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this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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I used to agree with this train of thought, why be armed when the government has tanks?
But the realities of the past several years have shown us that an armed rebellion can be significantly more powerful. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan, look at Myanmar today where the rebel groups are literally 3D printing carbines. A guerilla group with small arms can put serious pressure on a modern military. Will lots of them die? Probably. Will they "win"? Probably not, but they could easily wear down the enemy with attrition. When you need to move a couple dozen men with rifles it's an entirely different game than coordinating 12 tanks and 500 men, you can employ completely different tactics. Especially on your home turf that you know inside and out.
Is an armed rebellion happening anytime soon? I sure hope not. But the threat that an armed populace can at the least put some serious hurt on a military/government is a deterrent to tyranny. Just the possibility of it is a huge deterrent, compared to authoritarian countries where citizens aren't armed and get run over by tanks.
I'm not saying gun violence isn't a huge problem, but saying armed citizenry is zero deterrent is just factually untrue.
Couple things, but mostly: 1. How free are people in Iraq and Afghanistan, exactly? 2. Rebel groups are illegally printing carbines. The legality of it is meaningless. They aren't taking on the US military on it's own soil.
If you guys are saying that making death-by-gun the most common form of death for children in the USA, even above cars is worth it for some maybe-one-day-we'll-be-a-militia-group seems like the most sad and specious logic I've ever heard. I'm a parent and theoretically fighting some imaginary war (which we've been hearing about for decade after decade...) takes a definite backseat to my kids making it through school un-shot-at.
And virtually every armed rebellion that worked happened in a nation where firearms were heavily restricted, so the laws are meaningless. Hell you could only own a smoothbore shotgun at most in the soviet union, and last I checked a whole bunch of those countries had armed rebellions.
I'm not arguing against gun bans because I love guns. I'm arguing against them because humanity has a serious problem with fascism. I'm pointing out that fascists are heavily armed. The cops are almost entirely fascist sympathizers. They selectively enforce gun bans across racial and ideological lines, just like the Nazis did in Germany. They don't take guns away from Nazis. Instead, they use those laws to gun down minorities.
Oh hey, who's that? Why, is that a psychopathic fascist running for president? I wonder what would happen if he won again, and minorities and leftists were selectively disarmed and his neo-nazi followers weren't? But how could that ever happen? Cops are there to protect us from bad guys, right?
Yeah. Violence is generally not the answer. But when it is, it's the only answer.
Compare your image above with something extremely similar happening systematically, over and over and over as a populace is rounded up and shipped off to camps.
It sucks. Both situations suck. But disarming yourself isn't the solution.
Be armed. Be reasonable, and prefer to de-escalate. But also be willing to fight.