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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29426 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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After some of my recent rethinking about violent crime, I have realized that while before, I leant towards a pro-2nd Amendment position, I am now leaning against the 2nd Amendment, at least theoretically (I will explain more about what I mean by this further below). I could be into a more narrow version of the 2nd Amendment that restricts gun ownership to only certain highly vetted groups. However, I think that too much of American public is simply too stupid, impulsive, and/or antisocial to be trusted with guns. For a similar reason as to why I would not give children in general guns even though a certain fraction of them are capable of using them properly, I do not trust the American public in general with guns.

The main reason why I have had a pro-2nd Amendment position in the past was because I believed that the 2nd Amendment is a bulwark against government overreach. However, while the US is to me unquestionably more free when it comes to civil rights than, for example, Europe, I am not sure how much this has to do with private gun ownership. I have also seen the class of people who share my attitudes about the 2nd Amendment being a bulwark against government overreach repeatedly fail to actually use their guns even when they believe that such overreach exists. When I hear that something like half of Trump supporters claim to literally believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, yet I also see that basically none of them used guns to do anything about it, it gives me some doubt about this whole "bulwark against government tyranny" train of thought. And almost needless to say, widespread public gun ownership did nothing to stop NSA domestic surveillance or, long before that, things like the WWI-era Espionage Act. Or, for that matter, slavery.

Now, I do believe in the argument that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns". Hence the part about "theoretically" in my first paragraph. Changing the 2nd Amendment now would likely be a bad idea for the simple reason that there are already so many guns in the US that there is no plausible way that simply getting rid of the 2nd Amendment would lead to any outcome other than a bunch of pro-social people handing in their guns while a huge fraction of anti-social people keep them. And that would be very bad. Hence I mean, I still support the 2nd Amendment in practice as a defense against anti-social people. But I am questioning whether it might not be better now if the US had gotten rid of the 2nd Amendment say, a hundred years ago or so.

I should make clear that I am not clearly against the 2nd Amendment even theoretically. Like I said, I am just beginning to lean against it. I am no longer convinced that its supposed upsides are worth the downsides.

It is clear to me that the modern Democratic Party is essentially an enabler of violent crime, and that is one of the main reasons why I cannot imagine myself voting for a Democrat. However, I also see how the Republicans' pro-2nd Amendment position has contributed to the problem, and I cannot let them off the hook.

Edit: I should note that I would vastly prefer a hardcore crackdown on violent crime that does not take away pro-social people's guns, as opposed to taking away most people's guns. I believe that only a very small minority of Americans commit violent crime. However, I am not sure how likely it would be for such a crackdown to work in America to reduce the level of violent crime to what I would like it to be (not zero, but something like Japan levels), given the sheer size of the country and the sheer number of guns that exist here.

I could be into a more narrow version of the 2nd Amendment that restricts gun ownership to only certain highly vetted groups.

As I'm fond of jesting at people with similar agendas: I completely agree and I graciously accept the responsibility of appointing and chairing the 7-member commission that is in charge of vetting.

The 2A is a pretty meager defense against the general case of government tyranny. Has been for a while.

Fortunately, that was never the strongest argument for it. No, not even at the time of writing. The founders were preempting a more specific subset of tyranny: disarming specific groups. This stemmed from Protestant tensions in the previous century plus a healthy dose of federalist sentiment. See here.

There’s a case for disarming everyone. There’s no case for disarming just Republicans, or just men, or just Mormons, etc.

Compare the 1A. Viewpoint neutrality is really important to American law not because all viewpoints are credible challenges to a tyrant, but because speech is a protected right.

There's no case for specifically disarming a group of people who commit majority of crimes involving guns?

That depends almost entirely on how close the relationship is between group membership and criminal activity. MS-13 gang members? Good case! Right-handed people? No case at all.

Well, yeah, left handers are actually more criminally inclined, there's just less of them.

The ejection port sending hot brass down their shirts drives lefties to horrible extremes.

Not if that group is a protected class a la Civil Rights Act. I don’t believe that covers political parties, but we also have the 1A.

Felons are understandably SOL by longstanding precedent.

No there is not because "crime" is a purely social construct.

What about majority of murders?

Well murder being defined as criminal homicide, it also can't really exist as a category without the law.

At the end of the day, unless you're willing to bite the bullet of some moralism, it's all about who has the power to define the bound of acceptable behavior, in this case who can legitimately be killed and who can't.

This is the most solid argument that Foucault has ever produced in my opinion. I don't believe it's true because I believe in some transcendental standard of morality that delineates the legitimacy of homicide based on natural law (namely the sanctity of person and property against unilateral aggression), but without that it's about who's holding the gun and nothing else.

Without natural law, killing kulaks is not murder.

That's what they all say right before they get shot in the face.

Indeed it is.

...and that is why it's always the democrats who are pushing to disarm the populace.

When I hear that something like half of Trump supporters claim to literally believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, yet I also see that basically none of them used guns to do anything about it, it gives me some doubt about this whole "bulwark against government tyranny" train of thought. And almost needless to say, widespread public gun ownership did nothing to stop NSA domestic surveillance or, long before that, things like the WWI-era Espionage Act. Or, for that matter, slavery.

I’m not persuaded here. There’s a category of intelligent Americans with prior military service who would fertilize Jefferson’s metaphorical tree of liberty, so to speak, yet who are not persuaded that any of the above constitute a legitimate threat. I think the extrapolitical action you’re talking about is more likely the more intelligent you are, rather than less, so the low IQ person who believes that the voting machines literally flubbed vote tallies is the least likely to act on a political ideology. Dying for political ideology requires insanity or extremely low time preference plus prosocial obligation. “Democrats won the election because of ostensibly lax voter laws and the lawsuits about this are still in progress” is not a serious threat. The NSA’s spying is not serious threat for personal liberty in its current form. War-era spying act is not serious (wars are special cases), and attempting to shoot all slave owners is not a serious hypothetical scenario.

I would rather like my in-group (white Christian / Western-Tradition-sympathizers and her allies) to own guns, because I ultimately do not trust power in the hands of other groups and cultures, who have shown themselves to be violent against my group (eg Bolsheviks), whereas my group has shown itself to be pretty welcoming and fair to others.

When I hear that something like half of Trump supporters claim to literally believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, yet I also see that basically none of them used guns to do anything about it, it gives me some doubt about this whole "bulwark against government tyranny" train of thought

Most people in the US have a vision to Tyranny built around English aristocrats oppressing them with uniformed troops.

The reality is any tyrannical group coming into power is going to be too weak at first to use the police to oppress their enemies. Instead there's a gang of government supporters who are allowed to commit crimes against the disfavoured groups without the police intervening. Often they are masked, but not always.

This is a very loose category that includes everyone from the KKK to Hitler's brownshirts to Antifa. Maduro has 'colectivos'. They are just everywhere.

The second amendment is very effective against this loose category. Without it inner city crime gangs would have been driving out the the suburbs and rural areas to rob and kill.

Things like the 2020 election are about allegations of widespread corruption. Guns aren't helpful there. They need to tighten laws and gather evidence.

It is clear to me that the modern Democratic Party is essentially an enabler of violent crime, and that is one of the main reasons why I cannot imagine myself voting for a Democrat. However, I also see how the Republicans' pro-2nd Amendment position has contributed to the problem, and I cannot let them off the hook.

There's an OBVIOUS synthesis here, and I actually consider it an useful policy point that the GOP should adopt in their platform:

We should enact a federal ban on any registered members of the Democratic Party (or any organization that is their successor in interest) from owning a gun.

Yes, this 'technically' weakens the Second Amendment.

But since it also effectively bans firearm ownership for like 30% of the U.S. population, it actually brings the Democrats closer to what they CLAIM to want. So I expect they would not object to this particular law.

And lets put it this way, if the Dems don't believe in an individual right to bear arms, they shouldn't even care to fight this law in Court. Even if we GRANT that it is facially unconstitutional, who would bring the suit on their behalf? (This is tongue-in-cheek, the very SECOND anyone gets arrested under this law, there's going to be a civil rights suit filed). In the alternative, it would be funny to have the Dems funding lawsuits to strike down a gun control law.

From a moral/ethical standpoint, I see no problems with denying a group of people a 'right' they argue doesn't exist anyway (I also apply this to freedom of speech). ESPECIALLY when they can recover the right by simply changing their party affiliation.

I'm just curious if they would balk at such a law because it has a 'disparate impact' or it 'singles out one group', even if their underlying assertion is that the interest in question doesn't actually exist. Whining that its 'unfair' would be almost an admission that the right to own a gun does have some important value!

That’s a terrible idea.

  • It doesn’t erode the 2A so much as demolish it.
  • Same for the 1A, which has made the government awfully reluctant to assign penalties to party membership.
  • It’s strategic suicide for any coalition which cares, at all, about centrists and swing voters.
  • It’s literal suicide in the sense of telling bad actors “come oppress me!”
  • Registered Democrats are already less likely to own guns, so they’re getting diminished returns.
  • The tribal part of our monkey brains sees it as a humiliation.

Seriously, I initially read this as a straw proposal, written so you could call your outgroup hypocrites for not eating the shit sandwich. Since you’re apparently genuine, though, I can only propose a more mild alternative.

Let’s set up zones where guns are heavily restricted. To minimize the Constitutional damage, we’ll make them inconvenient rather than outright banned. We won’t tie it to party, either, dodging 1A objections. Because the zones are limited, we get to keep our coalition; the moderates can just migrate elsewhere. We’ll try to mitigate the crime incentives with alternative policing or, when that fails, harsher state action. The federalized nature of these zones lets registered Democrats choose to live in places with fewer (legal) guns without trampling everyone else’s rights quite so badly.

What do you think?

Isn't that just how places like Chicago and NYC work now?

Precisely.

I think the OP is being a bit unreasonable by ignoring the ways in which blue tribers do, in fact, implement rules that mostly affect themselves.

Yeah sorry wasn't sure if you were going for an "exxxaccttlllyyyy" moment.

I thought you were proposing this as some sort of not-very-clever Swiftian satire, but reading your posts below, apparently you believe this is a serious and reasonable proposal.

First, not all Democrats are anti-gun.

Second, those who are mostly don't want an absolute prohibition on firearms ownership.

But let's take your straw man at face value: all the people who want guns to be banned are banned from owning guns. Of course they would not agree to this, and the reason isn't because they "don't really believe that banning guns is just and fair." It's because their reason for wanting guns banned is that they believe guns cause violence and banning guns will reduce violence. Obviously banning only a small segment of the population (and mostly people who neither own guns nor commit violence) will not have this effect.

It's a dumb proposal even without bringing up "unfairness" (which, obviously, it would be, because also no one would accept a law like this that applies only on the basis of your registered political party).

Your proposition that somehow this will cause them to "face the consequences/realities of their own proposals" is specious.

Let's turn it around: "Republicans say they want abortion banned. Therefore, we will hereby ban abortion, but only for registered members of the Republican Party. Clearly, this will have the desired effect of reducing abortions, and it's what they say they want. Sound fair?"

You can't make any argument for why that's a stupid idea that doesn't also apply to yours.

I mean, I genuinely believe it is likely to have an impact on Gun crime since most of said crime occurs in cities that Democrats govern, anyway.

First, not all Democrats are anti-gun.

Then they can simply reject their party affiliation and maintain their rights.

Easy. They're not going to be inconvenienced in the least if they care about gun rights.

Second, those who are mostly don't want an absolute prohibition on firearms ownership.

I don't care what their proposal is, I'll accept any sort of gun control policy if it applies to registered Democrats only.

Find me one THEY will accept on those terms. Call it a 'compromise' position, which is how they always describe their proposals.

"Republicans say they want abortion banned. Therefore, we will hereby ban abortion, but only for registered members of the Republican Party. Clearly, this will have the desired effect of reducing abortions, and it's what they say they want. Sound fair?"

...Yes? That sounds absolutely like a step in the right direction that they would accept?

Have you even tried asking the question to the pro-life brigade? That wouldn't stop them pushing for more but its surely something they'd agree to!

Like, this is the question of "Okay, we'll ban abortion, BUT, we'll require the males to be held financially accountable for their children" question. Conservatives would hit that button so fast it'd make your head spin.

I mean, I genuinely believe it is likely to have an impact on Gun crime since most of said crime occurs in cities that Democrats govern, anyway.

So would going full Orwell. I too can imagine many modest proposals that would reduce gun crimes. Am I supposed to take your proposal seriously but not literally, or literally but not seriously?

...Yes? That sounds absolutely like a step in the right direction that they would accept?

Seriously? You actually believe Republicans would sign off on "Abortion is banned only for Republicans"?

Have you even tried asking the question to the pro-life brigade? That wouldn't stop them pushing for more but its surely something they'd agree to!

Well, no, I haven't, because it would never occur to me to propose such a non-starter of an idea, but I welcome the input of our pro-lifers here as to whether they would regard this as something they would buy into. It sounds like taking the old pro-choice line "If you're against abortion, don't have one, simple" literally.

I suppose some people might say "Sure" with the understanding that they expect it to lead to an abortion ban for everyone. I doubt very much anyone would agree to it if they know it will only ever be applied to those who are against it in the first place.

So would your proposed "Gun ban for Democrats only" be fine with you if you know that those who agree with it are going to use it as a first step in banning guns for everyone?

More generally, "people who propose laws get those laws applied to themselves and themselves only" is just not how things work.

