There are certain topics which I really hate. I hate them not inherently, not because they make me feel somehow uncomfortable, but because both sides of the issue are equally repulsive, self-righteous, ideological and totally stupid. One such topics is “abortion rights”. Oh how much I hate both pro-lifers and pro-choicers! But today I am going to vent about another topic which fills me with an overwhelming desire to, maybe, “shoot them all!”?
Gun control.
Rather than going into some fancy analysis (after all, I am only venting, not analyzing), I will just tell each side why I hate them so much.
Gun controllers – I hate you because:
a) You are totally obsessing over a completely irrelevant topic. Yes, guns don’t matter one bit in our society. They matter far less than cars, phones or computers. And if you are going to give me that crap about guns killing people, I will ask you about “car control” or “obesity control”. Bottom line: you are like dumb sheep who follow the purely ideological agenda of your political leaders who instead of looking at the real issues want to have you all get upset about a topic which they, the “One Percenters”, don’t give a shit about.
b) Your entire outlook is predicated on a total fallacy: that regulating or banning guns will reduce violence. In fact, it won’t even reduce *gun* violence for a simple reason: gun violence is only legal when engaged in by representatives of the state, all other form of gun violence are illegal. And since the action itself is illegal, it is hardly going to be controlled by making illegal the acquisition of the implement needed for the illegal action. Got it?
c) You are confusing everything and anything: automatic weapons with semi-auto, clips sizes with calibers, hollow-point rounds with “cop killer” ammo, assault rifles with submachine guns, submachine guns with machine guns, and I won’t even go to hunting rifles or knives (which most of you also want to regulate/ban). Most of you see an AR-15 semi-auto and think of it as an “military assault rifle”. The fact is you don’t care one bit about the “firearms” or “guns” you want to ban, as long as you get to “disarm the brutes” (or so you think). You always begin with “military weapons” (whatever that means) and you end up banning knives and box cutters!
Gun righters – I have you because:
a) You are actually dumb enough to say with a straight face that giving guns to people will protect them from tyranny. Let me break it to you: not only have their been plenty of tyrannical regimes which were more than happy to distribute guns, a single platoon of well-trained government goons will easily wipe-out several hundred of gun-toting civilians who would be dumb enough to challenge them.
b) For all your “concealed carry license” and gun magazines, you fail to realize that 99% of all folks out there cannot defend themselves with a gun. Not with a handgun, not with a rifle, not with an assault rifle. Most folks can only miss and freak out. If you had any common sense you would realize that a dog is far, *FAR* better defense against violence (including gun violence) than a frigging gun. Let me break it to you again: there is a darn good reason why cops regularly go to the shooting range – guns are hard to use. And then, look at how often even trained cops end up doing God knows what (mostly miss, run and duck) when in a shoot-out.
c) Most of you cretins think that guns are somehow patriotic. They are not. They are just tools, implements, devices. They are no more “American” than knives or even fly-swatters. The only thing truly American about guns is the mental dysfunction which consists of thinking of guns are patriotic. In other, civilized, countries guns are simply no big deal.
A couple of days ago I saw this cretin Obama standing with is VP offering a new set of gun control measures. Half of the morons reacted with delight, half with outrage. And ever since the airwaves are filled with a deluge of imbecilic statements about guns. What is really happening, of course, is this:
The USA is ruled by a tiny plutocracy which holds total power over society. There are no liberals here, and no conservatives. All I see is *serfs* who must toil in increasingly worsening conditions to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. And in order to create the ILLUSION of a political life, the One Percenters simply toss in the “gun control” issue, so the pseudo-liberals can “feel liberal” and the pseudo-conservatives can “feel conservative”. And as long as you morons keep on taking that kind of nonsense seriously, you are doing exactly what the One Percenters want you do to: arguing about a completely irrelevant topic while your masters are laughing at you.
Wake up guys, you are being conned! Stop it!
The Saker
Saker Message:
Fully agreed. I’ve never been to the US, so it is really weird to see how much attention is given to this no-issue. Just like the debate over if there should be public education and health care or not: no minimally informed person debates this kind of issue because the answer is completely obvious.
@Saker: I think it is even worse than you say.
To me, it is clear that there is an Argentine-syle “dirty war” going on in America right now. In my view, Aaron Swartz did NOT commit suicide. He was murdered, in cold blood, by an assassination squad. His own father came as close to saying so as he could without being murdered himself. I expect much, much more of this. Most instances of this will not be reported in the press – just enough of them to send the message to any would be imitators of Spartacus, that slave revolts will be ruthlessly put down.
I think that the PTB (a.k.a., the “One Percenters”) are deliberately trying to provoke an armed uprising. They want the motivated, concerned people of America to rise up, and conveniently present themselves to the minions to be slaughtered. They know that there is going to be a revolution at some point anyway, so they want this to happen on their terms and according to their timing, so they can get it out of they way early.
The (former) American middle class is now be subjected to the same treatment that the Empire used to mete out to Latin America, Northern Ireland, Southern Europe (Operation Gladio) and the Middle East. Now that the imperial wealth pump has been essentially sucked dry, the Empire, like the mythical Ourobouros, is swallowing its own tail.
Life in the post-Imperial U.S. will be much, much worse than in the post-collapse USSR.
Well apart from point a) and c) in your Gun righters section can’t really disagree with any of your points although I would add my own.
But first:
a) You are actually dumb enough to say with a straight face that giving guns to people will protect them from tyranny. Let me break it to you: not only have their been plenty of tyrannical regimes which were more than happy to distribute guns, a single platoon of well-trained government goons will easily wipe-out several hundred of gun-toting civilians who would be dumb enough to challenge them..
