Bring Your Sidearms To The Banks of the Potomac.

[compared2what?]

I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Intellectuals, queers, Jews, loose women and blacks are only tenuously American in most parts of the country at the best of times.

I suppose I'm asking you to ask yourself whether what you might realistically gain in the way of personal comfort and security if there was no such thing as gun registration is a great enough good that it outweighs what you (and everyone else in society at large) might realistically lose in the way of personal comfort and security if there was no such thing as gun registration.

In short, I'm asking you to consider all the functional effects of gun registration, pro and con, in a context that's more expansive than your own house before calling for its abolition. And also to articulate the intellectual basis for your position, without which its practical implications are bound to remain infinitely vague and undefined. To yourself, if not to me.

Because the reason I'm asking you (and everyone) to do that is that these are frightening times. I fear for me and I fear for you. And as I perceive, understand and generally process the issue using my analytic and critical thinking skills, changing the law in order to accommodate the needs to which you point does more to endanger you and others than it does to protect them. Much more. When broadly considered.

It's not like I want you to agree with me about this (or about anything, really) just for kicks. I don't get kicks out of being agreed with above all other things, personally. Don't even reply to this post if you don't feel like it. I'm just advocating for broad consideration, and also trying to promote it by supplying examples in the form of whatever half-assed templates for it I'm capable of generating by myself, off the cuff.

That's about all there is to it.

[norton ash]

Nordic:

People tend to be polite when they think the other person might be armed. The cliche of "a well armed society is a polite society" is actually true.

So I guess the other cliche about polite Canadians is untrue? In my experience, bad manners are an indication of a stupid person trying to be assertive and actually harming their cause.

Witness this whole little brandishing exercise by the Potomac.

A respectful and tolerant society is a polite society. And most Canadians think the American "frontier" attitude is absolute bollocks.

There's a rural/urban split in Canada between where a gun really is a "tool" and where it's just a bad idea.

[JackRiddler]

I belong to a club closely related to firearms, but one not any sane person would seek to join.

Iam, I appreciate your writing this post more than I can really express, and second c2w''s heartfelt sympathies. Once again the power of an individual story has trumped polemic on these discussions and added a layer of real world access I would have thought nearly impossible to find in a format like this. Thank you for that, and for evidencing a strength in the face of such tragedy which I'm certain would be beyond me.

Iam, right now I don't see what I could say that adds anything to barracuda's statement. Please allow me to echo his words. Trying to imagine what you've gone through is harrowing.

[Nordic]

C2W: I'm not even talking about changing the law. I guess I'm not making myself clear here. I'm talking about what I want to do, personally. I think it's just A-OK to buy guns outside of the "system" and to buy them unregistered. Like I'd buy something else off of Craigslist or e-bay. I don't agree with having to register them and having the government know I have them, so if I were to buy one, I wouldn't buy one in that way. Like if I wanted to buy a bag of weed (I don't smoke, just using as an example) I wouldn't exactly tell the world I was buying it. Everybody else can do whatever they want. They can live within the rules or not, it's their choice.

And Norton, that's a bit of a strawman. I didn't say it was the only way a society was polite. Of course not. Nor did I say that the opposite was true, i.e. an unarmed society was an impolite society. Of course not.

I guess if there's any point about all of this discussion involving myself is that I don't fear or worship guns. I just don't have an emotional response to them. Maybe because I grew up with them, and my grandparents had them leaning against the wall behind my grandpa's chair, just like a broom or a garden tool. They were just things, nothing more. I learned to shoot before I had pubic hair. Cars and motorcycles are far more dangerous things and kill far more people. I'm more scared of a tablesaw than I am of a gun.

[justdrew]

well for what it's worth, here's an example of "the federal gubamint" going after some people who surely had plenty of guns and the guns didn't help them prevent their arrests at all...

Operation Knockdown: FBI raids Texas gang

I feel that thinking having a gun is going to be able to be used to defend one's self or others is overly optimistic, there are so many small tactical difficulties with actually using it that a rational person's personal "rules of engagement" would almost always cause the person to wait too long to draw, aim and/or fire OR would brand the person a murderer in the eye's of many, some of who, like the dead persons friends/family, may seek revenge. Shooting our way out of trouble and riding off into the sunset is a seductive story, but it'll rarely work out like that. My feeling is, if I'm going to assume I can somehow pull off all this lucky maneuvers to actually use a gun to defeat life-threatening enemies, why not just also assume you'll take a gun off that enemy, let them bring it too you if you're going to go all "neo" on their asses? just dodge to the left, snatch the rifle from their hand...

