Guns (Yawn)

Theses submitted for discussion:
1) By the time any new federal laws in the follow-up to Sandy Hook are on the books, it will be laughable to say the federal government is coming to confiscate legally owned firearms. A few machine-gun models, maybe.
1a) Nevertheless, that is what Alex Jones and the NRA will continue to claim.
2) With the exception of the American War for Independence, the circumstances of which will never again be relevant, the group of Americans who own guns legally as individuals are not, have never been, and will never be a first, last, or intermediate bulwark against tyranny by government or other institutions of power in this country.
2a) This is not mainly because they could not win militarily (see 3), although that is also self-evidently true, and the imagined uprising-against-tyranny by Americans-who-own-guns-legally-as-individuals would be a short and poorly supported affair that would be labeled as terrorism and serve to strengthen the tyranny of the real-existing institutions.
2a) Said uprising, which will never happen, is the self-aggrandizing fantasy of a mostly right-wing set whose most widespread ideas of tyranny are that the Mexicans Are Coming, The Blacks Are On the Loose, and (for the more intellectual among them) The Liberals Are Preparing the NWO.
3) The main reason for #2, however, is that the vast majority of Americans who own guns legally as individuals have and will continue to support actual tyranny by government or other institutions of power in this country. In this they are much like the plurality (if not the vast majority) of US citizens, period. In their law-and-order politics and belief in the dominant ideologies of the state, the set of all legal gun-owners on average does not differ that dramatically from the whole.
4) It's predictable that a political hysteria should arise out of the Newtown massacre, and it's predictable that it should be used by politicians for political gain.
5) By master plan or not, said hysteria is mainly serving to distract from issues that are much more difficult and matter infinitely more than whether a minority of the current legal gun-owners might have to give up whatever exotic machine guns they imagine are essential to their self-defense and/or their ability to stop tyranny.
Guns bore me.
.
1) By the time any new federal laws in the follow-up to Sandy Hook are on the books, it will be laughable to say the federal government is coming to confiscate legally owned firearms. A few machine-gun models, maybe.
1a) Nevertheless, that is what Alex Jones and the NRA will continue to claim.
2) With the exception of the American War for Independence, the circumstances of which will never again be relevant, the group of Americans who own guns legally as individuals are not, have never been, and will never be a first, last, or intermediate bulwark against tyranny by government or other institutions of power in this country.
2a) This is not mainly because they could not win militarily (see 3), although that is also self-evidently true, and the imagined uprising-against-tyranny by Americans-who-own-guns-legally-as-individuals would be a short and poorly supported affair that would be labeled as terrorism and serve to strengthen the tyranny of the real-existing institutions.
2a) Said uprising, which will never happen, is the self-aggrandizing fantasy of a mostly right-wing set whose most widespread ideas of tyranny are that the Mexicans Are Coming, The Blacks Are On the Loose, and (for the more intellectual among them) The Liberals Are Preparing the NWO.
3) The main reason for #2, however, is that the vast majority of Americans who own guns legally as individuals have and will continue to support actual tyranny by government or other institutions of power in this country. In this they are much like the plurality (if not the vast majority) of US citizens, period. In their law-and-order politics and belief in the dominant ideologies of the state, the set of all legal gun-owners on average does not differ that dramatically from the whole.
4) It's predictable that a political hysteria should arise out of the Newtown massacre, and it's predictable that it should be used by politicians for political gain.
5) By master plan or not, said hysteria is mainly serving to distract from issues that are much more difficult and matter infinitely more than whether a minority of the current legal gun-owners might have to give up whatever exotic machine guns they imagine are essential to their self-defense and/or their ability to stop tyranny.
Guns bore me.
.