Invisible wrote:
> Except that a couple of dreaming idealists with pistols and shotguns 
> aren't going to last 7 seconds against the entire might of the US 
> military, the largest army on the face of God's Earth.

Except the *military* follows the same rules, you see. The people in the 
military are defending the constituion, not the leaders.

If you had a coup by part of the military, the other part would fight 
against them. If you had (say) a President try to stay in power longer than 
2 terms, how would he get the military to support that? Shoot the congress?

> Really, such arguments sound very, very silly to me. The US government 
> can do what ever the hell they like, and there's really not especially 
> much the US people can do about it. Just like every other country on Earth.

I dunno. It seems we're having a fair amount of trouble in the middle east 
right now, just from IEDs and AK-47's. You'd have a heck of a hard time 
having the military actually force people to do something, rather than force 
them not to.

Then again, that's not how it would be done these days, as evidenced by the 
fact that nobody started shooting when the USA started locking up US 
citizens of japanese descent during WW2.

> Now, see, if you don't actually trust the government, then you accept 
> that you've already lost. The government has so much power that if they 
> want to get rid of you, they *will* get rid of you, and there's nothing 
> that you as an individual can possibly do about it.

Not as an individual, no. But once can certainly fight back against soldiers 
with handguns as long as those soldiers aren't trying to actually kill you. 
Cops and soldiers don't want to get shot any more than you do.

The difference is that you're acting as if the entire government is one 
beast with power. It's not. It's a bunch of warring individuals. The reason 
you used to be able to overthrow the king and take over was the king and the 
noblemen who swore allegiance to him were the only people with any military 
might. If the average citizen owned a suit of armor and a war horse and just 
didn't take them out very much, you'd have far fewer noblemen abusing their 
positions.

> Well, I wouldn't want to live on a country where it's legal for any 
> random crazy person to own a gun. Not that all gun owners are crazy, you 
> understand - just that it only takes one of them to be crazy to cause a 
> whole heap of trouble...

The trouble hits the news because it's so rare. And the rules are generally 
strict enough that the crazies wind up with illegal guns anyway.  Most 
anyone can own a gun. Not too many are allowed to carry one in a way you 
can't easily see it, and even fewer actually do.

> Face it, there are already people driving cars which you really wouldn't 
> want behind the wheel.

True. But not because they're trying to kill you with the automobile, but 
because they're careless while using it. But since the point of "using" a 
firearm is to either shoot or intimidate, you wouldn't get too many 
accidents, as owners just wouldn't take them out of the safe accidentally. 
The people whose responsibility includes actually using a firearm every day 
know how to do it safely, probably better than drivers.

Granted, in the "wild west" days, many many people carried firearms 
regularly, and the murder rate was very high, but it's hard for me to say 
whether this was due to the lack of law enforcement, the environment, 
selection bias, or because everyone was carrying firearms. Probably 
comparing the murder rates with those in large cities of the time would help.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The question in today's corporate environment is not
   so much "what color is your parachute?" as it is
   "what color is your nose?"

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