Rioting - is the U.S. next?

[Kobal2]

@Martin_Hyde

The rioters on Bastille Day were going all the way, though. Rioters in the modern era are mostly not interested in trying to actually fight the King (or in this case the Prime Minister / President etc), the thing about something like storming the Bastille is you need a strong nucleus of people willing to die to do it in order for it to work. Enough people can storm anything, but there has to be enough people willing to die.

Hence the quip, “Is it a revolt ?” “No sire, it’s a revolution”.

But actually, I’m not convinced the Bastille-takers were interested in fighting the King either.
Fact is, I don’t think the people who were doing the rioting on that first day knew what the fuck they were doing or where it all was heading. They were just a bunch of pissed off Parisians (who, as you know, aren’t all that sunny on the best of days ;)) venting off because they were hungry and the bread delivery got held up again, with maybe only a handful of people who knew what they were doing steering the stampede. Maybe even taking advantage of the mob for their own aims, who knows. I mean, I know how it’s written up in (French) history books, but thems as wrote those books weren’t there, now were they ?

In my mind’s eye it’s only later, when the mob got everybody on the run and wondering where to go next that some dapper looking motherfuckers stepped up with a proposition for them, if they’d please put down the guns nice and slow. In my experience, that’s how revolutions go: mobs are good at tearing things down, not so good at getting things back up. That requires organization, forethought and - though I loathe the word - order.

And as an historical aside, the Parisians weren’t even pissed at the King himself, or even the monarchy - they liked both well enough. They were only pissed by the economic downturns, recent new taxes ordered by the (foreign) minister of finances to remedy them, and the (again, foreign) mercenaries hired to quell the unrest. And, of course, the bread thing, which sparked the powder keg.
Inconsequential trifles by all accounts, which is why today we’d all rather remember that they seized an ignominious, unjust prison (mostly to get at the powder stored there - there were barely a dozen actual inmates), toppled a despot, lopped of his head, then democracy happened sort of. Hallelujah for the brave patriots.
The real ones ? Tea Party material, really

If a band of rioters came upon a gun shop and the owner was there defending it, the rioters would need a core of people willing to trade their lives to get those guns, because some of them would certainly die if they wanted inside that store.

Meh, don’t think so.
I mean, hunting shops and gun stores are reinforced so that a stick-up crew has a hard time, but what can you do against a pissed off crowd ? Can’t shoot all of them, and if you shoot *some *of them you better believe the rest is going to hang you by your nuts and skin you alive. Nerves shot on both sides, both sides scared as hell, tempers running hot… a mosquito farts and you’ve got Peterloo, or Kent State.
And those were professionals (sort of), so a gun store guy, no matter how Rambo he tells himself he is in the mirror ? Please. He’s *not *staring down a crowd by his own self.

Then again (and this was something I wanted to write up after my Bastille quip, but couldn’t word right) these days the mob isn’t just up against tricorns and muskets. The police, the King, and even the gun shop owner : they’ve got machine guns now. One man with the power to clear up a street with one clip. And that’s only if the midden really hits the windmill - law enforcement’s been polishing up on their crowd control skills since that hot July day. Tear gas, water cannon, flashball, tasers, helicopters… plenty of ways to make a mob not want to be a mob anymore in a hurry.
And while I reckon 17th century peasants might have thought the same thing about running against muskets and sabers with butcher cleavers, it’s on a whole 'nother level now. Same thing about Minutemen, guerillas, militias (well ordered or not) and so forth - they can fight the power all they want, but they can’t win. What they can do is turn the whole country to shit forever, as seen in Afghanistan, Columbia, Iraq…

No man, my honest opinion is that the days of the righteous fury of the people are long gone. Egypt notwithstanding.

Speaking of the French, Napoleon had the right idea on how to handle rioters. While working for the Directorate he used grapeshot on riots in Paris, and very quickly dispersed the mob. When the people riot the only proper response is to use loudspeakers to enact a curfew until further notice, and to inform the populace that helicopters with miniguns will mow down anyone seen on the streets during the curfew. The riots would end very quickly.

Yup. But is it the country you wanna live in ?
I know I wouldn’t have wanted to live under Nappy. Why, bowing to a Corsican, the very idea !

[Martin_Hyde]

@Kobal2

Hence the quip, “Is it a revolt ?” “No sire, it’s a revolution”.

But actually, I’m not convinced the Bastille-takers were interested in fighting the King either.

