Here is the scenario: All civillian ownership of firearms is banned in the United States. Every civillian gun has been collected and melted down. ALL of them. Even hunting rifles are outlawed. Even security guards and private dicks are disarmed. The only people who can have guns are the police and the military, and even they have to turn their gun in at the end of their shift. And “Smart Gun” technology only allows them to fire their weapons when they have them.
Let’s pretend that it’s impossible to get a gun via the black market. Absolutely, positively, no one who isn’t a soldier or a cop has a gun of any kind in America. The liberal wet dream.
Then there is a Constitutional crisis. Both the President and Vice President are being investigated for high crimes and misdemenors. The VP resigns and the Prez is close to impeachment. Congress rushes through the Presidents nomination for a new VP. Afterward, the President, facing ultimate impeachment, resigns. Now the new VP is President.
The new president has to deal with a country in commotion.
Commotion because the economy is going to hell, unemployment is rampant, and inflation is making it impossible for those who still have jobs to afford anything, including feeding their hungry children. The public is also upset over an extremely unpopular war that has been going on in a foreign land for the last decade.
The new presidnt is being slammed by the media. He has to take action. And action he takes…
The President declares martial law. He suspends the Bill of Rights and he dismisses Congress. He calls in all American dollars, enforces curfews, cancels all pending elections, and nationalizes all industry. He also creates government control of the media. And seeing that many of those in the media (newspaper, magazines, television, movies, etc.) are Jewish, and they were against him, he strips all Jews of their citizenship.
They are sent to detention camps, and systematically executed. That’s right, jews are being rounded up and killed by the governement. the military is obeying the Presidents orders, and the United Nations is not about to step in.
Now the debate question to you idiot gun banners:
What are you going to do about it? How are you going to stop this?
How are you going to fight this tyranny without access to any firearms? Remember: There are no guns in private hands, and the cops/soldiers guns have “Smart Gun” technology, so stealing theirs is of no use. I want to know how a tyrannical government can be crushed without guns.
During this debate you may not deviate from my scenario.
“This will never happen in America” is not acceptable. Gerald Ford became President without a national election, under the exact same conditions I described, including the state of the union. It can and will happen again someday in history. Also, this country has imprisoned innocent citizens during both WW1 & WW2 simply because of their nationality. I want to know exactly how tyranny is supposed to be squashed without civillian firearms. Pitch forks? Butter knives? Sticks & stones? What’s the battle plan, gun banners? How do we topple a tyranical leader without guns?
Did you read my thread? The President has suspended elections. There are are no elections, therefore there are no voting booths, therefore there are no levers to press. The President has wiped his ass with your “Democracy”.
People, people, people! I know it’s saturday night and most of us are drunk, but please! Let’s read these threads carefully before we give our answers.
Gandhi did pretty well without guns. The people of various eastern European countries did it quite recently. As did the people of the Philippines, not just once, but twice.
Foreign military firearms? After all, it’s not like Hitler was brought down by some kind of German militia; he was brought down by the Red Army, with some assistance from the armies of the United States, Canada, Britain, the Free French, etc. Also note that most Germans were frankly pretty supportive of the guy from 1933 to at least 1939, and probably for some time thereafter; and by the time things started to go really sour, Hitler was at the top of a powerful war machine with several different secret police and security forces dedicated to his personal protection, such that even members of the German military were unable to assassinate him. And if you argue that your hypothetical American Hitler, unlike the real Hitler, doesn’t have any mass popular support from the get-go, then it’s unlikely he would be able to control the bureaucratic and military establishment of the U.S. government, and would thus be brought down by American military firearms. If President Palpatine does have popular support–at least at first–and the confidence of the military forces, then your civilians with personal firearms will be squashed like beetles, just like any self-styled militia which attempted armed insurrection against our allegedly evil UN-controlled federal government would be right now.
Similarly, the Communists were brought down by…well, I dunno, the vast, impersonal forces of history, or “Star Wars”, or something, but it wasn’t guys dressed in camo running around in the woods with their hunting rifles. I doubt if civilian resistance groups would have been able to make much headway against full-throated Stalinism–I seem to recall that there were armed resistance groups in places like Ukraine even into the '50’s, and they were all wiped out–and by the time the Soviet Empire had decayed enough to collapse, in most places large crowds of unarmed protestors were sufficient to bring about its demise. In the more resilient patches of Marxism-Leninism, like Romania, segments of the armed forces defected and provided the firepower.
I think you first need to provide a real example of an Evil Empire being toppled by civilians with firearms. I’m not saying there haven’t ever been such; I’m just saying try to ground the debate a little more firmly in historical realities.
