So…it’s been an abject failure then.
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No, abject failure would be Mogadishu. Or Bosnia.
What we have isn’t good, but, it can get a whole lot worse, and thats where having a safety net makes a whole lot more apparent sense. But once you’re up on the high wire, it’s too late to put it up then.
Its not being maligned, its being dismissed as serving no other purpose than to promote violence.
No, not just feminists. Real men who can actually have a sane relationship with women as human beings too. (I hope that doesn’t make them feminists to you)
Obvious concern trolley is obviously concern driving trollies.
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I wonder how other countries don’t dissolve into tyranny without such safeguards.
Must be all the people that they’re keeping alive from not being shot.
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And yet, many places without a local equivalent of the second amendment seem to get by just fine without devolving into utter chaos as well.
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an armed populace is a polite populous
One does not talk of religion, or money, or politics in polite company. Perhaps this is the larger goal.
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I was being tongue-in-cheek there. I don’t see taking up arms against the government as a good option, and probably not a viable one at all given the amount of firepower the government has and the increasing militarization of police. But, since we’re mooting it, I’ll put my money on FEMA as the first agency targeted by a well-regulated Militia.
When the USSR and the rest of the Warsaw Pact dictatorships collapsed in 1989-91, many of them collapsed non-violently, with few if any shots fired. The people – thoroughly unarmed – took to the streets in massive numbers, the rulers realized they had lost all moral authority to govern, soldiers refused to fire on the people. It has not been all wine and roses for them since, and some have new forms of tyranny, but they still provide several examples where simple mass disobedience forced tyrannies out of office.
There are of course counter-examples from that region, namely the dissolution of Yugoslavia (civil war) and the toppling of Ceaucescu in Romania (arguably a coup, not a popular revolution). So there is no guarantee that peaceful uprising alone is sufficient to topple a tyrannical state, but at least there is some evidence that an armed populace is not an absolute requirement.
Even an unelected dictatorship needs a critical mass of popular support in order to survive. Some of that support can be engineered through propaganda, personality cults, draconian punishments, or various other means, but ultimately any state needs a critical mass of people to buy into the existing power structure. Lose that, and you’re done.
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Go back and look at your history books. For the most part, they don’t just get by, and can dissolve into tyranny. The rights the US and other countries have were often gained with a rather conspicuous metaphorical sword sheathed nearby at a minimum (aka, a decent armed group nearby in favor), if not directly put to a monarch’s back and/or used. The US Constitution, the Magna Carta, the independence of many a nation. Often achieved with bloodshed, but, also as often achieved with only the knowledge that if ground wasn’t given, bloodshed was likely or imminent. Of course, these same methods achieved much evil as well, both at the micro and macro level.
The point is, use of force doesn’t say anything about the purity of one’s motives, only about the resolve of the person using it. Those who are unarmed and cannot arm, however, are at the mercy of the whim of those that are, that’s been true for all of human existence, and it remains true today, and there’s no indicator of that changing anytime in our future. Complacency with how things happen to be run today does not mean that one has no need of a means of change tomorrow. The 2nd and especially 3rd amendments may seem quaint today, but, it doesn’t take all that much change before they start to regain relevance.
In a way they bear similarities to nuclear weapons on the sovereign/global scale… The simple availability changes the conversation, it doesn’t even require their actual use.
I really want to reply more to these, but, We’ve gone well off topic for this thread, and not even on the topic of the “Gamers and Gun Control” thread, from what I can see… I’d request that this be moved to a different/new thread, but would otherwise be very interested in continuing the discussion started.
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I do think it still has some relevance to the original topic, in that it speaks (tangentially, sure) to the hypothetical question of what happens in a room full of armed people, one of whom is hell-bent on death and destruction. On that point, I see no reason to change my opinion that in that time and place all those people being armed is all about keeping each other, not the state, in check. And that everyone being armed does not keep any particular person, or the group as a whole, safe.
But, I for one am content to leave it at that. If others want to carry on elsewhere, that’s fine.
Who am I kidding?
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History books, got it.
Goodness knows things never change. I like how you reference monarchs, like Europe is tripping over all of them these days instead of being filled with democracies. Civilization moves on from “Thog have bigger stick, listen to me,” that’s what makes it civilization.
They are quaint, especially in comparison to 21st century fighting equipment owned by the military. Bring up Afghanistan and the mujahideen all you want, but that’s a foreign soil with a small portion of the army. If the US military was to turn its collective might against domestic targets it would not end up like The Wolverines.
Well, that’s a horse of a different color, that is. Generally speaking, I’ve no particular issue with Time/place/manner restrictions, presuming they’ve got a limit well short of what we’ve got with the deplorable “Free speech zones” that result from comparable TPM restrictions on free speech rights. If there’s a location or private space that wishes to have a speaker or a gathering without weapons allowed, 100% cool. I don’t buy into the idea that simply handing out weapons as a door prize will magically eliminate violence either.
My objection was to this sense that, because of the deplorable acts of a few, we ought discard a fundamental safeguard. As if, were we to have a spate of people bludgeoned to death with fire extinguishers, we ought to do away with them, after all, things arn’t on fire all that often, and, when you do hear about a fire, it’s bigger than what one extinguisher can fight anyway, right?
In this location, by the will of the local populace, they’ve decided on one balance of weapons, and, I can see how someone might not be comfortable with that, especially if controversial. After all, simply being controversial brings some costs with it, including deciding that, for reasons of simple common sense, some places are simply going to be too hostile or dangerous to speak at. Salmon Rushdie won’t be going to Mecca anytime soon, even if in a perfect world he ought to be able to safely.
@SteampunkBanana, Would Love to chat on that subject more, but, as noted above, that thread is already liable to be moved off by a dragon, if not eaten outright.
And that’s when the NSA raises its head and says: “Arent’cha glad we were listening?”
/Tinfoilhat
You joke, but this is a situation where the NSA’s snooping capabilities might (arguably) be of some legitimate use. I do not expect that agency to actually do anything of use here, but I suppose we may never hear about it one way or the other.
The thing is, you have a largely theoretical safeguard against tyranny that is, in practice, used as justification for a whole slew of other things that have nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the citizenry from the state – some are innocuous, some laudable, some stupid, some tragic. I don’t pretend to have a solution for that conundrum, so I’ll refrain from tossing out the same old ideas. Just pointing out that the standard justification for the right to bear arms doesn’t seem, to me, to have any bearing on this particular situation.
Well yes, it’s just that one would think a women’s studies department at a public university would be a generally safe space for a feminist guest lecturer. One would think some scrutiny of people entering the room would be acceptable to pretty much everyone involved, except any murderous stalkers.
The irony is that without the threats, the talk goes ahead as planned and, assuming no massacre, all but a few hundred people neither know nor care. Instead, millions more now know Anita Sarkeesian’s name. I hope that fact alone will make some of these bozos think twice about what they’re doing.
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If the US snooping capabilities ever caught any terrorists it is all we would ever hear. The TSA spends all their time bragging about how someone turned in a gun at an airport they just flew to, you think the FBI would miss an opportunity to remind everyone how vital they are to fighting domestic terrorism and how important it is that we ensure they are fully funded for the 22nd Century Threat?
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To answer your question, no, but I would be absolutely astounded if the FBI managed to foil a terrorist plot they didn’t cook up themselves.
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Nothing anyone does will ever make any place 100% safe.
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Just because you feel safe, doesn’t mean you are.
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Just because you feel unsafe, doesn’t mean you aren’t.
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I actually love her, Nicki Minaj is one of my guilty pleasures!
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Ok, you’re right. I totally get that point.
