And those arguments failed to save the Roman Republic because…?
*Originally posted by MEBuckner *
Let’s trade insults:
The Native Americans didn’t have a weapons control policy - and they got slaughtered by an ‘evil’ invader. :rolleyes:
Why was the British Empire was so ‘evil’?
So according to you, a popular Government was overthrown by an armed minority. Sounds like evil terrorism to me. :rolleyes:
And your historical parallel(s) consist of a revolution to achieve ‘no taxation without representation’. You ignore the many quoted examples of repressive Governments collapsing without a shot being fired. Do you know anything about history outside America? (e.g. how Poland became independent of the Soviet Union without the use of private guns. Something to do with trade unions and popular support…)
The UK has a ban on gun ownership to avoid, amongst other things, school children being shot regularly.
(Note to rational posters: I’m just using the quality of argument of the OP).
As an actuary dealing with unusual risks, it’s my job to estimate the likelihood of unusual scenarios. E.g., I put the likelihood of of another Great Depression as 1 in 100, since we had one in the last 100 years. Of course, economists say that their level of expertise is better now, but that’s what they said in 1929, too.
If I were making book on the US being taken over by some tyrannical government, I’d give it some small non-zero probability. The reasons have been provided earlier in this thread. This sort of thing has happened to a number of democracies in the last century, e.g. Cuba, Chile, Germany.
Although the likelihood of such a thing happening in the US is very small, the potential harm would be enormous, so the overall risk is not trivial.
The OP’s scenario is one example of what the Founding Fathers had in mind, when they wrote the 2nd Amendment. I would like the pro-gun controlers to seriously wrestle with this question, since it’s a central point in the debate.
Well, I’m not an idiot gun banner, but exactly how is this president going to accomplish all this?? He dismisses Congress, they all go home meekly and quietly? He calls in American dollars and everbody hands them over? He cancels elections and everybody says OK?
How would he get soooo many people to blindly obey him before he has disolved the fabric of our society and seized control of a sympathetic military? Must be one charming and beguiling MoFo, eh?
pkbites: *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. *
snicker Er, you don’t think that his twenty-four years in the House of Representatives, including eighteen years as minority leader, provided a bit of a public record to evaluate him on? Or that the hearings on Ford’s nomination as VP following Agnew’s resignation, which were conducted by the Senate Rules Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, and his subsequent confirmation by both houses of Congress, provided a bit of legislative oversight of his rise to high executive office? Forgive me for interrupting your fantasies of a dark-horse-dictator putsch, but I don’t think the facts really bear you out on this one.
pk, you’ve backed yourself into a corner.
Normally, I’d defend someone like you, cause hell I’m a republican and I’m all for gun rights. But this is frickin rediculous.
You’re initial scenario is hiding something else underneath. You’re afraid that the liberals will overthrow the earth!!! Its quite simple actually. You can easilly prevent that from happening by going to the voting booth now and voting republican for everything. If the liberals remain a minority in Congress and you keep them out of the white house, you have nothing to worry about.
Another thing. you’ve given the president almost god like powers.
1.)To the best of my knowledge, he can’t fire Congress.
2.)he is under the system of Checks and Balances. If he does something stupid, he’ll get impeached.
3.)Congress has to ratify martial law.
4.)He also has the Supreme Court watching his ass. If he makes any errant laws, they’ll shoot them down.
You’re scenario would never happen. Now, I highly suggest you turn off the Sci-Fi channel and call your shrink.
I would have supported you, but dolts such as yourself make Moderate Republicans such as me, look bad.
<sarcasm>Oh god no!! Red China is invading!!! Hitler Numero 2 is in power!!! Head for the hills!!!</sarcasm>
I think people are ignoring the fact that, barring the sudden rise of an evil dictator, the OP set his hypothetical world in the way that would be required for the concept of gun-banning to work. In other words, the OP world is exactly what is needed if banning guns is to have any real effect on reducing crime.
People keep responding about the evil dictator. The evil dictator is really irrelevant here. The effective phrases in the OP are the ones about all guns being melted down and there being absolutely no black market or smuggling of guns. These two impossible situations are required for the banning of guns to have any effect on crime in the US. And some of the respondents are absolutely correct…they’re not going to happen. Which means that gun banning is an empty feel-good gesture.
But many, many people have said that already…
jayjay
Wouldn’t your OP be a better argument for private ownership of, say, tanks?
As Myrr21 eloquently put it, if the military is truly following the president’s orders and he decides to turn them on us, we’re pretty much boned. We can have all the small arms in the world, and we’re still up against rocket launchers, tanks, planes, bombs, chemical weapons, etc. Not to mention that the military would be much better trained with the same small arms (on the average) than the general populace.