Do you remember Ruby Ridge and Waco?
They initially revolved around the issue of guns where the government/ATF overstepped their mark resulting in civilian deaths and a PR disaster for the government who were seen as becoming tyrannical and helped kick start and swell a growing militia movement during the 90’s until the OKC bombing .
c) Most of you cretins think that guns are somehow patriotic. They are not. They are just tools, implements, devices. They are no more “American” than knives or even fly-swatters. The only thing truly American about guns is the mental dysfunction which consists of thinking of guns are patriotic. In other, civilized, countries guns are simply no big deal.”
I disagree. They are symbolic of American ideal of freedom and independence and the dangers of encroaching government power like they have in Europe with Big Brother CCTV Britain like how the AK47 is a symbol of independence struggles in 3rd world countries.
I think at least 1 country has an AK47 on their country flag.
@Jack: Ruby Ridge and Waco prove nothing, they don’t even apply to the case of protection from tyranny. Besides, think logically here:
*IF* some civilians managed to somehow resist government forces, what would result? A civil war (small or big) which, sooner or later, involves the participation of at least roughly equally capable parties (if not, its called a massacre). Anyway, keep in mind than when the Founding Fathers adopted the 2nd Amendment they did not have a bunch of beer guzzling rednecks on trucks in mind, but a “A well regulated Militia” which could well mean a well-TRAINED one. And that, in a country with NO STANDING ARMY. In the 21 century USA none of that applies…
An armed rebellion against Uncle Sam would be crushed without mercy unless a critical mass of the National Guard and the Army refused to turn their guns on their own people and defected to the rebels. It’s not inconceivable that might happen at some point.
It’s all too common for the political class of a troubled nation to lose track of the fact that, after all, its power depends on the willingness of a great many people outside the political class to do what they’re told. In Paris in 1789, in St. Petersburg in 1917, and in a great many other places and times, the people who thought that they held the levers of power and repression discovered to their shock that the only power they actually had was the power to issue orders, and those who were supposed to carry those orders out could, when matters came to a head, decide that their own interests lay elsewhere. In today’s America, equally, it’s not the crisply dressed executives, politicians, and bureaucrats who currently hold power who would be in a position to enforce that power in a crisis; it’s the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, police officers and Homeland Security personnel, who are by and large poorly paid, poorly treated, and poorly equipped, and who have not necessarily been given convincing reasons to support the interests of a political class that most of them privately despise, against the interests of the classes to which they themselves belong.
Such doubts and dissatisfactions can build for a long time before the crisis hits. If history shows anything, it’s that trying to time that crisis is very nearly a guarantee of failure. Sooner or later, once the system’s legitimacy becomes sufficiently doubtful, some event dramatic enough to seize the collective imagination will trigger the final collapse of legitimacy and the implosion of the system, but what that event will be and when it will come is impossible to know in advance. Not even Talleyrand seems to have guessed in advance that the calling of the Estates-General in 1789 would set off the final crisis of the monarchy whose collapse he accurately anticipated—but then who could have predicted the spur-of-the-moment improvisation that led representatives of the Third Estate to proclaim themselves a National Assembly, or the circumstances that sent a Paris mob running through the streets to storm the Bastille?
@Robert: yes, but let’s not confuse two very different issues
a) the (hypothetical) situation where civilians protect themselves from tyranny by use of arms which they own
and
b) a regime who suddenly discovers that its tools of repression (police, army, guard, etc.) are unwilling to obey its orders.
My belief is that the first situation never happens, while the 2nd one is rather frequent. Think of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the events in Moscow in 1991 and 1993.
Bottom line -> guns make no damn difference :-)
@Michael:I think that the PTB (a.k.a., the “One Percenters”) are deliberately trying to provoke an armed uprising. They want the motivated, concerned people of America to rise up, and conveniently present themselves to the minions to be slaughtered. They know that there is going to be a revolution at some point anyway, so they want this to happen on their terms and according to their timing, so they can get it out of they way early.
This is a very interesting thought, but I am unconvinced. Here, where I currently live (East Central Florida), the local cops (police and sheriff) are very much local boys and I do not see them opening up on the local population. Not sure about the State Troopers and I have no idea about the National Guard of FBI or military. But I really don’t think that if Uncle Sam gives the order to our cops and sheriff deputies to heard us into camps, or shoot us, or otherwise mistreat us they will obey. A good part of them might even side with us. For instance, if major riots broke up in Orlando and Mexican gangs threatened us, I would not put it past our cops to distribute some weapons to instantly deputize folks with firearms experience. All my contacts with the local police/sheriff tell me that they might not be all geniuses or Christ-like saints, but they are fundamentally local boys who belong to our community and who will side with us if the shit hits the fan.
This might be because small-town USA is different from Manhattan where the NYPD got huge donations from JP Morgan iirc. Dunno for sure, but at least in my neck of the woods, I feel that the local firepower is on our side.
What about you? Do you see your local authorities turning against you?
@Saker: “What about you? Do you see your local authorities turning against you?”
My situation is different. I moved Down Under about 15 years ago, so the local situation is not the same at all. Police around here do not normally carry firearms on their person, unless there is a hostage-type situation. It’s a pretty mellow place. OTOH, Kim Dotcom faced a full-scale military assault by the police, because the order for such came from “on high”. The police here are civilized, but they are NOT loyal to the citizenry. They are loyal to their political masters, and will do as they are told.
As for the U.S., I am not so concerned about the local police in small towns or even in medium sized urban centers. My concern is with the Federal authorities, especially the military. My understanding is, that most active duty personnel are on a cocktail of psychiatric drugs, which allow them to commit the atrocities they are ordered to carry out, without feeling anything about it. Mind programming via violent video games also plays a role.
