[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.

[anigbrowl]

after the 30 Years War one would have hoped more would realize that widespread rifle ownership was an existential issue.

That's a complete non sequitur of an argument. You migth as well argue for conscription on that basis. I think you're confused.

[hga]

The 30 Years War was that era's WWI/Great War in it's aftermath. It forever shattered the idea of a general Christan commonwealth and so depopulated areas in which it was fought that many Germans think it was worse than the worse of WWII and I'm inclined to agree.

It was a stark object lesson in the potential fate of unarmed civilian communities, and I'm sure it was an input into the Swiss system, which of course includes conscription.

[anigbrowl]

It's an equally stark lesson in fully militarized armies being bloodily defeated. I fail to see what this has to do with contemporary gun control proposals; war always sucks for civilians. If an extended civil war of some sort broke out across privately owned Bushmasters would be of little use against bombs, long range artillery and so on.

[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.

[strlen]

It's probably fair to compare 7.62x39 with .30-30 (very similar ballistics) .30-30 seemed to have played a core role in the Mexican Revolution. Pancho Villa is almost always depicted with a Winchester 1894 and bandoliers full of .30-30 cartridges. Seemed to work fine when going up against Federales who were armed with machine guns and armoured cars.

[hga]

Very fair, that's the round I most often compare it to, it's about 10% more powerful.

I know nothing about that revolution so I can't comment on the rest. Although ... were they using FMJ or lead or soft nose bullets? Big difference in wounding capability....

[strlen]

> Although ... were they using FMJ or lead or soft nose bullets? Big difference in wounding capability....

I'd imagine they would be using whatever was popular in bordering US states at the time: a lot of this was actually privately purchased across the border (not straw purchased by the DOJ unlike today)

This was right before, concurrently, and shortly following World War I. So I'd imagine looking at ammunition advertisements (particularly from, e.g., El Paso, TX newspapers) around that time would help.

[tthomas48]

It's probably more fair to compare this to WWI. With US gun owners being the equivalent of the cavalry, and the US military being the machine gun. But go on discussing the relative merits of your horse breeds...

[strlen]

Few things:

1) To be honest I'm not the biggest fan of arguing about overthrowing US government, as:

a) Very few people (certainly not me) are willing to risk their lives for abstract ideas. In other words, this would have to be a fairly significant encroachment, e.g., suspension of all civil rights or a military junta coming into power (arguably, this almost happened in the 1930s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot): the point is to use first amendment etc... first to prevent it from getting that point.

Yet, a lot of people don't even bother to research the issue, or vote (even for a protest candidate). Vast majority of people don't know what "14th amendment incorporation" is, or that Iraq did not actually have WMDs. So overriding political apathy is and defending encroachments of any civil rights is more important to me: instead of panic buying firearms, people's money is better spent donating to ACLU, EFF, and SAF.

b) The preamble does not mean that being part of a militia capable of challenging the federal government is the only legitimate reason for firearm ownership. In essence it's as if first amendment was prefixed with "Excellent newspapers being necessary for..." -- I don't think an intellectually honest person would use this to argue that it should exclude any other medium of expression, any more that constitution explicitly authorizing an army and a navy doesn't mean it's unconstitutional to create an air force.

However, given that individuals serving in state militias (which, again, were not intended strictly to take on the federal government) required individuals to bring their own firearms -- it does suggest that firearms in common civilian usage should not be restricted in a way that prohibits common legitimate civilian firearm use. Note that this is still leaves a lot of place for gun control, regulation, and further rulings.

2) You're making the assumption that if such a scenario does happen (again, something I don't think about much myself), the citizens will be fighting the full force of US government all by themselves without any popular support.

Well, first if that is they case, they're probably an extremist group that deserves to lose. If they have wide popular support and the backing of another power (as was case during Mexican revolution), the civilian firearms would only serve as a means to gain access to a fuller range of options and/or to "join forces" with significant factions of US armed forces that would defect. I'm pretty certain that if given orders to suspend the entire Bill of Rights nationally, most of US military and police would refuse to follow them: irregular civilian groups trapped in pockets that do "follow orders" would be able to use common firearms (these could even be bolt action rifles) to break to rebel controlled territory.

Again, though, I'm not too comfortable arguing this: it's probably more likely that deprived of education, apathetic about politics, yet given sufficient electronic toys, "bread and circuses", and yes -- firearms to fulfill their commando fantasies -- the populace would simply vote to repeal The Bill of Rights. This is something I'm far more afraid of.

I don't want to fight this on HN, but here's why I hold the views that I hold:

I remember a time in high school AP US History class: it was a mock "re-trial" of a famous free speech case and I was chosen to "play" the role of Clarence Darrow. I argued that first amendment protects a near absolute right to free speech ("clear and present" danger being the limit).

Somebody in the audience, however, said that "If you use this argument with the first amendment, what does this mean for the second amendment and guns?". This was shortly after Columbine and long before Heller, so I gave the standard "second amendment is a collective right" response.

However, deep down I felt it was a bullshit response. It got me an A, but I later learned that this probably not what Clarence Darrow would argue: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/trialheroes/Da...). First ten amendments are not arbitrary, they represent the analogue of the English Bill of Rights that constitution itself did not include.

That has a few implications. First, we can't simply equivocate it away by reading the constitution to read what we want to read it. Now if you do indeed feel that the second amendments prohibits what would otherwise be good public policy, then argue for its repeal. However, I'm very uncomfortable with this idea for a simple reason: every single fundamental right in the bill of rights can be exercised in a dangerous manner (especially the first) or comes into conflict with security (government's legitimate role in reduction of violence).

Were the founders right to include the second amendment? I don't know, but I am not comfortable with -- for the first time in US history -- repealing a fundamental liberty. You can try equating it with slavery, but you know that's b.s. -- slavery involves coercing another human being, the lone act of possessing a firearm does not.

There are certainly limits on the second amendment (much like there are limits on the first amendment): no one disagrees that certain people should not be allowed to own firearms or that especially dangerous and unusual firearms can be banned.

See another comment I made on this matter on how this thinking fits into more concrete policy ideas: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5070170 (tl;dr background checks on 100% of purchases -- good, more authority to stop and investigate straw purchases and weapon trafficking -- great, assault weapon bans -- pointless and dangerous)