A gun in every house is a must

[The Two Jerseys]

And have yet to be subdued by an industrial nation.

An invasion is not domestic tyranny.

A far more apt comparison would be the Great Soviet Purge of 1937, where millions of guns did diddly squat to prevent Stalin from purging the Red Army and quietly taking away thousands of heavily armed officers and soldiers to be interned or shot.

Not even attempting to start a car is not proof that it won't run.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

Military structures generally only revolt when their own leadership do. Soldiers are trained to follow orders above all else.

So if soldiers are so loyal to their generals, why didn’t the Red Army’s leadership revolt? It wasn’t like it was just the lower ranks that were getting purged in 1937. The majority of the army’s top leadership was purged. The average general had poorer odds of surviving the year than the average private.

Organising a resistance against a stable state from territory pretty firmly administered by said state is a complete nonstarter to begin with, that’s why.

[Adamede]

Wars ugly, the world more so, and tyranny the standard for civilization.

Yeah, but you told me I could protect myself from the modern industrial state by owning a gun. Being able to shoot an agent of the state is not the same as protecting myself; an AR-15 isn't really going to help me survive a 155mm fragmentation shell.

No, I told you you could fight it with a gun. You can fight it with a lot of other things as well. Asymmetrical warfare has been a thing for a long time for a reason.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Wars ugly, the world more so, and tyranny the standard for civilization.

Yeah, but you told me I could protect myself from the modern industrial state by owning a gun. Being able to shoot an agent of the state is not the same as protecting myself; an AR-15 isn't really going to help me survive a 155mm fragmentation shell.

Living in Seattle, however, will protect you from that shell. One thing the Iraqi insurgents mastered was operating from civilian dense areas that negated the most overwhelming armaments because of rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention and whatnot.

[Lura]

Gun Control doesn't work though. We had a gun buyback and it just left guns in the hands of criminal gangs. However forcing people to own guns is just as bad as taking it away from them.

If you're from New Zealand, then I, as an Australian, find it very hard to believe that you could think this. New Zealand has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world, so I can't see New Zealand's policy as anything less than a great success. We in Australia did a gun buyback in the 90s after a mass shooting (USA, take notes) and after that gun crime fell quite dramatically.

As for the OP, I don't know who in their right mind would ever think that giving guns to every rando in the country could ever be a good idea. "What could go wrong???"

[Adamede]

Military structures generally only revolt when their own leadership do. Soldiers are trained to follow orders above all else.

So if soldiers are so loyal to their generals, why didn’t the Red Army’s leadership revolt? It wasn’t like it was just the lower ranks that were getting purged in 1937. The majority of the army’s top leadership was purged. The average general had poorer odds of surviving the year than the average private.

Because there was no one willing to organize such a revolt. The majority of people getting purged was the officer corp and their more concerned with keeping on Stalin’s good side ultimately.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Gun Control doesn't work though. We had a gun buyback and it just left guns in the hands of criminal gangs. However forcing people to own guns is just as bad as taking it away from them.

If you're from New Zealand, then I, as an Australian, find it very hard to believe that you could think this. New Zealand has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world, so I can't see New Zealand's policy as anything less than a great success. We in Australia did a gun buyback in the 90s after a mass shooting (USA, take notes) and after that gun crime fell quite dramatically.

As for the OP, I don't know who in their right mind would ever think that giving guns to every rando in the country could ever be a good idea. "What could go wrong???"

Australia's gun crime had been falling since the 1960's and actually spiked for several years after you passed the NFA. It didn't stop massacres either, there have been 38 since 1996.

[Bombadil]

I was watching a documentary the other day where it was noted if France and the UK had sent armed forces to stop Hitler's march into the Rheinland he had given orders for his army to retreat. That is if you let nations get away with increase after increase of belligerent behaviour then you're going to end up with war and violence.

Ideally HK is the stepping stone to ward off any attack on Taiwan, but frankly I don't know.. I'm just pretty sure that arming HK would not be the correct solution.

In fact the remarkably few deaths throughout the protests is pretty much down to a lack of gun culture in HK.

Early 21st Century China isn’t really in a comparable geopolitical position to early 20th century Nazi Germany.

My point is that China's in this position because the world has consistently let it egregiously break international law again and again so as not to 'harm relations'. Frankly everyone should just go ahead and recognise Taiwan as an independent democratic country, it's absolutely ridiculous they pretend otherwise for economic reasons.

HK is fucked, no two ways about it, in 10 years it will be a predominately Mandarin speaking city.

Anyway, this is way off guns.. but guns would not have helped the situation here.

[Senkaku]

Yeah, but you told me I could protect myself from the modern industrial state by owning a gun. Being able to shoot an agent of the state is not the same as protecting myself; an AR-15 isn't really going to help me survive a 155mm fragmentation shell.

Living in Seattle, however, will protect you from that shell. One thing the Iraqi insurgents mastered was operating from civilian dense areas that negated the most overwhelming armaments because of rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention and whatnot.

I mean, by the time we get to using howitzers against people stateside, I'm pretty sure qualms about shelling civilian populations will be fading rapidly. If I'm following Adamede's suggestion to protect myself by joining an asymmetric insurgency, and it's doing well enough that I haven't died, then we'll probably be looking at Vietnam-style recon-by-fire in not too long.

