[quote]NinjaTreeFrog wrote:
Hey, thanks for joining the discussion and giving me something to chew on.
Aragorn wrote:
Going back a number of pages, but this needs an answer. Handguns are useful for self defense specifically because they are easily carried, instead of being strapped to your back or whatever. So while they may be used in crimes, they are the most effectual means of securing your own safety, which as Lifticus noted is an integral part of being free–if you must rely on someone else to ensure your autonomy, you’re not really free. You need the means yourself.
But more importantly–there are about 200 MILLION guns in the US, in private hands. It’s not like only 1% of the population owns guns. That’s 2/3rds of the entire US population. If even 10% of those guns were mobilized with intent, the government would have a bitch of a time. What are they going to do, carpet bomb their own cities to root out danger? Not likely. That would align every single other person who wasn’t part of the original revolt against them. The government is made accountable by the sheer mass of widespread use.
Regarding the gun ownership number you claim, I’ve read elsewhere that, although there may be 200 million guns in the US, there are only around 80 million gun owners. Now if those gun owners mobilized with intent, they only represent about 1/4 of the population. Also, I highly doubt all 80 million owners would see eye to eye on any political issue such that all of the owners would be united in taking down the government. So you have less than a quarter of the population armed and willing to violently overtake the government that was elected by the majority of it’s citizens.[/quote]
Fine, I’m not arguing, except to say that distributing firearms from citizen gun owners to motivated non-gun owning citizens would be extremely easy and almost impossible to prevent. That’s why I used the total guns instead of owners. Given a motivated gun owning population and at least a portion of outraged citizenry not owning a gun, the distribution would be extremely rapid, almost instant.
I posted the scenario simply as a counter argument to your position. I’m not in favor of revolution (in case any high strung leftist reads this post) and I don’t think this scenario is likely. But your argument that the citizens would be helpless against the tanks, planes, carriers, etc. of the gov’t is unsound on several levels. It is not at all inconceivable that the citizens could raise complete hell. They are not “helplessly outmatched” unless you take them and put them in a conventional war, which will never happen because it would be retarded. You don’t even need to “win” the guerrilla war, you just need to make it too inconvenient and costly for the gov’t to want to keep at it–that’s what happened in Vietnam, and a 100 other political/military examples throughout history, and it’s what the insurgents are attempting to do in Iraq. You don’t even need all 80 million to agree. Look at history for crying out loud. I took 20 million guns, which could average to say 8 million gun owners. That’s still a TON of people, all hidden and spread through out states and cities. Iraq–not even most of the population is for the insurgents, but they’re still giving us big problems.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Sure, in any squad level firefight, or in straight “conventional” combat, the US gov’t owns. But the point is that warfare of that type is not conventional, it is asymmetric. Look at how much trouble the world’s foremost military power is having with a few thousand insurgents and cave rats in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now multiply that by 1 million.
When I multiply a few thousand by 1 million, I get a few billion. Are you sure about this? (in jest, please don’t get offended.)[/quote]
I’m glad you clarified you were joking. I was indeed using hyperbole.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
FYI—it worked in the American Revolution too. Frontiersmen used then unconventional tactics to fight effectively against the worlds most well trained, well equipped army of the century…and look what it got us.
The mistake you make and everyone else that argues this makes is that you assume the citizens and the tyrannical gov’t in this scenario will meet on a battlefield and fight it out using tactics from WW2. That is patently false, and would be ridiculous.
In any case, I would argue that even if the sole reason guns were kept was to potentially control gov’t, it is a sufficient reason to keep free and widespread gun ownership. As it stands now, that is NOT the sole reason we guarantee the freedom in the 2nd Amendment, but it is a sufficient one.
But seriously, this brings up an important issue. If the 80 million gun owners statistic is approximately correct, then it seems to reason that the will of the majority is at risk from a minority of gun owners more so than their own government.[/quote]
Thats bullshit and you know it. 1) the 80 million gun owners does NOT assume that everyone who is not a gun owner is pro-gun control and anti-NRA. There are literally millions of people who don’t own guns but who also are pro-NRA or are gun advocates, who simply choose not to own one or cannot afford to buy one. I am also one of those currently.
- It has been said ad nauseum before, almost always from left leaning liberals, that the democratic process is meant to PROTECT the minority’s values, rights, and opinions from the–and I quote-- “tyranny of the majority”. But now that’s not true?? They can’t have it apply only when it applies to something they agree with. If you want to apply that line somewhere else, then you have to apply it here too. Besides, this particular issue has more explicit provision in both the Constitution and the early Founders’ writings than any of the issues for which the left wants to apply the “protection from tyranny of the majority” rule. You do not simply brush that aside because it is inconvenient.