Rest of this screed about how stupid we all are for not agreeing with you deleted.
If you cannot tell if someone is obtuse or ignorant, then maybe it is a different possibility, and it is something that you are not seeing. You are the only one that is talking about gun nuts and bible thumpers or avatar, so it is not others that are bringing these things into the thread.
All of your examples are that of a foreign power going over to another country and imposing its rule upon them. That is only the very slightest bit relevant to when a domestic power oppresses its own citizens.
You are also assuming that all of these guns and citizens with these guns will be rising up against the oppressive govt, rather than joining it. That I do not see as a reasonable assumption at all.
Your “if only 1%” numbers mean nothing, as it still means that the other 99% are opposing that 1%. And sure, that 1% is bigger than the taliban, but the 99% is approximately 100 times bigger than even that.
This topic comes up often when I get into rambling political discussions with friends who have served or are currently serving in the military. Anecdotally, the opinions of these people usually tend towards supporting the idea that sufficiently-motivated guerrilla groups waging asymmetrical warfare against the US government could give them a really hard time. With the caveat that 1. they would have to be sufficiently organized, and 2. segments of the military itself would likely wind up on the opposing side. I’ve never heard any of these service members say, “oh, our military would totally mop the floor with them.” If I had to guess, it’s because their firsthand military experience leads them to believe that the military is actually a lot more disorganized and incompetent than the image that they’d like to project to the rest of the country and the world.
I don’t think that there’s any evidence that any such conflict will come to pass in the foreseeable future, though. Abstract ideas about government “tyranny” aren’t enough to make it happen. Feeling oppressed in your mind isn’t enough to get something like this to happen. People are going to have to start feeling it in their stomach. The prosperity and convenience of the American lifestyle that others have mentioned above, is the single biggest barrier to this kind of shit ever happening. But if it was removed, all bets are off. I agree with those who have said that nobody, no matter how extremist their views are, is going to sacrifice their comfortable existence to go setting off bombs and attacking the government in any organized way. But if access to food, water, electricity, and refrigeration are limited - for whatever reason - for large enough segments of the population, that’s when the rebellions will start.
It’s not that you aren’t agreeing with me. You and others seem incapable of even thinking about this stuff you are so locked into your preconceptions. Take your response here. You assume, based on gods what, that if 1% are fighting against something, that means 99% are for it. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to you that perhaps you’d only have a few percent that are committed for something (like freaking mowing down hundreds, thousands, 10’s of thousands or even millions of their fellow citizens…sure, all military will just be peachy doing that), and that the rest would fall somewhere in the middle or on the fence…or perhaps in completely different factions with different aims.
And just for the record, I’m NOT assuming all these guys would be ‘rising up against the oppressive govt, rather than joining it’…good grief, my whole point is that things wouldn’t be so cut and dried. You seem to have completely missed what I was getting at. :smack:
At any rate, it’s pointless. I answered the OP, knew it for what it was, another SDMB circle jerk about how stupid gun nuts are and that it would be another pile on.
No, we are capable of thinking about this stuff, we just aren’t agreeing with you.
I was using your numbers. Sorry about that. So, we can try this again. What percentage of people do you think will oppose this oppressive government, if it is not the 1% that you originally were going with?
It has occured to me. I was using your numbers. One of the things about oppressive regimes is that there really is not minor resistance. It really is obedience or rebellion. Maybe it is hidden rebellion, where you act obedient, but help the rebels, but there is no falling somewhere in the middle of being on the fence, the oppressive governments do not allow that.
And you think that the military will have a problem with enforcing an oppressive regime against it citizens? I’m sure there are many throughout history who were very surprised when they found out that it would. As far as things not seeming to occur to people, it does not seem to occur to you that our military, like every military ever used to support an oppressive regime, would go along with it with only very minor defection.
It is possible that I missed what you were getting at. I never said things would be cut and dried, so that can’t be it. I took it to mean when you were talking about all the gun owners and all these guns that are in the hands of the populace, that that had some sort of relevance to your point. Now you say it doesn’t, so I will admit that I don’t know what you were getting at.
I am sorry that you have made the decision to see it that way. No one has said any of the things that you have accused here, but if you are so locked into your preconceptions, then you could be incapable of thinking about this stuff in any other way.
And that is supported by other parts of the constitution that make reference to the militia and how it is to be relied upon to respond to invasions and insurrections. The people’s militia that is enabled by the 2nd Amendment exists “for the security of a Free State” not as a permanent knife to the throat of the officials of the state. There is a people’s militia to face enemy action or an outbreak of civil disorder within the borders and to help *prevent *the overthrow of the republic, not to prevent a government from passing unpopular policies.
As **Stranger **said the Constitution and Federalist papers nowhere contemplate the republic recognizing a right to its own armed overthrow. From the framers’ time’s perspective, if the republic failed, then the right to renounce a government that no longer protects the rights of the governed, acts destructively against them, and will not grant peaceful remedies, flows from natural law (that was what the Declaration of Independence was all about, earlier cited). OTOH, I can’t believe their intention was that the rule of the land would be that officials should govern a certain way out of fear that random citizens would murder them if they failed to do so, rather than out of their best choice of considered policy and moral duty. That would be an example of the republic having failed.
