Isnt it ironic that, by and large, most of those who support the right to bear arms,for among other reasons, the right to resist government tyranny, are also those who have been most supportive of the infringements of civil liberties which the US have brought in over the last decade? Just a thought ...
You do realize that there's a difference between supporting the right to bear arms and being a right-wing Republican NRA gun nut, right?
Makes me laugh that the American Public believe that if the army came to get them that they would be able to stop them no matter how well armed you might be after all its the fricking army.
1. Bear in mind that that's just the most extreme worst-case-scenario people talk about and that that's hardly the only reason most of us support the right to bear arms. As I and others have noted, there are other reasons, including self-defense and hunting.
2. If that kind of extreme situation occurred, there's a good chance the army itself might split into multiple factions.
3. I rather think that the numerous civil wars occurring in the developing world are proof that not all countries' citizenries would just go along with whatever the government wanted. Some would, some wouldn't, and not every armed faction would even be fighting for liberal democracy. But the fact is that not every country's citizenry just rolls over for their governments.
4. The United States was born out of an armed citizens' revolt against the government and its army. Apartheid ended because of the African National Congress's armed struggle against the South African regime. The Republic of Ireland exists because the Irish people took up arms against the British. Don't underestimate the potential of the general populace to bring about large-scale social change, in part due to the exercise of the right to bear arms against tyrannical governments.
Trouble is with many of those examples it was less about citizens revolting than external political pressure.
In most of those examples, it was about the
combination of the armed revolt and other political factors.
The people back home in Britain didn't have the will to keep fighting against the rebels, if they had, well history might have been different. After all roughly 25% of Americans were on our side and I imagine the number would have grown if the tide had turned (fair weather revolutionairies!) add in the slaves to that number as well. If you hadn't had the support of the French, and if some of our generals had be vaguely competant the revolution would have ended there and then.
The revolution
might have ended there and then. But there's never a guarantee, and let's not pretend there was.
You're certainly correct in noting that the British government didn't really have the political will to keep fighting. And if there's an armed revolt, what makes you think the government would be able to maintain the will to keep up the fighting?
South Africa? I'd argue international sanctions played more of a part than the ANC.
And those international sanctions would never have happened had the ANC not been fighting the apartheid regime.
I'll give you Ireland, but offer Northern Ireland as a counterpoint. The IRA may have eventually brought the British government to the negotiating table, but they haven't got their avowed aim of a united Ireland, a fairer distribution of power but they've hardly "won".
I don't think Northern Ireland is a comparable example. In the ones I cited, the majority of the populace had withdrawn their support for the governments involved -- those regimes had lost the consent of the governed, in other words. That's why the armed revolt happened, and why they worked -- no reasonable person could argue that the populaces that those governments were trying to maintain power over were populaces that mostly supported those governments. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, more Northern Irish support being part of the U.K. than don't, even if a large minority do not.
Obviously, arms are not the single determining factor, and I'm not arguing they were. Armed revolt has to occur in a context of a general loss of political legitimacy by the ruling regime in order to work. But that doesn't mean that they're not a significant factor, either.
And I really don't get why the citizenry has to have their own guns to resist tyranny? Surely all gun owndership does is make you a target once Dictator X gets into office?
It can. Again, it really depends on the context. That's why I say it's not a determining factor as to whether or not a given rebellion will be successful, though it is a vital one whose absence can break an attempted rebellion.
For a country that's had a stable democracy for several centuries now, which is supposedly the most democratic and free nation in the world to still cling to a rule created when they were a fledgling poorly defended countryand the most deadly weapon was a single shot musket...I just can't get my head around it.
*shrugs* It's part of our political culture. We have a significant subculture of hunters, and we regard the use lethal force in self-defense as a right, and, because we were founded by an armed citizens' revolt, we protect the right to bear arms -- to greater or lesser degrees, depending on just how you want to interpret the Second Amendment -- for potential use in another such context that no one wants to actually see (and which only a few extremists among us think is probable).
And, as I noted above, we know full well that any attempt to suppress gun ownership, to create an anti-gun Prohibition, would be doomed to abject failure; we couldn't keep people from drinking, and we can't keep people from getting high. We'd never be able to keep people from buying guns if we tried. Prohibition just doesn't work.
And, frankly, like I said, guns are not the thing that causes the severe violence that plagues American culture. Canada has similar rates of gun ownership per capita, and they don't have nearly the kind of gun violence problems America does. America suffers from an epidemic of gun violence because we have a classist, fear-based, unegalitarian culture.
(And I think it's fascinating the way no one criticizes Canada for
their guns the way they do America.)
I do wonder if anything will ever make the American people change, and I don't think it will. Two nuts massacring people in the UK was enough, especially so given that the victims of Dunblane were children, but no matter what happens in American, no matter how many innocents die, it never seems enough. Is there ever likely to be a tipping point? Especially given how much sway the NRA lobby posesses. That's a genuine question I'd be interested in knowing the answer to. Is there any incident that might change the playing field?
No. Because, as I said, guns are not the problem; an unegalitarian, economically oppressive culture is the problem. Fix that, and gun ownership is a moot point. Again, I point to Canada. No one bitches about their guns, because Canadian culture doesn't lead to epidemics of gun violence.
The problem isn't
guns, the problem is the political culture in which the guns exist.
ETA:
For the record, I'm skeptical of the presumption that America is the freest country in the world. We may be in terms of government control of the citizenry -- though, given as how the government can tell you who you may or may not marry in all but 5 states and the Federal government can pretty much spy on you whenever it wants under the Patriot Act, I'm not sure I even accept
that premise -- BUT, we have a deeply unegalitarian economic culture that inhibits individual liberty in many ways by redistributing wealth to the top richest minority, under the guise of so-called "Libertarianism."
Gun violence is a symptom of a very unfree economic culture in which the elites dominate the masses to a far greater extent than they do in cultures with a smaller rich-poor gap and greater economic mobility.
) but the reverse seems to be that anyone, irrspective of mental health issues, is trustworthy enough to have a gun if he or she wants one? Libertarianism seems like a great idea till the guy next door steals your car and rapes your wife by virtue of having a bigger gun than you, or being a better shot!