I think they were actually, and that was a very common thing. If you read the history of any European country, you will see many, many, many riots where the rioters essentially wanted to fuck things up and get the King’s attention. It was exceptionally rare for most of European history for these riots to have designs on removing a person from the throne. Instead they were a means of the lower classes to attack a system with enough vigor to get the attention of the powerful elites that ran things. There is a difference between wanting to act against the King in order to get his attention versus trying to actually remove him from the throne. For whatever reason many disaffected peasants up until the 19th century tended to believe their Kings were intrinsically good, and that bad policies were typically the result of bad ministers and that if they rioted hard enough the King would see the poor quality of the ministers who had messed things up and replace them.

When you have no real political power, only through violence can you express dissatisfaction, and I think that was what the Parisians were doing. It wasn’t until fairly late in the game that people decided they really wanted the King gone for real. Until the King tried to flee the country I think there was still a better than not chance that Louis XVI could have remained as a constitutional monarch if he had wanted. Instead he refused to legitimately support any compromise, begrudgingly going along with what he felt he had to and then essentially committing treason against the country the moment he got a chance (of course under the law he probably was incapable of committing treason since he was the King.)

Meh, don’t think so.

I mean, hunting shops and gun stores are reinforced so that a stick-up crew has a hard time, but what can you do against a pissed off crowd ? Can’t shoot all of them, and if you shoot *some *of them you better believe the rest is going to hang you by your nuts and skin you alive. Nerves shot on both sides, both sides scared as hell, tempers running hot… a mosquito farts and you’ve got Peterloo, or Kent State.

In the hypothetical we are positing a store owner who has barricaded himself inside his store to defend against a riot. For someone to do such a thing means they more or less must be willing to eventually have their store stormed and themselves killed going out in a blaze of glory, otherwise why would they even be there at all? It isn’t like most shopkeepers live in their store, if they were especially concerned about their safety they wouldn’t be there in the first place.

The rioters on the other hand are going to be opportunist looters. You don’t loot a store with an armed gunman inside of it when there are dozens of other stores in walking distance with no one inside of them at all to stop you.

If anything is outlandish it is perhaps the hypothetical gun store owner being there in the first place, and while that has happened, it has been rare precisely because I think most store owners will trade their merchandise for their lives and aren’t willing to lose their lives to defend their property.

However during the Rodney King riots and various other major riots we’ve definitely had shopkeepers defend their stores successfully by brandishing guns or even shooting looters. I don’t know of any instances in America in which an armed shopkeeper defending against looters was ripped apart by an unarmed crowd angered that he had fired upon them. Instead it seems like the looters do exactly what I said when faced with such a prospect: they go elsewhere, because unless several of them are willing to die they aren’t going to get in that store, and collectively there is no way to say for sure you won’t be the one to get shot.

I have noticed that immigrant entrepreneurs tend to be the ones who defend their stores the most vehemently. I think this is often because they operate on razor thin margins, probably have inadequate insurance coverage, have no safety net, and are essentially fighting for their families to not be put out on the streets when they defend their business.

[Tom_Tildrum]

@humanafterall

I live in SW Ohio, and the nearest secure facility I can go is to a nearby Masonic temple, The building is solid stone and concrete with 1-inch thick steel rebar spaced 4 inches apart. It would take some heavy firepower to break through that. The front doors are large and of heavy oak, and the back doors are of solid steel…

Why limit yourself? If you’ve got the armament to get in there, it seems like you could go wherever the hell you wanted.

[El_Kabong]

@Martin_Hyde

No, not at all. The two most important responsibilities of any government are to protect its people from outside violent threat and to maintain civil order within its borders. These are the ancient reasons that governments were instituted; without civil order no other rights can meaningfully exist, and in response to violent insurrections and riots the rioters can no longer be viewed as part of society but instead as an active infection threatening all of society. Government must respond with immediate force in these situations.

‘Infection’. Nice.

Er, no it doesn’t, not necessarily. In any event, I have been under the perhaps mistaken impression that wholesale extrajudicial killing over loss of property is generally frowned upon in this society. I’m pretty sure that’s the case in the UK as well.

