There ya go!
Have you read it? I wonder if it’s any good.
I read it… thirty years ago!? Yeesh. I don’t have it any more, but as I recall, it wasn’t terrible. As a Brit, I took it as an accurate portrayal of American suburbia. 
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OK, but let’s try to address the strongest forms of arguments rather than the weakest.
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I wouldn’t mind having one.
I wonder about the actual practical shelf life of such thing. The thermal batteries will last ages, the fuel if not heat-cycled too much (weather) as well, the explosive lenses and actuators too, double so if somewhat modern and based on silicone/TATB composite. The boosting tritium decays with 13 years half-life, progressively lowering the maximum oomph of the instasun…
Does the book credibly address any of such practicalities?
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Alas, I can no longer read the media those back-up memories are stored on.
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The British history in Ireland is complicated.
Irish independence would have come much sooner but the British Army had disproportionately more officers from Northern Ireland and they threatened mutiny if Ulster was made part of Ireland. That was really where things went wrong. The Protestants in NI created a near-Apartheid system to keep the Catholics out of power. In 1972 came Bloody Sunday when, against the advice of senior officers, the Paras were deployed against civilians. And then the US allowed the IRA to engage in fundraising, which kept them supplied for many years. US pressure also meant that known IRA strongholds could not be seriously attacked and Southern Ireland could not be invaded to secure the border.
Thus, the problems in Northern Ireland weren’t really tactical; they were strategic.
[in case anybody misunderstands, I personally think the NI Protestants should have been purged from the Army and Ireland united. There would still have been a civil war but the result might not have been the backward Irish theocracy that so frightened the Protestants. But once the initial bad decision had been made, the rest of it followed inexorably.]
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As I recall, Andrew Breitbart opined that the military was on the side of conservatives, and since his side had all the guns anyway, then liberals should “bring it on.” Given the tone of the overwhelming majority of conservative talk these days, I’m not sure “our” means all US citizens to them.
I understand the idea of “the threat of violence” being a deterrent to government tyranny in theory, but as it relates to actual US politics it’s meaningless. Gigantic and ubiquitous peaceful protests might be ineffective, but they will do more to change government policy than either a threat that nobody intends to follow through on, or is only undertaken by small groups of unhinged cranks.
But really, “occupying territory”? What situation are you picturing where US troops would do that short of something already chaotic and violent, a la rioting or a natural disaster? Secession, maybe?
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Seems to me that those who fear becoming owned by the elite don’t realize that they already are. Money and power keep funneling upward, faster than ever. The elite don’t need to to “take over” everything. They already have.
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Which had strict gun control under Saddam. I wish I had the article handy, but I was living in the Middle East when I read an article about strict new gun laws being introduced in Iraq in the Gulf News. Unfortunately, I don’t think their online archive goes back far enough to find it using my Google-fu. ISIS really doesn’t seem to have much problem getting their hands on AKs these days.
Here’s the thing about insurrections though: You don’t need the law to allow guns. In fact, the first thing that will likely happen under martial law is the elimination of that right anyway. People obtain arms for rebellion through a number of avenues including (and this is important) sympathizers within the military. The US Army is not going to turn on us in unison. Edward Snowden is the best argument for gun control in the face of the actual purpose of the Second Amendment which has zero to do with self-defense.
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Despite sporadic maunderings about it for nearly 30 years, I still have yet to read Dad’s Nuke.
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NNS:Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority
“The Right Weapon For Your Family ™”
(Michael Nesmith, Elephant Parts, 1981)
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Fair dinkum.
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What do you think US gov’t would do in response to a massive tax protest where whole counties simply didn’t bother to file with the IRS?
But my intention wasn’t to brainstorm scenarios where arming US citizens actually makes sense. It was to suggest that it’s more productive to engage with the stronger form of anti-gun control arguments rather than the weaker, since it’s only the response to the former that could possibly affect anyone’s opinion on the subject.
Yes, so the argument is obviously we need the right now so that we can buy guns now to prevent martial law from happening in the first place.
Again, not my argument, but try to argue against the actual anti-gun control arguments instead of strawmen because strawmen will only entrench people’s opinions further whereas actually addressing the real arguments might (but probably won’t) convince someone that they are actually wrong.
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Thumbs up, just for the Nez reference. 
This reminded me of something I heard following the Oklahoma City Bombing, that “taggants” could be added to fertilizer or other chemicals allowing them to be more easily traced, but that this was opposed by the NRA.
It made the cartoon seem a little less like satire even though the reality is more complicated. This is from the Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1995:
On one side are federal law enforcement authorities who say adequate technology has long been available to place indestructible microscopic chips into dynamite, gun powder and other explosives so that they can be traced back to the manufacturer, wholesaler and even the customer who bought the product.
On the other side are some manufacturing groups, including the Institute of Makers of Explosives. They question the safety, cost and effectiveness of taggants, particularly in bombs made with ammonium nitrate, a key ingredient in the Oklahoma City blast.
An NRA spokesman declined to answer questions Thursday. In the past, the group has consistently opposed taggants in gun powder, contending that they could affect the trajectory of bullets and also amount to a de facto form of federal weapons registration.
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The irony is that in the “old West,” guns were usually banned from town limits, meaning that they had a lot fewer guns than we do now. So Republicans are trying to turn the country into the actual rural frontier of the 19th century…
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The gun is symbolic. If the government can have guns, then equality demands that the people should also be able to have guns.
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The fact that anyone will compare the relative risk of martial law to the everyday deaths caused by guns as if they are in the same statistical universe distills for me the inherent ridiculousness of the argument.
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