Like, this is the question of "Okay, we'll ban abortion, BUT, we'll require the males to be held financially accountable for their children" question. Conservatives would hit that button so fast it'd make your head spin.

Sure, but that's not the same proposition at all, because both conditions would be favorable from their point of view. "Enforce a more conservative policy on men and women? Yes please!"

Well, no, I haven't, because it would never occur to me to propose such a non-starter of an idea, but I welcome the input of our pro-lifers here as to whether they would regard this as something they would buy into. It sounds like taking the old pro-choice line "If you're against abortion, don't have one, simple" literally.

Anti-abortion and pro-gun control here; would happily sign on to both banning abortion and banning guns for the half of the population that wants those respective bans more (assuming broader restrictions were not already in place). It's a classic "half a loaf". Take what you can get.

Well, no, I haven't, because it would never occur to me to propose such a non-starter of an idea, but I welcome the input of our pro-lifers here as to whether they would regard this as something they would buy into.

I would take that deal. I just asked my wife, and aside from some initial "what's the point", she settled quickly on "well, it's less abortions, so sure."

I suppose some people might say "Sure" with the understanding that they expect it to lead to an abortion ban for everyone.

That would be exactly why I would support it. It would be a significant expansion of abortion restrictions, and I believe expanding abortion restrictions is a good thing. It would also force the issue with Republicans who aren't actually on board; I could be persuaded that forcing the issue in this way would be tactically unsound, but I'm generally skeptical that compromise is really the correct avenue.

I would imagine the same logic would apply to guns.

So would your proposed "Gun ban for Democrats only" be fine with you if you know that those who agree with it are going to use it as a first step in banning guns for everyone?

Or a first step toward durable federalism, where we admit that Democratic rights and Republican rights can't be reconciled, and we should in fact have different legal regimes for different populations.

Or a first step toward durable federalism, where we admit that Democratic rights and Republican rights can't be reconciled, and we should in fact have different legal regimes for different populations

It's called rum millet.

rum millet

What a fascinating bit of history I wasn't aware of!

The goal of abortion is reducing infanticide and increasing your demographics, which is furthered (arguably even to your benefit, if you care about your demographics and your infants) with a partial abortion ban on you.

The goal of gun control is equitable disarmament (or, maximally uncharitably, to disproportionately disarm your enemies), and partial disarmament goes directly against both.

Prolifers are well aware that banning abortion is not really increasing our demographics; factually it’s reducing our fertility advantage.

You're painting with too broad a brush. 20% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents own guns compared to 45% Republican and Republican-leaning. Even if a majority of people in the Democratic-coalition believe that the Second Amendment should be appealed and gun rights seriously impaired (which I'm not sure is the case - there's a big difference between "I want background checks, mandatory gun safety classes, and for convicted perpetrators of domestic abuse and other violent crimes to have their guns confiscated" and "I don't think anyone anywhere should have any guns under any circumstances") - I don't think you could defend this policy as a serious proposal, since it isn't actually the case that the group of people doesn't recognize themselves as having the right.

The point is to make someone live with the consequences of their own stated beliefs, whilst minimizing collateral harm.

If they won't accept THIS deal, then I refuse to accept any other proposal they could offer because its clear they DON'T actually believe that gun control measures would reduce crime and death, or else they'd jump at a chance to enact a partial gun ban.

If they can't get gun control passed any other way, surely those 20% of Democratic gun owners (who are an astoundingly small minority overall, so its not a big loss!) will sacrifice their rights for the greater good.

Or not, and force a reckoning.

Literally, I will accept any proposed gun control measure, background checks on down, as long as the caveat "only applies to registered Democrats" is appended to it.

Find me one they'd accept.

I've mentioned it before, but America cannot function as a nation or a people if they had to live with the consequences of their own stated beliefs. Hell, most people can't do that. The Germans managed it, and they initiated World War 2 as a result.

Or not, and force a reckoning.

People can stay inconsistent longer than you can berate them over their hypocrisy.

My point is that there is no "they" you're negotiating with, though. "Democrats" do not speak with a single voice. Even if you look at majorities, that Pew survey I linked indicates that a majority of Republicans agree with preventing people with mental illnesses from owning guns, raising the minimum age to buy a fire arm to 21, and oppose allowing people to carry a concealed fire arm without a permit. Put that way, there is no party that is universally against gun rights or for gun rights.

The Democrat blob is not a monolith, and neither is the Republican blob.

If you're trying to make a point that Democrats who won't pass their preferred gun control policy (but limited to registered Democrats only as a compromise) are being hypocritical, I'm not sure the argument straightforwardly gets off the ground. First, I don't think the vast majority of gun rights advocates would be in favor of such a compromise, so you're not putting forward a live proposal that is really worthy of consideration. And second, there's reasons for wanting to oppose such a proposal apart from believing in gun rights. It's stupid to unilaterally disarm yourself, in a society where 40% of your "enemy" is legally armed.

First, I don't think the vast majority of gun rights advocates would be in favor of such a compromise, so you're not putting forward a live proposal that is really worthy of consideration

Nobody has made this proposal seriously, so perhaps this is simply a matter of it not being considered at all yet.

Why not change that.

It's stupid to unilaterally disarm yourself, in a society where 40% of your "enemy" is legally armed.

Wow, maybe there's certain advantages to owning guns that THE SECOND AMENDMENT WAS MEANT TO PRESERVE?

I GUESS THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS GOOD FOR SOMETHING AFTER ALL.

/sarcasm

So this argument now convinced me that I should oppose ALL gun control measures.

Debate over, as far as I'm concerned.

Wow, maybe there's certain advantages to owning guns that THE SECOND AMENDMENT WAS MEANT TO PRESERVE?

I GUESS THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS GOOD FOR SOMETHING AFTER ALL.

/sarcasm

I agree that there are advantages to owning guns, but the 2nd Amendment is about more than an "advantage" it is about a supposedly inalienable right. I would imagine that we should hold rights to higher standards than merely being "advantageous", as there are plenty of advantageous things that aren't rights. Cars are advantageous, for example, but there is no recognized right to car ownership or operation.

I'm weakly pro-gun rights, because I think that gun ownership is one of the more likely ways for minorities to protect themselves against right violations by the majority (i.e. a black man during segregation, or the Black Panthers following cop cars in the 70's), but I honestly have trouble mapping the limits of acceptable political violence within that framework. What is the dividing line between the 1954 attack on the United States capitol by Puerto Rican nationalists and the January 6th riots? What is the dividing line between trying to assassinate Hitler or Pol Pot and trying to assassinate Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? If cops are a representative of the force and will of the state, who gets to decide when cops have crossed the line into tyranny and it is thus morally justified to kill them?

Because I am pro-civilization and anti-violence, I have trouble with my tepid support of gun rights. It seems great to be able to defend against a tyrannical majority in the abstract, but how do we balance that against the fact that any state (tyrannical or not) is going to defend itself and attempt to delegitimize resistance by the oppressed? Why do we consider the Revolutionary War and the Founding Fathers good, but the Whiskey Rebellion or the Civil War bad and illegitimate?

What is the dividing line between the 1954 attack on the United States capitol by Puerto Rican nationalists and the January 6th riots?

The nationalists' fellow travelers eventually took power and pardoned them. At least, so far that's the political difference.

What is the dividing line between the 1954 attack on the United States capitol by Puerto Rican nationalists and the January 6th riots?

"Don't shoot at congresspersons" seems like a pretty bright line?

I suppose I didn't make myself clear. I am somewhat sympathetic to motives of the Puerto Rican nationalists of 1954, and I don't have a great argument for why they should have seen political violence as beyond the pale given their island's relationship to the United States. The ordinary means of political redress were denied to the Puerto Ricans, and violence seems reasonable enough under those circumstances, even if I prefer if Congress would not be attacked by people for the sake of stability.

While I don't think January 6 posed all that great a risk to the country given how badly executed it was, I tend to be less sympathetic to the January 6 rioters. A big part of this is because I don't think the thing they were angry about - stolen elections - were a "legitimate" complaint, if we don't engage in a motte and bailley about what we mean by a "stolen election."

However, what makes one "acceptable" and one "unacceptable"? I would prefer if there were easy and widely accepted principles for when political violence was considered acceptable, but the mainstream answer seems to "never, except in retrospect."

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Because I am pro-civilization and anti-violence, I have trouble with my tepid support of gun rights.

If you live in a civilized country, you should have little trouble trusting your neighbors with weapons.

If you don't live in a civilized country, the need for weapons should be almost self-evident.

I used to lean slightly pro-gun-control, but there's simply no way you can deep dive into the statistics and come away with the idea that the guns are the problem, and by focusing on guns, it is in fact harder to address more fundamental issues.

Which is why I am losing patience with gun-control advocates who burn so much effort on a cause that simply will not achieve its purported benefits.

Cars are advantageous, for example, but there is no recognized right to car ownership or operation.

I mean, you can own a car and it can't be taken from you by the government without due process and such (literally the fifth amendment), whereas operating one on public property is explicitly a 'privilege.' So no, there is no explicit right, but there's still an inherent protection in there.

If you live in a civilized country, you should have little trouble trusting your neighbors with weapons.

I mean, in my civilized country, a rando tried to assassinate the candidate of one of the two major political parties, so my trust is being strained.

My basic problem is that I can't say whether a rando trying to assasinate a political candidate is the 2nd Amendment working as intended (since it puts the power to decide when to overthrow tyrants in the hands of individuals), or if there is some principled way to criticize some acts of political violence as outside of the intended scope of gun rights?

I mean, you can own a car and it can't be taken from you by the government without due process and such (literally the fifth amendment), whereas operating one on private property is explicitly a 'privilege.' So no, there is no explicit right, but there's still an inherent protection in there.

The relevant comparison is whether it would be constitutionally possible for a Federal or State ban on cars to be enacted. I very much doubt if such a thing would ever happen, but I don't think it would be unconstitutional.

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Your point is "their rules applied unfairly and against them". No one will accept that, and they'll be right.

"A rule that we believe is inherently fair and just shouldn't be applied against us, that's unfair and unjust!" Bullshit.

Why would people who want gun control rules applied to everyone object to those rules applying to them?

What's unjust about treating people PRECISELY how they propose treating others?

What makes it unfair, precisely? And why can't that unfairness be applied to gun control generally?

What makes it unfair, precisely?

It applying to just them and not to everyone.

fairness noun fair·ness ˈfer-nəs Synonyms of fairness : the quality or state of being fair especially : fair or impartial treatment : lack of favoritism toward one side or another

If the Democrats propose gun control for the entire country, then "treating them PRECISELY how they propose treating others" would be... gun control for the entire country. Not just for them.

It applying to just them and not to everyone.

It is applying to people who support gun control.

It would be unfair to apply it to those who oppose gun control, OBVIOUSLY. This is the fair outcome, where nobody gets a rule imposed on them without consent.

gun control for the entire country.

But as we've established, the entire country doesn't agree with it. So they can't get that. But they can get something.

Why wouldn't they accept a compromise that gets them PART of what they want? Surely they're capable of adapting their position to make such a thing 'fair'.

If they won't compromise aren't they just being unreasonable? That's what they keep saying about gun-rights advocates who refuse to compromise on gun control policies.

Why wouldn't they accept a compromise that gets them PART of what they want? Surely they're capable of adapting their position to make such a thing 'fair'.

Because getting the policy enacted on the object level is only part of the motivation for partisan political affiliation and advocacy; there's another whole part rooted in the will to power, the desire to impose one's moral and aesthetic will over others, or just the desire to see opposing moral and aesthetic views stamped down/out.

To steal an old New Yorker cartoon - "it is not enough that dogs succeed, cats must also fail."

OBVIOUSLY. This is the fair outcome, where nobody gets a rule imposed on them without consent.

That's not how it works, unless you're willing to amend your modest proposal with "and all other laws that a party didn't vote for doesn't affect them anymore".

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(which I'm not sure is the case - there's a big difference between "I want background checks, mandatory gun safety classes, and for convicted perpetrators of domestic abuse and other violent crimes to have their guns confiscated" and "I don't think anyone anywhere should have any guns under any circumstances")

In practice this difference is small. New Jersey is nominally in the former class, but in fact getting a gun legally is difficult and various classes of people can't get them despite not being in those categories.

The main reason why I have had a pro-2nd Amendment position in the past was because I believed that the 2nd Amendment is a bulwark against government overreach. However, while the US is to me unquestionably more free when it comes to civil rights than, for example, Europe, I am not sure how much this has to do with private gun ownership.

I think that the face of warfare has changed a lot since the framing of the US constitution. In the days of the war of independence, men using small arms, i.e. guns similar to the ones privately owned for hunting or self-defense, made up the bulk of land military capability.

While today military small arms still play an important role in combat, especially in in urban areas, they no longer rule supreme. Artillery, armored vehicles, air and drone strikes are force multipliers for ground operations.

A war where one side has such assets (such as a tyrannic federal government) and the other side (such as freedom-loving Americans) does not have them will likely be very asymmetrical. The US military has proven capable of mostly suppressing insurgents in the Middle East even if they are armed with RPGs, which are crucial to counter armored vehicles.

