Interesting thing about the 2nd amendment.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The second amendment was put in the constitution so that The People would have the means to protect their liberty, so that their freedom was in their own hands.  Personally, I think James Madison was taking the piss...It was a bitter joke then, and it's a bitter joke now.

It was a bitter joke then, because of things like The Whiskey Rebellion, which demonstrated that even with weapons the same as the government had, ordinary citizens stood no chance of fending off the army.  That still leaves the ability, however, to use guns as a method of removing a tyrant through assassination.

Problem is, of course, who would you shoot?  History has shown that every assassination HELPED the cause of the person assassinated (Martin Luther King, etc), or made things worse (Lincoln).

And it's a bitter joke today, because despite being the most armed population on the planet, nobody has lifted a finger as one right after another has been abrogated.  In fact, the ONLY amendment that hasn't been shitcanned is amendment III, and that's just because there's no money to be made in quartering troops in peoples' houses.

I still support the 2nd amendment, because the potential is still there...But I still get a good laugh out of people screaming about needing their firearms to stay free.  There are many ways to stay free, but the same bastards screaming about their precious liberties are the ones cheering on every erosion of those liberties.

Why?  Easy.  They don't want RIGHTS, they want PRIVILEGE.  They certainly don't want smudgy people having the same rights as they have, and they have this incredibly bizarre idea that torturing foreigners (or holding them without trial) will always be restricted to Ay-rabs, Big Scary Black Dudes, etc.  They do not for one moment dream that these things can happen to them.

But the fun part about rights are that they are SEIZED.  Privilege is GRANTED, and thus can be taken away.  And these privileges WILL be taken away...It's just a matter of time.  And the yahoos will be stunned; they will wonder why nobody will rise in arms for them, never once considering that they themselves failed to rise in arms for anyone else.

So there you have it:  Guns are necessary to protect rights you don't have.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Also:  Back in Chicago, I knew a guy who thought that trials were unnecessary, that they were some sort of privilege given to criminals (as opposed to finding out if the accused was actually the person who did in fact commit the crime), because God knows the police don't waste time arresting innocent people.

I pointed out that trials were a constitutionally guaranteed right, and if we're gonna get rid of them, then we may as well get rid of firearm ownership.

His response?

"I need those guns to protect my rights."

He was utterly oblivious to the dangerous levels of irony, and I didn't bother explaining it.  Educating one po'bucker yahoo among millions wouldn't do any good even IF I could drive the notion through his thick fucking head.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Excellent point. Ive never held a gun let alone owned one. If anything stockpiling a bunch of guns for that time when shit hits the fanTM whatever shit that may be will probably put one on the big bad nwos radar. I like how un paranoia feeds in to it too.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Excellent point. Ive never held a gun let alone owned one. If anything stockpiling a bunch of guns for that time when shit hits the fanTM whatever shit that may be will probably put one on the big bad nwos radar. I like how un paranoia feeds in to it too.

Twid, the shit's been hitting the fan for 12 years now.  The government doesn't CARE who has guns, because guns are irrelevant.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Excellent point. Ive never held a gun let alone owned one. If anything stockpiling a bunch of guns for that time when shit hits the fanTM whatever shit that may be will probably put one on the big bad nwos radar. I like how un paranoia feeds in to it too.

Twid, the shit's been hitting the fan for 12 years now.  The government doesn't CARE who has guns, because guns are irrelevant.

Yep. Non-issue.

They'll run over your shit with tanks.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Let me expand on that. 

Okay, so we have this huge population, and we have about one gun per two people.  This obviously makes for a potentially dangerous situation.

But if Jon Q Public can be controlled anyway, by popular media and pre-packaged, shrink-wrapped "resistance movements" provided by the same people fucking John Q Public, then the potential danger is meaningless.

Think of it this way...My dog is HUGE, and is perfectly capable of ripping me literally limb from limb.  However, there's no danger, because my dog is incapable of forming the intent to do me harm.  It not only doesn't occur to him, it CAN'T occur to him.  It's simply not in his mental framework.

So nuts with guns?  They're a danger to you and I...Recent events have proven as much.  But a danger to the government?  Not even close.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Thats why i said if anything. The idea that a few guys will somehow be able to save their version of america with guns against an army (rather than the atf or something) is absurd.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Thats why i said if anything. The idea that a few guys will somehow be able to save their version of america with guns against an army (rather than the atf or something) is absurd.

Sure.  But my argument is that the government doesn't care who's stockpiling guns.  They're no actual threat, and when they need an example to scare the shit out of the population, it's easier to simply manufacture one (Wiki "Ruby Ridge", and have a read), then to dig around through the records.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

There's some propaganda value to all of this, of course.

