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Arkansas airport executive killed in shootout was under investigation for weapons sales
(www.nbcnews.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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They is an important lesson in this. Taking up arms against the government has two possible outcomes.
You end up in prison.
You and up dead.
You are one person with a small number of consumer firearms. The government can show up with a virtually unlimited number of people, with bigger guns, and weapons up to and including tanks, helicopters, and precision guided bombs.
Whatever collective fantasy you have about you and a group of friends overthrowing the government with your AR15s end up with you in prison or dead.
That's not how revolutions work...a large chunk of people will need to be basically homeless, hungry and jobless for everything to kick off. So long as people can still get their chicken nuggets and iPhones and they have a place to sleep, there will be no revolution. It's ignorant to say that small arms can't do anything, it's how we lost Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan. All small arms, because bombs cannot patrol street corners, and if you start killing Americans, you're going to just feed a revolution, remember you probably live right next to one of these so called gun nuts ...and bombs don't give a shit if his house explodes and showers yours with flaming debris.
It's also not what the revolutionaries need. A revolution in America would need to target power actors (owner class, politicians would just get you more politicians paid for by the same billionaires), precisely and relatively quickly.
Bombs and heavy or indiscriminate weapons would only harm that cause by turning the people against you. Honestly small fire arms and poisons would probably be the most effective weapon in a revolution that could actually lead to any real change.
Yep, we the USA, literally created the terrorism we know today, via blowing up people there indiscriminately. How no one here gets that is beyond me.
Bread and circuses.
Yep. Keep the people fed, happy and you starve revolutions. It's why China continues to give their population crumbs, it keeps them from uprising.
Nah, you just need enough people armed, angry, and overconfident
I can't tell if you're joking or not, but no you absolutely do need people with nothing left to live for, we already have armed angry and overconfident people...
You say that but Clive Bundy, who had a stand off with the federal government because he didn't feel like paying grazing fees on land that was not his, had his trial dismissed. His son, anarchist Ammon Bundy, who had an armed standoff against the federal government in Malheur Wildlife Refuge which resulted in a death, was acquitted.
And the people at Waco had their children burned to death.
Almost as if the government can pick and choose when to unleash full force.
Yeah, I was going to make that point after I posted but got side tracked. I would have mentioned Rugby Ridge though.
If the government had wanted him and his people dead they would have been dead. The only reason they weren't was that the government showed restraint. If you think they could have won had the government decided to end them you are delusional.
And Al Bundy threw 3 touchdowns in a single game
Given that Clive Bundy has 14 kids, there is a good chance that one of them is named Al and maybe even Ted.
I think "terrorist warlord" is a better epithet for the Bundys than anarchist
Yeah but they're white so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So was Koresh n crew
Dunno, my grand-grandparents ended up old Bolsheviks with party membership since 1919.
Which is why taking up arms against the government should be approached like an engineering task and not like some impulsive action from Hollywood movies. But it sometimes happens.
And what you are saying wasn't very different even in 14xx-s, to be frank.
In the 14xxs the balance of power was fairly even. They didn't have B52s dropping ninja bombs or A10s or helicopters with mini guns. Gravy Seals will die if they take on the government.
No, it was absolutely the same. Professional soldiers and knights with good gear and lifetime experience would easily massacre any amateur force and they regularly did.
It was less about technology (though a piece of that gear would cost a few villages with serfs, so technology too) and more about experience, but that's the case now as well.
So you think that the difference between a farm implement and a sword and armour is the same as the difference between an AR15 and a B52 wirh a ninja bombs, an A10, and a helicopter with side mounted mini guns?
Well then, by all means, have at 'er.
Doesn't have to be the same. The distance from Earth to the Moon is not the same order of magnitude as the distance from the Moon to the Sun, but for many purposes could as well be.
That is utterly ridiculous. Literally worthy of ridicule.
The peasant and knight could see each other. They had to be within a few yards of each other. The US government could take you out from an airplane 10 miles up and you would just end without knowing it was coming.
But, as I say, by all means, bring it. The rest of us would like to have it over and get on with our lives.
Does the government just bombing poor farmers ever work though? Recent history indicates a handful of determined fighters stand a really good chance against the U.S. military. Actually, has a conventional force ever won against a local insurgency?
It depends on what victory is and what defeat is. You can't dictate terms of your victory to people who don't understand them and don't coordinate with each other as a whole entity. You also sometimes are not prepared to engage in full-blown genocide. And getting the bombs to the place may cost you much more than for those people to get their AKs. And bombs don't control territory. And you may be willing to spend some amount of lives, and they may be willing to spend a different amount of lives.