Compared to patriotic Americans the insurgents in the Middle East had a few key advantages:

  • Birth rates above replenishment, where life is cheap
  • A religious ideology which emphasizes the importance of violent self-sacrifice
  • A causal disregard for the war crimes they are committing when blowing up their civilian countrymen
  • Access to RPGs and explosives

Any federal tyrant would first pass a law that punishes the ownership of firearms by summary execution. This would be enough to get most US citizens to hand in their pistols. A few would hide their rifles and eventually rise as an insurgency, but they would be utterly crushed.

Tanks? RPGs? Explosives?

lets do it.

We don't have to give these weapons to every individual.

But make damn sure that every state militia is primarily controlled by that state, then expand the militia system, give every city their own city militia. By the time we have those in place, there will be enough of a pro-defense cultural shift that we can re-assess the 'private citizens with Uzis' issue.

And while we're at it- Don't defund the police, instead train every citizen into a reserve officer.

train every citizen into a reserve officer.

Robert Peel approves.

I think that the face of warfare has changed a lot since the framing of the US constitution. In the days of the war of independence, men using small arms, i.e. guns similar to the ones privately owned for hunting or self-defense, made up the bulk of land military capability.

Yes, but those men had to be organized and equipped, and the expensive stuff - heavy cavalry and artillery - were what won most wars.

While today military small arms still play an important role in combat, especially in in urban areas, they no longer rule supreme. Artillery, armored vehicles, air and drone strikes are force multipliers for ground operations.

Each side had well over 200 cannon at the 1759 battle of Kunersdorf, or approximately one cannon for each 250 combatants.

As best as I can tell, as of January 2023 Ukraine had approximately 1,600 artillery pieces and roughly 700,000 men under arms, or approximately one cannon for each ~440 combatants. Even if that 700,000 number sweeps in a lot of non-combat personnel, the ratio of guns to combatants in major open warfare hasn't changed all that much.

And although there really is no civilian counter to organized air power, per press accounts (fwiw) imaginative civilians are dunking on established defence establishments these days in drone tech, development, and deployment.

A war where one side has such assets (such as a tyrannic federal government) and the other side (such as freedom-loving Americans) does not have them will likely be very asymmetrical. The US military has proven capable of mostly suppressing insurgents in the Middle East even if they are armed with RPGs, which are crucial to counter armored vehicles.

The U.S. war of independence was also a massively-asymmetrical conflict against a highly-capable enemy with experience in such conflicts - the rebels never developed a military establishment that was as disciplined, organized, equipped, and motivated as the Brits, who had significant experience putting down colonial risings in North America, Ireland, and India. Things don't change as much as you think.

Compared to patriotic Americans the insurgents in the Middle East had a few key advantages:

  • Birth rates above replenishment, where life is cheap

Both Russia and Ukraine have had absolutely atrocious birth rates for ages, and they're going at each other hammer and tongs just fine.

  • A religious ideology which emphasizes the importance of violent self-sacrifice

Not present in Ukraine either, or indeed in colonial America. People motivated themselves with secular causes just fine.

Both Russia and Ukraine have had absolutely atrocious birth rates for ages, and they're going at each other hammer and tongs just fine.

Perhaps closer to home, the Mexican drug war has heated up as the fertility transition took effect there- and the economy got better.

Access to RPGs and explosives

The core red tribe has no trouble getting ahold of explosives.

The US military has proven capable of mostly suppressing insurgents in the Middle East

What? The US managed to beat ISIS (in conjunction with Russia, Iran, Syria and so on). They pulled out of Iraq with a little dignity, having turned Iran's nemesis into an Iranian subordinate. They left Afghanistan with their tails between their legs, having completely failed their campaign objectives.

That's not exactly a great track record! Once serious fighting gets going, the US will fall into a deadly spiral of capital flight, brain drain, financial crisis and increased radicalism. Consider that the economic damage power outages cause is totally disproportionate to the cost of sabotaging substations. There's already vast deficit spending in peacetime. The tax base to pay for social spending and war won't exist, so there will be serious inflation.

Russia and China would send really nasty things to any serious insurgency via the US's gaping open southern border. MANPADs, ATGMs, kamikaze drones, plastic explosives... They'd probably send spooks and advisers too. The insurgents would be far better-resourced than any asymmetrical opponent the US has fought since Vietnam. Al-Qaeda was working with whatever explosives were lying around, they didn't have the latest and greatest from Norinco. Furthermore, many of the insurgents would be ex-US military and could plausibly take things from military bases. Maybe some people within the military are sympathetic to the enemy and are passing intelligence off to the insurgents.

The real advantage of the US is that their media and political power is very strong and they can focus on squashing anything before it becomes a conflict. But if it does come to a conflict then the US government is totally screwed. Very few good outcomes for them. That's why they deployed all those National Guard to Washington after Jan 6th. If they can't squelch it at the beginning, it's all over.

They left Afghanistan with their tails between their legs, having completely failed their campaign objectives.

Obviously, the nation-building objective failed completely. But during the occupation, at least cities like Kabul were pretty much under US control. Sure, there were IED attacks, but it was not like any insurgents would claim a neighborhood, keep the US out of it and enforce their ideas of Sharia law in it.

Of course, the countryside looked much different, but I would argue that Kabul is a better model of US conditions than overall Afghanistan with regards to accessibility.

Furthermore, many of the insurgents would be ex-US military and could plausibly take things from military bases. Maybe some people within the military are sympathetic to the enemy and are passing intelligence off to the insurgents.

My point is that the US is stable because the US military really buys into the US constitution. A general imprisoning a democratically elected president and declaring himself supreme leader would be considered awfully un-American.

The real advantage of the US is that their media and political power is very strong and they can focus on squashing anything before it becomes a conflict. But if it does come to a conflict then the US government is totally screwed. Very few good outcomes for them. That's why they deployed all those National Guard to Washington after Jan 6th. If they can't squelch it at the beginning, it's all over.

I think this vastly overstates the dangers of J6.

If the SCOTUS had ruled that Trump was the election winner and the rest of Washington had decided to ignore that ruling and certify Biden as the president, that would have been a constitutional crisis, and the question with whom the federal bureaucracy and the military would sided would have been debatable.

With just a lone Trump crying election fraud, the outcome was never in doubt. Even if his followers had managed to take over the Capitol, do you think that that would have changed anything? There is no kill-switch for the US internet controlled from the White House, no easy way to take control of the media narrative.

Even if the powers that be had decided to let the insurgents fester for a month in DC, the outcome would not have been a collapse of the US government. It would have lead to more dead insurgents, and a few DC buildings being worse for wear, but in the end the US military would have prevailed.

A general imprisoning a democratically elected president and declaring himself supreme leader would be considered awfully un-American.

It would never be that. It would be the lawfully elected president heroically preventing an illegal, fraudulent coup/stolen election in defence of freedom, democracy and American values. You'd just have two such figures battling it out, possibly followed by more as the economy implodes and militancy skyrockets.

Obviously, the nation-building objective failed completely. But during the occupation, at least cities like Kabul were pretty much under US control. Sure, there were IED attacks, but it was not like any insurgents would claim a neighborhood, keep the US out of it and enforce their ideas of Sharia law in it.

The point of gorilla warfare isn't to defeat the enemy on the conventional battlefield, but to win through attrition and demoralization. The Afghans won the war in the end.

gorilla warfare

Now I'm imagining armies of trained tactical ape commandos.

I would argue otherwise at least in red tribe areas. Most red states are pretty rural often with few roads, and substantial wilderness in between small towns. The ideal strategy in that area would look a lot like what happened in Iraq or Afghanistan. You strike with a small group and slink off into the wilds. Or you plant bombs along the roadside. Or you take out the power grid. And so on. Tanks and drones don’t work well without defined targets. Air strikes can’t be called on people who aren’t there.

And big cities have a huge problem with supply chains— almost everything that a city needs comes from or through rural areas. If the trucks don’t come to DC for long enough, there’s not much that can be done from the government end.

Urban areas have supply routes running through rural areas, but those supply routes need to route through urban areas to function properly(eg highway interchanges). The overall picture still benefits the reds but it’s much more complicated than you make it seem.

Of course nothing in a conflict of this type is simple, but what I’m pointing out is that there are a lot of thing that go in favor of the rural areas and make the kind of fighting that the military would do a bit more complicated. Yes you could field a very large army in rural areas, but if you don’t know who’s fighting and who’s not, or where the IED is or drone strike or attack on infrastructure will come from. And trying to be everywhere isn’t easy, even the biggest military in the world is still finite and can’t control everything.

In a war that’s more a guerrilla conflict with unexpected attacks by small groups who blend in with the locals and have lots of wilderness areas to hide in, it’s going to be really hard for a conventional military to gain and maintain control over the territory and to protect the supply lines to several large cities at the same time. The Blues would have the major disadvantage of having to protect itself and its political leadership in the theater of war. We haven’t had to do so since 1865. And even then, the South was too genteel to try things like starving a city (Maryland surrounds DC and thus cutting off DC would have been possible even back then had they tried to invade). The problem for the military will be fighting an insurgent conflict with most of its tools prevented by the fact that the people doing it are Americans and thus you can’t do things like bomb the strongholds of the insurgents or go house to house collecting weapons.

Not to mention that it turns out that the PREMIER weapon in modern warfare (for cost-effectiveness, anyway) is not tanks, fighter aircraft, or cruise missiles, but a $25 Chinese Amazon drone with a $2 explosive warhead.

I actually think that bulwark-against-tyranny types often underestimate the difficulty of a successful low-intensity conflict. But imagine a Northern Ireland-type conflict today, except the IRA has the DJ Mavik.

the PREMIER weapon in modern warfare (for cost-effectiveness, anyway) is not tanks, fighter aircraft, or cruise missiles, but a $25 Chinese Amazon drone with a $2 explosive warhead.

Or a $300 thermal camera.

I think we have a working model for what people with working knowledge of firearms, access to long guns, and willingness to go into hot war with D.C. will be; it might not be an insurgency, but instead, dozens of D.C. snipers operating in tandem, and specifically targeting the tyrant and their supporters.

Obviously, only the barest fraction of people who talk the boogaloo game would do anything but hand over their guns and seethe when push comes to shove. But as the D.C. sniper shows us, it doesn't take a lot of people to utterly fuck things up. Add in things like targeted sabotage of the power grid in key areas and a few more Oklahoma City bombings, and I think that the government could run out of state capacity very quickly.

I am not convinced that the ability of the tiniest sliver of the population to fuck things up is a net positive.

The way a militia envisioned by the framers would work is that it would unite the bulk of men in a country with similar ideas on how their country should be run. If 99% think that life under British rule is great, and 1% wants to fight for independence, then the 99% would simply arrest the 1% and extradite them to the Brits. Political power grows from the barrel of a gun, so if the guns are equally distributed throughout the population, the majority will be in charge.

If anyone who owns an AR15 gets de-facto veto powers over the federal government, this will not make a country more democratic, but less democratic.

For what it is worth, I agree with @Capital_Room that assassinations are unlikely to change the fundamental character of a political system. If you killed Hitler in 1924, this would not turn the NSDAP or their voters into democrats. But also, if someone had shot Biden in 2020, the US would not have said "well, our democratically elected president is dead, so democracy has failed and we should build a Fuehrerstaat."

Ok, I think we have to keep in mind just how red the people willing to use guns are. The FBI is a small minority of federal law enforcement, after all. The ‘police caste’, for lack of a better term, is ultra ultra red.

the tyrant

This points to a problem recently discussed by Auron MacIntyre: that the word "tyranny" generally conjures up in our minds rule by a singular tyrant; and thereby the impression that all that needs be done to guard against oppression is to prevent power from falling into any one person's hand's. But such individual concentration of power is not necessary (nor sufficient) for a government to become oppressive. As Hannah Arendt wrote in On Violence, bureaucracy can lead to "tyranny without a tyrant."

Snipers can shoot a singular "tyrant and their supporters," but when you're instead oppressed by tens of thousands of mostly-interchangeable near-anonymous bureaucrats with no clear, single leader, what then?

Snipers can shoot a singular "tyrant and their supporters," but when you're instead oppressed by tens of thousands of mostly-interchangeable near-anonymous bureaucrats with no clear, single leader, what then?

Well, about that sniper...

I've read that piece before, and I think our @KulakRevolt both overestimates the ease of assassination government officials — and the willingness of sane, non-suicidal people to attempt it, given the negligible odds of getting away with it — and underestimates the willingness of our officials to bear the risk (which, again, is lower than he thinks).

Was McVeigh really that much of an outlier? You make a good point that this would require sufficient motivation, but I think living conditions could easily get bad enough that people no longer have much to lose.

Really all that needs to happen is that people get their friends and family killed, raped or immiserated with no recourse.

As mentionned elsewhere in this thread, the Feds have been smart enough to avoid escalating in such conditions since Waco, but if they did we could easily get back to levels of violence that are not really that far in the past. People forget there are still living members of the Weather Underground.

Was McVeigh really that much of an outlier?

Yes, and his sort even more so in the decades since.

I think living conditions could easily get bad enough that people no longer have much to lose.

Perhaps, but not particularly soon, and as times get more desperate, people tend to get less cooperative as they compete with one another to maintain their slice of the shrinking metaphorical pie.

Really all that needs to happen is that people get their friends and family killed, raped or immiserated with no recourse.

I think Nybbler answered this one pretty well.