I wouldn't trust a gun to compel cooperation either, it might work for awhile some of the time, but you'd have to be willing to use it at some point, and who would really shoot someone in cold blood for not complying with demands?

Unfortunately for Solzhenitsyn, had he engaged in the kind of fighting-back that he and anyone thinks of in hindsight, we'd probably have never heard of him today and not have his writings... because they were way outnumbered just for starters. Even well organized resistance armies can't do much but hang on by throwing bodies at the enemy these days, can you imagine what their attrition rate is like? "Look around you recruits, four years from now, there's likely to be one of you left alive" The technological imbalance only stands to get worse, very soon, the resistance efforts are going to find themselves fighting heavily armed telepresence robots and "poison sting flies" - the age of armed resistance to political power is likely over already.

[StarmanSkye]

I absolutely concur, Justdrew. The local, regional or state constabulatory on behalf of the dominant system imposed by the Master Class will ALWAYS up the ante of sufficient force to subdue any perceived threat to their authority or the rule of law; To small-arm resistance they will call-in Tactical SWAT-type Units, from there to armored assault vehicles all the way up to attack helicopters, artillery, precision missiles and even fighter-bombers or the warthog tank-buster. Iraq, Afghanistan have been testing-grounds to perfect neutralizing strongpoints and armed resistance. Undoubtedly the US military drew on their ally Israel's experience in Gaza, the West bank, Lebanon & Syria. It's probably only a matter of time before self-identified members of an extremist armed group in the US are goaded into challenging the status quo, possibly intentially so to provide a desired pretext by a branch of FBI/Homeland Security et al. for a dramatic take-down show of gov. force.

Perhaps many of the more idealistic Patriot/Militia members would wish the battle-lines of oppression and their 'NWO' foes of Constitutional Government were more absolutely defined -- I think that's the secret intent of many who find the Potomac River demonstration of 2nd amendment support appealing. It's probably a key idea behind the notion of defining Obama as everything despicable from islamofascist to socialist, and targetting 'progressives' and 'liberal fascists' and 'Chicago Collectivists'. It lets the gun nuts pretend their issue is not with Policemen or the Feds but with the 'wrong-thinking' traitors in the whitehouse and scattered in Congress. They are basically indulging in some ego-gratifying role-playing in which their wounded sense of dignity and pride in a nation that has been led-astray by liberal excesses is somewhat assuaged by their making an implied threat that unless they are respected and treated with deference due them as honorable freedom-loving free-market flag-waving patriotic citizens, there will be hell to pay.

It is some very childish, naive fantasy they are indulging in. Just goes to show how out-of-touch and disconnected so many people are with the neo-REAL reality, in which people are having a hard time coming to grips with the state of the world being far different than they thought it was. They resent the hell out of it, that fuels their drive to find simple scapegoats they can blame and easy answers to hard problems that should have been addressed 30 years ago or more -- They still can't accept their part in not paying attention when the corporations and special interest elites began to infiltrate American institutions, skewing the rules in their favor, rigging the game, buying city hall and congress and the courts, planting the bootheel of Imperial oppression around the world, ripping-off forests and oilfields, building sweatshops and stealing plantations, toppling governments and imposing Americentric economies ...

[82_28]

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Didn't a "lone gunman" shoot up a whole army base full of professional trained soldiers not so long ago? Most of them would've been armed, and, more importantly, trained to respond immediately to such a threat... yet he killed 44 of them, if mainstream sources are to be believed.

That case could be used as an argument in favour of Nordic's point - it seems to indicate that one guy can massacre more than a platoon of "enemy" troops, given the will and the weaponry - or against it, because all those people, with their arms and training, appear to have been helpless when attacked. The attacker himself (if mainstream media are to be... yeah, you know) wasn't even killed!

Which indicates that there was more than one gunman - or that if you fire into an armed crowd unexpectedly from concealment, they will soon begin shooting each other in panic and confusion. Which would be the worst possible outcome of this Potomac event, especially if it's a mixed crowd of rightists, leftists, libertarians, gun nuts, constitutionalists who don't know the constitution, states rights' activists who want national bans on gay marriage, and all the rest, eyeing each other warily through their night-vision gear.