We're not taking about our farmers. We're taking about christofascist Gravy Seals. The vast majority of the population don't want the US to become a fascist theocratic dictatorship.
Not every nutter is a Gravy Seal I promise.
Flipped on its head your argument boils down to: If the GOP keeps winning and the country sinks further into fascism we should just give up because we won't be able to resist the might of the military anyway no matter how many of us don't want a theocracy.
There's a distinct difference between 400 million people who don't want to live under a christofascist dictatorship and 30 million do think they do. The reality is that there are a very small number of people who are willing to continue to live out their collective fantasy after they see someone standing beside them lose their head to a 7.62 bullet. Everything changes when you're on a two way range. The attack on congress was ended when a single bullet ripped through the chest of a single traitor and everyone thought, "Holy fucking shitballs! They're shooting white people! They're going to fucking kill us! "
The problem with collective fantasies in echo chambers is that no one ever says, "They're going to be shooting back with more powerful weapons. How many of us are going to die and what will happen if we lose?"
You never lose in a collective fantasy.
Just a reminder that the 1979 Iranian Revolution happened when 98% of voters approved of the shift to an Islamic Republic.
The battlefield isn't always two sides facing off and shooting each other determined by who has the larger caliber. Sometimes it's in basements and churches, whispered to close friends and trusted compatriots.
I tell people all the time (especially trans and BIPOC friends) as often as I can that now is the time to arm yourself. Get a couple firearms (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn a bit of first aid (you just need to know how to stabilize someone), and start networking with like minded people around you. As you've pointed out the police and military will not protect us, they'll happily shoot us in the face with rubber bullet and club senior citizens to the ground; just like they did during the BLM protests.
There are idiots champing at the bit for a "civil war," and while they may not win it, more than a few might be happy to take a couple "queer-o libtard commie groomers" or whatever with them in the process.
That's not the situation in the US. The vast majority don't want a christofascist dictatorship. The army decides who wins any revolution. You don't beat the army, you get it on your side. Most of the members of the army don't want a christofascist dictatorship, either, and the leadership definitely don't want one. If the Trumpists try to take up arms to install Trump as dictator they end up in prison or dead and the US survives.
That's not the situation in the U.S. today but who's to say what things will look like 50 years from now.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have gun control laws just that the argument that the person with more/bigger guns will win is a poor argument.
Regardless, we don't have to agree, have a pleasant weekend!
I didn't say anything about gun control. Nothing. Not a single word.
I'm talking about the Gravy Seals, Y'all Queda, Meal Team 6 who think they can use their AR15s and ill- fitting, mismatched surplus store body armour to overthrow the government and install the Mandarin Mussolini as dictator for life. They will end up in prison or dead and the US will be better off for it.
I think you're the only thing here worth of ridicule.
A cat and a mouse too, but I haven't head of a mouse killing a cat.
That's a good point, wasted enough of my time on a modern equivalent of that peasant.
It's scary outside the collective fantasy of your echo chamber.
Beyond your point, I always felt that the Second Amendment, ostensibly for the purpose of overthrowing the government, is completely redundant. That is to say, if you’re plotting to overthrow the government by force of arms, whether your firearm is constitutionally protected is kind of moot by that point. Ergo, the 2A should have no relevance with regards to holding government tyranny in check.
2A for overthrow purposes means you and your militia buddies can build up an armory that the government can't take away. Pre-overthrow you're lawful citizens doing perfectly fine civilian stuff. It's a just in case, probably not even going to be used. Once you're rebels, sure, laws don't matter, but if they make preparing yourself to be credible rebels illegal, then the rebellion never gets off the ground.
There is literally zero evidence for that. In armed insurrections around the world where firearms are supposedly illegal for civilians to hold, rebels have never had trouble getting a hold of guns.
2A is all about government tyranny - it was a concession to the slave states so they could have local organizations (militias) to prevent/eliminate slave uprisings and to pursue runaway slaves.
The fact that we have witnessed successful revolutions throughout history means you are wrong.
The balance of power is dramatically different now.
Then the people had long sticks with sharp points, the government had long sticks with sharp points.
Now the people have AR15s, the government had B52s that can drop Ninja bombs from 40,000 feet and kill you while you're having a cigarette on your balcony.
But by all means, get out your AR15s and give it a go.
You are disproportionately wrong. Like several orders of magnitude wrong.
You're not even comparing apples and oranges here; it's more like apples and Apple computers.
He wasn't part of a revolutionary army, he was an untrained lone gunman who was seriously outnumbered.
Also, pretty much every successful revolution has had some outside force bearing down on the Establishment. Washington had the French Navy; the Viet Cong had Russia and China; Lenin had WW1 chaos on his side.
This is relevant to a suicide by cop event how?