Therefore, I do expect that the military and Homeland Security units will be like the ZOMOs in Poland. They will shoot their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins, et al., until the supply of drugs runs out. They will shoot and torture whoever they are told to, and you should not doubt that.
I also note that suicides among returning veterans is absolutely pandemic. According to a recent Army Times article, there are 18 suicides per day among veterans. Apparently, once the psychiatric drugs wear off, remorse of conscience sets in, and the veterans cannot live with themselves over what they did under the influence of drugs.
One more thing. Walter Russell Mead has now all but officially warned us, that Soviet-style psychiatry will now be used for the “damping” of dissidents:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/01/17/the-invisible-trigger-mental-health-and-gun-violence/
@Michael:My understanding is, that most active duty personnel are on a cocktail of psychiatric drugs, which allow them to commit the atrocities they are ordered to carry out, without feeling anything about it. Mind programming via violent video games also plays a role.
I never heard about that and, frankly, I have a hard time believing this. I know that the Chechen insurgents in Russia were often doped up which made them both rather reckless and insane, but the US military? I have a hard time imagining that. That soldiers get high – sure – but that their commanders actually encourage that? It’s hard to imagine that for me.
Therefore, I do expect that the military and Homeland Security units will be like the ZOMOs in Poland.
But see, in Poland they did not have local forces which could resist. In the USA they do. For example, in my county if you add the “county police” (aka “Sheriff Deputies”) and the city cops, you get a halfway competent infantry force, with even some sharpshooters, some K9 units, a few helicopters and possibly even some lightly armored vehicles. This is true of most of the USA I would think. And the governor also could try to get back the National Guard (which, and this is scary, has been re-subordinated to the White House recently). The military has a US continental command now, but whether they could be used to crush real civil unrest is not clear to me. It’s just a very risky scenario, I think.
I also note that suicides among returning veterans is absolutely pandemic. According to a recent Army Times article, there are 18 suicides per day among veterans
True. And there are more suicides in Afghanistan than combat casualties. But that hardly is a sign that a force capable of repressing its own population is in the making.
@Saker: Good rejoinders.
I hope you are right and that I am wrong.
Given the atrocities which the Federal Government has routinely carried out in my lifetime, from the JFK assassination to the present, I tend to discount the role of humanity and conscience in government affairs.
In other words, I assume that anyone who would put on a uniform either has no conscience (i.e., is a natural-born psychopath) or has “seared his conscience with a hot iron” in return for power and perks.
Perhaps I am being too pessimistic. It may well be, that when push comes to shove, that uniformed minions will actually behave as human beings should. Greater miracles have happened in history.
@Michael: well, the US is a complex country because it does not really have one “super-center” of power. There is no “Moscow” or “Paris” in the USA. Unlike France, the USA is huge, but unlike Russia, it does not have a single seat of power. Many US regions can really break away and be viable (think California or Texas here) and there is a lot of decentralized power here, including decentralized firepower. Uncle Sam currently rules the country through brainwashing, ignorance, propaganda and, yes, some violence, and the latter is carefully aimed at the weaker social groups. But to crack down over the entire country with military force is a very difficult proposition and, last time they tried, they had a really nasty full-scale civil war on their hands. And the 19th century USA was far more primitive than the 21 century one (if only there was not West Coast to speak of in the 19th century).
I might be optimistic, but I don’t see Uncle Sam having the means to brutally crack down on the US population, herd millions of people into FEMA camps, or pass martial law. Not without huge popular support, that is.
Maybe I am mistaken (as I have often been in the past), but the preferred method of oppression here is indirect, economic, oppression for the majority, and violence for the minority.
Cheers!
Political power’s a remarkable thing. Though Mao Zedong was quite correct to point out that it grows out of the barrel of a gun, it has to be transplanted into more fertile soil in short order or it will soon wither and die. A successful political system of any kind quickly establishes, in the minds of the people it rules, a set of beliefs and attitudes that define the political system as the normal, appropriate, and acceptable form of government for that people. That sense of legitimacy is the foundation on which any enduring government must build, for when people see their government as legitimate, no matter how appalling it appears to outsiders, they will far more often than not put up with its excesses and follow its orders.
It probably needs to be said here that legitimacy is not a rational matter and has nothing to do with morality or competence; great nations all through history have calmly accepted the legitimacy of governments run by thieves, tyrants, madmen and fools. Still, a government that has long held popular legitimacy can still lose it, and can do so in a remarkably short time. The fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the USSR is a classic example of this. Communist nations saw the entire apparatus of their government dissolve around them as the people they claimed the right to rule stopped cooperating.
Now of course that sudden collapse of legitimacy was long in preparing. Just as a singer or writer who becomes an overnight success normally gets there after many years of hard work, the implosion of a system of government normally follows many years of bad decisions and unheard warnings, and it’s not too hard in retrospect to trace how simmering unrest eventually rose to a full boil; still, the benefits of hindsight can be misleading, because it’s actually quite rare for anyone to catch on to what’s building in advance. As the famous Affair of the Diamond Necklace dragged the prestige of the French monarchy in the mud, Talleyrand commented to a friend, “Pay attention to this wretched necklace-affair; I should not be in the least surprised if it overturns the throne”—but then Talleyrand was one of the supreme political observers of the age; to most others in France in 1784, it was just one more tawdry royal scandal in a country that had seen plenty of them already.
Absolutely true about how decentralised the US is. There is indeed no equivalent of Paris or Moscow. In the United States and Canada alike, the national capital and the largest population centre are two different cities; in both nations, as well as Mexico, large regional divisions—states or provinces—maintain a prickly independence from the central government, and regional cultures remain a potent political force. The United States is the most extreme example of the lot; Washington DC is for all practical purposes a modest regional center that just happens to share space with a national government meeting, and there is no place in the country where even the largest urban mob could have a decisive impact on the survival of the federal government.