"You may not deviate from my meaningless, ridiculous scenario, and you can’t say it will never happen, because I don’t want to lose this argument, so I will set the parameters so as to prevent anyone from being able to give a reasonable response. And if they do, I shall stick my fingers in my ears and sing, ‘La-la-la-la-la, Chuch Heston is still my president.’ "
I am anti-wholsesale gun control. Having said that, I cannot rally to your defense, because as JonScribe has pointed out so well, your scenario borders, no, it doesn’t border, it is ridiculous. You’ve set up the worst cliche-ridden, down-right mornoic scenario possible.
pkbites, please note my criticism is of your OP, and not yourself as a poster or human being.
Uh…you do live in the United states, don’t you? Quite a few civilians arms were used to topple the British, a very evil empire at the time. the American Revolution was half guerrilla warfare. And remember, king George may have enjoyed as much as a 66% popular backing rate among the colonists.
As far as a dictator having to have popular support to stay in power, not necessarily. The populace of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Red China only give the illusion of supporting the tyranny simply because to do otherwise would be to invite execution. And how would they do otherwise? All of those people (civillians anyway) were/are disarmed.
As for the “foreign intervention” solution, I covered that by saying the U.N. would do nothing. If tyranny against it’s own people were a reason to declare war on a nation the Soviets, Chinese, and Cubans would have been liberated decades ago. And depending on the help of other nations to insure your freedom is not being free at all. My scenario, as presented, is very real, and very possible, even probable in some point of American History. You want a ban on civillian gun ownership because of a sissy fear of crime? Fine! Then you tell me how to deal with domestic tyranny when it occures.
Nice job of getting those jabs in there when this is not the Pit.
Speaking of wet dreams, this seems like some sick little scenario you’ve dreamed up just to show us dumb ol’ liberals that we’re wrong and being led into a future of mind control and slavery.
Obviously us stupid liberals would just roll over and take it without making an attempt to stop any of this when we see it starting.
Seriously though, do you really think that towns of people that are armed will have the power to combat a military (that apparently supports the dictator :rolleyes: ) with tanks and the capability for air strikes? Your hunting rifles would not do any damage in the first place.
The people are the government. Guns or no guns this would not happen. But since I “can’t” say that, if it did happen and this was the case, you can kid yourself all you like, but your hand guns and hunting rifles wouldn’t do a lick of good. Of course, I suppose this would be a good argument for legalizing automatic weapons!
To be fair, PK, you do have the theory kinda skewed… the theory isn’t “If a tyrannical Government achieves power, guns can overthrow them”, it’s more along the lines of “An armed populace helps prevent a tyrannical Government from arising in the first place.”
Note that an armed populace isn’t the ONLY method of preventing tyranny… just one of them.
I gave a specific scenario. If there were no civillian firearms and a dictator took over, how would we fight him? spit if you don’t like the scenario. I don’t like it either, but it is very possible:
Gerald Ford become President under the EXACT conditions I spelled out. He was not elected to be President or Vice President. But because of a crooked administration a man became President without a national election. Who really knew who the heck Ford was before he became president. And the nation was in the exact shape I described: A bad economy, an unpopular war. What if we get another President the same way who is a bit more…power hungry? Now look at the things Another President did…Abraham Lincoln. He violated the Constitution 7 ways from Sunday. The President has the power and the means to become a dictator if he wants to. All I want to know is, without a gun how do you plan to fight it?
Why is my scenario so absurd? I’ll bet those 6 million dead Jews in Germany said “that’ll never happen”.
Sir, a great deal of the problem lies in the many times you said “Let’s pretend this,” or “Let’s pretend that.” Example: (not exact quotes): Let’s pretend ALL guns were melted down.
PK, ain’t gonna happend. Period. End of sentence.
But wait, under your rules, this absurd melting of every single weapon ever produced is a done deal. I can’t change this dumb fact, so I can’t debate you.
Or, this: Let’s pretend that you can’t get a gun on the black market.
PK, IT AIN"T FUCKING GONNA HAPPEN! But in your ridiculous scenario, it has happened. Can’t debate you.
You’ve set up stringent rules, as JonScribe noted, guaranteeing that you’re gonna win the debate.
AND I"M MORE OR LESS ON YOUR SIDE, PAL! Damn.
I’m outta here, will wait to be warned about my Pit language. And just the other day, I posted about how I never let words on the internet get to me. And here I let someone get to me, whom I would probably defend were his OP worth more than the pulp-Sci-Fi from the 50s wherein he surely ripped off this notion.