Sure, one sentence summaries are not great history. That doesn’t change what I said.
Random scenarios:
The President starts to institute some authoritarian policies. These are widely unpopular, but he’s got dirt on a lot of people in Congress and is corruptly in bed with a lot of the rest, so they’re all on board for anything. The military and the populace are strictly against all of this. A few corrupt congressmen start getting popped and the military starts making some comments hinting at a coup.
The President has gained the support of half the military, but half opposes him. The half that is in opposition also has the entire armed populace on their side.
The President claims dictatorial rule. Everyone - Congress, the military, the people - ignores him, stays home, and elects a different government. They tell him, “Feel free to send some goons, I’ve got a gun.”
Have none of you ever read Mao’s “On Guerrilla Warfare?” Stand-up battles are stupid, and going after hard targets is even stupider. Any oppressive regime in this country would fold rather quickly if the people behind the regime were targeted. Burn the Hamptons to the ground and the 1% will quickly turn socialist as a survival strategy. No need to stand your ground. The true guerrilla blends in with the population.
Nobody is piling on you or calling you a gun nut, and only one poster has even made an intentionally derogatory use of the term "gun nut’ (Textual Innuendo). You have concocted this “circle jerk about how stupid gun nuts are” out of whole cloth and have whinged about being attacked for expressing an opinion and then turned around and insisted that everyone who does not agree with you as “deliberately obtuse” or ignorant.
For what it is worth, I used to be a ‘gun nut’. I was not as nutty as some who felt that their arsenal of weapons would protect them from the UN Army massing in salt mines under Lake Michigan or the New World Order that Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama was going to drop upon imminently, but I had a healthy collection of weapons, was a certified tactical firearms trainer, and studied military and insurgency tactics as a hobby. Then I worked with some people who go around training insurgents for a living and understood just how ineffectual any group of semi-trained unorganized ‘militia’ would be in relation to a modern military force trained in counterinsurgency tactics.
People, including yourself, keep making reference to the Afghan Taliban as an example of a small force of insurgents effectively beating back a large modern military effort which is true as far as it goes, but it is not at all the same scenario as a domestic insurrection against a tyrannical government. For one, the Taliban aren’t really trying to overthrow a government; they are just making it as costly and painful for Coalition forces to occupy and control areas of Afghanistan. They have not succeeded in driving out the Coalition in over fifteen years of fighting even if they’ve basically made it clear that the US and its allies will not be installing their own government with control over the country and that it will be able to exist without external support. The Taliban have also received substantial outside funding and support; they aren’t a bunch of towelhead hillbillies with bolt action rifles; they actually have access to modern man-portable weapons, and the terrain and culture favor them in strike-and-fade attacks. They are also willing to engage in suicide bombing, holding villages hostage, et cetera, in order to achieve their objectives.
Unless you are positing this unorganized, revolutionary militia with extensive external support and a willingness to do whatever damage necessary in order to overthrow or repulse an oppressive government, the analogy does not apply. And in any case, to the question of the o.p., the Second Amendment was never intended to support revolutionary action against the government who authored it; the intent was to ensure an armed population that could repulse armies of the then-more powerful foreign governments which still occupied North America (the British and French, as well as Spanish Florida and eventually Mexico and California), and their allies among the North American natives.
All of your scenarios sound like some version of an unstable dictatorial republic that I’d rather the United States not devolve into to begin with. While we have a party of people who have decided to systematically dismantle the democratic norms established over the last two hundred and thirty years, there is a lot of law and legal precedent that prevents them from doing so in a fell swoop, and I’d sooner rely on concerted legal and political action–which has kept all of Western Europe, including the country that ostensibly elected a megalomaniacal genocidist to run it leading to WWII–from turning to gross public corruption and extreme nationalism (even though Italy keeps trying for it, and Spain made a sincere push to maintain a more-or-less benevolent fascism until 1975).
Regardless, the intent of the Second Amendment is not for people to overthrow the government if they are unhappy with how it is being run. There is a wide array of checks and balances that the Founders argued bitterly over in order to assure that the armed resurrection option–which would invalidate any constitutional authority in any case–was not necessary. There are other reasons that the government should protect the rights of citizens to own firearms (within the same kind of reasonable boundaries that prevent someone from exercising their First Amendment rights in slandering someone or yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre) but that they exist to allow the citizenry to expunge an offensive administration by force is not among them.