The complex historical processes that brought thirteen diverse colonies under a single federal system, furtthermore, left a great deal of power in the hands of the states. Very little of that power is used these days; repeated expansions of the originally very limited powers given to the national government have left most substantive issues in the hands of federal bureaucrats, and left the states little more to do than carrying out costly federal mandates at their own expense. Still, the full framework of independent government—executive, legislative, and judicial—remains in place in each state; state governors retain the power to call up every adult citizen to serve in the state militia; and, finally and critically, the states have kept the constitutional power to bring the whole system to a screeching halt.
You’ll find that power spelled out in Article V of the US Constitution. If two thirds of state legislatures call for a constitutional convention to amend the Constitution, the convention will happen; if three quarters of state legislatures vote to ratify any amendment to the Constitution passed by the convention, that amendment goes into effect. It’s that simple. Congress has nothing to say about it; the President has nothing to say about it; the Supreme Court has nothing to say about it; the federal government is, at least in theory, stuck on the sidelines. That power has never been used; the one time it was seriously attempted, in 1913, Congress forestalled the state legislatures by passing a constitutional amendment identical to the one for which the states were agitating, and submitting it to the state legislatures for ratification. The power nonetheless remains in place, a bomb hardwired into the Constitution.
What makes that bomb so explosive is that there are very nearly no limits to what a constitutional convention can do. The only thing the Constitution specifies is that no amendment can take away a state’s equal representation in the Senate. Other than that, as long as two thirds of the states call for the convention and three quarters of the states ratify its actions, whatever comes out of it is the supreme law of the land. Everything is up for grabs; it would not be beyond the power of a constitutional convention, for example, to provide a legal means for states to withdraw peacefully from the Union, or even to repeal the Constitution and dissolve the Union altogether.
I can well imagine in a national emergency if Uncle Sam committed a major atrocity against the American people that a governor of Texas, say, would call on the Texas Rangers and Texas National Guard to ignore any orders from Washington and remain loyal to the free state of Texas. Having done so he could then order Homeland Security to get their goons out of his state.
@Robert:Just as a singer or writer who becomes an overnight success normally gets there after many years of hard work, the implosion of a system of government normally follows many years of bad decisions and unheard warnings
Yes, and I think that this process is well underway in the USA. Congress is absolutely *hated*, and so is the White House, though marginally less. Most Americans do believe that the system is totally corrupt. If it had not been for the corporate mass media and big money, Ron Paul would have made even a far better score than he did. The man is really far more popular than the elections outcome show. There are also more and more “hard left” (real) progressives, but they mostly “get off the grid” and live in what used to be called the “internal exile” in the USSR. Sure, there are plenty of what I call “zombies” who watch TV and believe it all, but they are also very passive and they could not pro up the system by themselves.
My personal feeling is that the USA under Obama is very much like the USSR under Brezhnev – a decaying, sclerotic system, which few people really believe in and which is loosing legitimacy at a steady pace.
There was real, widespread, hope that Obama would really bring about some deep, meaningful change, but now all that is left is an immense sense of disgust and, alas also often, despair.
There can be no resolution of the crisis in the United States without confronting the issue of inequality. A certain amount of inequality is necessary to maintain healthy incentives but the kind of grotesque inequality you have in the United States is ultimately going to lead to stagnation and some kind of breakdown.
The right is fond of accusing leftists of espousing the politics of envy. One response would be to denounce the right as representing the politics of greed and callousness but quite apart from the moral arguements too much inequality is dysfunctional. Firstly because with gross inequality of wealth comes gross inequality of power and given human nature that leads to abuse. But even in terms of practical economics if too high a percentage of the national wealth is concentrated in the hands of the One Percent they use it to buy up assets which helps to blow bubbles. Meanwhile the poor and the working middle class usually spend most of their income back into the economy thereby maintaining demand. If their purchasing power falls the economy suffers from lack of demand. What has happened over the last several decades is that the public has been encouraged to get into unsustainable debt to maintain demand for the goods and services the economy produces but the debt levels have now proved terminal.
The economic crisis cannot be resolved without confronting Wall Street and the 1% but organised money has a total grip on Congress, White House and the entire Republicrat party. There is no way reform can happen within the system just as there was no mechanism for reform in ancien regime France. In both cases the greed and corruption of the privileged class with at some point provoke a terminal crisis. It could be decades in the making but it will eventually come and I personally expect it to happen sooner than anyone thinks.
@Robert:
Great stuff you are posting.
However, please give credit where credit is due, OK? You are cutting and pasting text qholesale from John Michael Greer’s Archdruid Report without attribution.
To wit:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/a-crisis-of-legitimacy.html
P.S.: I like Greer’s website too. I want to see more people read it.
@Robert, Michael & everybody else:
You are cutting and pasting text
Frankly, this bothers me at least as much as the lack of attribution. A short quote, properly attributed, is ok, but not long ones, please.
Please, I want *real* conversations here, but not a shootout of cut-n-pasted materials.
Thanks!
The Saker
a)….”a single platoon of well-trained government goons will easily wipe-out several hundred of gun-toting civilians who would be dumb enough to challenge them.”
You have to ignore a lot of recent history to believe that. Both the French and the US were defeated in Vietnam by an army of illiterate peasants. In the case of the Viet Minh, most were armed with bolt-action rifles as were a sizable portion of the NLF against the US. The US military has failed to defeat the Sunni resistance in Iraq even with the backing of the Iraqi army, police and Shia death squads. They inflicted over 40,000 casualties on US troops alone.