The point is, your initial scenario is pretty ahistorical, if not downright silly. If the evil dictator can command the armed forces of a modern superpower, then civilians with ordinary guns are just going to go out with a bit more of a bang than unarmed demonstrators. Now, if you can persuade the Canadians or somebody to slip the Resistance a few Stinger missiles, then in time they may be able to bring down the tyrant. However, while I am not a knee-jerk “ban all guns” type, and I’m even willing to concede that bans on “assault weapons” are probably largely cosmetic, I do draw the line at peacetime civilian ownership of anti-aircraft weaponry and similar hardware.
See, there are two possibilities:
(1) Your new President has not come to power as the head of a major political movement with a more or less explicit platform of “Let’s Kill All the Jews!” In this case, as soon as he starts decreeing stuff, the Vice President and the Cabinet get together, pursuant to Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, and declare “Yo! The new President is whack!” and they cart him off to the loony bin. If the Cabinet is too spineless to do this, the House of Represetatives impeaches him, and the Senate removes him from office.
(2) Your new President has come to power (by whatever more or less devious means) as the head of a major political movement with a more or less explicit platform of “Let’s Kill All the Jews!” He has presumably also won the support of the armed forces. Your civilians with guns are therefore going to be massacred in short order, unless perhaps they can enlist the support of foreign powers, and even then it’s going to be a long, bloody road ahead.
I realize it sounds namby-pamby of me, but I honestly think counting on “checks and balances” and the separation of powers (and armed forces which don’t have a tradition of running over large numbers of their fellow citizens with tanks) is really more practical than civilians stockpiling handguns (useless in an actual war) or major artillery (likely to cause worse problems than the hypothetical problem it’s supposed to prevent).
As to the British: Well, that wasn’t your scenario. You brought up Hitler and so forth. (Also, the 18th Century British were hardly a ruthless totalitarian “evil empire”, whatever problems may be inherent in colonial domination of one people by a government in which they have no representation.)
While guerrilla warfare certainly existed during the American Revolution, my understanding is that it did not predominate. Washington figured that the Brits had plenty of experience with this sort of activity during the French and Indian war. My understanding is that General C.L Lee disagreed with Washington on this issue.
At any rate, I think you need to show an example where guerrilla warfare prevailed, in the absence of any conventional forces. Remember, you ruled out foreign intervention. (Perhaps you may want to rule it back in.)
[sub]Calling ExTank, calling ExTank, come in, come in…[/sub]
I get scenarios a lot more ridiculous and unlikely than this all the time about Libertaria. The giant sentient squids who arise from the ocean to reclaim their land. The unspeakably psychotic man who ends up owning all the water on earth (evaporation has ceased). The neighbor who manages to buy up all the land surrounding you because the other neighbors have only mush between their ears.
Revolutions happen all the time. Republics have fallen before. Just answer his question.
Actually Lib you get pointed scenarios based on well-thought out consideratio of actual problems which you procede, rather like PK, to hand wave away with slogans.
One plausible way for a tyrannical gov’t to be overthrown after disarming the populace (why the hell is everyone caring so much about the HOW when that isn’t the focus of the question?) is to have a small group of Heroes[sub]TM[/sub] band together (one of them has a love interest, and this fuels his passion) and infiltrate the capitol, assassinate Mr. Bad Guy (after a really cool sword fight), and then disable his evil droid army by sending an 8-year-old-boy into space to destroy the International Droid Control Station.
Another way is to rely entirely on outside help… which wouldn’t do much good (against an army as powerful as America’s?!?) without some sort of inside help.
So basically you’d need a good chunk of the population dedicated to the downfall of said Evil Government. Without their weapons, it’d be a lot more difficult, but not necessarily impossible. Computer warfare, economic warfare, that sort of thing, could allow any Resistance[sub]TM[/sub] to arrange for assistance from outside sources.
SO… with much unnecessary bluster and blather about PK’s lack of storytelling creativity, the OP is finally properly addressed.
pkbites----
[list=A]
[li] Your debating style grows to resemble Jack Chick’s. Stop it.[/li][li]In this country, Money Talks. One or two wealthy & powerful men who distrusted or disliked our hypothetical Il Duce could cause his government a world of hurt.[/li][li]Sabotage is our friend. All good little Rebels say this three times every morning upon rising.[/li]Why are you scared of a dictatorship? All Americans could recognise it for what it was, & would resent it, giving rise to rebellion. Our current Corporate/Military/Industrial/Petroleum/Fiscal/Facist elite are potentially more frightening. You can’t fight 'em with guns, & the public [sub]bless 'em[/sub] just says DUUUUHH? when you try to talk about it.
