[enraged_camel]

>>so basically a gun for every man, woman and child; its a formidable defense against tyranny.

No it isn't? I mean, I know it's a very common conservative fantasy, but if the federal government comes after you, they are doing so with tanks and helicopters, and your puny guns won't change the outcome. Vietnam is not a good analogy. Your average American is dumb, fat and undisciplined. The Viet Cong were none of those things.

This is aside from the fact that an armed populace only encourages the government's law enforcement agencies to arm themselves more, and increases tensions in every encounter because the LEO has to assume the target is armed.

[dang]

> Your average American is dumb, fat and undisciplined

We've asked you so many times to stop posting this and other kinds of flamebait to HN, and you've so often ignored our requests to stop, that I momentarily banned your account when I saw this.

On looking at your recent comment history, though, I saw that you mostly haven't been doing this lately (that's good), so I unbanned you. Please don't do it again, though, because if this becomes a pattern again there won't be much slack left to cut.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[AnthonyMouse]

> if the federal government comes after you, they are doing so with tanks and helicopters

What is that supposed to do against the domestic population? Would they use their tanks and planes to blow up their own bridges and cities? Those are weapons used to claim territory from other governments. They're not very useful in a guerilla war where you don't even know who the enemy is.

> Vietnam is not a good analogy. Your average American is dumb, fat and undisciplined. The Viet Cong were none of those things.

Where does that leave the American government if that's the population they draw their soldiers and law enforcement from and they're each only trained for a couple of months? What do you do when half your new recruits sign up with the intent to turn against you as soon as you've trained them and provided them with weapons and equipment?

Fighting a civil war is hard. The US government is well aware of that, hence the bread and circuses.

> This is aside from the fact that an armed populace only encourages the government's law enforcement agencies to arm themselves more, and increases tensions in every encounter because the LEO has to assume the target is armed.

The solution to which is to expressly prohibit them from doing so. Random sheriffs have zero need for military tanks and riot gear and they shouldn't even be allowed to touch it. You don't need a SWAT team to serve a warrant on a check forger. You don't need a SWAT team at all, because anything it could legitimately be used for is the rightful role of the national guard.

Just because the domestic population is armed doesn't mean even 1% of them would shoot a police officer. And the people who would, tend to be the people who acquire firearms unlawfully regardless.

If the problem is that violent drug dealers have illegally-obtained guns, you can't solve that by taking legally-obtained guns away from peaceful hill billies and women who just want to feel safe walking home at night.

[JetSpiegel]

> What is that supposed to do against the domestic population? Would they use their tanks and planes to blow up their own bridges and cities?

To fight an insurrection of its own populace? This is what is being described.

This has precedent. See Tianamen, Soviet Union sending the tanks to its satellite republics, the Turkey failed coup.

The only time the federal government can be stopped is to wait 4 years and electing a new president. Allowing individuals to own AR-15 has no bearing on 'freedom' from federal attacks.

[AnthonyMouse]

> To fight an insurrection of its own populace?

Right, so the government has all the tanks and bombs they need to blow up their own bridges and structures.

Insurgencies don't have separate infrastructure. They use yours. Blowing it up hurts you more than it hurts them.

> This has precedent. See Tianamen, Soviet Union sending the tanks to its satellite republics, the Turkey failed coup.

Rolling in tanks is purely an intimidation tactic. They're designed to be hard targets that can destroy hard targets, but insurgents don't have hard targets. They use secrecy rather than fortification. To kill them with a tank you would have to know where they are, but if you knew where they were then you could go arrest them rather than doing anything whatsoever with a tank.

And even the intimidation value can be one hell of a footgun. Everybody has seen the photos from Tienanmen square of the man standing in the way of the tanks. That kind of iconic imagery is a massive fiasco for government and a major PR win for the opposition.

> The only time the federal government can be stopped is to wait 4 years and electing a new president.

It's not just about overthrowing the government. It's about making oppressive policies more difficult to implement.

It makes it more dangerous for corrupt police to sneak around like criminals without announcing themselves or outright lynch people in the streets, because it leaves people more ability to defend themselves against petty local tyranny as well.

Also notice that there is a large racial disparity in who gun control laws restrict from having firearms.

> Allowing individuals to own AR-15 has no bearing on 'freedom' from federal attacks.

In the case of an outright insurgency it's not about defense, it's about offense. It's about capturing soft targets for their resources. Twenty guys with rifles may not be able to take on an army base, but they can take on car dealerships and hardware stores and chemical plants and then drive off with their stuff.

And the obsession with the AR-15 is wholly misplaced. It's used by some bad people because it's used by a lot of people in general. It's popular. That doesn't make it different in any meaningful way from most other rifles, and the attempts to distinguish it immediately devolve into cosmetic differences like whether it has a pistol grip or certain types of mounts for ancillary equipment.

[JetSpiegel]

> Twenty guys with rifles may not be able to take on an army base, but they can take on car dealerships and hardware stores and chemical plants and then drive off with their stuff.

Isn't this coming back to your point? If you are fighting an insurrection, and start acquiring resources by force, you are losing the will of the people. At some point, your insurrection is just thuggery, returning to the point that guns only benifit criminals.

> It makes it more dangerous for corrupt police to sneak around like criminals without announcing themselves or outright lynch people in the streets, because it leaves people more ability to defend themselves against petty local tyranny as well.

History shows the police murdering people in the street because they happen to have guns. But since they fire dozens of shots against sleeping targets, having guns for defence never helps, and gets you branded as cop killer.

> And the obsession with the AR-15 is wholly misplaced. It's used by some bad people because it's used by a lot of people in general. It's popular.

Completely agree, it's just an example. A gun is a gun.

[DuskStar]

> but if the federal government comes after you, they are doing so with tanks and helicopters, and your puny guns won't change the outcome. Vietnam is not a good analogy. Your average American is dumb, fat and undisciplined. The Viet Cong were none of those things.

Because our tanks and helicopters have done so well at suppressing a bunch of afghani sheepherders, right? I don't think you're really qualified to evaluate the ability of the US's rural population to adapt to guerrilla warfare.

In all seriousness, it's easy to use superior weaponry to subjugate a populace... if one of the win conditions is killing everyone in the population to be subjugated. As soon as you have to care about things like "mass killings" or "civilian casualties" or "are you sure this isn't genocide" that gets a lot harder. And I'm relatively sure that the people who make up the US military would care, particularly when it's people they identify with that they're exterminating.