and tanks. Either the government is willing to bomb the hell out of the country, in which case they wouldn’t have any country left to govern, or they are going to have to come to some kind of agreement with a resistance movement that has been harrying them with house to house urban warfare and guerrilla tactics.
I didn’t realise that end goal of a civilian insurrection against a fascistic US government was to make a deal with it. Generally I thought the whole idea was that both sides would have a pretty vested interest in wiping each other out. One side wins or it’s continual conflict for however long, i’m afraid.
Anyway, it looks like my view here isn’t all that common, but i’m pretty against this. Yes, it’s certainly excellent strategy, as spying tends to be. But it’s still a lie.
All an insurrection needs to do is harass the governing force to the point where it’s ready to give up. It doesn’t need to obliterate it.
If an insurrection against an extremely powerful military machine couldn’t succeed, then you’d be living in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, not Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
If you want me to stop posting here, just say so. 
You don’t need to “bomb the hell” out of a country to effectively quash an armed insurrection. You just need to be willing to kill anyone who is, knows, or looks like they might know one of the rebels. Saddam Hussein was able to rule Iraq without having to bomb the country, because he was willing to use his army to murder anyone with the barest taint of disloyalty. Although our behavior has often been far from laudatory, the US is not willing to be that brutal in cowing armed dissent, either in Iraq, or in Vietnam previously. And so that sort of armed insurrection, using small arms, can be effective. If we ever get to the point where the US government is using the military against its own population, odds are good that whoever is in charge will long since have abandoned those sorts of niceties.
It’s a bit hard to really get a lot of outrage out of this because I’m laughing so hard. And…well, it’s just classic that it’s Mother Jones, ehe?
You owe me a new monitor BG…
-XT
Well, hell, even if that’s true, it’s better to be able to put up a fight and die trying, than to just go like a sheep to be slaughtered.
And all a governing force needs to do is discourage the insurrection. An insurrection on the point of defeat can continue to fight on. A governing body on the point of defeat can break out the bombs - like you say, bombs mean you don’t get those places to govern, but if you’re not going to get them anyway, what’s the risk?
And if the planned American insurrection was Californians trying to take back California alone, 100-odd years ago, you’d have a good argument.
Hm we have guns. We both practice gun control [when we shoot, the round hits the target, right where we aimed it within a suitably proximity. I can manage about a 3 inch grouping, mrAru is better than I am and can get a 2 inch grouping at normal target distances with both long arms and hand guns.]
I have no doubt that if I had to defend myself I would be able to. I also know that if we depended on hunting to get dinner we would not starve 
Last I knew we weren’t faschists but tended to lean towards the conservative side of liberal. Some government is a necissary evil but too much is purgatorial. The problem is in agreeing where the balance lies.
The way I always heard it was the value of a partisan is not measured in how many of the enemy he kills, but in how many he keeps watching.
Check out Algeria then, and how well the French faired. Afghanistan caused the Soviets no end of troubles, and that was before Charlie Wilson’s War really took off. The VietCong were a significant threat until they stopped being guerrilas and went for the throat at Tet (then the NVA took over). The Contras, the El Salvadoran Rebels, the Shining Path, and FARC have all shown how effective you can be against formal military units.
Civilians with small arms can be VERY effective in harrassment attacks. Over time, they can show their willingness to fight and they can get the support of other nations. However, unless they start with arms that they know how to use - they are going to find it very difficult to get their insurrection going.
Having an armed populace means that when the troops are sent it, they have to keep the hatches buckled down in the tanks and APCs. Soldiers can not walk the streets safely. If the military decides to make examples, then you start bringing MORE people over to the insurrection side.
Small arms in the hands of a civilian populace are a serious threat to modern military forces. The only way around it is to kill everyone, and unless you are ready for that level killing - you are going to be hurting.
That’s impressive. You linked to a dictionary entry for fascism, and still managed to spell it incorrectly.
And i’m still trying to work out which is best–a “necissary” government, or a purgatorial one.
Is it really true that too much government will cleanse us of sin?
I was in L.A. during the riots in the '90s. (They never got closer than about two miles from where I lived, so no worries where I lived.) ISTR that armed shopkeepers were less likely to have their stores looted than unarmed ones. I do remember that at least one cop advised that they were unable to protect people, and that people should arm themselves. (This was not possible for many people, as there was a 15-day waiting period on all firearms.) SCOTUS had already determined that the police to not have an obligation to protect everyone.
People were looting in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I’ll wager that in such a situation law-abiding citizens would find ‘some use’ for a firearm.
There doesn’t have to be an insurrection. Natural disasters or civil disorder are enough.