[Adamede]

Gun Control doesn't work though. We had a gun buyback and it just left guns in the hands of criminal gangs. However forcing people to own guns is just as bad as taking it away from them.

If you're from New Zealand, then I, as an Australian, find it very hard to believe that you could think this. New Zealand has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world, so I can't see New Zealand's policy as anything less than a great success. We in Australia did a gun buyback in the 90s after a mass shooting (USA, take notes) and after that gun crime fell quite dramatically.

As for the OP, I don't know who in their right mind would ever think that giving guns to every rando in the country could ever be a good idea. "What could go wrong???"

NZ had low crime rates before and after the ban. And in neither case did the buyback get the majority of the recently banned guns iirc.

[The Disorder]

3D printers exist. Arguments about what 'should' happen have been rendered completely invalid.

3D printers are likely to do to gun control what electricity did to kerosene lighting.

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

Because there was no one willing to organize such a revolt. The majority of people getting purged was the officer corp and their more concerned with keeping on Stalin’s good side ultimately.

Indeed. And you think this will be different in the United States why...?

If there is a successful overthrow of a modern, industrialised state, it will be achieved by the defection of key insiders who already control the key administrative, financial, and military apparatus of that state, not by the armed resistance of lots of ordinary people like you or I.

[Senkaku]

So if soldiers are so loyal to their generals, why didn’t the Red Army’s leadership revolt? It wasn’t like it was just the lower ranks that were getting purged in 1937. The majority of the army’s top leadership was purged. The average general had poorer odds of surviving the year than the average private.

Because there was no one willing to organize such a revolt. The majority of people getting purged was the officer corp and their more concerned with keeping on Stalin’s good side ultimately.

This should maybe give you a hint that it's quite hard to oppose a centralized modern industrial state if it's trying to purge you politically, because the only effective means of stopping it is ultimately the military, and militaries are easy to decapitate if you're the one in charge of them. You just get rid of problem officers and install loyal subordinates in their place, and carry on with your other purging.

[The Two Jerseys]

Yeah, but you told me I could protect myself from the modern industrial state by owning a gun. Being able to shoot an agent of the state is not the same as protecting myself; an AR-15 isn't really going to help me survive a 155mm fragmentation shell.

Living in Seattle, however, will protect you from that shell. One thing the Iraqi insurgents mastered was operating from civilian dense areas that negated the most overwhelming armaments because of rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention and whatnot.

Modern industrial states will always put down an armed insurrection^*. *Provided that literally everything they do in the process is a war crime.

[Cannot think of a name]

When your hobby is so shit that it requires that I partake in it in order for you to enjoy it, it's time to evaluate some shit.

I'm not a 'no guns nowhere' cat, I get that guns can be fun. I've been shooting, I kinda get it and even if I didn't whatever, I don't have to enjoy everything. But police your fucking hobby, man, or others will police it for you. Wally Parks figured that out, so can you.

[Adamede]

Living in Seattle, however, will protect you from that shell. One thing the Iraqi insurgents mastered was operating from civilian dense areas that negated the most overwhelming armaments because of rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention and whatnot.

I mean, by the time we get to using howitzers against people stateside, I'm pretty sure qualms about shelling civilian populations will be fading rapidly. If I'm following Adamede's suggestion to protect myself by joining an asymmetric insurgency, and it's doing well enough that I haven't died, then we'll probably be looking at Vietnam-style recon-by-fire in not too long.

Don’t put words in my mouth dude.

[Adamede]

Because there was no one willing to organize such a revolt. The majority of people getting purged was the officer corp and their more concerned with keeping on Stalin’s good side ultimately.

This should maybe give you a hint that it's quite hard to oppose a centralized modern industrial state if it's trying to purge you politically, because the only effective means of stopping it is ultimately the military, and militaries are easy to decapitate if you're the one in charge of them. You just get rid of problem officers and install loyal subordinates in their place, and carry on with your other purging.

Insurgencies tend not to be as centralized as armies are. Autonomous cells and all that.

[A-Series-Of-Tubes]

Or democratization. If that sounds silly, did anyone imagine democratization of the Soviet Union in 1970?

Russia functionally didn't change much from democratization. Power just shifted from the party to the oligarchs, all the same basic methods are still used.

It's a fully crap democracy, I will grant. Also, losing most of the Republics came simultaneously, and a lot of them aren't democratic in any sense. But was THAT something Americans saw coming either?

Trying to "hold" Afghanistan (really they only held Kabul) was a big part of that. So perhaps that's the key to China. The Soviets assumed that pouring money into the military would keep morale up, and loyalty to the civilian government (the military being the common origin of coups, even in democracies). But after decades of that, all it took was a protracted losing war against guerrillas who wanted nothing more than the modest prize of Afghanistan to make the military restive.

Gorbachev was opposed to trying to hold/invade Afghanistan. He was probably lucky to survive being a dissident on that, and so history sometimes turns on small things. Without Gorbachev becoming General Secretary (then some other role, I forget), the military may have been tasked with a state-on-state invasion, kicking off a much bigger war. Or it may have rebelled. Remember the tipping-point of the Russian Revolution itself, was the appearance the Navy was on the side of the Bolsheviks.

