>  Some argue that Europe is in grave danger of becoming a totalitarian
> government system because the citizens have no way of keeping governments
> in check, and they are passing stricter and stricter laws, restricting
> more and more liberties, as time passes. Europeans don't shoot back, but
> instead they submit.

That's only correct for an issue like guns, because far fewer people in 
Europe care about having a gun than in the US (as far as I can tell).  If 
any government in Europe changed the law on guns, basically nobody would 
care apart from a small minority.

Take a different issue, say tax on fuel, and suddenly people do "shoot 
back" - certainly in the UK there was havoc when fuel prices went too high, 
the government knows it cannot do anything silly here else the country will 
be brought to a standstill.

I suspect other issues which a lot of people actually care about would have 
similar outcomes if the government tried to do something they didn't like.

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:54:02 -0800, Neeum Zawan wrote:

> 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.

"High quality" garbage is still garbage.  Just because everyone's doing 
it doesn't mean it's right or what we should do.

>> 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.

Somewhat, yes - some of the places that strike me as being less owned by 
corporations, though, are places like China......

Jim

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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>>>         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.
>>
>>   I don't think it's possible to repeal an amendment over the span of
>> 2 decades. It's instantaneous: At one moment the amendment is valid,
>> the next moment it has been repealed. I don't think there's any middle
>> ground there.
>>
>>   It happened with the 18th (in December 5th 1933, to be exact).
> 
> I think Neeum meant a slow ban on guns in spite of constitutional
> protections. For example, it's now very difficult to own machine guns,
> in spite of the 2nd amendment not giving them special treatment.
> 

It is very difficult to get a permit to sell a machine gun. It is not
all that difficult, depending on the state, to get the tax stamp
required to own one. Get finger printed, pass a background check, and
talk to the local LEO. Then pay $200 for a tax stamp when you buy the
weapon. On the state level, there are probably some extra hoops to jump
through.

The guns are the hard part. They have to be made before May 19th 1986,
so the prices are through the roof. Or they can be home-made, if you pay
a different tax and get the correct stamp. Those can only later be
transfered to the military or police.

All this assume I read the National Firearms Act, and remember it
correctly. I recommend you do not assume that.

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan wrote:
> On 02/27/10 04:01, Warp wrote:
>> Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>>>         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.
>>   I don't think it's possible to repeal an amendment over the span of
>> 2 decades. It's instantaneous: At one moment the amendment is valid,
>> the next moment it has been repealed. I don't think there's any middle
>> ground there.
> 
> 	Well, yes there is. In the US, there's a ban on a number of kinds of
> guns. That's already a partial ban.
> 

The various bans have been challenged on Constitutional grounds before.
There was a recent case in . . . Tennessee I think. I don't recall if it
got to SCOTUS, but the goal was to weaken the National Firearms Act (the
ban). There was also a law passed in Montana that intends to do away
with the NFA in-state. Since it was only passes last year, it will be
some time before it gets tested.

What I find amusing is that the NFA ban is based on Congress's
assumed/presumed power (Commerce Clause) to regulate items that affect
inter-state commerce, even if those items never cross state lines, or
are not even sold. The same power is what gives the various drug
enforcement agencies their clout. Get rid of one, and the other is
likely to fail on precedent. Amusing because, in stereotypes of
political leaning, the right wants to own guns and ban drugs, while the
left wants to ban guns and use drugs.

Post a reply to this message

Neeum Zawan wrote:
> On 02/25/10 14:55, Darren New wrote:
>> It just wouldn't get enforced. The federal government has no forces to
>> do that other than the military, and a fairly recent poll (like a few
>> years ago) asked "would you assist in wide-spread confiscation of
>> firearms from US citizens" of the general soldiers and about 70% said
>> they wouldn't.
> 
> 	While I tend to agree, I wouldn't put any stock into that poll. Find
> soldiers (of any country) who've done nasty things, and I'm sure most of
> them would have years earlier said and believed that they wouldn't do it
> even if ordered to.
> 
> 

Prime them right, and phrase the question right, and even after they
have done nasty things you could get the same percentage.

What it comes down to is how easily the 'powers-that-be' can dehumanize
the people they want shot. Few would agree to shooting a fellow citizen
who is involved in an uprising to preserve their Constitutional rights.
Many might agree to shooting a domestic terrorist who is attempting a
violent overthrow of the local government, and killing fellow soldiers
and law enforcement as a means to that end.

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> The various bans have been challenged on Constitutional grounds before.

Just recently they overturned the Washington DC ban, but that's special 
because Washington DC isn't a state, so only federal laws apply there.

They also decided to allow guns in federal parks (like the grand canyon 
park, for example) as long as the state would allow guns there. Which was 
somehow hailed as a terrible blow to gun regulation for some reason.

-- 
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?"