[Koxinga]

@Martin_Hyde

However during the Rodney King riots and various other major riots we’ve definitely had shopkeepers defend their stores successfully by brandishing guns or even shooting looters. I don’t know of any instances in America in which an armed shopkeeper defending against looters was ripped apart by an unarmed crowd angered that he had fired upon them. Instead it seems like the looters do exactly what I said when faced with such a prospect: they go elsewhere, because unless several of them are willing to die they aren’t going to get in that store, and collectively there is no way to say for sure you won’t be the one to get shot.

I have noticed that immigrant entrepreneurs tend to be the ones who defend their stores the most vehemently. I think this is often because they operate on razor thin margins, probably have inadequate insurance coverage, have no safety net, and are essentially fighting for their families to not be put out on the streets when they defend their business.

Specifically Korean shop owners: I knew there was some conflict centering around their community at that time (the 1992 riots) but until today I had no idea to what extent:

During the riots, many Koreans from throughout the area rushed to Koreatown, heeding a call put out on Korean-language radio stations for volunteer security guards. There was a lot of activity to protect the Korean businesses, especially in Koreatown. Many Koreans had weapons, including but not limited to: shotguns, AR-15s, semi-automatic AK-47-style rifles, and semi-automatic Uzis. . . .

One of the most iconic and controversial television images of the violence was a scene of two Korean merchants firing pistols repeatedly at roving looters. The New York Times said, "that the image seemed to speak of race war, and of vigilantes taking the law into their own hands.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@guizot

A lot of people were saying the same thing that hot afternoon in L.A. on April 29, 1992.

Back then crime was at an all-time high, there was far more lack of understanding on all sides, and so on and so on.

@Der_Trihs

Americans are typically submissive and passive, they can be abused and exploited without resistance to a far greater extent than the citizens of most other countries. Usually, they blame themselves rather than whoever is victimizing them.

In other words they’re more law-abiding and unlikely to riot and loot just because some benefits got cut or the other person won the election (as in France in 2007)

@Broomstick

For now. That can change.

It was just as accurate to say that the US was “socially stable” and had avoided riots for 20 years before the Rodney King LA riots, but - oops, there goes LA. Except your assertion that there were no riots “for 20 years” is wrong. 1981 and 1983 are the only years since 1960 that didn’t have a riot in Wikipedia’s list, and given how spotty Wiki is, you can’t be sure 81 and 83 were all that peaceful.

Most of these riots really were no more damaging or violent than bar fights like say the rather violent protests in Oakland last year. It barely gets covered and most people outside of the city where it occurred forget about it.

Not to mention US rioters are more likely to be heavily armed than UK rioters, and past experience shows at least some of them will return fire rather than run.

Perhaps but in the end the police will enjoy the advantages of professionalism and especially if the SWAT team or the National Guard is called in overwhelming firepower.

@Koxinga

Specifically Korean shop owners: I knew there was some conflict centering around their community at that time (the 1992 riots) but until today I had no idea to what extent:

[Koxinga]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

You make me sick sometimes Curtis. Here’s the reason the Korean American community feared they’d come under attack: a 51 year old Korean shopkeeper lady had shot an innocent black teenage girl in the back of the head just two weeks before the Rodney King incident. Korean shopkeeper lady was given five years probation for that.

I mean shit, guy, what’s wrong with you?

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Koxinga

You make me sick sometimes Curtis. Here’s the reason the Korean American community feared they’d come under attack: a 51 year old Korean shopkeeper lady had shot an innocent black teenage girl in the back of the head just two weeks before the Rodney King incident.

I mean shit, guy, what’s wrong with you?

I don’t approve of that certainly. I just approve of the idea of shopowners defending their property and livelihoods.

[Koxinga]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

I don’t approve of that certainly. I just approve of the idea of shopowners defending their property and livelihoods.

Which is exactly what the 51 year old Korean shopkeeper thought she was doing.

[guizot]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

Back then crime was at an all-time high, there was far more lack of understanding on all sides, and so on and so on.

The rise in crime at that time was almost entirely gang related. However, the violence of the rioting itself was not exclusively gang-linked. As for “understanding,” I can assure you that it’s still not where it should be. The Black-Korean Alliance disbanded only six months after the riots. And the Koreans were more symbolic, than anything, because they owned so many markets. A lot of those have been sold to–yes, you guessed it–Middle-Eastern families. (“Yeah, you know, like those Persians who destroyed the World Trade Centers.”)

Still, I’m also inclined to say the same thing: The situation–in L.A., at least–is not as tense as it was at that time. There are a few more supermarkets and banks in the areas where the riots ignited. But I’d never rule it out.

