WTF is wrong with America?

[TheButterZone]

I guess you learned that lesson from the poorly armed afgan taliban?   How many 50 cal are in private hands in the USA?    And "small" arms can be used to get into invader's depots and get better weapons.   And then people come help and give you more arms (just to eff with the invaders :  afganistan and russia, then USA)

Ehhh... I think you are missing the point.  The right to bear arms was much more paramount to the publics protection from their government when the Bill of Rights was drafted.  You know, before the government had nuclear warheads and multi-billion dollar destruction machines.

Even if you get your hands on that 50 cal, the captain in the F-16 will just laugh as he shoots a 60 cal at you from the air.

If the tyranny gets to you and you want to revolt, you will need a lot more than what you can legally get your hands on.   Of course, the only way anything would be succesful is if you could form a coup with some inside help, IE a general or admiral would be of significant strategic advantage.

BINGO!  I can't believe this is never part of the debate.  Guns are not at all a means of protection against an oppressive government in this day and age.  Nobody seems to want to point that out.  If you really care about the necessity of protecting yourself from oppressive governments, the argument you should be making is that everybody ought to be able to buy nukes, big bombs or at the very least anti-tank rocket launchers!  The whole argument about firearms simply is unrelated to the ability to protect one's self from oppression.  It honestly doesn't even matter whether or not that was the intention of the 2nd Amendment because very few people think everybody ought to have nukes or rocket launchers, so that point is moot to begin with.

Utter tosh fallacy.

1) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers do not operate themselves, and the humans operating them are vulnerable to small arms, so they carry their own small arms 2) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are crew-served and nearly always collateral damage-causing weapons, which means they are not covered by the 2A for individual keep and bear. However, when the government takes the cold civil war hot, the 2A will no longer matter as a legal defense against categorical infringements against the right to self-defense. People will either use whatever weapon they have or can loot to defend innocent lives (regardless of whether it is crew-served or not), or evil will win.

[luv2drnkbr]

Utter tosh fallacy.

1) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers do not operate themselves, and the humans operating them are vulnerable to small arms, so they carry their own small arms 2) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are crew-served and nearly always collateral damage-causing weapons, which means they are not covered by the 2A for individual keep and bear. However, when the government takes the cold civil war hot, the 2A will no longer matter as a legal defense against categorical infringements against the right to self-defense. People will either use whatever weapon they have or can loot to defend innocent lives (regardless of whether it is crew-served or not), or evil will win.

Please please tell me that's a joke and that you really do understand the blaring fallacy with that argument.

[chmod755]

no boobies on tv

This is actually the most important point and will lead to the downfall of the system.

Indeed. No boobs on TV, but people are allowed to have guns = civil war!

[TheButterZone]

Utter tosh fallacy.

1) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers do not operate themselves, and the humans operating them are vulnerable to small arms, so they carry their own small arms 2) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are crew-served and nearly always collateral damage-causing weapons, which means they are not covered by the 2A for individual keep and bear. However, when the government takes the cold civil war hot, the 2A will no longer matter as a legal defense against categorical infringements against the right to self-defense. People will either use whatever weapon they have or can loot to defend innocent lives (regardless of whether it is crew-served or not), or evil will win.

Please please tell me that's a joke and that you really do understand the blaring fallacy with that argument.

Oh, you're right, nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are all fucking controlled by Skynet, not humans. Nevermind! /ignore

[Badonkadonk]

Utter tosh fallacy.

1) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers do not operate themselves, and the humans operating them are vulnerable to small arms, so they carry their own small arms 2) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are crew-served and nearly always collateral damage-causing weapons, which means they are not covered by the 2A for individual keep and bear. However, when the government takes the cold civil war hot, the 2A will no longer matter as a legal defense against categorical infringements against the right to self-defense. People will either use whatever weapon they have or can loot to defend innocent lives (regardless of whether it is crew-served or not), or evil will win.

Please please tell me that's a joke and that you really do understand the blaring fallacy with that argument.

Oh, you're right, nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are all fucking controlled by Skynet, not humans. Nevermind! /ignore

did you get dropped on you`re head when u where a child?

[TheButterZone]

Utter tosh fallacy.

1) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers do not operate themselves, and the humans operating them are vulnerable to small arms, so they carry their own small arms 2) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are crew-served and nearly always collateral damage-causing weapons, which means they are not covered by the 2A for individual keep and bear. However, when the government takes the cold civil war hot, the 2A will no longer matter as a legal defense against categorical infringements against the right to self-defense. People will either use whatever weapon they have or can loot to defend innocent lives (regardless of whether it is crew-served or not), or evil will win.

Please please tell me that's a joke and that you really do understand the blaring fallacy with that argument.

Oh, you're right, nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are all fucking controlled by Skynet, not humans. Nevermind! /ignore

did you get dropped on you`re head when u where a child?

If that's the only way you can appreciate sarcasm and irony, sure I was.

[J603]

Utter tosh fallacy.

1) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers do not operate themselves, and the humans operating them are vulnerable to small arms, so they carry their own small arms 2) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are crew-served and nearly always collateral damage-causing weapons, which means they are not covered by the 2A for individual keep and bear. However, when the government takes the cold civil war hot, the 2A will no longer matter as a legal defense against categorical infringements against the right to self-defense. People will either use whatever weapon they have or can loot to defend innocent lives (regardless of whether it is crew-served or not), or evil will win.

Please please tell me that's a joke and that you really do understand the blaring fallacy with that argument.

Oh, you're right, nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are all fucking controlled by Skynet, not humans. Nevermind! /ignore

You are not shooting down an ICBM with small arms. You are not shooting down a cruise missile with small arms. You cannot destroy an M1 Abrams with small arms. In fact, good luck destroying an Abrams with anything but another Abrams. And yes, you could kill the operators... If they open up the door and let you in. Otherwise they'll just laugh at your second amendment and tear you apart.

The only heavy weapon you could take would be a rocket launcher. But that's useless against any of the other things listed.

[alephi]

I think we'd all be better off if the USA was simply fenced off from the rest of the world so they couldn't fuck up other countries any more.  No need to invade, I don't see anything I particularly want there.

[tvbcof]

You are not shooting down an ICBM with small arms. You are not shooting down a cruise missile with small arms. You cannot destroy an M1 Abrams with small arms. In fact, good luck destroying an Abrams with anything but another Abrams. And yes, you could kill the operators... If they open up the door and let you in. Otherwise they'll just laugh at your second amendment and tear you apart.

The only heavy weapon you could take would be a rocket launcher. But that's useless against any of the other things listed.

In a scenario where there was hot citizen/government combat, most of the citizens would fall victim to some video game player operating a drone from half way across the country.  The poor guy with the peashooter would be just poof.  gone.  No idea or warning about what hit them.

The main strength that the 2nd provides in terms of a policy at this point is the alienation it would cause to attempt to take it away.  It would be very messy.  A lot of people are really attached to their guns.  I am, though not nearly so much as a lot of my friends and neighbors.  I see the high rates of gun ownership in my area as a key element in keeping confrontational crime to a surprisingly low level in a part of the country where we have 2 or 3 law enforcement personnel covering 1500 square miles and much poverty.

We have a relatively strong contingent of tweakers and various 'white trash' who occasionally use firearms in their tussles among themselves, but absent guns (which a lot of them cannot legally own anyway) they would just use some other utensil.  Usually they do anyway.  The vast majority of citizens are 'normals' and taking firearms from them would create very legitimate psychological and quality of life issues since they would feel much more vulnerable to threats, and not without good reason.

Probably the only way to get firearms out of the hands of the citizenry of the US at this point would be to implement a forced urbanization campaign as was attempted in Vietnam.  At that point a computer program could do the drone strikes with simple logic, and it would be safer doe to 'friend or foe' decisions which humans often fuck up.  I mean 'authorized' personnel would be in the non-urban zones from time to time working on resource exploitation, infrastructure maintenance, etc.

[TheButterZone]

Utter tosh fallacy.

1) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers do not operate themselves, and the humans operating them are vulnerable to small arms, so they carry their own small arms 2) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are crew-served and nearly always collateral damage-causing weapons, which means they are not covered by the 2A for individual keep and bear. However, when the government takes the cold civil war hot, the 2A will no longer matter as a legal defense against categorical infringements against the right to self-defense. People will either use whatever weapon they have or can loot to defend innocent lives (regardless of whether it is crew-served or not), or evil will win.