Forty French commandos recently got their asses handed to them when they went up against 100 Shebab in Somalia. Modern military forces are not invincible, though it is always a sin to underestimate the enemy.
In any conceivable conflict between a popular uprising and the US government, I would expect large numbers of soldiers to desert, defect to the rebels or simply refuse to fight.
What’s left will fight a guerrilla army that will largely avoid combat with the US military on its terms. A guerrilla army fights its enemies where it is weakest, not where it is strongest. The US military’s weakness is its heavy reliance on supply. A rebel army could launch attacks at armament factories, fuel depots or anywhere along the supply chain. The US military doesn’t have the numbers to defend everywhere at once. A rebel army can also strike directly at the homes and holdings of the 1 percent, making life a living hell for them. If challenged with overwhelming force it can melt into the general population.
Given the huge numbers of veterans in the US population, there is every reason to believe the rebels can be quickly trained to at least the standard of the US military, if not better. In the end a rebel army doesn’t have to win a military victory, it just has to take out the US elite and outlast the US military.
b) “For all your “concealed carry license” and gun magazines, you fail to realize that 99% of all folks out there cannot defend themselves with a gun.”
Not true.
“According to the National Self Defense Survey conducted by Florida State University criminologists in 1994, the rate of Defensive Gun Uses can be projected nationwide to approximately 2.5 million per year — one Defensive Gun Use every 13 seconds.”
Guns are not usually fired when used in self-defense so the wild shootout scenario favored by gun control advocates is also a myth:
“In 91.7% of these incidents the defensive use of a gun did not wound or kill the criminal attacker.”
http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/stats.html
Less than 1 percent of all homicides involve innocent bystanders, and that’s even with the cracked-up drug thugs doing drive-bys with fully automatic weapons, or the deliberate killing of bystanders to eliminate witnesses. I would fully expect well-trained people with concealed carry permits to do a lot better than murderers and thugs when it comes to controlling themselves in a combat situation, assuming they even have to fire their weapons which is not usually the case.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01062556
“Wake up guys, you are being conned! Stop it!”
How do you suggest the American people stop the sociopaths who are running this country? They will not go down easy by a long shot. Their wealth and the sadistic power games they play with human life is all they have.
Both the French and the US were defeated in Vietnam by an army of illiterate peasants
First, you are wrong when you think that these people were illiterate, that is a myth. In fact, they had some superbly trained commanders. Second, you yourself use the word “army”. Thus, these were not gun-toting civilians, but soldiers.
The US military has failed to defeat the Sunni resistance in Iraq
What you are referring to is basically the ground forces of the Iraqi army which went underground and then turned into an insurgency, exactly as Saddam trained them after the First Gulf War.
Your conceptual mistake is this: you equate people+guns=military. That is wrong. As the expression goes, “civilians think of guns, solider think of logistics”. You make the same mistake – you forget about not logistics, but also command and control, intelligence, medical support, mobility, recon, etc. Most importantly, you overlook *training*. And when you write Given the huge numbers of veterans in the US population, there is every reason to believe the rebels can be quickly trained to at least the standard of the US military, if not better you simply fail to consider that for anything over platoon/company level operations you veterans are going to run into major difficulties.
Defensive Gun Use every 13 seconds
Lies, damn lies and statistics :-) Seriously, define “gun” and define “defensive” and then define the sample size and quality.
“In 91.7% of these incidents the defensive use of a gun did not wound or kill the criminal attacker.”
Because they missed?
How do you suggest the American people stop the sociopaths who are running this country?
So according to you guns can:
a) make it possible to resist against a military force
b) make it possible to resist against criminals
c) make it possible to resist against your own government
That is self-evidently magical thinking, you place way too much emphasis on what guns can do and that reliance on guns is what will eventually defeat you. A typically American syndrome, I would add.
@Sean: please consider this – the USA is the only country on the planet with such a quasi-religious faith in guns. Does that idiosyncrasy make you feel unique/patriotic or does that worry you?
First, you are wrong when you think that these people were illiterate, that is a myth. In fact, they had some superbly trained commanders. Second, you yourself use the word “army”. Thus, these were not gun-toting civilians, but soldiers.
The majority of Viet Minh and NLF fighters were in fact illiterate peasants. Of course they had some very good leaders who studied and invented tactics and I am not taking anything away from the rank and file as fighters. But they were not “soldiers” in the conventional sense. They were guerrilla fighters who of course were trained to fight and yes they could fight as an “army” as well. The NVA were “soldiers” in the conventional sense. The rules of war distinguish between “soldiers” and insurgents so the distinction is not just semantic.
In either case I see no reason to assume that “soldiers” are better trained or more combat effective than volunteer guerrilla fighters. When it comes to fighting guerrilla warfare, they are often less so.
What you are referring to is basically the ground forces of the Iraqi army which went underground and then turned into an insurgency, exactly as Saddam trained them after the First Gulf War.
I’m not buying this. It is convenient for Western propaganda to portray the whole Sunni resistance as “Ba’athists” but they are not the only people out there fighting the Americans.
Your conceptual mistake is this: you equate people+guns=military. That is wrong.
No, I don’t. You make a false dichotomy between soldiers and civilians, as if the latter can never become the former, or civilians cannot be trained to the same level or better than soldiers. That is simply not supported by the evidence. Soldiers and guerrillas are basically warriors, with the difference being one is a paid agent of the government subject to military law and discipline and the other operates under far more flexible rules and command structures—the latter being a huge advantage. Many of the successful guerrilla leaders of the 20th century like Michael Collins, Che Guevara and Mao Zedong were not trained soldiers, but civilians.