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>> On 02/25/10 14:55, Darren New wrote:
>>> It just wouldn't get enforced. The federal government has no forces to
>>> do that other than the military, and a fairly recent poll (like a few
>>> years ago) asked "would you assist in wide-spread confiscation of
>>> firearms from US citizens" of the general soldiers and about 70% said
>>> they wouldn't.
>> 	While I tend to agree, I wouldn't put any stock into that poll. Find
>> soldiers (of any country) who've done nasty things, and I'm sure most of
>> them would have years earlier said and believed that they wouldn't do it
>> even if ordered to.
>>
>>
> 
> Prime them right, and phrase the question right, and even after they
> have done nasty things you could get the same percentage.
> 
> What it comes down to is how easily the 'powers-that-be' can dehumanize
> the people they want shot. Few would agree to shooting a fellow citizen
> who is involved in an uprising to preserve their Constitutional rights.
> Many might agree to shooting a domestic terrorist who is attempting a
> violent overthrow of the local government, and killing fellow soldiers
> and law enforcement as a means to that end.

A few points that I am reminded of:

* The 1989 uprising in China was not put down immediately because the 
troops who finally did the job had to be brought in from another region 
of China.  This was before Twitter and the Internet, so the government 
had far less difficulty keeping people ignorant of what was going on. 
According to my recall of the report, the local-area troops were deemed 
too sympathetic to the uprising (and may have refused to fire on people 
they knew), whereas the troops brought in were deliberately misled on 
the nature of the "enemy" they faced.

* I don't think it's terribly hard to institute a reign of terror; not 
so much because the average man is amenable to manipulation, but because 
you don't have to rely on corrupting the regular populace (although if 
you can, it helps).  Every society, apparently, has enough people who 
will obey any order, if they are paid in the proper coin, to staff a 
Gestapo of suitable size.  For some of them, obeying the order to 
terrorize ordinary citizens *is* the reward.

* Going on from this, some nations are particularly amenable to police 
state rule, by virtue of being so tribal in nature that everyone outside 
the tribe is dehumanized by virtue of that fact alone.  So when one 
tribe gains power, oppression of the other tribes follows as certainly 
as night follows day.

* It has been reported to me that during the Clinton administration, 
some US military personnel were asked if they would fire upon fellow 
Americans if ordered to do so.  At least one responded that he would be 
more inclined to fire upon the person giving the order.

Regards,
John

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On 03/31/10 18:24, John VanSickle wrote:
> * It has been reported to me that during the Clinton administration,
> some US military personnel were asked if they would fire upon fellow
> Americans if ordered to do so.  At least one responded that he would be
> more inclined to fire upon the person giving the order.

	I'd guess it depends on what kind of American ;-). These days the
powers on high keep implying that they will assassinate American
citizens if they're deemed terrorists or terrorist recruiters. These
Americans just happen to have names like Ahmed, which I suspect will
make the shooting easier.

	Besides, if you want to get soldiers to shoot Americans, just don't let
them know they're Americans. I don't think it was ever a "strong"
protection.

-- 
No, Taco Bell is NOT the Mexican Phone Company!

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Neeum Zawan wrote:

> Besides, if you want to get soldiers to shoot Americans, just don't let
> them know they're Americans. I don't think it was ever a "strong"
> protection.

I was in the U.S. military for twenty years.  Anyone trying to turn our 
military into a force for oppressing fellow Americans is going to have 
to make radical alterations to our military's culture.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

On 4/3/2010 8:18 PM, John VanSickle wrote:
> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>
>> Besides, if you want to get soldiers to shoot Americans, just don't let
>> them know they're Americans. I don't think it was ever a "strong"
>> protection.
>
> I was in the U.S. military for twenty years. Anyone trying to turn our
> military into a force for oppressing fellow Americans is going to have
> to make radical alterations to our military's culture.
>
> Regards,
> John
Hmm. Like recent, but failed, attempts to replace more balanced 
religious representatives with evangelicals, while actively excluding 
other religions, by people that have been fairly clear that they don't 
exactly think that a) all Christians, and especially b) non-Christians, 
should necessarily have the same rights, or even, in some cases, 
citizenship?

Yes, it would require a radical restructuring, but the nature of the 
animal is that it is authoritarian driven, and teaches the people in it 
to follow orders, so.. if the authority is telling you that X set of 
ideals are more important than defending the constitution itself, or 
citizens that disagree with that X set of ideals, you have a major problem.

The difficulty is, in a nut shell, such changes do not happen instantly, 
but by degrees, and it takes people not just standing up and protesting 
them to keep them from happening, but political powers **listening** to 
those protests. Its not hard to imagine several of the thing that 
changed this year going the other way, including an increase, instead of 
a rethink, of Evangelism in the military, had we ended up with McSame 
and Falin. The first of which seemed to do a 180 the moment he might get 
elected, and sided with the crazier people in his party, and the later 
of which... well, some people still seem to think she isn't one of the 
crazies herself, but some people also think that the movie 2012 was a 
documentary.

Its only necessary to get the majority looking one way, and the minority 
afraid to say anything, then mix in some "excuses" that the majority 
will believe. They might not be willing to shoot anyone, specifically, 
but they might be willing to shoot them in a properly staged situation, 
where things get violent, and the orders they **where** given **seem** 
somehow lawful, based on the majority philosophy and claimed threat 
presented as a factual one, by people making a grab for power.

In other words, you don't have to order them to shoot someone. You just 
have to arrange matters so that they won't have a choice, and it will 
*appear* to be in defense of an ideology that they have been trained 
into following, as part of their service. There are already "some" that 
would fall into that category, and have suggested so. There could have 
been more, if the trend of replacing chaplain with ones who had a 
specific agenda had continued.

-- 
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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