Gorbachev's greatest mistake was thinking Yeltsin had the military on his side, and allowing him to take over. All the nepotism and corporatism and corruption began with Yeltsin, a drunken fool who did whatever the money told him to.

[Senkaku]

This should maybe give you a hint that it's quite hard to oppose a centralized modern industrial state if it's trying to purge you politically, because the only effective means of stopping it is ultimately the military, and militaries are easy to decapitate if you're the one in charge of them. You just get rid of problem officers and install loyal subordinates in their place, and carry on with your other purging.

Insurgencies tend not to be as centralized as armies are. Autonomous cells and all that.

Which might be fine in South Vietnam or Algeria or early-mid-1800s France, but tends to work a little less in an urbanized digital panopticon like, say, 21st-century Japan or Britain

Terrorism and insurgencies are very different from actual revolutions and you and others have been proposing gun ownership on the basis that it makes the latter possible, not the former, because "take genuinely appalling losses for a couple decades before everyone gets sick of it and agrees to leave each other alone again" is not an appealing model of change to sell people and never has been

[Lura]

If you're from New Zealand, then I, as an Australian, find it very hard to believe that you could think this. New Zealand has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world, so I can't see New Zealand's policy as anything less than a great success. We in Australia did a gun buyback in the 90s after a mass shooting (USA, take notes) and after that gun crime fell quite dramatically.

As for the OP, I don't know who in their right mind would ever think that giving guns to every rando in the country could ever be a good idea. "What could go wrong???"

Australia's gun crime had been falling since the 1960's and actually spiked for several years after you passed the NFA. It didn't stop massacres either, there have been 38 since 1996.

Wow, a whole 38 in 23 years. I didn't say the buyback totally eliminated gun crime, only that it dramatically reduced it. Over there in the United States you have 38 massacres every month, and probably more than that. I think 38 in 23 years is pretty low when you look at how often it happens over there where almost everyone is armed.

[Adamede]

Insurgencies tend not to be as centralized as armies are. Autonomous cells and all that.

Which might be fine in South Vietnam or Algeria or early-mid-1800s France, but tends to work a little less in an urbanized digital panopticon like, say, 21st-century Japan or Britain

Terrorism and insurgencies are very different from actual revolutions and you and others have been proposing gun ownership on the basis that it makes the latter possible, not the former, because "take genuinely appalling losses for a couple decades before everyone gets sick of it and agrees to leave each other alone again" is not an appealing model of change to sell people and never has been

No it hasn’t. That’s why I tend not to advocate for violence. I mean actual organized revolutions as you so call them rarely turn out well either.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Australia's gun crime had been falling since the 1960's and actually spiked for several years after you passed the NFA. It didn't stop massacres either, there have been 38 since 1996.

Wow, a whole 38 in 23 years. I didn't say the buyback totally eliminated gun crime, only that it dramatically reduced it. Over there in the United States you have 38 massacres every month, and probably more than that. I think 38 in 23 years is pretty low when you look at how often it happens over there where almost everyone is armed.

There is quite literally no evidence it dramatically reduced it. I even made a neat little post about it.

[Adamede]

Australia's gun crime had been falling since the 1960's and actually spiked for several years after you passed the NFA. It didn't stop massacres either, there have been 38 since 1996.

Wow, a whole 38 in 23 years. I didn't say the buyback totally eliminated gun crime, only that it dramatically reduced it. Over there in the United States you have 38 massacres every month, and probably more than that. I think 38 in 23 years is pretty low when you look at how often it happens over there where almost everyone is armed.

Way to miss the forest for the trees.

[Senkaku]

Which might be fine in South Vietnam or Algeria or early-mid-1800s France, but tends to work a little less in an urbanized digital panopticon like, say, 21st-century Japan or Britain

Terrorism and insurgencies are very different from actual revolutions and you and others have been proposing gun ownership on the basis that it makes the latter possible, not the former, because "take genuinely appalling losses for a couple decades before everyone gets sick of it and agrees to leave each other alone again" is not an appealing model of change to sell people and never has been

No it hasn’t. That’s why I tend not to advocate for violence. I mean actual organized revolutions as you so call them rarely turn out well either.

So if insurgencies are invariably terrible, and actual revolutions are usually also terrible, and owning a gun is unlikely to let you do anything but make a very poor attempt at the former, remind me again why any of us civilian types need a personal arsenal, except for sport or if our entire village sustains itself on migrating caribou?

[The Emerald Legion]

No it hasn’t. That’s why I tend not to advocate for violence. I mean actual organized revolutions as you so call them rarely turn out well either.

So if insurgencies are invariably terrible, and actual revolutions are usually also terrible, and owning a gun is unlikely to let you do anything but make a very poor attempt at the former, remind me again why any of us civilian types need a personal arsenal, except for sport or if our entire village sustains itself on migrating caribou?

Well, because being tyrannized over is generally worse than either. Insurgencies and revolutions are terrible, but not so terrible as being enslaved.