As the expression goes, “civilians think of guns, solider think of logistics”. You make the same mistake – you forget about not logistics, but also command and control, intelligence, medical support, mobility, recon, etc. Most importantly, you overlook *training*.
Considering that I mention “training” of civilians specifically and point out attacks against the enemy’s logistics as one of the primary goals of the resistance, that’s a rather bizarre accusation. The fact I do not mention something does not mean I “ignored” it.
You assume the US Army is well-trained, but I would argue the opposite based on my experience as a paratrooper. Although the military is good at teaching basic infantry tasks, a lot of the stuff we were taught was plain stupid and dangerous for soldiers to put faith in. For example, we were given bayonet training and encouraged to think of bayonet charges as a viable tactic in modern warfare. The Army was so obsessed with this that the barrel of the M16A2 was thickened so it wouldn’t bend during bayonet training. Need I say more?
I can also say that I never participated in a successful combat training exercise. Every single one was a major clusterfuck and disaster because our leaders from platoon sergeant on up were morons. If you can’t get it right in training good luck in combat. A guerrilla army would drill, drill and drill again in battalion size operations until it got it right. We were too busy cleaning the barracks and picking up cigarette butts to indulge in any of that.
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Part 2 of 2
Lies, damn lies and statistics :-) Seriously, define “gun” and define “defensive” and then define the sample size and quality.
You invent statistics out of thin air to make your point and then complain about the quality of scientific studies? This is not the only study that showed a high rate of defensive gun use. If you don’t want to accept contradictory evidence that is fine. The study is available here and discusses the limitations of those other studies, The sample size is 5000, which is more than adequate to minimize sampling error. At this point I have presented enough evidence to satisfy any reasonable person.
http://www.guncite.com/gcdgklec.html
“In 91.7% of these incidents the defensive use of a gun did not wound or kill the criminal attacker.”
Because they missed?
The study showed a 53 percent hit rate.
How do you suggest the American people stop the sociopaths who are running this country?
I really would like an answer to this question. Surely you must have an opinion, as you call on the American people to put a stop to it.
So according to you guns can:
a) make it possible to resist against a military force
b) make it possible to resist against criminals
c) make it possible to resist against your own government
That is self-evidently magical thinking,
This is self-evidently true to anyone who cares for evidence rather than naked assertion.
a). History is full of example of guerrilla forces successfully engaging and defeating conventional military forces.
b). I ‘ve given evidence of the defensive use of guns against criminals.
c). History is full of successful armed revolts against domestic and foreign governments, the American revolution being one example.
@Sean: please consider this – the USA is the only country on the planet with such a quasi-religious faith in guns. Does that idiosyncrasy make you feel unique/patriotic or does that worry you?
Believing in the utility of guns based on scientific studies and historic precedent is not “quasi-religious” but is entirely rational and supportable. Rejecting evidence in favor of personal preference is faith-based thinking.
Just about every country on the planet has an army and police force armed with…wait for it…guns. If they were useless in any kind of self-defense role you would think they would have figured it out by now.
The US may be the only country on Earth where the people believe they have a *legal right* under the nation’s constitution to overthrow a tyranical government by force of arms should that prove necessary. That’s one thing Americans should be proud of.
Sean: ok. this is getting boring, so I will try to keep it short.
A) Gun toting civilians vs guerrillas vs soldiers:
We are going in circles here. How does a civilian become a guerrilla? By a) surviving long enough to learn some combat skills or b) by being trained. Neither case applies to the US population because a) there is no actual civil war b) there are no actual training camps. Furthermore, real combat happens in three distinct levels: tactical, operational and strategic. BTW – Guerrillas being at the most at a (theoretical) battalion-level of combat (and I am being rather generous here), they cannot effectively engage at the higher levels of warfare. Guerrillas working with/for a regular military force, however, can. This is what you had in Vietnam. Your experience as a paratrooper is, I think, misleading you because US Airborne forces are really a form of mobile infantry. An officer with a, say, armored cav or artillery background would most likely not think that way. An air force or navy guy would most definitely not.
B) Statistics:
I was being tongue-in-cheek in my comments, sorry if that did not come across more clearly. Seriously, you can give me all the stats in the world, you fill never convince me that handing out firearms to the majority of the population is a good idea. When I see that the vast majority of American can’t even drive a car halfway decently, I gasp in horror at the thought of these guys having to use a firearm in self defense and actually do something useful with it. Again, there is a reason why cops go shooting once a week or so, and I am really really not impressed by what cops end up doing when bullets start flying. God protect us all from non-trained folks opening up while fearing for their lives…
C) The gun toting civilian against tyranny:
Well, I guess we will know if somebody ever tries it. So far, I see no sign of this happening, and any group contemplating such an idea can be sure that no less than 50% of its members are FBI plants. Let me break this to you: the US is *ALREADY* a tyranny, it is *ALREADY* a subservient colony to Israel, it is *ALREADY* run by a tiny 1% class of absolutely evil plutocrats and nobody has fired a single shot. The country is flooded with guns, and they made no damn difference. So, QED – guns are useless.
But if by now you STILL don’t see it, there is absolutely nothing I could write here to way you up from your dream.
So hold on to your gun, and sleep tight :-)
Cheers,
The Saker
Here is a good article from Signs of the Times website, analyzing this whole issue in context:
http://www.sott.net/article/257130-Liars-Gun-Control-and-Money-in-a-Culture-of-Violence
A good, relevant quote I like very much:
“There is a general undercurrent of anger and hatred in our society and there is in fact an obvious reason. Because justice has never been done. We realize, after centuries and centuries of oppression that we are fundamentally impotent. No matter how hard we try, we cannot shake the oppressive regimes, the genocidal leaders, the banal Eichmanns. They keep coming back, they keep torturing and murdering us and they never meet an end commensurate with their crimes, at best they are simply shot, or hanged, or die in a prison. That is to say nothing of the frequent abuses that go on within families.This abuse, as we have seen repeatedly, is sometimes physical and/or sexual and/or emotional.
