Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I am unconvinced that

> 1. There will be a cival war if the government does something the people 
> don't like.

  I'm pretty sure there would be a civil war if the US government tried
to appeal the second amendment and confiscate all firearms. That's because,
as I wrote earlier, the second amendment is seen by many Americans as a
safeguard against a totally corrupt government. It gives the people the
power to keep the government in check.

> 2. Not having guns makes it impossible to force the government to change 
> its policy.

  Guns make it easier to keep the government in check. If you suddenly have
a million fully armed people taking over the government, that cannot be
taken lightly.

  (I'm not saying that guns are the *best* way to keep a government in check.
I'm just pointing out what seems to be the case in the US.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   Guns make it easier to keep the government in check.
> 
>   (I'm not saying that guns are the *best* way to keep a government in check.
> I'm just pointing out what seems to be the case in the US.)

And it seems to me that being able to own guns gives the American people 
a nice illusion of safety when in fact they don't really have any.

But hey, fortunately I don't have to live in America. :-)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> And it seems to me that being able to own guns gives the American people 
> a nice illusion of safety when in fact they don't really have any.

  I'm not so sure. As I have said, I don't think the American government
would dare confiscate all firearms. Their economy would plummet and it
would result in countless casualties and property damage.

  And if they don't dare doing that, what else don't they dare doing
because of the same reason? People do have power there.

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                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> And it seems to me that being able to own guns gives the American people 
>> a nice illusion of safety when in fact they don't really have any.
> 
>   I'm not so sure. As I have said, I don't think the American government
> would dare confiscate all firearms. Their economy would plummet and it
> would result in countless casualties and property damage.
> 
>   And if they don't dare doing that, what else don't they dare doing
> because of the same reason? People do have power there.

There are other countries where certain policies would be political 
suicide. You don't need guns for the people to have power.

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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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Invisible wrote:
> The entire country isn't going to resist. Half a dozen zeolots will, the 
> rest will just quietly accept it. Half a dozen zeolots are not difficult 
> to control when you have a huge army at your disposal.

I think when the army is called out to supress a riot, you're suddenly going 
to find there's a whole bunch more than half a dozen zeolots.  I don't think 
the whole Tiennaman Square thing would have gone down around here. Heck, 
we're *still* talking about the three or four people shot in the 1960s on a 
college campus by the local army.

> Oh, sure, like that's *really* going to work.

Seems to work in the middle east.

-- 
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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Invisible wrote:
> 1. There will be a cival war if the government does something the people 
> don't like.

We did once.  You don't think there would be all-out war in this country if 
Congress decided to repeal the constitution we have pass Sharia law instead?

> 2. Not having guns makes it impossible to force the government to change 
> its policy.

It's not *just* the guns. The guns are what keep the government from 
changing the rules to the point where they can't be changed back. The guns 
are what happen when the government officials stop following their own rules.

So far, they're still following the rules, for the most part. We haven't had 
any president declare an "emergency" that canceled elections, nor has 
Congress reinstated slavery.

Understand that guns are the "I'd rather die than live under this system" 
sort of thing, not the "I don't like what that senator just said" sort of 
thing. They'd only come in to play if you were actually willing to shoot at 
soldiers.

> This whole idea that "without guns the government will enslave the 
> people, but as long as people carry guns the government can be held in 
> check" seems utterly ridiculous to me.

That's becasue you're exaggerating it into absurdity and then arguing it's 
absurd. There are a bunch of checks and balances built into the system, such 
as the military not being loyal to the *people* running the government but 
to the *laws* of the government.

-- 
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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On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:16:26 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> the largest army on the face of God's Earth.

You haven't seen the Chinese Army.....

Jim

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On 2/26/2010 2:16 AM, Invisible wrote:
> 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...
>
> Face it, there are already people driving cars which you really wouldn't
> want behind the wheel.

Yeah, tried that argument recently with my father, and all I got was the 
"statistics for home invasion", "criminals will always have guns, even 
if you don't", and the ever popular, "look at the increase in home 
invasions in country X, where people are losing gun rights." Grrr...

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On 2/26/2010 7:15 AM, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> I am unconvinced that
>
>> 1. There will be a cival war if the government does something the people
>> don't like.
>
>    I'm pretty sure there would be a civil war if the US government tried
> to appeal the second amendment and confiscate all firearms. That's because,
> as I wrote earlier, the second amendment is seen by many Americans as a
> safeguard against a totally corrupt government. It gives the people the
> power to keep the government in check.
>
Problem is, its not. Pretty much ever madman and dictator in history has 
gotten into power by a) giving the majority what they **seemed** to 
want, and b) convincing a significant number of those that are not in 
that majority that they can get what they want too, if they side with 
them. Armed citizens, in that scenario is not a means to "prevent" civil 
war and fascism, its a means to guarantee it. Its like I have said to a 
lot of people about the whole paranoid idiocy you always get about Satan 
hiding among liberals... Sure, if he a) existed, and b) was a complete 
fracking idiot, that is where he would be. If he was real, intended to 
cause the greatest chaos, strife and war, wanted to form a huge army, 
and needed to gather followers to arrange these things to happen, he 
would found of bloody fracking mega church, hand out guns as door 
prizes, whip up the pre-existing paranoia, persecution complexes, and 
fears, of believers, then tell them, "March with me, and everything will 
be fixed!"

Hell, even the paranoid people are not logically consistent about this. 
They try to push in evangelical and Biblical literalist ideas into the 
army, while fighting to prevent joe six pack losing his right to shoot 
beer cans, and coincidentally, the neighbors house, behind them, but are 
***sure*** that liberals are all out to... what? Take away everyone's 
guns, then convince the, often, in this day and age, borderline criminal 
(they throw out gays, lesbians, and other "undesirables", and until 
recently refused to use women in combat at all, so don't **have** 
anything other than convicts to pick from), nearly all believers, to put 
themselves in concentration camps? WTF?

Truth is, there is a sane level of gun ownership, and sane ways to keep 
them, and yes, some countries are being bloody damn stupid about even 
allowing that. But, the US policy is pretty much protected, protested as 
great, railed about, in terms of its endangerment, and hugged like a 
warm blanket, by people that are completely, batshit, insane, and I 
wouldn't trust with a water pistol, never mind a semi-automatic.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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