[defilade]

It's not an issue of handguns vs. drones, or rifles vs. tanks. It's an issue of ~20 million households holding 300 million guns. In the (admittedly unlikely) event that someone has tyrannical aspirations, those numbers present a real obstacle.

[bithive123]

It's mostly in movies and comic books where the tyrants literally round everyone up at gunpoint and violate their rights. I'm not saying "we're all slaves because plutocracy" but your framing of the issue demonstrates a real lack of imagination.

[hga]

Errr ... how familiar are you with 20th Century history?

Well more than 100 million previously disarmed people were rounded up at gunpoint and their rights were violated to the point they were killed.

Those movies and comic books had some real world inspiration, after all.

[ajuc]

No amount of guns in people hands could prevent Hitler or Stalin or WW2. Even in WW2 era guns weren't sufficient to overthrow governments. You would need tanks and planes and artillery, and logistic system to support all of this. Since 1945 war became even more expansive and require much more specialized equipment. Guns won't do.

Yes, you could organise resistance movements. People did that a lot, even on German occupied areas. And they were thorns in regular army side. But no resistance would suffice to win WW2, because by that time war required very costly machines.

You think Jews or Poles could maybe shoot at Germans taking them from homes? Yeah - they did that. And escaped to forests, and ambushed them, etc. Poles even did uprising and liberated Warsaw for roughly a month. Guns weren't that big problem - they massproduced them in homes and hidden factories. Tanks and flamethrowers and bombers and logistic were the problem. Germans retook and obliterated the city to be 90% flat.

Do you really think people in USA could overthrow government if it went Nazi? Assuming army is supporting the government. I think it's very naive argument.

Also pre-WW2 Poland had quite liberal laws regarding gun ownership - you only needed positive opinion from local police station. Didn't helped.

[hga]

Our recent difficulties in the Middle East would seem to argue against your assertions.

One other point you're ignoring is wealth and the development of guns that don't take a great deal of maintenance to keep working (e.g. non-corrosive primers). However liberal Polish policies were, and I can't possibly believe they were for Polish Jews, many fewer people could afford to keep a functioning gun of military utility. Things are very much different today, with cheap reliable designs like the AK family and non-corrosive primers.

The other problem is that we're addressing different scenarios. Guns vs. a mechanized invasion: yep, that's bad. But I'm talking about governments killing what were nominally their own people. Armenians in Turkey. Jews in greater Germany, which points out the problem of numbers on each side. Lenin and Stalin killing more than both combined, in once case the latter arresting 1/3 of the residents of Leningrad in one night (!).

Guns are really useless against the agents of the state, no matter how expensive they make genocide or mass deportations or executions? I mean, does any state have an infinite supply of thugs?

[ajuc]

> and I can't possibly believe they were for Polish Jews

Well, maybe police all over the country discriminated against Jews when making each decision, I don't know, but no difference between non-Jewish and Jewish Poles regardin gun ownership law. Antisemitism in pre-war Poland was very different from that in Germany (antisemitic party was always second in elections, for example, ruling party and Piłsudski (the guy in charge) weren't antisemites, and even the antisemitic party never proposed killing Jews as a solution). But that's another subject (yes, there were a few laws discriminating agains Jews- the most famous is quota on places on university for Jews).

> Our recent difficulties in the Middle East would seem to argue against your assertions.

The difference in army budget between ME countries and USA is orders of magnitude. And still rebeliants needed help from regular army in many cases.

> Guns are really useless against the agents of the state, no matter how expensive they make genocide or mass deportations or executions? I mean, does any state have an infinite supply of thugs?

According to [1] the second country in the world by number of guns per citizen is Serbia. Incidentely - Serbia had genocide not that long ago. Third is Yemen, which also had genocide. Fourth is Switzerland, which, exactly like USA, wouldn't have problems with genocides even without mass weapon ownership.