As mentionned elsewhere in this thread, the Feds have been smart enough to avoid escalating in such conditions since Waco

McVeigh had very little to do with the lack of further Wacos. Nor is it due to any unwillingness or incapacity on the part of the government. It is my understanding that the local cops had several opportunities to arrest Koresh and other leading Branch Davidians, and indeed wanted to do so, but were specifically told not to by the feds, who wanted to sweep up the entire group in a single big operation that Janet Reno could show off in the media, and the FBI and ATF could use to justify their big budgets and fancy toys.

But then it went wrong. So, now, they don't bother doing it that way. Instead, they let the local cops pick off leadership as soon as possible.

The reason you don't see any more Waco-type incidents isn't because the government can't deal with groups like the Branch Davidians, it's because they've gotten so good at nipping such groups in the bud long before they ever reach the "armed compound" stage, in ways that don't grab mass media attention.

It's not a sign of their weakness, but a sign of their strength.

Really all that needs to happen is that people get their friends and family killed, raped or immiserated with no recourse.

They'd cling to authority and blame their friends and family for their disobedience and defiance. Law-and-order conservatives do this as naturally as progressives denounce their "racist uncle".

Because they believe in a recourse. This cannot be maintained forever.

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Snipers can shoot a singular "tyrant and their supporters," but when you're instead oppressed by tens of thousands of mostly-interchangeable near-anonymous bureaucrats with no clear, single leader, what then?

"He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance."

I guess you're going to need a lot more bullets.

No, you're going to need a lot more people. Because our sniper might be able to successfully pick off one of the faceless bureaucrats… but his odds of getting away alive and free to try again with another are very, very small. So you're going to need someone else to pick up where he left off… and then another to follow after him… and then another…

And like @RobertLiguori noted above, only "the barest fraction" are even going to do anything other than meekly submit. And after the first dozen snipers all end up arrested or dead, while the bureaucrats they picked off are replaced, with no real change in the mechanisms of tyranny (beyond further crackdowns and tightening security), how many are really going to want to follow suit?

Because our sniper might be able to successfully pick off one of the faceless bureaucrats… but his odds of getting away alive and free to try again with another are very, very small.

Recent events seem to indicate that for the set of bureaucrats not protected by countersnipers the odds might be better than you think?

AIUI the countersnipers were slower to respond to the Trump shooter because they were busy doing overwatch at the ranges that a sane sniper who was concerned with getting away with it might have set up -- 4-500 yards.

Take away the overwatch, substitute a competent assassin, and it would absolutely be possible for a bad dude to crank off a few shots COM and hop in a van to escape. (on second thought let's make it a dirtbike considering that this is a Kulak fantasy were in)

substitute a competent assassin

Random citizens are not "competent assassins." And for that matter, I'm not sure how much "competent assassin" is even a thing. I don't remember where I read it (as usual), but I recall reading about how on the one hand, it's not easy for a protection detail to stop a determined assassin with no concern for his own survival, but, on the other hand, any assassin who makes plans to try to get away alive is pretty much guaranteed to fail at hitting their target.

Now, the fact that the bureaucrats (at least initially) won't have a protection detail will change this a bit. But still, the odds of getaway remain very slim.

Random citizens are not "competent assassins."

Well picking citizens from a hat your odds would suck, sure -- but go over to Rokslide.com (hunting forum with a focus on long range elk & such) and there are 10,000 dudes who could hit a man at 500 yards every single time. 500 yards is a long ways -- much easier getaway than robbing a bank, and people do that all the time.

That's before you even get into people with military experience -- I'm not saying it's likely, but it's not impossible. And even if it fails most of the time, assassination attempts would put quite a damper on the activities of the bureaucrats, and might make many reconsider their path in life?

A sane terrorist would use bombs, damn the collateral damage. That’s what terrorists elsewhere in the world mostly do.

I’m pro 2A mostly because of crime. The problem with being unarmed in America is that any criminal who wants a gun can get one so easily that it’s a safe assumption that anyone committing a crime would have one. Police are effectively corralled into coming several minutes later to write and file reports that — even if the do somehow find the criminal, that criminal won’t be prosecuted or if they are, it’s a very light sentence, and thus don’t matter— don’t help except in getting insurance to pay for repairs to the damage. This makes disarming the law-abiding effectively a unilateral disarmament in the face of rising criminality when no other help is available.

Most of the actual solutions to crime would be so long term as to be non solutions. Re-empowering the police to deal with crime as it happens would be good, and probably the only one that would help within the decade. Recriminalizing drugs would help by reducing crime associated with drug use and give cops a good way to get rid of known criminals. Beyond that, it’s things that need to change in the culture— stopping the glorification of guns, crime, and drug use, creating a culture of achievement, politeness, and regard for others — would be changes on the order of decades, assuming it’s even possible. Basically you’d have to turn American city culture into something at least like Europe or East Asia to get there, and I’m not sure you can do that.

A popular uprising against tyranny is possible today. See Venezuela, Hong Kong, Ireland, etc. Just because we haven't reached the boiling point doesn't mean that we would never rebel on the face of tyranny, and it also doesn't mean that arms haven't subtly discouraged tyranny.

Meanwhile the poor saps in HK and venezuela got no chance in heck of throwing off the yoke of communism.

Meanwhile the poor saps in HK and venezuela got no chance in heck of throwing off the yoke of communism.

I think this isn't applicable to a theoretical "disarmed" US. Just look at how other recent civil wars started out, where an autocratic Government pushed the populace to far. Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine.

They all tried to violently suppress street protests, and the moment the badly armed population needed to fight back because they were getting shot in the streets, they either sacked police stations and military armories; or entire guard/police/army battalions switched sides and brought their guns with them.

I see no reason to think the US would turn out different. It's unthinkable that large-scale violence would be used against citizens in the streets with police/national guard/fed. armed forces just watching their neighbors and brothers being killed. The US still has sufficient diversity in its armed forces, there is no large distinct outgroup they would collectively tolerate being violently suppressed.

Also, police armories have gotten ridiculous, and defending them seems like a daunting task once you start slaughtering people in the streets. We've seen burning police stations before, at much lower stakes. Looting them before setting the fires is kind of a given.

Just look at how other recent civil wars started out, where an autocratic Government pushed the populace to far. Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine.

They all tried to violently suppress street protests, and the moment the badly armed population needed to fight back because they were getting shot in the streets, they either sacked police stations and military armories; or entire guard/police/army battalions switched sides and brought their guns with them.

This all depends on state capacity. The state capacity in these shithole countries is low and the discipline and morale in their armed forces is even lower. This can't happen in HK at all.

It's unthinkable that large-scale violence would be used against citizens in the streets with police/national guard/fed. armed forces just watching their neighbors and brothers being killed.

History has shown that they will kill if ordered to. Kent state is the most obvious example but there are others.

The state capacity in these shithole countries is low and the discipline and morale in their armed forces is even lower. This can't happen in HK at all.

True, HK is a totally different story. But it's also very different than the US. I'm also not at all convinced that a few hundred thousand AR-15s would change their situation all that much.

History has shown that they will kill if ordered to. Kent state is the most obvious example but there are others.

That's kind of my point. Kent State is the obvious worst case example. At 4 dead and 9 wounded. The number of guardsmen actually aiming at bodies was probably lower than those two numbers, and it happens exceedingly rarely.

Which brings us back to discipline and morale. Unless some out-group is identified and systematically "othered", I can't see a guard unit murdering students in larger numbers without both going out the window on day one.

Kent state is the most obvious example but there are others.

Vietnam war protestors were pretty much hated by working class Americans at the time, IIRC, to the extent of unions siding with republicans when it meant they got to go beat up some of them, so the national guard being violent and brutal towards them means less than you think.

The US still has sufficient diversity in its armed forces

I don’t think this is true. The US security forces are pretty much all blacks and republicans. The FBI is a small minority.

The US security forces are pretty much all blacks and republicans.

Just above 20% and just below 60%, respectively. I'm not too worried yet. Also, in the grand spectrum of possible political ideologies, Republicans and Democrats stand pretty closely together.

The Soviet union fell without guns. The people who built Detroit, south side Chicago and Atlanta largely were forced to leave their cities and were replaced without any resistance. The US has never really had any insurgency or militia fighting the government. Northern Ireland had the IRA, the Spanish have independence groups, Italy has had groups fighting the state, Germany had the Baader–Meinhof Gang. The US has had indviduals go bananas and a group of Saudis conduct a major attack but no organized insurgency.

The significance of your observation depends on your causal model. Usually the fall into tyranny is treated as exogenous: it is just as likely when the civilians have guns as when they are disarmed. Eventually it happens, and if the civilians have guns we get to see if they can shoot their way back to freedom.

I prefer to add two upstream stages. Before you can have a coup or a tyrant, you need that kind of person in politics. Once in politics they scheme and calculate. Perhaps the civilians have been disarmed by a well meaning predecessor. Now the would be tyrant's calculation is whether the police and the army will kill on his behalf. Perhaps the civilians have guns. How the calculation is whether the police and the army will take incoming fire. Some will die. Dying is a bigger ask than killing, and I anticipate the would be tyrant biding his time, waiting for a better opportunity that never comes.

But upstream of that is the question: does the would be tyrant even go into politics? Some-one who grows up in a disarmed country may see his fellow country men as sheep to be sheared and enters politics hoping to transcend electoral politics and become Lord Protector. Some-one else, growing up where civilians have guns sees less chance of grabbing ultimate power and probably ends up following a different path through life. Perhaps he aims to become very rich, by up newspapers, and then to half-rule from the shadows, using the media to shape public opinion, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but never at risk of being shot.

Perhaps the lack of organized insurgency shows that the second amendment is pointless because the guns never get used. I think that the lack of organized insurgency shows that the second amendment works better than expected, shaping who goes into politics. The guns are never used because those with ambitions to be tyrants find others paths through life.

Germany had the Baader–Meinhof Gang.

In the grand scheme of things, the RAF was utterly insignificant. They made a lot of headlines with their murders, but they were no closer to taking over the German government than Bin Laden was to establish a caliphate in the US.

The US has never really had any insurgency or militia fighting the government.

I mean this is objectively not true if you look at the whole of its history, but lets just look at post-1900.

On the small scale:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff

That armed resistance WON their conflict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

So did that one.

The US has never really had any insurgency or militia fighting the government.

So the KKK and other adjacent Reconstruction-era militias don't count?

To be honest, I'd be against a right to bear arms if I was writing a constitution for a new country. HOWEVER, in light of the fact that the US constitution does grant a right to bear arms, I am very strongly against allowing anyone to do an end run around the process for amending the constitution.

The true test of the strength of your institutions is whether or not you can stick to them even when there's a legitimately good idea that you can't implement because your institutions are in the way. If you can't respect your institutions when they're actually wrong then you don't respect your institutions at all.

I'd be against a right to bear arms if I was writing a constitution for a new country.

I'm curious why, in the abstract?

I'm pretty partial to the ancient prejudices of Englishmen personally.

I don't think an armed uprising is plausible in this day and age. People revolt because they're desperate, and the western world is too rich to foster that kind of desperation. The big difference since the days of George Washington is that we're much richer and more comfortable now.

With no possibility of being able to productively use them against the government, guns can only be used against the citizenry. Having a right to guns just makes your society more dangerous to live in.

Anglosphere governments do not enforce laws particularly evenly, and this being known, I’m sticking with being allowed to carry a gun over criminals being ignored when they do it but being policed with presumption of guilt for firearms ownership.

In Japan, sure, I would happily go unarmed, and comply with whatever ridiculousness they demand for hunting shotguns. We’re not Japan.

This is a bad and inaccurate model for how successful revolts happen. The American Revolution was led by dissatisfied elites who were living at the pointy end of life satisfaction at the time and risked it all for reasons that were partially ideological.

Desperate people foster low-level street violence that is typically easily crushed. Dissatisfied elites are the true threats to regimes, and they don't revolt out of desperation. There's a reason that every few years people discover that DHS or someone has been flagging disgruntled O6s as threats to homeland stability, and it's not because they're stupid.

I guess we disagree on that very premise. You think we're beyond warfare because you haven't done it in a while. You obviously haven't been to Northern Ireland. They have video games there too you know. And the 90s aren't that far back. Pretty comfortable times then too, arguably more comfortable than today.

no possibility of being able to productively use them against the government, guns can only be used against the citizenry

Nonsense. Citizens can also use them against criminals. Who always have them anyways.

There's certainly a tradeoff but my bias is to favor a slightly more dangerous society where I'm allowed to execute the man that has designs on my property (and therefore myself).

You obviously haven't been to Northern Ireland.

I have, in fact, been to Northern Ireland.

Then you may have seen large mementos of people using small arms to get concessions from their government within living memory. Which makes the implausibility of something that did happen very weird indeed.

using small arms to get concessions from their government within living memory.

Except they failed. The express goal of the IRA was a united Ireland. Indeed there is an argument their goal would have been further along without their intervention. They accepted a peace deal that had been offered to them in the 1970's in 1998. All the violence didn't actually get them any further forward than the government had been willing to accept beforehand.

With another 25 years of (mostly) peace we are now closer to a United Ireland (polling wise) than we ever were during the Troubles.

I fail to see how that's relevant to the plausibility of the insurgency in the first place.

You can say the PIRA failed, but it did exist.