“We see all around us that the executives who lay us off, or scam us out of our savings live in comfort on their yachts, the leaders who torture us, or ‘extraordinarily rendate’ us into secret torture facilities are never brought to justice. We live in a sick, oppressive society, where the best we can hope for is a patronizing pat on the head and a promise to do better, or an explanation of, sure, we’d like to send them to jail, but their company is so big, it would destabilize the economy, so they can just get away with it.
“Impotence leads to frustration and then anger, and anger is at the core of violence.”
And another:
“The goal of good people is to create a society and government of peace and goodness so we can get along with the business of living. There are lots of fun things to be doing, and we’d like to get to that, if only we could free ourselves from the constant battle to maintain our freedom. The average person is so busy fighting against being taken advantage of at work, in the stores, on the streets, in the courts, and in the voting booth, that they have time for little else.
“Did you ever stop to wonder what the goals of evil psychopathic people are? Their goals are actually very similar to our goals, except they come from a bizarro universe where down is up and left is right. They want to create a system of government that establishes their right to rule over everyone in perpetuity. The average evil-doer is so busy trying to take advantage of people in the workplace, in the stores, on the streets, in the courts, and in the voting booth, that they also have time for little else.
“The problem for evil people is that good people have this nasty habit of not being happy while being oppressed and exploited. Where the two diverge, and why evil may eventually triumph over good is in this: Good people want to do more things than evil people. Good people want to enjoy life, and take their enjoyment from creative endeavors, like art and science. Evil people want to oppress good people. That is what they work day and night towards. All forms of enjoyment for evil people center around the exploitation of good people as a form of entertainment or slave labor. You’re either a gladiator in the ring, a whore on the bed, or a servant in the kitchen. Good people want to do things, and evil people want things done for them. Good people are too busy. They are fighting a battle on multiple fronts, and are stretched too thin. “
1) I am basically worried about civil insurrection or general chaos like in New Orleans post Katrina, or in LA during the riots. You are on you own. Policy have only rolls of yellow tape to put around you an hour later.
2) Go into any neighborhood bar now and ask around and you can find some connections to buy drugs. – contraband of any sort can be had if there is a market- regardless of the law enforcement efforts, which at best can drive the price up and enrich some very bad people who run the contraband pipeline, and make criminals out of every day citizens. Railroad cars quantities of contraband marijuana roll into the US every day. If a gun is not available at wall mart- be absolutely assured, it will be using the same contraband pipeline and distribution network as the narco traffickers use.
@Anonymous:I am basically worried about civil insurrection or general chaos like in New Orleans post Katrina, or in LA during the riots. You are on you own.
Yes, that is a real concern and that is one of the situations where weapons definitely can help, especially if enough people in your neighborhood get together to protect themselves, like the Koreans did during the LA riots. I am lucky to live in a part of the USA where my local cops will probably do a decent job defending us, but I realize that I am in a lucky minority.
So yes, for that situation having guns can definitely help, I agree.
If a gun is not available at wall mart- be absolutely assured, it will be using the same contraband pipeline and distribution network as the narco traffickers use.
Absolutely true, this is why I think that “gun controllers” are naive if they think they can make them disappear, in particularly when thugs don’t give a damn about laws, and can use well-know trafficking routes.
Two very good points, thanks!
The Saker
A) Gun toting civilians vs guerrillas vs soldiers:
You keep bringing up this gun-toting civilian meme as if I or anyone else claimed that civilians with no training are ready to take on the military. I specifically stated otherwise multiple times now.
The one advantage the US has over other countries in history is that the people are already heavily armed, so that enormous and defeat-causing hurdle doesn’t have to be passed. This is not a lifetime warranty against tyranny.
You don’t show up with 50 guys and hope people will follow (though that is pretty much what Castro did and he succeeded).
The 82nd is a ticket-punching station for any career officer who expects to ever hold a field grade commission, so it is a microcosm of the Army as a whole, with most of the Army’s top leaders having served in it. It would be impossible to overestimate the contempt we had for our officers, or the severe morale problems their stupidity, abuse and refusal to treat us with respect caused.
Few American soldiers will follow leaders like this into civil war against their own people. There is no Caesar or Antony among that bunch.
B) Statistics:
“Most Americans would be equally stunned to learn that a great many police officers are not good shots.
Many fire their duty handguns only for yearly qualifications on courses of fire with generous passing scores. A great many citizens are far more capable with firearms, and due to military training — most police officers are no longer veterans — and other specialized training widely available to civilians, more tactically adept.”
http://pjmedia.com/blog/until-u-s-understands-police-limitations-some-will-put-faith-in-gun-control/
C) The gun toting civilian against tyranny:
Tyranny is relative. It takes a high degree of abuse to get people to the point where they feel life is so worthless they have nothing to lose risking their lives in a rebellion. I don’t think the US is anywhere near that point yet, but if the system collapses, that might push people to the breaking point. Using the failure of a revolution to arise as evidence that it can’t or won’t makes no sense. No country is ever ready for a revolution…until it is, just like no dog ever bites, until it does.
So hold on to your gun, and sleep tight :-)
By all means call the cops the next time a criminal confronts you with a weapon. I am sure he will wait for you to put the call through, if he has any courtesy at all.
