>>it's nothing like being a Jew under the Third Reich or, perhaps, living in eastern Ukraine right now...
>>not having an armed populace now might allow things to get really bad in the future, whereas in the case where everyone's reasonably well-armed, or has the option to be, it wouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place...
Again, this is a chalk & cheese comparison. People like to forget that the Third Reich was democratically elected. The German people read "Mein Kampf", listened to Hitler's "Make Germany Great Again" speeches and put their cross next to the Nazi party. And, up until the tide of war started to turn against them, most were pretty happy with the outcome.It's also convenient to forget that, in those times, hatred of the Jews wasn't an exclusively Nazi, or even German, sentiment. In many other parts of the world, Hitler was initially seen as being a "good thing" and giving the Jews what they richly deserved. Of course, with history being written by the winners, these facts tend to be glossed over now. So Hitler seized power and plunged an oppressed and terrified people into a war they didn't want And the rest of the world was always horrified by the Nazis' treatment of the Jews. This is what I meant, when I said above that "Oppression is incremental". By the time you realise that you're living under fascism, it's too late to do anything. And you'll be in for a shock if you're depending on your fellow citizens to rally to your "Let's throw off our oppressors!" flag. Most of them will be quite happy to see you dragged off in the night, instead --you stinking Jew-Lover! [replace "Jew" with "Commie", "Terrorist", "Paedo"... etc. as required by zeitgeist] And re your point about Ukraine: The irony is that Russia's justification for seizing areas such as the Donbass in the East is precisely because they say ethnic Russians there were being oppressed by the Ukrainian government. And that was in spite of those ethnic Russians having well-armed militias already in existence. So having an armed population didn't really help there, did it? And, in the wider context, the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion is being fought by the existing Ukrainian well-trained, professional armed forces, who are being supplied with billions of £££s worth of advanced weaponry. And they're still taking a pounding. So the idea that a handful of untrained civilians with their Wal-Mart rifles could have prevented any of this is delusional fantasy. |
The thing about the U.S. is it's not a handful. They have more guns in civilian hands than people. It would be very easy for U.S. civilians to arm literally everyone.
And, I should note, the quality of the rifles people own privately is as good as or better than what the military gets. The military does, however, get full-auto.
I take your point about the Nazis. I suppose if I had to point out a difference with respect to the U.S. today, it would be that the right to keep and bear arms is for everyone. Americans really don't discriminate (at least overtly), and that's a core tenet. The Jews in Nazi Germany obviously were or had to be disarmed before terrible things happened to them.