If it were 1790 and a bunch of civilians with their hunting rifles had a shot in hell against the military, your argument makes a lot more sense. In 2001, we might as well fight back with pitchforks and butter knives.
Dr. J
Ah…well…actually, Congress couldn’t ratify martial law. The Supreme Court would strike any such thing down (at least any Supreme Court that is not openly extremely hostile to civil liberties…so you may want to be sure the judges that get appointed to it aren’t). There is no way in the American system for the bill of rights to be legally suspended, except by an amendment to the Constitution that would require Congess’s approval (2/3 majority in both chambers, I thought, although I could be wrong on that part) and the approval of the legislatures in 3/4 of the states.
As others have pointed out, the OP’s argument seems to be an argument for the expansion of the “right to bear arms” to include private ownership of tanks, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, and so forth, since the lack of these would not produce a very fair fight between the resistors and the government.
In summary, if you want to prevent this sort of extreme totalitarian takeover of the country (which seems pretty damn unlikely in any event), you would be more effective sending the most generous check you can to the ACLU than trying to fight against any sort of restrictions on gun ownership, smart-gun technology and the like. I’m sure the ACLU would be glad to put your money to good use fighting the more real and realistic threats to our freedoms.
I think the OP was written the way it was to focus respondents’ minds on the fact that to advocate the banning of guns should mean that the advocate is prepared to do without them under any circumstances.
I also think it’s been made pretty clear that a) there are means of protest, used in the past by figures such as Ghandi and King, which are successful and non-violent and b) using the guns which are legally available just now to fight a military dictatorship would be nothing more than a grand gesture.
I think b) is the interesting one. If you accept it, doesn’t it suggest that the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution is due for a rethink? If keeping and bearing arms won’t preserve liberty (or whatever the exact quote is) then the logic no longer applies.
Times change. Best to change with them
What, precisely what, does this statement have to do with…[list=A]
[li]The original post[/li][li]The premise of the OP[/li][li]Any, and I do mean any, of the responses[/li][li]The United States of America[/li][li]Private ownership of guns[/li][li]The price of beans in Boston or[/li][li]The temperature of spit in Wichita[/li][li]Anything else?[/li][/list]
The Romans never attempted to restrict the private ownership of weapons. In fact, at various periods, weapon ownership was required by law–a person had to turn out armed once a year as part of the militia to prove he was available to fight.
When Julius Caeser tried to become Emperor (he was never officially awarded that title in life, the first was his nephew) he ran into some quite heavily armed people. Happened during the Ides of March. You must have heard of it. It was in all the papers. :rolleyes:
They killed the Dictator, exactly as pk suggested they might.
Didn’t change a thing.
Started a civil war over who was gonna take over.
Most citizens stayed out of it & didn’t take sides. So when everybody was sick of the fighting, the Republic was dissolved anyway, & nobody said “boo”.
Ya see, boys–people had lost faith in the Roman Republic. It had become corrupt. So corrupt, that the average Joe couldn’t have cared less.
Guns won’t save America if America isn’t worth saving.
Get out there, register, & VOTE!
All the cap pistols in the world won’t stop a dictatorship if **apathy **takes control first.
flowbark:
:POOF: (roiling cloud of vapor) You rang? Your personal evil gun-genie awaits your command to slay. Or play. Or sit idly by and twiddle his thumbs in boredom until he goes away and checks his 401k.
DoctorJ:
It might, but have you seen the gas mileage estimates on those things? It would elevate the “gas pump drive away” problem to another level. Now, private ownership of Stingers and Anti-Tank Missiles…nah. Some idjit would accidentally shoot themselves with them, or blow up their neighbor’s house. Not a great idea.
To the OP: I seriously doubt the viability of the scenario as presented. However…
As far as the elimination or serious reduction of gun ownership, I can see such a state of affairs coming about gradually, over a period of years. Gradually tighter restrictions (after all, it’s just common sense gun control, right?) on firearms could lead to a drastically reduced right to keep and bear.
But it would take a major, MAJOR international incident (nuclear war, biological warfare, total global economic collapse) to even begin to allow the political scenario presented in the OP to have even a remote chance in hell of happening, IMHO.
No one man can sieze power in America today. Does anyone remember the semi-paniced alarm that ensued when General Alexander Haig, then Secretary of Sate, attempted to calm Americans and reassure them that the government was in good hands when he addressed the Nation after Reagan was shot in 81?