[Marley23]

@Koxinga

You make me sick sometimes Curtis. Here’s the reason the Korean American community feared they’d come under attack: a 51 year old Korean shopkeeper lady had shot an innocent black teenage girl in the back of the head just two weeks before the Rodney King incident. Korean shopkeeper lady was given five years probation for that.

I mean shit, guy, what’s wrong with you?

This isn’t appropriate for GD, Koxinga. The rule here is “attack the argument, not the poster.” Keep this kind of thing in the Pit in the future.

[Koxinga]

All right, sorry about that.

[Kobal2]

@Martin_Hyde

I think they were actually, and that was a very common thing. If you read the history of any European country, you will see many, many, many riots where the rioters essentially wanted to fuck things up and get the King’s attention. It was exceptionally rare for most of European history for these riots to have designs on removing a person from the throne. Instead they were a means of the lower classes to attack a system with enough vigor to get the attention of the powerful elites that ran things. There is a difference between wanting to act against the King in order to get his attention versus trying to actually remove him from the throne. For whatever reason many disaffected peasants up until the 19th century tended to believe their Kings were intrinsically good, and that bad policies were typically the result of bad ministers and that if they rioted hard enough the King would see the poor quality of the ministers who had messed things up and replace them.

When you have no real political power, only through violence can you express dissatisfaction, and I think that was what the Parisians were doing. It wasn’t until fairly late in the game that people decided they really wanted the King gone for real. Until the King tried to flee the country I think there was still a better than not chance that Louis XVI could have remained as a constitutional monarch if he had wanted. Instead he refused to legitimately support any compromise, begrudgingly going along with what he felt he had to and then essentially committing treason against the country the moment he got a chance (of course under the law he probably was incapable of committing treason since he was the King.)

Yes, I said that (or I tried to, though my point might have been lost in my usual meanderings). The blokes who took the Bastille* weren’t* true believers ready to die for a cause, and they weren’t in it to change the regime. They just wanted to scream loud enough to be heard from up the ivory tower. And it’s only later, when the smoke cleared that they were hit by the collective realization that went something like:

• WOOOOO !
• woooooo ?
• um.. maybe we took things a little too far, man
• Oh crap. We’re going to get in real trouble over this, aren’t we ?
• unless…
• Fuck it. In for a penny, in for a pound.

that they turned from revolting to revolutionizing. Different line of work altogether, even though the latter is always nested in the former.

To get back to the original discussion, I have no idea what’s going on in London right now, whether it’s just a bunch of chavs tearing things up, a Greek-style political protest, just general chaos sparking from a tiny local beef and spreading on its own momentum or any other kind of riot. But any of those has the potential to turn into an Historical Event, if it goes on long and far enough.
Few of them do, but each one of them could have.

In the hypothetical we are positing a store owner who has barricaded himself inside his store to defend against a riot. For someone to do such a thing means they more or less must be willing to eventually have their store stormed and themselves killed going out in a blaze of glory, otherwise why would they even be there at all? It isn’t like most shopkeepers live in their store, if they were especially concerned about their safety they wouldn’t be there in the first place.

The rioters on the other hand are going to be opportunist looters. You don’t loot a store with an armed gunman inside of it when there are dozens of other stores in walking distance with no one inside of them at all to stop you.

Well, not if we’re positing a Bastille Day hypothetical, where the crowd went for the national guard armouries specifically to get themselves strapped in preparation for the next event.

Of course, in Americafuckyeah, I presume looters and rioters would already come with their own handguns. But if the crowd suddenly decided to go from revolting to revolutionizing, then they would need ways to fight the State for real. Which means they’d want more, bigger, better guns all around. Ammo too. And that would mean either raiding one gun store after the other, or the local National Guard/Army/Air Force base.

Which option seems easier to you ? The at-best-one-guy-per-store civilian one, or the whole base full of trained killers one ?

If anything is outlandish it is perhaps the hypothetical gun store owner being there in the first place, and while that has happened, it has been rare precisely because I think most store owners will trade their merchandise for their lives and aren’t willing to lose their lives to defend their property.

Bingo.

