Assault Weapons Ban Introduced in Delaware; NJ's tough gun laws toughened more
116 replies, posted
I appreciate that this is a hot topic, but do keep an open mind. I certainly don't expect you to agree, but some measure of understanding would be nice. I absolutely don't fault you for wanting to place faith in the system. I find it admirable even. I just can't place that degree of faith when I know that history has shown corruption to win time and time again.
The US military is a massive and ridiculously dangerous monster. No doubt. It is also expensive as all hell and a logistical nightmare to deal with. High tech hardware comes with a cost. Now we have a hell of a logistics backbone, but frankly it is still a massive weakpoint.
Widespread revolt would see that bloated military have massive issues with getting supplies to where they need to be. Worse, as money dries up, the paychecks would stop. Inflation would happen and confidence in the market would collapse. Now for the nations that derive a lot of their income from natural resources, they can last a long while in this state. A decent oil income, a cheap military, and a willingness to slaughter your own people wholesale can keep you afloat for some time. The US government doesn't retain control over natural resources, and frankly the cost of our military far outstrips the ability of event sign ificant natural resource production to supply for.
We live and die by our market. Our government would last a while following a market collapse, but the reality is that it would be dead and not aware of it yet.
It is important to understand that it isn't about fighting the US military directly. That is suicide. Winning a conflict like this would be about disrupting logistics for both civilian and military goods. It would be about disrupting banks and other financial institutions.
Ah, yes, I forgot that little clause in the 2nd Amendment that says "unless the government has too much firepower".
Whether it's possible or not is irrelevant to the 2nd Amendment giving us a fighting chance.
15 to 10 per magazine
What the fuck is this, a balance patch?
And lol at the grenade launchers. Soon enough, some crazy guy with a knife will cut through 5 people at once, and the thing they come up with is a ban on RPGs.
I'm up for tougher gun laws, but this really is dumb. Then again, maybe tougher gun laws isn't the way to go.
You're missing the point. If you're going to claim increased violence in your country is the lesser of two evils compared to not being armed in case a revolt becomes necessary, you've got to show that being armed is necessary and sufficient to achieve this, on top of showing that such a scenario is probable enough to warrant prioritizing it over the actual, current victims.
It's not really a question of wanting to place faith in the system, it's that I haven't seen any reason to lack it to the point where you consider a violent revolt to be an inevitability.
I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say history has shown that "corruption wins" time and time again, especially since many nations haven't had to enact a violent revolt to safeguard their democracy.
That should be enough for you to consider that your doomsday scenario isn't a foregone conclusion, and that you should take inspiration from those nations and what they do right if you're that worried about tyranny creeping into your own government.
Yes, that is a viable strategy. Then again, the exact same result could be achieved without violence if you used your collective power as workers and contributors to society through social movements, instead of your firepower. Something as simple as a general workers' strike, or even a targeted strike on critical fields such as energy and transportation would be just as effective as sabotage and warfare would be, with the added benefit of causing dramatically fewer deaths. I just don't see how firearms are necessary to achieve the result you propose.
Why? There is no certainty in rebellion or war. We can show all the sufficiency in the world and still lose. And same true for the government.
Sufficient as in it can reasonably be achieved, not that it necessarily will be.
Again, that is incredibly impossible to tell until a conflict is over.
In 2012, I would have put all my chips on the FSA winning in Syria, and look where we are now. On the flip side, I would never had guessed ISIS would manage to take over half of Iraq let alone in such a short time.
Are you reading my posts or...? It's not about accurately predicting the outcome, it's about the method being plausibly efficient.
I certainly think our chances are better with rifles in hand than, uh, protest signs.
Better enough to justify the very real deaths that are currently caused by this "precaution"? Is the probability of revolt being necessary high enough to justify it?
And yeah, of course waving protest signs around is the only thing you can do that's non-violent in terms of resistance. It's not like there's a plethora of methods that don't involve gunning people down and are just as, if not more efficient, and simply result in less deaths on both sides. Nope.