But as I have no crystal ball to divine the future, and having seen what partisan guerillas can do to modern military juggernauts, I am in partial agreement with the OP that widespread civilian ownership of firearms, even lever- and bolt-action hunting rifles, or pump-action shotguns, and revolvers, can certainly give any would be dictator, even one backed by a cabal of military leaders, serious pause.
But if he’s (she’s?) installed with broad popular support?
Forgetaboutit.
I see more threat to American’s individual liberty coming from the point raised by Bosda Di’Chi. People will give up guns because they don’t care; they’ll give up other rights in sucession as well, for the same reason. As long as there is Monday Night Football, Must-See-TV and ESPN1 & 2, a paycheck every two weeks, plenty of food at the grocery store and reasonable energy costs, most Americans probably would roll over unresisting if someone declared themselves Emperor and could make it stick.
Note: I don’t think that this MB is a representative cross-section of the American population.
I now declare myself the Godlike Administrator.
I am dismissing Tuba Diva, Ed Zotti. The assorted hacks who where formerly known as moderators are now my storm troopers. Any dissenting voices will immediately be banned.
FYI…I have also banned sock puppets. They no longer exist. When you are banned, you have to go away forever and can’t even come back to read the pages.
It’s my decree, so live with it.
From now on I require anyone posting on the SD to allow me access to their personal e-mail. I must approve all thoughts that come and go from the SD community.
I dare you to try and topple my new empire without sock puppets.
Pkbites, you really need a better argument. I’m sure if I think hard enough, I can come up with a scenario in which the only way that we can save ourselves from evil Martian invaders is for the president to go on TV dressed as Bozo the Clown and throw pies at the vice president. But nobody argues that we should have a secret stash of clown make-up and custard pies in the White House, just in case.
Every political issues has pros and cons. The fact that a certain position on a controversial issue has a potentially huge con might be relevent, but the extreme rarity of the situation you postulate negates its validity as an effective argument.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by pkbites *
**
Beware the oppression of Gerald Ford! He’s not just falling down stairs anymore! No, he is falling all over your rights and liberties!
Oh, you’re not scared of Jerry Ford? How about…
Abe Lincoln! He’s tall, he’s rangy, and now that rail he’s splitting is the rail of American liberty.
pkbites, thanks for the jokes. 'Cuz you are joking right?
[Kent Brockman]
I, for one, welcome our new overlord. Let me be the first to offer my services in rounding up the other posters to…um…toil in the underground sugar caves.
[/Kent Brockman]
Hell, man, screw the Martian invaders–I think lots of us would pay to see that now.
Why would one necessarily need guns to over throw the dictator? Just gather up some of the instructions for homemade bombs that are floating around the internet, find a few people who value glory over their own lives, and have them attempt to blow up the white house or where ever the guy is hiding out. It’d probably be more effective than taking pot shots at the guy, anyway.
You might be misinterpreting Livy. He said that, before the republic was established, “the right to bear arms had belonged solely to the patricians.” As the republic arose and plebeians were integrated into the army, he wrote that all men “capable of bearing arms were required to provide” them. This does not mean that everyone was required to have arms. A man too poor to afford arms simply was not let into the military.
This is what the American founders considered to be a militia. Richardson wrote
Revolutions by their nature are unpredictable and sometimes can stew for generations, as when the Roman Republic morphed into the Roman Empire.
PK merely offered a scenario, less improbable than many of those offered against Libertaria, by which America might become authoritarian and civil liberties suspended. Ridiculing his scenario as impossible merely lends it credibility as a testament that people can loose their vigilance against tyranny.
What reasons?
Perhaps you could also expand on your examples.
I thought a right-wing Government in Cuba (supported by US businesses) was overthrown by a popular revolution, using guns. The country has stayed an undemocratic one-party state ever since. (Is this a good or bad thing for you?)
I thought the elected Allende Government in Chile was overthrown by a CIA-backed right wing dictatorship. (Was this a good or bad thing for you?)
Germany has had a chequered history. Are you thinking of the rise to power of Hitler, or the overthrow of the East German satellite of the Soviet Union?
The US is a great country because of democracy, freedom of the press, freedom of information, freedom of worship etc.
Lack of gun control has nothing to do with it.
Over here in Europe, we have stable democracies with gun control, and they work well.
Note the common denominator.
If you want paradise where every male can have any weapon (and they overthrew a powerful evil empire!) try Afghanistan. :rolleyes:
I don’t think you guys are taking this seriously enough. I mean, if Palpatine can declare himself Emperor, ANYBODY can.