I hate to say it, Nordic, but I have to agree with what seems to be the consensus view of the thread... a gun won't really protect you from the forces of the state, if it comes to that.

Look at what happens (way too often) during no-knock police or SWAT raids in America - a citizen who has no idea that it is the police who are crashing through his windows unannounced and unidentified in the middle of the night might automatically think to get his gun to defend his home and family. In doing so, he gives them a fully legal reason to shoot him dead on the spot. It doesn't matter if his gun is licensed or not, or even if he is wanted for any crime...

In fact, he might not know it is the cops coming into his house for the simple reason (this also happens way too often) that the cops have got the wrong address.

So in trying to protect their homes from unknown home-invaders, people get killed the moment the cops see a gun in their hand... or a knife, or a hammer, or a TV remote for that matter... Having a gun hasn't helped any of them so far.

Saying that, the activities of the police during these no-knock raids could definitely be compared to that of Solzhenytsin's "Blue Caps". Most of the raids are warrantless, but the citizen is more or less forced to sign a waiver after the fact - provided he's still alive. Sorry to go on about them, but I've been reading up on these raids lately, and it terrifies me.

Come to think of it, it's probably the last thing you want or need to hear about right now. I'll maybe start another thread about it.

Will have to start another post now.

[23]

The Controllers are too smart to have uniformed personnel enter your homes to implement Martial Law.

All they have to do is create an economic catastrophe where civilians do harm to other civilians, in their search for food and shelter.

A uniformed person will be welcomed by the many victims of their neighbors' lawlessness.

That is how you get the public to want and support totalitarian control.

By getting them to look at uniformed control as a welcome remedy to civil disorder.

Guns won't be needed to address uniformed personnel, in such a scenario.

They'll be needed to protect you from the participants of the civil disorder.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Do I really want to own a sawed-off shotgun? Not really, no. But do I want any potential intruders to think I might have one? Sure! And that goes for any government assholes that might decide they need to start rounding up "dissidents".

This is what some people are now claiming Saddam Hussein was up to - bluffing about his weapons capabilities, or at least not making his exact capabilities clear, in order to prevent invasion. They say he fooled "every intelligence agency in the world" into thinking he was heavily armed. Even if the people who say this weren't deliberate revisionists and liars (which they are) there is still one unavoidable fact - it didn't turn out too well for Saddam.

He actually did try to make it clear that he was unarmed, but let's face it - they would've invaded even if they'd really believed that he did have weapons of mass destruction. The disparity in power would've still been so huge that the "potential intruders" would have gone ahead anyway - and they don't care if a few of their grunts get shot in the process.

Having a handgun for protection against criminals is probably a question best left for Americans to argue over (I've never got anywhere trying to convince anyone of the possible downsides to it), but having one to protect yourself, and whatever militia you can gather, against a nuclear armed state is just... it won't work.

Unfortunately for Solzhenitsyn, had he engaged in the kind of fighting-back that he and anyone thinks of in hindsight, we'd probably have never heard of him today and not have his writings... because they were way outnumbered just for starters.

Exactly. It's not that the victims of the various purges and round-ups (which began long before Stalin came to power) were outnumbered by the security forces - far from it - it's just that the number of people among the victims who could've effectively fought back was very low, and always will be, in any group. It would literally take a hero to do it. It would take a Solzhenitsyn, in fact... and there were never many of those around.

Nevertheless, there were people who fought back. They did it alone, because the vast majority of people simply are not heroes - and they died the same as everybody else.

And who could've been expected to fight the Blue Caps, anyway, if they had resisted in Petersburg and Moscow? Most of the young men were either in the Red Army, and away at the front - or in the Blue Caps, knocking on their comrades' fathers' doors in the middle of the night.

Even well organized resistance armies can't do much but hang on by throwing bodies at the enemy these days, can you imagine what their attrition rate is like? "Look around you recruits, four years from now, there's likely to be one of you left alive" The technological imbalance only stands to get worse, very soon, the resistance efforts are going to find themselves fighting heavily armed telepresence robots and "poison sting flies" - the age of armed resistance to political power is likely over already.