Right now the probability of revolt is low, but this is one of those things where once it's gone, it's gone forever. At no point will the citizenry ever be able to say 'hold up, you're seeming a little tyrannical, let's have the right to bear arms back please'. In just the last couple of years the American political landscape has changed dramatically, and I don't know where it'll be in ten years, let alone fifty. After Trump, a lot of people I know who used to laugh off the idea of America slipping into fascism aren't laughing anymore.
And, well, no, I think the evidence is pretty compelling that non-violent protest isn't a more effective means of resisting government overreach. Compare the Keystone pipeline protests to the Bundy standoff. The one with widespread public support, petitions, lobbying, and video documentation lost. The one with a bunch of rednecks having enough guns to make federal law enforcement have second thoughts won.
Yes. I believe there are ways to mitigate the damage access to such a right may cause that doesn't further violate the rights of the current and future citizens.
If you're to the point to where you need to shoot at people to make things right, chances are peaceful resistance has already failed.
Non-violent resistance isn't limited to sit-ins and marches...
How do you think the pipeline project would've fared if the engineers and technicians tasked with working on it refused to do it? If they couldn't get access to the required raw materials because the factories that output them were on strike? If they can't get them from elsewhere because trade ports and railways were blocked?
If you suppose that, in the event of government overreach, enough people will be ready to put their life on the line to overthrow it, then you can be sure as fuck that enough people would be willing to not work paralyze it and dispose of it. I know for a fact that a few people in select fields rendering their company ineffective can absolutely fuck a country up, and that's with mobilization which is next to nothing compared to what a revolt would be.
I find it pretty strange that GarrettFox can claim that disrupting supply lines through guerilla tactics and other violent means and everybody agrees with it, yet if I point out that the same can be achieved through basic union methods it just gets glossed over and everyone strawmans non-violent resistance as just being people standing outside with signs doing frowny faces.
What would your plan be when the gov't starts compelling the workers to do it via gunpoint and promises of violence? Most people are going to fold at that point if they have no way to resist that force.
You're saying the most economically liberal nation in the world is going to force people who quit their job to work at gunpoint? Thinking of the US as an outright tyrannical government is a stretch but you lost me there. How exactly would they enforce that nationwide anyway?
Besides, we're talking about people who were willing to die for the cause, right? Why would they fold then? Seems to me you're not putting both scenarios on equal terms.
I don't think myself it'll happen any time soon, in my life time, or even a hundred years from now. But who knows what can change in the future? It's happened all throughout history.
All things being equal, if we have two forces of people willing to die for a cause, I'm gonna hedge my bets on the ones who are dying with weapons in hand having more success overthrowing a tyrannical gov't than the one wielding the power of collectivist ideals.
Corrupt government is less frightening and threatening than the military/police that follows their orders. Saying that the people who volunteer to defend our nation would oppress their fellow citizens seems a bit pessimistic.
You are asking for a hivemind opinion on a site (and specifically, topic) where there is no hivemind
It's been established by the supreme court that people have the right to carry arms to defend themselves.
You don't need a reason to exercise a right.
Which is why, IIRC, there's a lawsuit in California about the may-issue way they do permits there to try and force them to be shall-issue, which when that inevitably reaches the Supreme Court will mandate shall-issue CCW across the US.
Beautiful.
I wonder when Canada will be getting nationwide CCW, perhaps when the states gets legal marijuana nationwide as well :/
While I personally beleive that Section 7 of the Charter should guarantee it for Canada, I realistically don't expect any politician to take up that cause, or anyone with enough money to bother trying to sue for it.
These de facto bans are for handguns.
It seems to be that, so long as someone has access to a firearm, then states are open to ban anything else
Yeah that needs to be struck down.
At what point can these states say "You didn't pass our 8 year long intense training program to become a firearm license holder to get authorised to use our states designated bolt action pea shooter rifle, so too bad no guns for you"
What does "shall not be infringed actually mean in legal terms when it comes to banning certain rifles, what are the governments limits?
According to people right now? It doesn’t mean jack shit.
As for government limitations, who knows? The limitations on everything are being eroded constantly, and I don’t just mean in terms of gun rights.
It means that you can't have an AWB.
If you want it to be something more serious that prevents your scenario then you should probably push your representatives to try to get the Constitution amended to protect more than that.
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