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...

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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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On 02/26/10 04:52, Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>>   If that kind of law (ie. all handguns illegal, confiscated without
>>>> recompensation) was enacted in the US, it would most probably result in a
>>>> civil war.
> 
>> 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.
> 
>   Yeah, sure. The US Army is going to attack its own country and its own
> citizens, especially at a large scale, resulting in thousands and thousands
> of casualties, millions and millions in property damage and a full-fledged
> civil war, plummeting the economy of the country so low that the current
> crisis is paradise in comparison. I don't think so.

	That's one scenario. Another is that few will die, and most will
comply. I doubt it, but I doubt it will be anywhere near as bad as your
scenario were this to pass.

	Remember: *Many* people in the US are against guns, and want them banned.

	I think you're assuming that the ban will be sudden. Make it happen
slowly (over, say, 2 decades), and the outcome may be quite muted. The
people did lose certain rights with the PATRIOT act, and for all the
"anger", no one really did anything about it. Heck, probably most people
who claimed to be upset by it ended up re-electing their congressmen.

	Now of course, these weren't freedoms people felt about as strongly as
the 2nd amendment, but a lot of people did have really strong feelings
about some of them (library monitoring, questionable detentions where no
charges are filed and no access to lawyers is given for years - although
not sure if the PATRIOT act was directly responsible for this one...).
Then you have a ridiculous amount of surveillance - some even illegal
despite the PATRIOT act, but no matter: Retroactive immunity was given.
People were upset, and then elected as president one of the people
responsible for the immunity (someone who said he opposed it, too).

	Follow the PATRIOT act model. Sit around till a bunch of events happen
that scare everyone (e.g. terrorist attacks). Pass laws that allow the
forceful removal of guns from *certain* individuals who seem to have a
high risk profile, and the rest is much easier.

	(Just saw that Patrick pointed this out).

	Americans can get quite upset if they think the government will go
after them. But there's no uniform "us" in the US (no pun intended) like
there may be in some European countries. If they push legislation with a
lot of sweet talk about how this is mostly for Mexican origin folks to
keep drugs and its violence out of the US, or Ali who seems to make lots
of calls to weird people in the Middle East, I think most Americans,
given the right circumstances, would be fine with it. (The exact
argument *was* given regarding the telephone monitoring - "If you're not
calling Afghanistan, you don't need to worry"). After all, it's not
_that_ rare that you get a congressman publicly stating that it's OK to
remove certain civil liberties (I think even freedom of speech) from
Arabs/Muslims. Wouldn't surprise me if they got re-elected as well.

	To be honest, when it comes to the effectiveness of protests to change
policies, the US simply sucks. I don't know about Finland, but in some
European countries it works a lot better (perhaps France would be an
example...).

	I also get the feeling that at least in some European countries, when
politicians do things that are wildly unpopular, they often get replaced
quickly. How often do you guys pass laws just to ensure crimes already
committed by the government or corporations don't get punished, or pass
laws simply to avoid having to follow rulings meted out by the courts? I
don't really know - perhaps it's common and doesn't hit the news here often.

-- 
If you ate pasta and antipasta, would you still be hungry?

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On 02/26/10 08:31, Darren New wrote:
> 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.
	
	But they weren't _really_ Americans, now, were they ;-)


-- 
If you ate pasta and antipasta, would you still be hungry?

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On 02/25/10 17:19, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Happens in the US as well - that's how something like PATRIOT gets passed.

	But the PATRIOT act is milder than what was passed in a number of
European countries - some before 2001.
	
> Governments are owned by corporations - doesn't matter where you are in 
> the world.  The golden rule applies - he who has the gold makes the rules.

	I think the degree of "ownership" varies quite a bit from place to
place, to be honest.

-- 
If you ate pasta and antipasta, would you still be hungry?

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