[Cain]

In regards to assassination:

It depends on your POV.  If the problem is a certain man in a certain place, then great.  Killing Kennedy was pretty useful for Lyndon Johnson, the Mafia, the CIA etc.  Most medieval armies relied on a single strong leader to keep them all together, and when that person died, the army dissolved, which was the source of success of the Ismaili cultists (at least until they met the Mongols, who had something akin to a modern chain of command). 

On the other hand, assassinating Bush to protest against the Patriot Act...not so handy.  Assassinating Hitler, famously, was considered troublesome because of the possibility of someone more competent taking over.  That said, it didn't stop SOE from whacking several Generals and Nazi officers, most famously Reinhart Heydrich.  Assassinating Stalin wouldn't have ended Communism in the USSR.

It can be used as a tool of terrorism though, like the Ismailis did.  By publically killing people associated with certain ideas or actions, intimidation can be used to dissuade them.  Possibly. 

Such campaigns can also be used as part of a strategy of escalation, like the Social Revolutionaries in Russia did, advocating and carrying out assassinations to provoke a brutal crackdown which would then provoke more sympathy for the movement and, over time, break the morale and support of the Czarist Empire.

However, like all tactics, it is a matter of context as to where such an attack would be useful or not.  Against the entire machinery of modern government, a single bullet, while certainly less bloody than revolution or war, is probably not going to have the desired effect.  Certainly not unless combined with other actions to massively increase the impact of such a shot.

[LMNO]

This might have been covered already, but is there a possibility that the guns themselves create a general atmosphere of Fear and Paranoia which is then used as an excuse to limit freedoms?  So the tools given to protect our freedom actually serves to limit them.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

On the other hand, assassinating Bush to protest against the Patriot Act...not so handy.  Assassinating Hitler, famously, was considered troublesome because of the possibility of someone more competent taking over.  That said, it didn't stop SOE from whacking several Generals and Nazi officers, most famously Reinhart Heydrich.  Assassinating Stalin wouldn't have ended Communism in the USSR.

<snip>

However, like all tactics, it is a matter of context as to where such an attack would be useful or not.  Against the entire machinery of modern government, a single bullet, while certainly less bloody than revolution or war, is probably not going to have the desired effect.  Certainly not unless combined with other actions to massively increase the impact of such a shot.

Well, this is exactly my point.  Funny thing is, Hitler aside, the people who are the obvious targets of assassination are usually the people moderating the people beneath them, and preventing even worse abuses.

The Lincoln example is my favorite...Lincoln wanted a concilatory approach to the South after the civil war.  So dumbass John Wilkes Booth kills him in a terminal fit of attention-whoring, and the result was a punishment-oriented approach to reconstruction.

And, with respect to the current government, there's no one person - or even 100 people - that you could assassinate that would make any difference whatsoever.  America, for example, is called "a nation ruled by laws, not men"...We're actually a nation ruled by The Machine™, not men, but the result is the same.  Kill one cog, he gets replaced with some other asshole, and nobody smells the difference.  The Machine™ grinds right along without skipping a beat.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This might have been covered already, but is there a possibility that the guns themselves create a general atmosphere of Fear and Paranoia which is then used as an excuse to limit freedoms?  So the tools given to protect our freedom actually serves to limit them.

Sano just mentioned this in another thread:

People here have commented on the paradox that people buy into the idea of individualism yet are always displaying signals of being submissive to a certain community, and that it may be because of their feelings of insecurity; I think it might be something more general:

People operating under the "rugged individualism" meme do not want to live in a society (for certain definitions of "society", of course)
Not wanting to live in a society, they don't care for it.
Not caring for it, they don't pay attention to the idea.
Not paying attention to the idea, they don't know much about it.
Not knowing much about it, they can be part of one without realizing it.
And of course, if you are a part of something without even realizing that something is there you can be manipulated by it much more easily. Which explains why countries thought to be more community-oriented (Britain and Japan were cited) are less conforming: they are able to see some of the bullshit because they recognize their own community-related experiences better and are able to use that knowledge in their favor.

So the paradox does not arise from the conflict of an idea with a specific psychological reaction to it, it follows usually from the idea itself, it's a consequence of it. Does any of this make sense?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Also, yeah, if you let the po'buckers keep their guns, but occasionally threaten to take them away, they will concentrate on those guns to the exclusion of all others, as every one of them thinks of themselves as a latent Rambo-esque lone hero, in the same manner that they assume that they will one day be rich.

[LMNO]

But also, there is a fear generated by the amount of guns, at least to a lot of my more liberal friends.  A low-grade tension, a fear of gun-related violence, which prompts an urge to limit freedoms to increase false security; but those limits don't pertain to the thing that's producing the fear.