Please please tell me that's a joke and that you really do understand the blaring fallacy with that argument.

Oh, you're right, nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are all fucking controlled by Skynet, not humans. Nevermind! /ignore

You are not shooting down an ICBM with small arms. You are not shooting down a cruise missile with small arms. You cannot destroy an M1 Abrams with small arms. In fact, good luck destroying an Abrams with anything but another Abrams. And yes, you could kill the operators... If they open up the door and let you in. Otherwise they'll just laugh at your second amendment and tear you apart.

The only heavy weapon you could take would be a rocket launcher. But that's useless against any of the other things listed.

Many seem to be implying all military and government and private contractors are traitors who will commit genocide without question, and that you can't get inside things (ETA: like tanks, and also "secure" facilities) from the outside.

Wrong, and wrong.

[luv2drnkbr]

Utter tosh fallacy.

1) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers do not operate themselves, and the humans operating them are vulnerable to small arms, so they carry their own small arms 2) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are crew-served and nearly always collateral damage-causing weapons, which means they are not covered by the 2A for individual keep and bear. However, when the government takes the cold civil war hot, the 2A will no longer matter as a legal defense against categorical infringements against the right to self-defense. People will either use whatever weapon they have or can loot to defend innocent lives (regardless of whether it is crew-served or not), or evil will win.

Please please tell me that's a joke and that you really do understand the blaring fallacy with that argument.

Oh, you're right, nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are all fucking controlled by Skynet, not humans. Nevermind! /ignore

Ok well since you ARE that stupid, let me lay it out for you.  The more effective a weapon is, the less people required to use it and the less time it takes to use it in order to inflict damage.  The number of people and amount of time it takes to destroy a city with rocks is significantly higher than the manpower and effort required to do so with a nuke.  Thus, when the people have inferior weapons, the government can still exert control with far less effort and manpower, which negates the entire point of the people being able to resist tyranny with weaponry.

[tvbcof]

Many seem to be implying all military and government and private contractors are traitors who will commit genocide without question, and that you can't get inside things from the outside.

Wrong, and wrong.

Some people are capable and some are not.  We employ armies of mercenaries from all over the world and they have no qualms about murder for sport.  And we have a lot of people with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan who's brains are scrambled (literally and figuratively) to form a pool.

Ultimately no nation has ever had trouble finding manpower to commit atrocities domestically and the US would be no exception.  Even with appropriate indoctrination only a minority of citizen (and foreign-born mercenaries) would be capable so there needs to be a force multiplication factor but modern hardware and systems make that more possible now than probably at any time in the past.

Even though an armed citizenry is not an insurmountable problem for the imposition of martial law and what-not, it is still a nuisance and a complication.  Of the multitude of things I fool around with (cars, tractors, ladders, falling trees, etc) firearms are one of the least dangerous.  Simply put, they are simply not as big a problem as they are pumped up to be, and it is not unreasonable to hypothesize that one of the reasons for the anti-2nd amendment campaign is in anticipation of finding it desirable to control the population through more authoritarian means at some point on the horizon.

[TheButterZone]

What is referred to as "friendly fire" is not always just "oops, I hit a friendly", or "fuck yeah, I hit a 'friendly', because I am a traitor who loves betraying/killing people". It is quite possible that some incidents of "friendly fire" are committed by people who felt morally compelled to shoot friendlies to save innocents, but as the victor writes the history books, it is unlikely to learn of any who were justified in using violence when "the U.S. is always right" and anyone who disagrees is a "traitor" - if they even get any exposure at all and not just a rug-shuffling.

It's one thing to keep drone striking the fuck out of women, children, non-coms in the middle east, Pakistan, Yemen, but if I were a commander in the U.S., I'd be scared shitless that my subordinates would turn on me if I gave the order to do that in the U.S., because nationalism trumps "foreigners" and the "collateral damage" thereof. But, I guess that's why the CiC is trying to purge the ranks of anyone who would defy genocide orders, starting from the joint chiefs on down.

Think of the case of August Landmesser, albeit non-violent: http://twentytwowords.com/2012/02/13/a-lone-dockworker-refuses-to-raise-his-hand-in-the-nazi-salute-1936/ or stateside, KKK members who may have pointed arms against their own brothers in government, after coming to a place where they could not stand idly by the murder of non-whites.