My conclusion is - in poor countries gun ownership don't prevent genocide. In rich countries genocides are prevented by government, and if government want to do genocide, guns won't help, cause government is rich.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...

[hga]

Note the comments that Yemen estimates are all over the place, from #2 to way way down (poor country). And I'm unaware of any genocide there, even after using Google.

Serbia et. al. was a long drawn out war; e.g. Srebrenica was sacked after a successful siege; this simply does not address my points.

[anigbrowl]

Tunisia has the lowest rate of gun ownership int he world, and they managed to have a revolution and get rid of an entrenched dictatorship just the same. What's missing from your historical examples is a strategic dimension; it's not as if all those people knew a dreadful fate awaited but had no weapons to resist with. Rather, they were taken by surprise and did not anticipate finding themselves the targets of mass repression. It's easy to say that you would have fought back with the benefit of hindsight. Everything looks simple in hindsight.

[hga]

Tunisia: any revolution like that can susceed if the rulers don't have the will to order mass supression and/or the military is not willing to follow those orders. 338 deaths (Wikipedia) tells us there wasn't a whole lot of shooting in either direction.

As for your latter point and Europe, after the 30 Years War one would have hoped more would realize that widespread rifle ownership was an existential issue. The Swiss did, at least in due course. Others obviously did not, although as I've pointed out elsewhere wealth had a whole lot to do with that, plus the higher maintenance required by older guns.

[tthomas48]

The Middle East does not argue against it. Guns haven't been the thorn in the US military's side. It has been improvised explosive devices. Guns require a person to pull the trigger and have a single point of failure. They're not that effective since they still require a 1:1 ratio of warrior to weapon.

[hga]

I would not expect that to be as true in the US, the AK-47 with it's 7.62×39 mm round is not particularly long range and accurate with iron sights and minimal training. And possibly less effective does not mean ineffective.

[anigbrowl]

Eh, those historical claims about disarmament prior to massacre are very poorly founded in fact. Here is but one example debunking: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1791/did-hitler-ban...

Mass death in the 20th century is much more the outcome of the industrial revolution (in the west) and the catastrophic failure of collective agriculture (in Asia). There were no systematic campaigns of public disarmament. The comparisons to Nazi Germany are overblown, often reflect a complete misunderstanding of history (eg the belief that Hitler was left wing), and generally ignore context such as a long history of popular anti-semitism dating back centuries, if not millenia.

[hga]

Except it isn't a debunking, it acknowledges the Jews were disarmed (do you not expect me to follow the link, let alone know the facts from scholars I follow)?

A lot of "Good Germans" were allowed to keep arms (I think this has to do with Hitler's outward focus vs.the more inward of the Soviet Union; Hitler thought Germany was in an 11th hour situation so he was a lot more merely authoritarian that one might think); no one's claiming a general disarmament of the nation, just of the Jews, and of course other untermenschen).

I and we know there was a "systematic campaigns of public disarmament" in the USSR; as I recall, by modern times unlicensed possession of a single round of handgun ammo was technically punishable by death. In China it was part of the revolution, look up rifle taxes. That more people were killed by inept collective agriculture has absolutely no bearing on those who were killed by more direct means (in fact, a lot of "Kulacks" or "landlords" to clear the way for it).

When your sources don't support what you say they do, and you're rebutting claims I didn't make, it's hard to believe you're arguing in good faith; I don't expect to be making many future replies to you.

[anigbrowl]

no one's claiming a general disarmament of the nation

People (not you) make that claim all the damn time, and I find it hard to believe you're not aware of this. Opponents of gun control are very fond of drawing a causal link between gun control and genocide and then hedging on the technicalities when challenged on this. I'm really tired of it. If you want to me to argue in good faith, provide support for your positive propositions from the get go. Support your claim that over 100m were disarmed prior to being subjected to genocide. I call bullshit on it.

[jlgreco]

Ah, but all of those crimes against humanity were not committed by current governments that we like! (and of course those that were have the benefit of victor's justice...)