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The game theory for making sure individuals maintain an offensive advantage remains. It makes the land generally inhospitable to tyrants. It is true that there are costs but I tire of people that think simply pointing them out and also the that the decaying retirement home husks of once vital nations don't pay them should make me jealous. To put it as kindly as possible, I am not jealous of these nations. Pointing out that these once giants and now living museums have adopted a policy in the last few hundred years makes that policy sound as appealing as rat poison. I don't have any particular attraction to guns. I own none and despite having been shooting with friends on a few occasion generally recognize no personal appeal. But I hate the idea of being part of a disarmed population. I will not childproof my my home for my own safety. Fuck that.

It makes the land generally inhospitable to tyrants.

The practical outcome of the US government being afraid of its armed citizenry wasn't a bulwark against tyranny, it was the enabling of Jim Crow (which, for the avoidance of doubt, was tyrannical oppression from the point of view of its black victims). During WW2, the Feds acquired a large standing army sufficient that the government was no longer afraid of its armed citizenry, the American people elected the man who embodied the values of that army to the Presidency, and the South folded in short order.

Given

  • the semi-official status that the Dunning school of history had in the South
  • the relationship between 60's and 70's movement conservatism and Southern resistance to civil rights
  • the fact that the Cincinnati Coup was led by Southerners (one of whom was probably a racist murderer)

we can be reasonably confident that the modern 2nd amendment movement centred around a politically-active NRA loosely aligned with movement conservatism was founded by people who thought that gun culture was good because it enabled Jim Crow, not in spite of it. The viewpoint that the 1st Klan and the Redeemers were justified resistance to tyranny, that Jim Crow was the liberty the 2nd amendment existed to protect, and that the Feds imposing civil rights on the white South was a tyrannical usurpation, was entirely mainstream in right-wing circles in those days.

The problem of political violence does not have a technical solution - there is no substitute for civic virtue. A government that has the technical capability to protect you from warlords has the technical ability to oppress you if it chooses to. And an (organised or unorganised) militia which has the technical capability to protect you from a tyrannical government has the technical ability to overthrow a non-tyrannical government and take up warlordism* on you if it chooses to. Empirically, warlordism is worse for the people who have to live under it than tyranny. The American approach of setting up the nation-in-arms as a counterveiling power to the armed forces of the democratic state has failed - the worst incident of democratic backsliding in American history was imposed on the democratic state violently by a section of the nation-in-arms. The approach to the same problem taken by the French Revolution was to set up a conscript army in such a way that the nation-in-arms is the armed forces of the democratic state. That approach failed fast and spectacularly in France, though it seems to have worked very well in Switzerland. It remains as central to the democratic mythos of Continental Europe as the 2nd amendment and the Minutemen are to the democratic mythos of Red America.

* I am happy to make the mildly tongue-in-cheek claim that the actually existing form of government in the South between the withdrawal of Federal troops in the 1870's and the establishment of functioning Jim Crow state governments in the 1880's and 1890's was warlordism, but defending it would take more space that one Mottepost.

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we can be reasonably confident that the modern 2nd amendment movement centred around a politically-active NRA loosely aligned with movement conservatism was founded by people who thought that gun culture was good because it enabled Jim Crow, not in spite of it.

The NRA was created by Union officials who thought pro-Union forces needed better training. You are describing a Michael Moore-style history which is the opposite of actual history.

The NRA went from being a primarily-sporting group of the type you mention to being a primarily-political one as a result of the Cincinnati revolt. This isn't Michael Moore history - "The NRA leadership was useless until a grassroots takeover put real 2nd amendment supporters into place" is the story gun rights activists tell themselves. The NRA was not a white supremacist organisation either before or after the change, but the new leadership was dominated by Southern conservatives, and the vast majority of Southern conservatives in the 1970's were white supremacists by modern standards. "Jim Crow is protected by states' rights under the Constitution", "Civil Rights law is an unconstitutional expansion of federal power", and "Reconstruction was an abuse of power by carpetbaggers and scallywags" were all standard Southern conservative positions at the time, and "Jim Crow is good actually" was still within the Overton window.

The NRA went from being a primarily-sporting group of the type you mention to being a primarily-political one as a result of the Cincinnati revolt.

Yes. And the 1977 Cincinnati revolt was a result of the Gun Control Act of 1968. Which itself was AFTER the end of Jim Crow.

I presume that if you had evidence that the actual leaders of the NRA following said revolt were supporters of Jim Crow, you'd have posted it.

I presume that if you had evidence that the actual leaders of the NRA following said revolt were supporters of Jim Crow, you'd have posted it.

The fact that they were Southern conservatives is Bayesian evidence that were supporters of Jim Crow, given that the vast majority of Southern conservatives born before the civil rights era were supporters of Jim Crow. The racist murder that Harlon Carter was convicted of was of a Hispanic, so it is definitely possible that he wasn't shockingly racist against blacks, just unlikely.

In any case the claim I was trying to make was the slightly weaker claim that the leaders of the Cincinnati revolt were people who accepted the moral assumptions of the Dunning School of history (which would have been taught as uncontroversial fact in the high schools and colleges they attended) and would therefore have seen the 1st Klan as an example of righteous-but-doomed resistance to tyranny and the Redemption-era white militias as a good example of successful resistance. The set of people who thought that the 1st Klan were the goodies in Birth of a Nation (which was not small - the movie enjoyed mainstream success) is much larger than the set of people who were actively working to bring back Jim Crow in 1977. The Sons of Confederate Veterans gave Nathan Bedford Forrest a posthumous honour in 1977, so "the 1st Klan were the goodies" was still comfortably within the Overton window at the time.

I am happy to admit that I have no evidence whatsoever that Neal Knox was a segregationist apart from the fact that it was normal for white Texans who attended segregated Christian colleges in the 1950's to be segregationists.

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The fact that they were Southern conservatives is Bayesian evidence that were supporters of Jim Crow, given that the vast majority of Southern conservatives born before the civil rights era were supporters of Jim Crow.

OK, so you don't actually have evidence that the particular people involved supported Jim Crow. You just want to use the word "Bayesian" to justify your stereotyping. Your intimation that Carter and Knox were supporters of the Klan (any Klan) is, I presume, similarly supported, and comes down to "they were Texans".

The racist murder that Harlon Carter was convicted of was of a Hispanic, so it is definitely possible that he wasn't shockingly racist against blacks, just unlikely.

He wasn't convicted of having racist motivations in the killing, and his conviction was overturned on the grounds that the jury was not adequately instructed on the law of self-defense.

And the NRAs turn to politics began with the Gun Control Act of 1968 (which the NRA did not object to, resulting ultimately in the replacement of NRA leadership). Rather later than the abolition of Jim Crow. Earlier gun control laws were often intended to disarm blacks.

I know "private guns enabled Jim Crow" was one of those successful leftist memes (along with "jury nullification enabled lynching"), but it's not true. They were called Jim Crow LAWS for a reason; they were enforced with state violence.

Jim Crow was enforced by social pressure. My grandparents remember the system and they remember it falling; there were blacks getting beaten by cops but there were far more bus drivers who just didn’t care anymore who sat in the front.

That's...the point, sort of, isn't it? Social pressure normally doesn't entail armed threats in most societies, and one can make the argument that most laws that are worth a damn are enforced by social pressure everywhere. It's a rather big stretch to say that Jim Crow was facilitated by racist whites having easy access to guns.

The practical outcome of the US government being afraid of its armed citizenry wasn't a bulwark against tyranny, it was the enabling of Jim Crow

Armed resistance in the South was crushed. Except in Louisiana, Jim Crow was imposed at the ballot box, with a decent helping of more normal threats of violence.

Armed black men were a bulwark of African American freedom.

The practical outcome of the US government being afraid of its armed citizenry wasn't a bulwark against tyranny, it was the enabling of Jim Crow (which, for the avoidance of doubt, was tyrannical oppression from the point of view of its black victims).

I'd say the most you can argue is that it was both. It seams clear as day that since governments stopped being afraid of it's citizens, they implemented programs of unprecedented surveillance, social control, manipulation of information, and political oppression. The UK (and the rest of Europe to a lesser extent), which is far more advanced in this process than the US is happily locking people up for shitposting, as they let out rapists and murderers.

A tyranny of the majority also being possible, and guns possibly enabling it, is not the own that you think it is.

The UK (and the rest of Europe to a lesser extent), which is far more advanced in this process than the US is happily locking people up for shitposting, as they let out rapists and murderers.

I think that’s proof they are worried about the citizens. They’re not scared of rapists or murderers, really, any more than they’re scared of sharks. They’re worried about allowing dissent to foster among the working class, so they stamp on it.

The game theory for making sure individuals maintain an offensive advantage remains. It makes the land generally inhospitable to tyrants.

I will note that there's a certain bimodality here. Small arms alone don't help against tyrants these days unless the tyrants have the gloves firmly on; you want at the very least MANPADs and anti-tank (recoilless) rifles, and probably private tanks and mortars, if you really want to make tyrants have a bad time (also tunnel systems that the tyrants don't know about, which has certain conflicts with building permits).

The argument that having an armed populace increases the lethality of crime and thus reduces total crime by attrition of criminals holds water with small arms, but this argument doesn't.

(NB: This is not a reductio ad absurdum; militia maximalism is a colourable position. I'm merely pointing out where the goalposts are.)

Small arms alone don't help against tyrants these days unless the tyrants have the gloves firmly on;

I think the Waco and Ruby Ridge stories show that while the state can defeat partisans in battle with small arms, this isn't always a win for the state. There's a convincing case in my opinion that the state lost the wars there: even decades later they're still treating groups like the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff and the Bundy conflicts with kid gloves. And even despite that, the government lost most of the resulting court cases even when you'd think there was clear evidence of their case.

Absent a huge swell in public opinion away from small-armed partisans (most obviously: poor trigger control and injuries to uninvolved parties), I think actually rolling out the jackboots might well burn public support faster than it can put down rebellion. And I don't think that's purely right-coded either: I doubt squashing riots in 2020 would have brought a more peaceful resolution there, either. There's a fine, if observably fuzzy, line dividing public support for state violence from denouncement: even the Ma'Khia Bryant shooting was controversial.

I don't buy the Hollywood scenario where a tyrant suddenly has tanks rolling down the streets from a bunker where they never interact with the common man. Trump's recent experience with American small arms should shatter any illusion that assassination is beyond us and fighting a full military occupation is a step I don't think anl properly armed population willing to fight gets to.

The solution to violent crime is easy: incapacitate criminals. The hardcore crackdown on violent crime that does not take away pro-social people's guns is possible right now in most places but doesn't happen, I think largely because of prosecutorial discretion by progressive prosecutors. Maybe the solution is something out of left field like allowing any citizen to press charges, in the same way that civil rights law works. Take the discretion away from public officials.

I am much more of a 2nd Amendment maximalist (private fighter jets? Yes.). However, I think the real goal of preventing tyranny can't be achieved by the 2nd amendment alone, as you've argued. What must be possible is alternate centers of power and the real possibility of them becoming autonomous, of seceding from the authority of the federal government. What would make alternative centers of power a more realistic possibility is making self-determination an explicit right. It should be one of the unenumerated rights that the founders didn't think necessary to put in the Constitution, but the modern interpretation of rights (at least post-1860) requires listing it explicitly. I'm not sure whether it needs to be about secession specifically vs. a more generic right to self-determination, but the specter of the federal fist coming down on any group that wants to go their own way makes it practically impossible without the right to do so.

If there was a right to self-determination or secession, then the threat of a group leaving the union would force the federal government to accommodate individual groups more. As things are, tyranny of the majority keeps ratcheting up.

First, the value of the Second Amendment is not that AR-15s prevent government oppression via Sic Semper Tyrannus. To be clear, it almost certainly can do that if it has to, but it's very expensive and avoiding it is strongly preferable. The value is that the Second Amendment and the AR-15s it protects form a coordination mechanism for resistance to government overreach generally, and that this coordination provides better protection for liberty than many, many actual shootings of tyrants. The existence of the Second Amendment has decisively shaped the form and nature of our society's ongoing collapse, and thus what is likely to emerge from the wreckage. My assessment is that it is strongly preferable to any plausible alternative.

Second, from a Red perspective, there is zero reason to seek any common ground on the subject of criminal violence under present conditions. Nor is there any reason to entertain any argument about whether gun control might or might not improve rates of violent crime. The correct response is to make it clear that there is no grounds for any discussion on this subject at all. Blue Tribe deliberately generated the largest increase in violent crime ever recorded, explicitly in pursuit of partisan political advantage. There is no plausible mechanism by which any practicable amount of gun control could outweigh even a fraction of the harm they caused. They have accepted zero responsibility for the vast and appalling harms generated by their deliberate and protracted campaign of social vandalism caused, and to the extent that they are now attempting to use the crime wave they created as an excuse to strip Red Tribe of its rights, the correct response is, at the most charitable, contemptuous silence.

To the extent that Blue Tribe may be able to unilaterally impose destruction of Red Tribe human rights, the correct response is to destroy the social mechanisms that allow such illegitimate impositions. Either we control federal law, or there is no federal law; this is the evident position of Blue Tribe, and it should be our position as well. Defiance and nullification are the correct stance; either they will be sufficient to solve the dilemma, or we will need to escalate further.

The value is that the Second Amendment and the AR-15s it protects form a coordination mechanism for resistance to government overreach generally

I hear this narrative, and all I see is that you've concentrated everything into a singular highly-visible tripwire, and thereby given the enemy a roadmap for successful oppression. The assumption seems to be that any "slide into tyranny" must include, early in the chain, a mass confiscation of guns, and therefore, the time to engage in armed resistance to agents of the state is when they do that… and only ever when they do that.