The point, as near as I can recall, concerning the 1% is that this would be minimum. During the Revolutionary war, we were probably talking about 10% of the population being loyalist and, maybe, 15-20% being rebel. The rest were, basically, on the fence and undecided, depending on how the war was going. Assuming we are talking about a realistic scenario, with a fascist government attempting to consolidate power in our current structure, we’d probably be talking about similar numbers wrt the civilian population. As for the military, I’d guess it would be similar as well…something like 10% firmly loyalist (i.e. willing to basically snuff a bunch of civilians without qualm), 10-15% rebel (directly opposed to such measures) and the rest, basically, on the fence. You can do the math yourself what that would mean…frankly, I’m too drunk to even recall what those numbers would be or what the point of any of this is. If you have further questions, I’ll get back to you later.
IMO you’ve got an overly narrow view of the protection being claimed. It’s not protection for violent overthrow of the Constitutional government. It’s protection of the means needed in case that government is no longer in place. That part has to happen while the Constitutional government is still in power…unless the follow on government is really stupid.
As much as I love the supposed quote about the American military practicing chaos on a daily basis making us prepared for war, that wouldn’t be an accurate guess of my reasoning.
One of the reasons I’m less sure of a tyrannical regime win over insurgents is that counter-insurgency(COIN) is hard. It involves a lot of skills that limited utility on a battlefield against major powers. There’s just not much call for culturally aware junior leaders to be negotiating with civilian leadership on those types of battlefields. There was a common phrase in the Army as we dealt with two major COIN campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. COIN was described as the “graduate level of warfare.”
Force ratios and troop densities is the other major issue with assuming an easy win by the coutner-insurgent. Force ratios, in the research about outcomes of modern insurgencies, is the ratio of security forces to insurgents. Troop density is the ratio of security forces to the population. The research is mixed for statistical significance. There’s issues with assessing success, differing definitions of insurgencies, and, for force ratios, accurately assessing insurgent troop strengths. Still, there’s generally support for more troops increasing the odds of success (Duh! :D). US Security forces (combination of police and military) are extremely small to deal with a geographically broad-based insurgency that gets out of Phase I (using Mao’s three phases) if either force ratios or troop densities do matter. Ignoring that is the same as cherry-picking only the research that calls force ratio and troop density irrelevant while ignoring the other research.
There is also the question of what in detail either side would be able to achieve, in terms of keeping the daily business of civil government going, and the “hearts and minds” aspect - who do people turn to to get things fixed, disputes resolved, and so on?
Military power can only take you so far: if people are in fact deferring to the opinions and judgements of your opponents on such everyday matters, there’s not a lot you can do about it.
when talking about the Second Amendment where do the people on this board think the military fits into the discussion? It is made of of citizens with family and friends. IMO it’s presumptuous to think they would act any differently than people did during the Revolutionary war. Some would side with the government and some would not.
Or for that matter during the Civil War.
But going back to the thread title, one small question: when a current politician, at a time the republic is still ostensibly standing, talks trash about “Second Amendment solutions”, what are we supposed to understand they mean? Hunker down for when the black helos show up? Parade around blatantly open-carrying across the street from the unfavored ideology’s events? Arise, ye opressed? Self-appoint as Minutemen to provide unsolicited nonprofessional backup to LEAs? Veiledly or not so veiledly threaten violence if things go the “wrong” way? Buy more guns now?
Candidate Donald Trump, 2016:
Sharron Angle, failed R (kook wing) NV Senate candidate 2010:
I can’t remember if it was on this board or elsewhere, but I once read something to the effect of “Bomber pilots have families too, which is why this sort of thing [Second Amendment solutions] isn’t discussed in polite company.”
I think that in the end, the idea that of a second amendment solution is problematic in America because the gun culture in America aligns politically and culturally with the forces most likely to undermine democracy: the far right and white nationalists. Rather than protecting democracy, I think it is more likely that the NRA would serve as paramilitary thugs for the government similar to what we’ve seen in other authoritarian regimes. In Russia, for example, biker gangs are encouraged to beat up protesters and opponents of the regime.
It’s pretty obvious that when the NRA talks about 2nd amendment solutions, they picture white guys in Dockers killing the Obamas. The fact that no one in the NRA is talking about armed resistance in Georgia where there is a transparent and obvious attempt to prevent free and fair elections makes it clear that all this 2nd amendment talk is just white guy fantasies.
So, to be clear, the second amendment has nothing to do with killing (members of) the government of the USA because you disagree with what they are doing?
It is specifically to do with threats from without, or in a total breakdown of government?
The second Amendment has to do with the right of the people to keep and bear arms. One of the justifications for this is that a strong militia (composed of citizens who are so armed) is necessary for the security of a free state. The FF thought that citizens (white citizens) armed with their own weapons were a strong force in case of military crisis, either domestic or foreign, so they used that as one of the justifications for a personal right to keep and bear arms.
They certainly wouldn’t have condoned taking up arms against the government just because you disagreed with it, not when the political system was still intact and working, since you could use other means to change it. If you couldn’t, then the issue was, basically, your position wasn’t popular enough to gain the votes needed to make the changes you wanted. They did have some checks in place for minority views and parties, but essentially tough titty if you couldn’t drum up enough support on your view. The military, police and your fellow armed citizens would be a check on you trying to use force of arms instead of democracy to change something you didn’t agree with.