[QUOTE=Qin Shi Huangdi]
Back then crime was at an all-time high, there was far more lack of understanding on all sides, and so on and so on.
[/QUOTE]

You might argue that the socio/ethno/economical classes understand each other better these days, what with the miracle of the Internet, TV and such. Nobody gives much more of a shit now that they did back then though. Fiends are still fiending, pushers are still slinging, cops are still busting heads, ghetto’s still the ghetto, people still can’t get out of it and City Hall is still looking the other way and pretending it’s happening on another planet if it happens at all.
And everybody who’s not in the ghetto is OK with that because frankly my dear, who gives a damn ?

[Omar_Little]

@Der_Trihs

Machinegunning a bunch of unarmed brown guys from an attack helicopter is more our style.

This isn’t the first time I have heard the assassination of Osama Bin Laden described in this manner.

[Bisected8]

@Broomstick

Untrue - there was a man shot in a car in Croydon a few days ago who has died, and last night three young men apparently part of a neighborhood defense group were run over by a car. Those are just the ones I, an American with nothing more than crappy TV and internet coverage, are aware of, there might be more. This riot has caused deaths along with numerous injuries.

Actually those have been the only fatalities so far. I think the fact that only 4 people have died (one of which was shot by someone who had to be a criminal by definition, the other 3 of which were part of a small crowd that was attacked by a lunatic in a car who may have already been arrested) over 4 days of unrest speaks for itself.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

@Koxinga

Which is exactly what the 51 year old Korean shopkeeper thought she was doing.

Well I think its pretty obvious if there is a mob outside your store smashing windows and taking any merchandise they see.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

No, the US has avoided any riots for the last twenty years since Rodney King. The US is socially stable despite its economic woes.

Not to mention the US will act far more decisively to suppress rioting.

That’s sweet.

@Der_Trihs

Americans are typically submissive and passive, they can be abused and exploited without resistance to a far greater extent than the citizens of most other countries. Usually, they blame themselves rather than whoever is victimizing them.

That is also sweet.

[Martin_Hyde]

@Koxinga

You make me sick sometimes Curtis. Here’s the reason the Korean American community feared they’d come under attack: a 51 year old Korean shopkeeper lady had shot an innocent black teenage girl in the back of the head just two weeks before the Rodney King incident. Korean shopkeeper lady was given five years probation for that.

I mean shit, guy, what’s wrong with you?

I’m not sure I’m following you very well here. Are you saying the Korean-American shop owners were essentially in the wrong during the Rodney King riots? Or am I just not reading you right?

[Broomstick]

@Kobal2

Of course, in Americafuckyeah, I presume looters and rioters would already come with their own handguns. But if the crowd suddenly decided to go from revolting to revolutionizing, then they would need ways to fight the State for real. Which means they’d want more, bigger, better guns all around. Ammo too. And that would mean either raiding one gun store after the other, or the local National Guard/Army/Air Force base.

Historically, even with the availability of fire arms in the US, riots have typically stuck mostly with rocks, sticks, bottles, and other such weapons of opportunity. It’s not that guns never appear, they’re just not that common.

However, the are exceptions. There have been mob attacks on military armories in the past. During the 1967 Detroit Riot over 2500 guns were looted from shops in the city, and 40 Federal troops spent most of a day pinned down by amateur civilian snipers. Sure, the Feds and the National Guard won in the end, but it really was a brutal couple of days of gunfighting there.

I do find it ironic that the West cheered the “Arab Spring” and the oppressed and poor rising up in the Middle East, but pitch a fit when their own downtrodden hold a riot. After all, Western democracies couldn’t possibly have flaws that might lead to rights, given the right spark…

Time for everyone to wake up and smell the coffee. Time are hard, the ones on the bottom are getting squeezed, and some of them now feel the need to push back. We can either get in a mutual shoving match, with escalating violence on both sides (which I expect will be the outcome) or actually try to solve the current problems.

Naturally, we have to get the current situation under control first, but what will be really telling is what happens after the last hooligan is arrested, the last fire put out, and the last broken window boarded up. What happens then determines if there is an aberration or if we get to do it all over again in the near future.

[Koxinga]

@Martin_Hyde

I’m not sure I’m following you very well here. Are you saying the Korean-American shop owners were essentially in the wrong during the Rodney King riots? Or am I just not reading you right?

I mean it was a sad situation all around, that was initially touched off by an innocent girl’s death. I’m not saying the shop owners* were wrong necessarily, but multiple at the situation is kind of galling. Violence begetting violence and all that. There might be some incidents of justified self defense in, say, Ulster, but in view of the overall situation I wouldn’t go high-fiving about any of it.

*in the later riot, not the initial incident.