But what if they don't?

If you'll only shoot when they violate your 2nd amendment rights, that means you won't when they take away your 1st, or 4th, or 5th, or…

The cops start searching homes and arresting people without warrants? Well, they're not taking away your 2nd amendment rights, so no resisting.

They begin arresting people for "hate speech"? Well, they're not confiscating your guns, so armed resistance is off the table, and you submit.

They shut down your church and forbid your faith? They haven't disarmed you yet, so it's not yet time for violence, and you submit.

They confiscate the contents of your bank accounts? Well, you've still got your guns, so you submit.

They begin sending people to jail without a trial or a lawyer? Well, they haven't taken your guns, so you submit.

They begin sending people to jail without a trial or a lawyer? Well, they haven't taken your guns, so you submit.

You've announced the one and only time they'll meet force, and thus, that they can enact every other bit of tyranny they want without ever having to worry about those guns. And thus, why would they ever need to worry about them?

The cops start searching homes and arresting people without warrants? Well, they're not taking away your 2nd amendment rights, so no resisting.

Sympathetic nutjobs(all of whom are heavily into the 2nd amendment) resisting will trigger more resistance- ruby ridge to okc.

Sympathetic nutjobs(all of whom are heavily into the 2nd amendment) resisting will trigger more resistance-

That's not what I see from the right wing red tribe people I know IRL (i.e. my family and most friends), nor from similar people online (see for example commenters at Sarah Hoyt's blog). Instead I see denunciations of anyone who shoots as cops as automatically losing any and all sympathy, because you Just Don't Do That Ever, with the one and only exception of gun confiscation. If they're not taking your guns, you don't resist. Ever. And anyone who does resist our Boys in Blue is automatically thereby a Criminal Scumbag Who Deserves What They Get.

Blue Tribe deliberately generated the largest increase in violent crime ever recorded, explicitly in pursuit of partisan political advantage.

This is an extraordinary claim. It's normal to think your political opponents' policies with respect to crime are sub-optimal, but an explicit goal of increasing crime sounds like cartoon villainy.

While I personally believe it is obvious that the blue tribe deliberately generated the crime, I think yours is a reasonable request for evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory the claim is, and am glad you asked. Thanks!

This is an extraordinary claim.

And yet, the impending increase in violent crime was obvious well in advance, only grew more obvious as we raced our way up the exponential curve, and is now completely undeniable. The chain of causality driving that increase is not obscure, and was likewise pointed out well in advance, tracing back to a specific set of politically-motivated actions that Blue Tribe collectively chose to implement and then maintain for a decade despite strong opposition and numerous warnings.

Their goal was not to increase crime. Their goal was to secure unassailable political power. To advance that goal, they intentionally and dishonestly delegitimized a massive amount of our law enforcement apparatus, destroying our collective ability to enforce peace and order. The massive increase in violent crime was an obvious effect of doing this, but it is evidently a cost they were willing to pay. They are evidently unwilling to take responsibility or show remorse for what they've done, and there is no reason to suppose that they won't do it again the instant it seems expedient to do so. Further cooperation only enables further harm.

All of this happened in public, and there are plenty of receipts available. I stand by my original statement: there is no basis for cooperation with the Democratic party or with Blues generally on law enforcement or the crime rate. They are not willing to follow or enforce the law impartially. There remains neither common values nor common interest.

an explicit goal of increasing crime sounds like cartoon villainy

Bailing out rioters in 2020 to re-victimize communities was a mainstream leftist position. Our current Dem presidential nominee participated in it, despite previously being a prosecutor happy to nail people for weed.

This was done to weaken the contemporary administration and force them into making difficult decisions about using force against citizens. It excited the leftist voting base by simultaneously casting them as "oppressed" when the riots were met with resistance, while also showing them the power of a near-monopoly on lawfare that enabled outrageous violence against their political enemies with impunity.

Yes, it is cartoonishly evil. Much like the death-cult celebrations with free vasectomies and abortions at the convention. How can you not just shake your head at how insane this all is and was? It all sounds ridiculous because it is.

I think that the progressive prosecutors who release violent criminals (a constant problem in the deep blue city i live in; its very common to see news stories about a violent attack by a perpetrator with 10+ arrests for other violent crimes in the last couple of years) would not say that the goal of their policies is increasing violent crime, but that increasing violent crime is an unfortunate but acceptable side effect of their pursuit of criminal justice reform. So deliberate not in the sense of being the primary goal, but deliberate in the sense that they know it will happen and forge ahead anyway.

The value is that the Second Amendment and the AR-15s it protects form a coordination mechanism for resistance to government overreach generally, and that this coordination provides better protection for liberty

In the last 80 years of federal government overreach, how many federal attempts at imposing more rules were successfully resisted by gun owners? Because it seems to me that the answer is none. American gun owners are too fat and lazy to mount a rebellion. The few victories they’ve had have come through the courts.

In truth, a large enough unarmed mob can easily successfully overwhelm an autocratic state, and a respectably sized group of civilian firearms owners can be easily crushed by a committed and powerful security corps and/or military, both of which the US effectively has.

You're not counting all the rules which might have been imposed, but weren't due to the practical considerations of an armed population. That which is seen, and that which is unseen.

Don't get me wrong, I agree we're all cowards that will meekly agree to be crushed.

But the past 30 years have seen massive expansions in gun rights, ownership, and (available) competence. More people can and do conceal carry a firearm than ever before. More people own weapons that make them capable of defensive or offensive work against multiple assailants (I.E. Kyle Rittenhouse). Extremely high-quality training that can put you on-par with an army infantryman in close combat is widely available to the middle class, along with the plates and carriers to engage at a similar level.

In the last 80 years of federal government overreach, how many federal attempts at imposing more rules were successfully resisted by gun owners?

The 90s assault weapons ban sunsetting seems like an obvious example. They definitely wanted to keep it, and we definitely killed it. Likewise holding the line on bump stocks and braces. But the framing of your question elides much more significant advances: normalization and proliferation of concealed carry, suppressors, automatic weapons, the standardization of the AR-15, 3d-printing and DIY tech, and general cultural penetration are all monumental achievements that have greatly eroded the control landscape. The general level of defiance is steadily improving, from "comply, guys," to "I lost them in a boating accident" to "I didn't lose shit," and this correlates with general defiance throughout Red Tribe and the steady collapse of capacity in Blue Tribe institutions.

American gun owners are too fat and lazy to mount a rebellion.

I think this assessment is wrong, but time will tell. The coordination problem is, in my view, largely a red herring, with pernicious effects on both sides of the debate, in extremely unwarranted confidence in the security of their position from blues and equally-unwarranted black-pilling and despair from Reds.

That’s not really an answer to my question. My point wasn’t that gun owners haven’t successfully kept their right to own arms. My point was that none of the other tyrannies of the federal government have been reversed by the threat posed by firearms owners.

Unless you count abuse of cattle rancher’s grazing rights in eastern Oregon.

Apologies, I thought you were referring to gun-related rules specifically, and in fact, gun-related rules have indeed been rolled back, and others have been prevented.

If the question is about federal tyranny as a whole, it seems pretty clear to me that the last two decades have seen significant erosion of federal capacity, and the gun culture has been a crucial vanguard in that erosion. Social cohesion is decaying at a significant and accelerating rate, and with it the capacity of the federal government and blue tribe generally to impose its edicts on society as a whole. We are now seeing open, organized defiance to federal edicts from state governments, and the federals backed down. We are seeing a complete collapse in trust for the media, for the federal bureaucracy, for the federal courts, a deadlocked congress, collapsing trust in elections. The military is facing a severe recruiting crisis, serious readiness and procurement issues, most notably in the Navy, and a deep-rooted toward any foreign mission among its historical core source demographic.

You claim that gun owners are too fat and lazy to mount a rebellion. I counter that the federal government is so sclerotic, deficient and mismanaged that actual enforcement of actual laws against anything other that the fat, lazy and supremely comfortable is completely beyond them. They can, sometimes, make examples of unfortunate individuals, but even this capacity is increasingly failing, and each "example" they attempt generates significantly more defiance than it does compliance.

It is common for moderate Blues to opine that the tribes need each other, that the Conservative commitments to order and stability are a necessary counterbalance to the Progressive commitments to change and innovation. This makes sense if you believe that the old order was a good thing that should be preserved. But then, that same order is the tyranny that you're asking for examples of Gun Culture resistance from, isn't it? To the extent that Conservatives have done what moderate Blues claim to want them to do, you would be correct in accusing them of failure to impede tyranny. Only, those commitments have largely been eroded, haven't they? Red Tribe has in fact embraced Trumpism, abandoned fiscal conservativism, largely turned against foreign interventionism and the maintenance of the international order, become deeply critical and skeptical of the "free market" and of corporations, and is increasingly hostile to the concept of law and order generally. We are pretty clearly done being a moderating counterbalance, cleaning up your messes and paying the bills in an unreciprocated pursuit of an entirely theoretical "we". It is evident now that there is no "we", and likely will never be a "we" in the foreseeable future.

All this, over a period of relative peace and prosperity. It was often claimed that what we needed was a good external threat to pull people back together; we saw how that went with Covid, and now that claim seems to have been quietly retired. The stability and the unity are gone, and they are not coming back. Likewise the state capacity, and the orderly, instinctual rule-following it was built upon. What follows is an escalating conflict terminating in separation of one kind or another. There is far better hope for meaningful freedom in that breakdown than there ever could be in a federal government cementing unitary power over a population of pacified subjects.

They've been reversed by using the other three boxes, which is...vastly preferable.

The 90s assault weapons ban sunsetting seems like an obvious example. They definitely wanted to keep it, and we definitely killed it. Likewise holding the line on bump stocks and braces. But the framing of your question elides much more significant advances: normalization and proliferation of concealed carry, suppressors, automatic weapons, the standardization of the AR-15, 3d-printing and DIY tech, and general cultural penetration are all monumental achievements that have greatly eroded the control landscape.

Notice, these are all guns rights victories. Which just, again, reinforces my point about how they can take away all your other rights without concern.

Battle of Athens, and to a lesser extent Bundy Standoff.

Battle of Athens,

Several generations ago, and well before the NSA began watching veterans' groups as closely as they do now.

Bundy Standoff

Did anybody on the Bundy side ever actually fire a shot?

No, nobody in the Bundy standoff fired a shot period. The national guard refused to engage to avoid bloodshed.

Something tells me a disarmed population would have just been arrested upfront.

Something tells me a disarmed population would have just been arrested upfront.

see: the UK

3d-printing and DIY tech

Order a 3D printer and the wrong prefab parts, and the Feds and the State will beat a path to your door. They're tracking all of this.

The last time this came up, the proof was a case where a guy in NYC bought a printer and the parts, assembled firearms, took pictures of those firearms, and then posted those pictures on twitter; IIRC he also tagged anti-gun politicians with those photos. There is a big difference between "they can drop the hammer on people who openly advertise defiance of the law in one of the deepest-Blue enclaves in the country" and "they can drop the hammer on this activity in general."

I can entirely believe that the federal government is tracking correlated printer and gun purchases; they should not be doing this, and their power to do this should be destroyed. But they have not, in fact, demonstrated a capacity to substantially impinge on DIY production of effective firearms. Based on my own knowledge, they can't. It's not a matter of political impracticality, but rather physical impossibility. DIY tech isn't a potential-maybe-someday thing that might or might not happen at some point in the future; it's multiple decades of technological overhang that is already in freefall, only the first pebbles of which have hit the ground in a way that most people have noticed, because most people have not spent five minutes with a piece of paper and a pencil thinking about the matter.

DIY firearms weren't practically stoppable once metalworking tools became widespread; what John Browning and Mikhail Kalashnikov could invent, many lesser men could copy. CNC milling machines and 3D printers have made them even more so, though in earlier days when more of the population could work metal, maybe more people could make them. DIY ammunition, on the other hand, remains a problem. Possibly not insurmountable given the success of meth cookery, but both brass and primers are a real problem. But probably not in the quantities necessary, and messing around with it is a good way to get a trip to Club Fed. By tracking the easy ways (like the NYC guy was using -- a 3D printer + uncontrolled parts), they can prevent any significant illegal arming by people who have to care about the law until shit happens.

DIY firearms weren't practically stoppable once metalworking tools became widespread

You don't need metal. You don't even need plastic. You don't need a printer, cnc machine or lathe. You don't need brass or primers. You don't even need powder. Firearms themselves are entirely unnecessary; you certainly don't need "significant illegal arming" in the sense you are using the term. In fact, I'm convinced it is possible to shift the probabilities toward collapse of centralized authority by a two-digit percentage through the exclusively legal, entirely private and secret actions of between two and five individual people committing to a year or two of dedicated effort. This is speculative only in the weakest sense of the word; there are no pieces of the puzzle actually missing, they are all evidently on the table waiting to be assembled. We do not need to rummage around for a ball of sufficient greyness; it has already been drawn from from the urn. Gibson was correct: the future is here, it just isn't evenly distributed yet.

Maybe it won't have to be, but I don't see a plausible ending where Blue Tribe continues to advance without triggering distribution. The hope is that the fever breaks before that distribution is triggered. It is not an entirely unreasonable hope.

