Because these weapons in particular can shoot 100s of rounds a minute.
Archers not so much.
Same for cannons.
Trebuchets.
Spears.
8 Likes
Thatâs how the gun lovers usually frame it, but few if any politicians have actually argued for banning all guns. Go ahead, name one prominent politician who says âletâs put an end to all private gun ownership.â
Itâs never been about banning guns. Itâs about regulating them as the dangerous objects they are.
19 Likes
No, thatâs the problem of others who prefer to fit (or not) anarchism to their specific goal. Thatâs the problem of coercive government - nobody is in a position to tell others what their own goals are.
An unfair system used for the purpose of scale itself, regardless of the increasing unlikeliness of ever attaining itâs purported goals of equitable representation, versus deliberately scaling governments to sizes which allow them even the possibility of success? I would say that the latter is markedly less bad.
1 Like
My goal is to go about my business, spend time with friends and family, and generally get on with life. Making the US some anarchist paradise doesnât strike me as fulfilling those goals. Iâm not interested in a decade or two of civil war either.
Anarchists can dream big but most of the US doesnât want what theyâre selling. Even folks oppressed by the current system seem to prefer reform and clean up over trying a form of government that hasnât been tried in the industrialized or post-industrialized world on any scale. People are risk averse with their lives.
Keep dreaminâ but it is all talk. We have the reality on the ground, which is that we have a legacy system and weâre all enmeshed in it. Better to work on that.
4 Likes
Iâm heading out to the archery range this afternoon if anyone would like to join me.
I wonât be using broadheads on my arrows because I donât intend to kill anything, but I figure if I practice enough I might get to the point where I could theoretically injure maybe two or three people before someone got pissed off enough to tackle and beat the shit out of me.
8 Likes
Have you seen âWe need to talk about Kevinâ?
1 Like
Consider a crossbow!
3 Likes
Thatâs a pretty goofy correlation there - thereâs a mass shooting nearly every single day in the USA. You might as well have said, ever day that ends in Y, or every day that the sun rises, or every day that Walmart is open.
Not that there isnât some causal relationship between the gun companiesâ earnings, and the mass shootings - itâs just that the causation is the reverse of what youâre implying.
Nope. Does it have an archery-based massacre? I havenât heard of any of those happening in real life. I suspect racking up a big body count that way would be more difficult than Hawkeye, Katniss and Legolas make it look on film.
Those arenât allowed at the range either. For some reason it seems that most people who are into archery donât actually see the potential lethality of their weapons as a selling point.
1 Like
SoâŚnot like AR-15 or AK-47 owners then.
1 Like
Well I am literally spoiling the entire movie and book for anyone perusing this thread⌠but yes. Also it stars Tilda Swinton and is very much worth a watch. Very good and affecting.
2 Likes
Indeed not. In my experience archery culture is very different than gun culture (though Iâm sure thereâs at least a little overlap between the two).
Besides, itâs a hell of a lot quieter and I donât have to pay for ammo every time I hit the range.
3 Likes
And itâs really fun and cheery and uplifting!
(but seriously, yes, very good, very worth watching. I guess I should read the book)
1 Like
Iâve always found anarchy-enthusiasts somewhat naive. Give the that the entire history of humankind demonstrates not one single anarchistic situation that endured, the evidence is right there.
Take any anarchic situation, and within 15 seconds a power structure is emerging to leverage it.
Thatâs simply the nature of humans.
7 Likes
Yeah, called âThe Strong Manâ normally (aka âThe Warlordâ or âThe Gang Leaderâ).
3 Likes
Youâre begging the question when you say that anarchists need to âgovern an entire country.â Plain and simple. Particularly when anarchists defy the concept of borders. Countries or nations as we know them today are only about 200 years old, and are entirely a capitalist invention. Not a good one, either. Saying that anticapitalist anarchists fail to organize like capitalists makes no sense. Besides, thereâs never a moment when 300 million people need to agree on something. Ever. Centralizing the economy can make it appear so, but this too is begging the question because the economy is centralized in numerous unnecessary ways precisely because centralization is a strategy of control.
Practical solution for self-government: workers councils. Orwell and Berkenau write about them extensively in the books that I mentioned. The CNT-dominated communities were running themselves very effectively before being wiped out by people who believed in republican forms of government. (The Soviet policy at the time was to have a liberal representative democracy in Spain because it wanted a rich, capitalist trading partner, not a partner in furthering social revolution, which pretty much sums up Soviet policy apropos revolution.)
Co-ops were formed in conjunction with the workers councils. Keeping production and distribution going in times of dire need is indeed a vital role of government, whether it is âfrom belowâ or from the state. Government after all creates and maintains public spaces for economic relations and so is an integral part of business. These same councils even formed militias that successfully pushed back Francoâs forces before foreign intervention and sabotage from the Republican government. (Interventionism hasnât changed much.)
Again, in Rome and Greece, any form of voting was restricted to male citizens only. Kind of like in the US claiming to have representative government when women amd people of color couldnât vote, and when slavey was still a thing. Calling something democratic or republican doesnât magically make it so. These terms have always been used to mask and legitimize oppression. I doubt plebes voted for the world they were born into in which a vanishingly small number of powerful men held almost absolute power over everyone else. That whole reality kind of sucks the juice out of the idea of âdirect democracyâ that you credited these societies with.
Also, ageism, really?
1 Like
I wasnât talking about you. I was talking about younger me.
1 Like
It doesnât matter if anarchists donât believe in the concept of borders as long as there is somebody else who does, because in the absence of a government structure eventually either
A) Some neighboring power is going to step in and take control, or
B) The independent anarchist communities will have to band together to keep out said neighboring power, effectively forming a new central government in the process.
3 Likes
I understand the reasoning, but at this point itâs like Charlie Brown falling for the football trick again. The restrictions people are so afraid of never happen. Thereâs a point at which you have to call it out as the gullibility it actually is.
Except when some of them happen. Sometimes they get eased again later, but without a functional crystal ball you arenât able to reliably predict either.
I made mistakes, in non-weapon contexts, to both sides. I never regretted buying too much for stock; that gets consumed eventually. I however bitterly regret NOT buying when I couldâve and now I cannot, or can but with undue difficulties.