[J603]

Utter tosh fallacy.

1) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers do not operate themselves, and the humans operating them are vulnerable to small arms, so they carry their own small arms 2) Nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are crew-served and nearly always collateral damage-causing weapons, which means they are not covered by the 2A for individual keep and bear. However, when the government takes the cold civil war hot, the 2A will no longer matter as a legal defense against categorical infringements against the right to self-defense. People will either use whatever weapon they have or can loot to defend innocent lives (regardless of whether it is crew-served or not), or evil will win.

Please please tell me that's a joke and that you really do understand the blaring fallacy with that argument.

Oh, you're right, nukes, big bombs, tanks, and rocket launchers are all fucking controlled by Skynet, not humans. Nevermind! /ignore

You are not shooting down an ICBM with small arms. You are not shooting down a cruise missile with small arms. You cannot destroy an M1 Abrams with small arms. In fact, good luck destroying an Abrams with anything but another Abrams. And yes, you could kill the operators... If they open up the door and let you in. Otherwise they'll just laugh at your second amendment and tear you apart.

The only heavy weapon you could take would be a rocket launcher. But that's useless against any of the other things listed.

Many seem to be implying all military and government and private contractors are traitors who will commit genocide without question, and that you can't get inside things from the outside.

Wrong, and wrong.

When did I imply that there would be a genocide? If there was a revolution, of course the government is going to fight back... It wouldn't be genocide, but they aren't going to send the rebels flowers and cookies.

And I assume that by the "inside things from the outside" you're talking about buying from contractors? Because contractors don't have access to the plans of the weapons they build most of the time. Instead each section of the factory has access to a small piece, and together they build the weapons or vehicles without knowing the entire blueprint.

[Rassah]

All you guys completely forgot one extremely important point: military stuff costs a shitton of money.

Even if it's just one guy who is able to operate a drone or a war machine, that drone/machine and the muscles and amp they fire cost a lot. That money has to come from somewhere.

A war requires the following cycle:

People have money > Government collects money through taxes > Money is given to soldiers and manufacturers of weapons/ammo > Repeat

If the government collecting money step is broken because people have small arms and shoot money collectors, the military will only be able to wage a war of vastly superior fire power until they run out of missiles and money to pay their soldiers. And no amount of tanks, drones, or nukes will be able to extract or create the wealth to fund them. All those things can do is destroy.

[jasinlee]

[crumbs]

All you guys completely forgot one extremely important point: military stuff costs a shitton of money.

Even if it's just one guy who is able to operate a drone or a war machine, that drone/machine and the muscles and amp they fire cost a lot. That money has to come from somewhere.

A war requires the following cycle:

People have money > Government collects money through taxes > Money is given to soldiers and manufacturers of weapons/ammo > Repeat

If the government collecting money step is broken because people have small arms and shoot money collectors, the military will only be able to wage a war of vastly superior fire power until they run out of missiles and money to pay their soldiers. And no amount of tanks, drones, or nukes will be able to extract or create the wealth to fund them. All those things can do is destroy.

There's a magical place where people do own small arms.   
It's called USA.
The lucky folks who live there don't shoot their tax men. 
Why not?
Because they mostly aren't batshit crazy is why.
Not even Walla Walla Washingtonians shoot their tax men.
Go figure.

[Rassah]

There's a magical place where people do own small arms.    
It's called USA.
The lucky folks who live there don't shoot their tax men.  
Why not?
Because they mostly aren't batshit crazy is why.

Huh... and here I thought it was because the folks who live there are not at war with their government. Silly me.

[tvbcof]

There's a magical place where people do own small arms.   
It's called USA.
The lucky folks who live there don't shoot their tax men. 
Why not?
Because they mostly aren't batshit crazy is why.
Not even Walla Walla Washingtonians shoot their tax men.
Go figure.

Humptulips Washington on the other hand...not so sure about those guys.

[Rassah]

There's a magical place where people do own small arms.   
It's called USA.
The lucky folks who live there don't shoot their tax men. 
Why not?
Because they mostly aren't batshit crazy is why.
Not even Walla Walla Washingtonians shoot their tax men.
Go figure.

Humptulips Washington on the other hand...not so sure about those guys.

I feel stupid, because I forgot that the magical place called USA only came into existence because batshit crazy folk started shooting their tax men.