Ammunition reloading is a sufficiently common red tribe hobby, and the supply chain is sufficiently red, that a scenario where the reds hit ‘defect’ en masse is one in which the wildcat production of ammunition is unstoppable.

The propellant and primer supply chain has ATF throughly up their rear end, and ATF is blue as it comes. Reloading preserves brass (and there's a lot of it out there already) but doesn't help with powder or primers.

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Do successes through the courts not count? I believe that if you look at the last fifty years or so, there's been a steady march of increasing gun rights in the US. My understanding is that prior to the 1960s, it was actually quite unusual to read the Second Amendment as preserving an individual right to own firearms, and state-level laws on it could be quite restrictive. Since then, however, both judicial and legislative pressure, owing partly to advocacy by gun rights organisations like the NRA, have established and expanded individual rights to gun ownership. This is particularly obvious if you look at, for instance, the spread of right-to-carry laws.

Honestly, this surprises me because I would have said that gun rights is pretty much the only social issue on which the right has been consistently winning. They're losing or at best holding steady on everything else, but guns are the one place where they are successfully advancing.

Do successes through the courts not count?

Not when they're totally fake, granting a theoretical right to keep and bear arms but in practice accepting restrictions sufficient to vitiate said right. That's what Heller and Bruen were, and if you think otherwise, try buying a gun out of state, or (lawfully) buying and carrying a gun in New Jersey or Times Square.

how many federal attempts at imposing more rules were successfully resisted by gun owners?

A surprising amount. But mostly by lawfare.

Consider the recent pistol brace ban and how it was defeated.

This is a bit like the ongoing argument that conservatives conserve nothing because they always end up brushed away by time eventually. Without the organized 2a people constantly pushing back, things may be a lot worse than they actually are in America.

This is also quickly forgetting the wins they have been getting pushing for constitutional carry over the last decade.

Changing the 2nd Amendment now would likely be a bad idea for the simple reason that there are already so many guns in the US that there is no plausible way that simply getting rid of the 2nd Amendment would lead to any outcome than a bunch of pro-social people handing in their guns while a huge fraction of anti-social people keep them.

That's where I stand. It seems to have worked in Australia, but it's much easier to smuggle guns into the US.

I'm fine with background checks to hopefully forestall some of the impulsively murdersome and going back to the assault weapons ban. The book should continue to be thrown very forcefully at people who use guns in the commission of a crime.

I wonder how many guns involved in crime are originally purchased by shady elements versus upstanding citizens who turn into shady elements. Like that maine shooter, the army knew the guy was clearly fucked in the head and openly talking about doing a shooting, they even wrote down "don't give this guy guns anymore", and yet no one bothered taking away the guns that the military guy obviously still had?

The breakdown of guns that were stolen and guns that were straw purchased changes based on location, time, etc.

I looked up similar stats recently. According to an ATF study somewhere between 58% and 87% of gun crimes were committed by someone other than the purchaser. This next stat is somewhat old (2004), but probably still reasonably reliable. About 43% are bought off the street, 12% are bought from legal markets, 25% are consensually given by a family member or friend, and 8% are stolen - Source 1, Source 2.

I wonder how many guns involved in crime are originally purchased by shady elements versus upstanding citizens who turn into shady elements.

This question seems malformed.

My understanding is that the large majority of guns involved in crime which begin their involvement in crime immediately after purchase are purchased by either criminals or by the criminally-adjacent for those criminals, and that almost no guns are bought by upstanding citizens who then subsequently turn to crime with their legitimately-purchased firearm. But this excludes the guns that were purchased by upstanding citizens for legitimate use, used legitimately, and are then stolen or otherwise transferred years or decades later, unwittingly, to criminals for use in crime.

Personally my preferred gun regulation model is banned handguns and semi-autos, combined with unregulated ownership of bolt/lever action long guns.

  • -10

Your policy would likely result in a much larger number of dead criminals and/or people, and basically boils down to 'black plastic bad, wood good'.

Most bolt/lever action long guns use much heavier caliber cartridges than your typical AR platform.

I don't think so. It's certainly possible to use a bolt action rifle in a crime, but observationally it doesn't happen often.

Now you can argue that's because for any particular place either better options are available (USA) or all kinds of guns are unavailable (other countries), but I don't think that second part is true. Countries with gun control mostly don't have literal bans, but still allow these types of guns with licenses and storage regulations and so forth.

I'm pretty skeptical of the power of these sorts of regulatory hurdles - once people can get guns they can then be stolen or sold under the table or whatever. So I'm led to believe that the low prevalence of rifles in crime is because they're not really well suited for it.

Sigh.

The reason long guns are rarely used in crime is because the majority of documented crime is basically blacks shooting and killing one another with their handguns of choice. Funny, despite the prevalence of glock switches displayed on public forums like, say, youtube, you never hear about the ATF raiding and confiscating them.

This is one of those tells that people whom actually know anything about guns can sniff out - politicians always, always bang on about banning ar-style platforms and their ilk in the wake of their pet tragedy, despite, numbers and capita wise, they're never used in violent crime.

But that's not my point. I'm looking at the law of unintended consequences. Mauser-style and lever-action long guns tend to be hunting rifles, and despite the snide asertions from various political pundits about how 'deer don't wear body-armor' when it comes to critiquing ar-style rifles, the typical hunting round, such as, oh, say, 30-06, is a much, much more powerful round than 5.56.

5.56 puts holes in people's heads, 30-06 makes heads disappear.

People respond to incentives. You ban ar-style rifles(for some reason) and only allow hunting rifles, and suddenly people are defending themselves with said bolt rifles with much larger cartridges, likely ending up with alot more dead criminals.

And before you say 'Well, actually, bolt rifles are much more difficult to wield than ARs', no, I've handled both. They may weigh more, but that doesn't make them more difficult to handle, especially when you're defending yourself.

I don't think so. It's certainly possible to use a bolt action rifle in a crime, but observationally it doesn't happen often.

Tell it to John F. Kennedy.

Reaching back 60 years to find an example seems like strong (if unintended) support for both "certainly possible" and "it doesn't happen often".

And? I'm not arguing that it never happens.

Most bolt/lever action long guns use much heavier caliber cartridges than your typical AR platform.

And can be cut down to something bad for self-defense, but still acceptable for crime.

What about single action revolvers?

I lean against, but don't have strong opinions. Basically if I could be convinced one way or another what the likelihood is they would be used in a significant amount of crime, that would swing me.

Saturday Night Specials enabled a whole generation of criminals. Even with the limited capabilities a revolver provides, they're still extremely dangerous to civilian victims.

widespread public gun ownership did nothing to stop NSA domestic surveillance I also see how the Republicans' pro-2nd Amendment position has contributed to the problem [of violent crime]

Well, if the goal is to get rid of or dramatically curtail violent crime, NSA domestic surveillance is Good, Actually. Having the government spy on my data all of the time is an "invasion of privacy" which hurts me only in a dignitary way, except inasmuch as it can be used to construct a domestic surveillance state in the service of a totalitarian regime. But, since the 4th Amendment hasn't stopped said domestic surveillance either, from your position why shouldn't we bite the bullet the rest of the way and go full panopticon?

The answer of course is that freedom isn't a bright-line binary switch [unless you live in a place with actual chattel slavery], it's a back-and-forth, and just because you're on the backfoot for a decade or two doesn't mean you should throw in the towel and embrace the comparative advantages of TOTALITARIANISM. And in the same way that the 4th Amendment is an (imperfect) protector of American's rights, the 2nd Amendment is also an (imperfect) protector of American's rights. Certainly it has protected American's rights to keep and bear arms!

You act as if this right is purely instrumental, but it is not. The 2nd Amendment is good because it does serve as a bulwark against tyranny, and just because the bulwark isn't perfect doesn't mean we shouldn't get rid of it (imagine if we got rid of checks and balances because they demonstrably fail from time to time!) But it's also good because shooting is fun and a good thing for people to do, and it's the sort of good and fun thing that people want to take away, and it's good that there's a rule saying you can't do that. You can see something similar with the 1st Amendment: it's not merely instrumental, with free speech as a bulwark against "tyranny" – free speech is something that is good to exercise.

The problems, in terms of risk to human life and wellbeing, caused by alcohol, tobacco, and drugs are vastly worse than the problems caused by guns in the United States, and they are probably worse contributors to the violent crime problem, but you rarely see anyone endorse banning the former and a great many people are convinced that banning the latter causes or contributes to a lot of modern ills (including, ironically, violent crime.) If we're going to violate people's rights to achieve Good Ends (we swear for real this time!) then I think the cost/benefit calculus is significantly higher there. But, curiously, there seems to be much more demand for taking people's guns than cigarettes (even though about three times as many Americans own guns.) I think one can conclude from this that the desire to take guns has more to do (on balance, perhaps not in every individual case, including yours) from a dislike of guns than it does a Principled Stance on government action that (ostensibly) is for people's own benefit.

Well, one big difference is that cigarettes only play a very minor role in hurting anyone other than the people who use them, as opposed to guns.

As for the NSA, I am not convinced that it does much that is good to curtail violent crime in the US. What they ostensibly mainly focus on, other than spying on foreign countries, is trying to prevent terrorist attacks in the US. But terrorist attacks in the US are a relatively minor problem compared to random street crime.

Would I support a version of the NSA that spies on everyone and tries to pro-actively prevent wrongthink? No, clearly I don't even support the current version.

I think that there is a lot of space between "do more to prevent random anti-social idiots from getting guns" on the one hand, and totalitarianism on the other.

I question whether the 2nd Amendment in its current form does enough to be a bulwark against tyranny to make it worth while, given that it has also meant that the country is so flooded with guns that it is trivial for any anti-social idiot to get one.

Again, keep in mind that I am not calling to get rid of the 2nd Amendment, just potentially to modify it. I have gone from leaning pro-2nd Amendment in its current form, to leaning anti-2nd Amendment in its current form. I am not calling for getting rid of all privately owned guns, just for a rethink of the 2nd Amendment in its current form.

My new perspective is that maybe there is no good reason to allow citizens in general, with few exceptions, to have guns. Maybe there is a way to keep whatever deterring-the-government force that the 2nd Amendment has without also making it so easy for apolitical, anti-social psychopaths to get guns?

Ben Franklin famously supposedly said "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Ben Franklin also supported a revolution that resulted in large numbers of people who supported the previous government in fleeing the country even though they had done nothing particularly wrong. Where was those people's liberty? My point is that these things are complicated.

I am still very libertarian when it comes to free speech. But I believe that broadly free speech is essential to the kind of society that I would want to live in, and I am no longer necessarily convinced that the ability of almost anyone to buy a gun is also essential to it.

My new perspective is that maybe there is no good reason to allow citizens in general, with few exceptions, to have guns. Maybe there is a way to keep whatever deterring-the-government force that the 2nd Amendment has without also making it so easy for apolitical, anti-social psychopaths to get guns?

Current US gun control efforts have no real interest in actually reducing gun violence, they’d rather make life more annoying for legal gun owners because they vote for the other party.

Well, one big difference is that cigarettes only play a very minor role in hurting anyone other than the people who use them, as opposed to guns.

I challenge you to rethink this framing, both because secondhand smoking is a thing (estimated cost on a Google: upwards of 40K lives per year; somewhere around 3x the total number of gun murders) and because (IIRC) most gun violence victims in the US either shot themselves or (less likely but still statistically significant) were part of an ongoing criminal enterprise. People getting shot and killed in e.g. a random mugging or a school shooting is far from the median case of death by firearm.

Maybe there is a way to keep whatever deterring-the-government force that the 2nd Amendment has without also making it so easy for apolitical, anti-social psychopaths to get guns?

Yes, mandatory military/militia service.

As for the NSA, I am not convinced that it does much that is good to curtail violent crime in the US.

Yes, because we don't ask it to. Probably it could if so directed.

But I believe that broadly free speech is essential to the kind of society that I would want to live in

This is how many people feel about guns.

Yes, mandatory military/militia service.

How is that deterring the government? One would assume that a government that can force you into military service is the opposite of deterred.

The government can force you into military service if they want, and always has been able to, at least in the United States.

But yes, as IGI-111 says, a strong militia at the state level provides a very potent counterbalance to the capabilities of the federal government. Also, when every single person is either in the military or has military training, it may make your armed forces less reliable for the purposes of tyranny (since you'll have a harder time selecting for loyalists) and it makes the citizenry you'll be looking to oppress considerably more resilient. Interestingly, up to and during the Civil War, the army was actually a very localist organization. Regiments were raised from a certain geographic area, and they selected their own officers democratically – a far cry from the centralized command and control mechanisms that we all assume to be the default today.

But besides this, the reason I floated it is that it actually could be (I think, maybe) a decent mechanism for weeding out legitimately dangerous characters; a dishonorable discharge is the equivalent of a felony and bars people from firearm possession. Maybe, since we're making up stuff in the abstract (Goodguy still being in favor of the Second Amendment in practice) a simple "can you serve your country and community responsibly for a year without committing a felonious offense?" test is a good way of preemptively weeding out the people Goodguy is talking about.

(I'm very much on the fence about this and expect to get at least one comment from someone who served that actually no the psychopaths do fine in military service and then they use their experience to go tip over banks in Chicago or something. But I'd rather be conscripted for a year and then have a free pass to buy whatever gun I used in the service than live under a British shotguns-only permitting regime.)