I hope you never have to find out the hard way how useless the cops are. I have survived 3 murder attempts in my life, one which occurred 100 feet away from the cops when I was 13. The cops “protected” me by hitting me over the head and arresting me, even though my hand had been slashed in the fight.
Just last year my two nieces survived an attack by a white racist street gang (we are white). This gang had earlier savagely beat a black Hispanic friend of theirs but my niece intervened to save his life. On the way home, these guys attacked my nieces in retaliation but my niece grabbed a chain off one of them and they managed to beat all five of them.
The cops arrested my nieces and took them to the station in handcuffs, even though my niece had broken her hand in the fight and they were the victims. They were initially going to charge my nieces with first degree assault with battery—a felony offense—but after my brother threatened to go to the media the DA dropped the charges to misdemeanor assault. The DA refused to drop the charges but he let the case lapse by failing to show up for court three times in a row.
So that’s what the cops are: cowardly, low-life scum cut from the same cloth as the thugs they are supposed to protect you from. Good luck getting them to risk their ass to protect your family.
@Sean:Just last year my two nieces survived an attack by a white racist street gang (we are white). This gang had earlier savagely beat a black Hispanic friend of theirs but my niece intervened to save his life. On the way home, these guys attacked my nieces in retaliation but my niece grabbed a chain off one of them and they managed to beat all five of them. The cops arrested my nieces and took them to the station in handcuffs, even though my niece had broken her hand in the fight and they were the victims. They were initially going to charge my nieces with first degree assault with battery—a felony offense—but after my brother threatened to go to the media the DA dropped the charges to misdemeanor assault. The DA refused to drop the charges but he let the case lapse by failing to show up for court three times in a row.
So how would guns help here? If your nieces had guns they would shot these thugs? What would the coppers and the DA have done in that case? Applaud? Or are you saying that all they would have done in waved the guns and the thugs would have run away?
This is *exactly* a situation in which guns are of no real use IMHO…
By all means call the cops the next time a criminal confronts you with a weapon.
My personal strategy is different:
a) I avoid such situation completely (best strategy)
b) I have 4 dogs at home, inside my house, 24/7 (2 shepherds, 2 terriers)
I am going to be 50 years old – so far I have a 100% success rate :-)
YMMV
@Saker
You are so self-contradictory and hypocritical it makes squirm in my chair! You make these blanket-statements about people only make you sound like the clowns on mainstream news. You “try” to shoot down facts by telling everyone how incompetent they are and that no one can stand up for what they believe in. I think you’re an ass! I have only been on your site for an hour or so, and all(<blanket-statement) I see is idiocy!
@anonymous:You are so self-contradictory and hypocritical it makes squirm in my chair!
Excellent! That means that the cognitive dissonance you are experiencing is still bothering you and that, in turn, tells me that you have not been terminally zombified. What you need to do now is try to come up with logical arguments to expose the contradictions and hypocrisy you see on my blog. Think of it as “chewing on the red pill” if that helps. At first, this will be frustrating, but gradually you will feel better and better.
Remember that you will always be welcome here.
Good luck!
The Saker
“guns make no damn difference :-)”
“A typically American syndrome, I would add.”
“the USA is the only country on the planet with such a quasi-religious faith in guns.”
“I was being tongue-in-cheek in my comments”
“So hold on to your gun, and sleep tight :-)”
—
Coming from an expert observer of global geopolitics, this amateur effort is quite disappointing.
Tongue-in-cheek comments, lazy stereotypes, and smiley-faces, oh my!
For a second I thought I landed on HuffPo or Salon…
The Saker — an eagle-eyed observer whose gaze pierces the fog of disinformation and lies — except when it comes to this issue (or non-issue, or however you wish to call it). Yes, you said you were only venting about a “topic you totally hate”, but shouldn’t rational logic eventually prevail over emotionally charged rhetoric? At some point, a level-headed discussion would be preferable over this narrowing spiral of empty words. You of all people should know not to traffic in such rhetoric, even when “ranting” about a subject you dislike. It may even lead some to question your credibility in other matters.
—
My .02:
Firearms are not the exclusive domain of any particular country or society. They are much more prevalent than you may think. People all over the world exercise their God-given right to own and use such tools regardless of edicts from corrupt officials reeking of hypocrisy. “Guns/drugs are baaaad, let’s ban them!” — say the arms-dealing, drug-trafficking parasites.*
Gun prohibition, like drug prohibition, is doomed to failure. Just ask the master gunsmiths in Pakistan or the Philippines (the craftsmanship of their homemade firearms is impressive and, dare I say, awe-inspiring). And if they can do it in Third World conditions, why can’t those in the First World?
There are places in the world where everybody and their mother owns an AK, and I would feel much more comfortable living there than in many so-called civilized First World countries. Why? In a word: community. A sense of unity and moral duty, and the integral role that firearms play in that dynamic is the bond which unites the community together.
—
“My personal strategy is different:
a) I avoid such situation completely (best strategy)
b) I have 4 dogs at home, inside my house, 24/7 (2 shepherds, 2 terriers)
I am going to be 50 years old – so far I have a 100% success rate :-)”
Tip: get a 12 gauge pump action shotgun (i.e. Remington 870 or Mossberg 500). Dogs are a great deterrent, but there are criminals who would think nothing of mowing them down. Think of it as an extra layer in your home defense strategy (don’t forget other options like steel doors and home alarm systems).
And don’t think violent home invasions can’t happen where you live. They do. Here’s a terrifying example, which occurred in a wealthy suburb:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ghastly-details-in-conn-home-invasion/
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Thank you Saker for all the good work you do (and I mean that sincerely).
* Real-world example: Leland Yee, California state senator, who was busted by the feds in a sting operation. Article here. You can also read the 137-page FBI affidavit for yourself right here.