Exactly again. The states we're talking about have nukes, and exclusive access to nuke shelters that actually work... if it were to come to that. Just like a threatened homeowner, the state will use whatever means are at it's disposal to protect itself if it's people force it's back to the wall. Handguns and rifles don't scare them. They are way better at violence than we will ever be. Millenia of practice and refinement have gone into their abilities.

Writing off the viability of armed resistance might sound, in a way, like a counsel of despair. But it's not really. It was ultimately through widespread concerted non-violent resistance (and a gradual, generational change in the leadership) that the Soviet Union was brought down. Plus, Ronald Reagan (only joking).

The fact that it took nearly 75 years, and that tens of millions of people died, and that a KGB veteran of the East German torture chambers is now sitting in the Kremlin is neither here nor th.... oh. shit.

[compared2what?]

It was ultimately through widespread concerted non-violent resistance (and a gradual, generational change in the leadership) that the Soviet Union was brought down.

Would that it were so.

They were broke and isolated, as a result of the long, fruitless and costly war in Afghanistan into which we enticed them during the Carter administration. They just happened to run so totally out of options that they had to put on their Glasnost best and come begging their rich western cousins for work when Reagan was in office. So he gets the credit.

I've just been massively, massively hating on him recently. As more and more of the flowers he planted in the eighties reach their fullest bloom.

No, it has nothing to do with the topic at all, actually. Why do you ask?

[Nordic]

The Controllers are too smart to have uniformed personnel enter your homes to implement Martial Law.

All they have to do is create an economic catastrophe where civilians do harm to other civilians, in their search for food and shelter.

A uniformed person will be welcomed by the many victims of their neighbors' lawlessness.

That is how you get the public to want and support totalitarian control.

By getting them to look at uniformed control as a welcome remedy to civil disorder.

Guns won't be needed to address uniformed personnel, in such a scenario.

They'll be needed to protect you from the participants of the civil disorder.

Sure. All the more reason to have one.

Listen, the only time I've really wanted a gun in my house? Was during the Los Angeles riots. I actually wanted one then, because we had total anarchy, people running around looting, robbing, raping and thieving and it was, no joke, every man for himself for a couple of nights. If you haven't lived through that, you really can't imagine what it feels like. There's no calling 911, there's nothing. You can't even call the fire department. It's just you.

Could happen again, very easily.

No, of course if the SWAT team wants to enter your house, there's not a damn thing you can do. But so what? Is that any reason to outlaw guns? What I have in my own house, in my own private space, is nobody's business but mine.

[barracuda]

Why do you ask?

Because, as with most things, it seems as if there might be potential intersections.

[23]

The Controllers are too smart to have uniformed personnel enter your homes to implement Martial Law.

All they have to do is create an economic catastrophe where civilians do harm to other civilians, in their search for food and shelter.

A uniformed person will be welcomed by the many victims of their neighbors' lawlessness.

That is how you get the public to want and support totalitarian control.

By getting them to look at uniformed control as a welcome remedy to civil disorder.

Guns won't be needed to address uniformed personnel, in such a scenario.

They'll be needed to protect you from the participants of the civil disorder.

Sure. All the more reason to have one.

Listen, the only time I've really wanted a gun in my house? Was during the Los Angeles riots. I actually wanted one then, because we had total anarchy, people running around looting, robbing, raping and thieving and it was, no joke, every man for himself for a couple of nights. If you haven't lived through that, you really can't imagine what it feels like. There's no calling 911, there's nothing. You can't even call the fire department. It's just you.

Could happen again, very easily.

No, of course if the SWAT team wants to enter your house, there's not a damn thing you can do. But so what? Is that any reason to outlaw guns? What I have in my own house, in my own private space, is nobody's business but mine.

You're singing to the choir here, Nordic. I agree with you on this score.

The only disagreement that I have with you is... I believe that you should meet minimal training/qualification requirements and be licensed, if you want to carry. As you are required for driving a car.

[Nordic]

You're singing to the choir here, Nordic. I agree with you on this score.

The only disagreement that I have with you is... I believe that you should meet minimal training/qualification requirements and be licensed, if you want to carry. As you are required for driving a car.

Yes, I agree with that. As someone who actually lets common sense rule his life, I wouldn't want to have a gun without having training. I wouldn't want to fly a plane without learning how to fly it either, or try to drive a motorcycle without someone showing me how.

Common sense is in short supply, however.