Do I really need to be the one to tell people that the government has much better and many more guns than you do?.. …False equivelancy: AQ doesn’t play by the rules of war. The US army (sort of) does.
This is where you’re missing sort of a major point. Our constitution is very specific about having no standing armies: Only a small navy (whose duties as described are much closer to what our Coast Guard is actually doing), and the ability to raise an army from the local militia- and for no more than two years.
The intent was that the power to wage war was not to be trusted to a few individuals, but distributed across the entirety of the population, in the same way that representative democracy distributes the power to make and enforce laws.
We have strayed very far from both of those principles, and our system is buckling. I think that it is a strong enough system to recover- I think we can find a peaceful and prosperous solution to our problems, and that the current climate will be seen in retrospect as simply growing pains. BUT, looking at just how bad some specific things have gotten, I would not be surprised to see another civil war within my lifetime. I really, really hope it doesn’t come to that.
But, it does lead me to your next point:
America has an addiction to guns.
It’s not an addiction like the guy who’s hooked on heroin and can’t quit when he wants to- It’s more like the guy who keeps drinking because it’s the only thing that stops the voices.
I’m sure that somewhere, you have met a guy who feels weak and scared and powerless, and so he compensates with a lot of macho bluster and setting out to prove just how much tougher he is than everyone else.
Right now, we have tens of millions of those guys- And it’s not without good reason. We live in a country where your job can move overseas without notice, your retirement savings can vanish into thin air, you have no idea what’s in your food or where it comes from, getting sick can put you into bankruptcy and a lifetime of debt, and the people responsible for all of this get rewarded for it. It’s a country where a major city can be wiped out by a natural disaster and the government does nothing. The average American seriously lives in fear that he won’t be able to provide for his own basic needs.
Mind you, there’s a hell of a lot of great and positive stuff too- We have Tesla Motors and Virgin Galactic and some of the best universities in the world- But we also have this nagging stress that never quite goes away, even when you’re actually rich.
So we have a lot of desperate people looking for something that will give them some sort of sense of security, and some sort of reassurance that they are capable of surviving. Some of us do what we can to fix the underlying problems, and yes- Some of us prepare for the worst.
I have a job that pays next to nothing, and I’m neck deep in debt. I am drowning in this world- But I’m a maker, a scrounger, and hang around with a lot of SCA and homesteader types. I know how to build water filters, generators, and yes, firearms and black powder, from whatever I can salvage. I have a pretty strong sense that my chances of survival actually increase with the collapse of civilization. I understand that that’s probably pure fantasy, but damn it if it doesn’t give me a little comfort to know that I’d be okay in a worst case scenario. There are times when it’s the only thing that gets me through the day.
So there are a lot of less intelligent people who simply don’t have the mental capacity to understand anything beyond “bigger dog”. Instead of fighting to restore the middle class, they fight to keep the immigrants from taking what little they have left. Instead of learning to build a composting toilet and grow penicillin, they stock up on guns and ammo. Taking this guys guns away isn’t going to fix the problem- It’s going to make him snap.
Now, we can talk about the issues around violence and gun ownership. We can look at what the Europeans are doing differently. We can debate rights, responsibility, and natural law. BUT- The one thing you cannot do, is take this shit out of it’s fucking context.