But I think this comment is a good time to point out something sort of interesting at the heart of American freedom. Today, "freedom" is typically defined as "lack of government coercion" but the American experiment assumed lots of government coercion as part of what made freedom possible. Things like jury service, militia service, and the draft were contemplated and accepted by America's framers as something that would strengthen American freedom. A lot of this was about checks-and-balances, but I think it's worth considering the sort of person they thought such civic participation would make.

Gun ownership is like car ownership: the more you use them, the more exposure to risk you accept, but the more proficient you get at them, the more you lower your risk while using them. (Driving a car for only an hour a year is actually a bad idea!) Today there's so many truisms about "law abiding gun owners" that I think they often obscure the interesting suggestion at the heart of them, which is that unlawful firearms violence is inversely correlated to actual use of firearms. My guess is that people who own firearms to hunt, or as a hobby, get more range time than most murderers.

I don't think that using a firearm makes you a more moral person. But I do think that being part of a culture that teaches you to exercise self-governance (both at the personal level and at the civic level) is more likely to make you into a person who is law abiding and responsible. I wouldn't say we've entirely lost that culture in America, and I'm not confident the schemes people scrape together (mandatory militia service! gun permits! regulation! deregulation!) will be able to return the parts of that culture that have eroded away. But that's the America I want to (and largely do) live in, an America where I can trust my neighbors to vote wisely, serve as just jurors, handle firearms and automobiles with the respect they deserve, and ask if I mind before lighting up a cigarette.

Those units being explicitly not under the orders of USG may help.

Consider countries like Andorra, which have laws on the books that force you to own a firearm for national defense. Putting that responsibility in the hands of local individuals (what the constitution defines as "the militia") is a way of empowering them, not making them subservient to a government that does national defense on their behalf.

Isn't this a fully general argument that applies to everything? "People are too stupid to make good decisions, so the government should make those decisions for them!" And yet despite the fact that many people are very stupid, the government almost always seems to do a worse job at making decisions than those "stupid" people did. It's the same intuition that leads people to think communism is a great and flawless idea that "just hasn't been implemented properly." It's important to judge policies by how well they work, not how good they sound.

It's important to judge policies by how well they work, not how good they sound.

Fortunately there are many countries with various forms of gun control that we can look at to see how they're doing.

White gun homicide rate per white gun owner in the US is lower the same as in highly regulated Czech Republic, where only 1% own guns. (Assuming over 20% Americans own guns)

https://x.com/JimPurphy/status/1768936215259316482

https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1825652230680359035

For the record, about a third of Americans own guns, although I would estimate the number would be slightly higher since a nonzero amount of people will lie to people who call them on the phone asking if they own a boomstick. 44% report living in a household with a gun, which is functionally closer to a useful number (as if a wife can't or won't use her husband's revolver). I wouldn't be surprise if the "true" numbers were closer to 40% and 50% respectively.

I'm not sure I understand the point you're making. Is your argument that since it's mostly blacks being murdered, gun violence is no big deal or...?

Yes. Now that there's no need for vast amounts of field labor, blacks are even more obsolete than whites. That they're killing each other in serious numbers doesn't really matter. If young 130IQ white and asian males were prone to duelling and suffered similar attrition rates, that'd be worth paying some attention to. That people who at best would break even, tax contribution/expense wise are killing each other, and at worst (repeat offenders) are very expensive are killing each other doesn't matter.

Yes it's bad, but in the present political arrangement the cure paternalism, apartheid or serious social control etc is worse than the problem.

Lol, I've had an identical argument with another Australian friend, almost word for word.

A minority race's cultural problems aren't our collective national responsibility to pay for.

If we want to solve the problem, we already know how. It's to use programs to patch problems in low-income urban culture. It still would cost billions of dollars, but is preferable to wiping our ass with our core governmental document and punishing 80% of the country.

...or that that looking at the countries you mention will yield very little useful results for the US, given the differences in populations they consist of.

If guns were the issue, you wouldn't be getting the statistics he's citing. The UK also wouldn't be freaking out about "knife crime".

Pretty badly from a civil rights perspective, mostly?

Which is the country that restricted internal travel and refused to allow their citizens to leave recently? China? Venezuela? Oh, no, it was Australia. And the one which made it illegal to possess a video of a (violent, public, non-sex) crime in progress? And the writings of the criminal? And some foreign philosophical writings said to have inspired him? Australia AND New Zealand for the first two, NZ only for the last.

Kind of wild that you're bringing up the Wakeley church stabbing to argue against gun control. Think about how that event plays out if the attacker has an AR-15. Instead 0 people died. That one is a win for the NFA.

Kind of wild that you're bringing up the Wakeley church stabbing to argue against gun control.

I'm not. First of all, I'm arguing that Australia and New Zealand are bad on the civil rights perspective (even aside from guns). Second, it wasn't Wakeley I was referring to, it was Christchurch. Thanks for providing ANOTHER case matching the facts though.

Agreed, but it seems to me that empirical evidence shows that letting people make more of their own economic decisions clearly leads to much better economic outcomes, in general, than centralized economic control. I agreed with that ten years ago and I still agree with it today. To me the evidence for that seems overwhelming. However, when it comes to guns I am not so sure. Is it really the US' gun rights that are a major factor for why it, for example, the US government does not suppress free speech as much as England's government does? Or is it the explanation for that more of a cultural thing?

Also note that I am not advocating for the government to make all decisions for people. My attitude about the 2nd Amendment is more that I no longer believe that it is necessarily the best idea of gun ownership to be available to basically everyone except felons and people who have been proven to be mentally unstable. I think it might be better to revise the 2nd Amendment so that gun ownership is restricted to a significantly smaller subset of the citizenry that it is today. Not along lines of "what politics do they support", but more along the lines of "how likely are these people to be likely to use these guns purely for defense rather than in an attempt to obtain profit". Not necessarily saying that it is realistically possible for any laws to make such delineations well, but I am just trying to explain my current thinking.

While I probably have the same terminal values as you do here, this feels like wishcasting.

If the 2nd Amendment were to be cast aside, we wouldn't get a newer, better 2nd Amendment. We'd get a wholesale ban on guns like they have in the UK, Australia, or Japan.

To put it another way... we should be very careful about casting aside long-established norms. Because when we do, we will not end up at some ideal, better place. We will end up wherever the regime wants to take us. There is no world in which you get to have a gun but the people you dislike do not.

Just to point out the UK does not have a wholesale ban on guns. A shotgun license is pretty straightforward to get. Rifles slightly less so. Handguns are generally banned except perhaps ironically back home in Northern Ireland.

Semi-auto rifles (ie. the one thing you need to give authoritarian overreach the potential to cause pain to said authorities; the Right Arm of the Free World, if you will) are AIUI completely banned in useful calibres?

Again depends on locality, but in England I believe that's kind of accurate. You can have self-loading .22 rifles but nothing in a higher caliber. You can also have lever action rifles so you can cos-play as your favorite Wild West hero.

But given most people don't bother to apply for gun licenses, I wouldn't imagine being allowed AR-15's or whatever would make much of a difference in the populace's ability to fight the government. You would still only have a very small number of people.

Remember this is not the US, the culture is not the same.

Remember this is not the US, the culture is not the same.

I know, but neither is it the same in Canada, and lots and lots of people have various self-loading rifles -- they are super-fun, and there's a case to be made that a suppressed .223 semi-auto would be much more effective and humane for a lot of the hunting in the UK than what's currently in use. (much moreso than for Canadian use cases if I'm being honest -- also we aren't allowed suppressors)

Even if not many people actually own the things, their potential existence constrains governments -- the 'firearms threat' associated with the trucker protests turned out to be mostly non-existent, but you can bet your ass that the presence of a bunch of yucky blue-collars who happened to be unarmed this time hanging around the seat of government got some wheels turning on how far the population can be pushed.

Do you believe that the UK has a functional right to self-defense?

Yes indeed. Though largely you can't want a gun for those purposes. Again excepting Northern Ireland where you can get a firearms license for that reason alone.

Edit: Though this has nothing to do with the correction that the UK does not have a wholesale ban on guns. The rest of jeroboams post may or may not be true, but that particular statement is straightforwardly incorrect.

UK has duty to retreat, carrying any weapon is illegal, pepper spray and stunners are illegal and famously the pensioner who shot someone in his own home was jailed.

What right to self defense?

Tony Martin did shoot one of the burglars in the back with a gun he did not have a license for. Even in the US shooting someone in the back as they run away may find you having trouble with a self-defense plea.

I've been in three violent altercations in my life, all in the UK, all where I was defending myself. In all three I called the cops, and in all three the cops did not arrest me, but either arrested or attempted to arrest the attacker. Now none of these involved guns or weapons (other than a pint glass in one case), but that doesn't stop them being self-defense.

Edit: and the duty to retreat was removed in 2008. Then in 2013 the standard for self-defence in one's home was improved from not being unreasonable to not being grossly disproportionate.

Yes indeed

I'd have to look up how things are in the UK, but Europe is pretty staunchly against self defense, and I haven't heard anything that would indicate the UK is any different.

IIRC there are situations where self-defence is allowed, but as @FCfromSSC implied there's no functional right to self-defence; if you have a gun to hand when someone goes active shooter, I think you're allowed to return fire... but you 99.99% of the time don't have a gun to hand if you're following the law, because you're not allowed to take a gun (or a knife or armour) with you for the purposes of self-defence, which makes the point moot.

More comments

Edit: Though this has nothing to do with the correction that the UK does not have a wholesale ban on guns, and claims that it does are wrong.

Sure. You've established that the UK does not have a wholesale ban on guns, I'm trying to get to what they do have and how to describe it. What's the optimal encapsulation of the socio-political position of firearms in UK society?

Generally, most people do not keep firearms even though they most likely could have a shotgun or semi-auto .22 rifle, or larger caliber bolt-action rifle if they wanted to. This is mostly because of cultural attitudes to firearms in the UK and is not particularly a live political issue. Even back home in Northern Ireland, where you can get a firearms license for self-defence alone, and where you can get handguns legally, the vast majority of people do not do so, even during the Troubles. It is also not particularly difficult to get hold of an illegal Kalashnikov or similar automatic rifle in Northern Ireland, but very few people outside of the paramilitary organizations do so.

Restrictive firearms laws are generally supported by the majority of the population, because the cultural attitudes towards firearms are very different than in the US. Most people who have guns will likely be farmers or other rural folk, (most of my uncles have shotguns and rifles for example), and the average person (certainly in England) is likely to be somewhat uncomfortable around guns, and most police will not be be armed (again as almost always excepting Northern Ireland, where almost all officers are armed, and the population is exposed to people carrying firearms probably on a daily basis).

Going for maximum brevity: you are allowed a gun for shooting objects or animals, but never ever ever for shooting at a human being no matter what.

(i.e. generally the law tries to say yes to sport and hunting, but no to lethal self-defence or rebellion. In days when people had more faith in government, this was pretty well understood and supported as being the government retaining its necessary monopoly on violence. Now, of course, two-tier anarcho-tyranny beckons.)

I don't think this is true. There is a large pro-gun constituency in the US that does not exist in other countries. Maybe in several generations time that would change, but I would struggle to imagine eg Texas passing a full ban in the forseeable future even if it was allowed to.

I think the existence of the Second Amendment is partially causative in the continued existence and size of that constituency due to the way Kohlberg IV morality works.

The federal government bans drugs, why not guns too?

Everything I know about Kamala Harris tells me she would have no problem regulating guns on a federal level. The 2nd Amendment makes that a lot harder.

For the same reason - there is a large pro-gun constituency in America, and those people have political power and influence in a democratic system. There are many levers of power in America, and many of them are within the grasp of the pro-gun faction.

You, one year ago:

Mixed. We need some level of gun control, but I do not support total gun control because I value publicly owned guns as a way to deter powerful groups from becoming too dominant.

And in general your record on guns is to try to use gun rights as a lever to get conservatives to accept progressive arguments (while not actually going so far as to accept the validity of gun rights), and is otherwise generally negative on guns, e.g.

This is in part because the US has higher violent crime rates and much higher private gun ownership than Europe does, so as a reaction cops are heavily armed and jittery.

Mixed. We need some level of gun control, but I do not support total gun control

I think most 2nd Amendment advocates agree with this, so this aligns with what I said, which is that I leaned pro-2nd Amendment in the past.

And in general your record on guns is to try to use gun rights as a lever to get conservatives to accept progressive arguments

Progressive arguments like what? I doubt that the vast majority of progressives would consider me to be progressive after an honest conversation with me, and this was as true a year ago as now. To be fair, I don't remember most of the things that I wrote here a year ago off the top of my head, I would have to look at my previous posts.

Charitably, I'd recommend a second draft. I can't understand what you're after here. Is this about violent crime or 2A rights?

Both. The two are connected because 2A rights have contributed heavily to making it so that the US is flooded with firearms, some of which are used to commit violent crime.

Would it be your contention that fewer guns would mean fewer violent crimes?

Yes, at least as long as the government doesn't become totalitarian and use their guns to commit violence. But as I said in my original post, I'm increasingly having my doubts that our government in the US is seriously deterred by all the public gun ownership from becoming totalitarian, as opposed to having other reasons for not being totalitarian. Not necessarily altruistic reasons, but other reasons at least.

Yes

I'd draw a distinction between "fewer violent crimes" and "fewer deaths from violent crime". Essentially any man can rob an old lady with his fists, it's just far less likely that someone dies than if they've both got guns.

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