patrick.net

Guns make it very hard for government to oppress population. They can still do it, but at enormous cost which at this time they won't be able to bear.

I don't believe you or I will change the minds of liberals. They are too naive and just repeat everything liberal media tells them. Only wisdom of old age will teach them why guns are a necessary evil. Until then, all of us are just talking to a wall.

I've never understood the anti gun portion of the modern democrat forum. I can only assume its a vote pandering position taken soley to increase votes in urban areas. I'll note that I've seen a number of lefties on Pat.net take a pretty strong stance on supporting the 2nd amendment.

It makes sense as a population I gun owners is one of the few ways to ensure civil liberties.

When the populace had the same muskets as the army, they could resist government.

Unless the populace can get their hands on Warthogs, Apaches, Bradleys, etc, the effect won't quite be the same.

Quigley says

So why do you anti-gun people hate civil rights?

Stupid deliberately misleading question used to make a Straw Man argument. Would you like to know what the other team really thinks about guns even if it dispels your cartoonification of them?

The NPR interview discusses the role of guns in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The interviewee asserts that the gun was a critical tool in that movement and therefore gun ownership protects civil liberties. I disagree with the premise -- that's the part that goes "the gun was a critical tool in that movement" -- as I will explain. As for the conclusion, that's another matter all together as I may or may not reach that conclusion for different reasons. Finally, I will answer the real question of whether or not gun ownership defends civil rights in our society today.

But first, let's discuss the premise. The Civil Rights movement was first and foremost a cultural revolution, not an armed uprising. Had African Americans used guns to gain political rights and equality, they would have been demonized as thugs and terrorists and every violent action they did in the name of freedom would have been twisted by their opposition as a justification for suppressing the violent black aggressors. Just take a look at how the Black Panthers had been viewed in the 1970s or even today.

The movement had to win over the hearts and minds of the American people, which meant they could do no wrong and could harm no one, not even the bad guys because the American public, being predominately white, would have identified with the bad guys rather than their victims. At best, a violent civil rights movement would have lead to a tit-for-tat war similar to what we see in the Middle East today or saw in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. Even today, there are some people who call the Irish Republic Army terrorists and others who call them heroes.

So I do not agree with his hypothesis that the use of guns or the threat of gun usage contributed to the success of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Now let's look at the conclusion, which is really what's important to both the interviewee and the conservatives who like this interview.

The first question is can guns, or more generally the use of violence, be used by the people to protect themselves against human and civil rights abuse. In some situations the answer is clearly yes. However, there are certain criteria that have to be realized in order for this to be the case. The second question is can guns, or the use of violence, be used in our society today to protect human and civil rights. I believe that the unfortunately answer is no and I will justify that conclusion.

Let me start by stating unequivocally that as a liberal I absolutely love the idea of a common citizen using lethal force against a cop committing a crime, such as false arrest, and the state being utterly unable to punish that citizen in any way for his lawful and justified action. Holy shit, did I just say it would be lawful and just for a citizen to kill a cop committing false arrest? You bet your ass I did. You see, liberals also believe in self-defense including the use of lethal force with guns. Liberals don't have a problem with guns. We have a problem with the fantasy world most gun nuts live in.

So, I want the answer to be "yes, guns can protect liberties". However, I'm not just a liberal. I'm also a rationalist, and as a rationalist I acknowledge reality even when it does not suite my political or social agendas. This is something conservatives -- and to a lesser extent, the left -- simply does not comprehend.

Let's take a real world example. As recently posted, a woman received a $57,000 settlement when she was falsely arrested for exercising her First Amendment right to video police. The police arrested her on trumped up charges. The cops, who are by criminals, were not prosecuted for their crimes and did not lose their jobs. The corrupt police department did not even admit wrongdoing. As far as I'm concerned, this is still a travesty of justice. In the very least, the state should have aggressively prosecuted these criminal police.

But, let's examine the issue at hand by modifying how this situation played out. Let's say the woman was armed and shot the police dead who tried to falsely arrest and imprison her. This would be a perfect example of using guns to protect civil rights as the conservatives are trying to make. But what would happen to this woman in the real world if she did this. And by the way, I'm just tabling the issue that 95% of the time the cops would have shot the victim(s) dead because they have far more training and muscle memory and typically outnumber the victim(s) and have body armor, etc. Let's just deal with the case in which the victim manages to kill off the cops without dying him or herself.

Most likely, the police would get an arrest warrant with the intent on shooting the woman dead with 50 rounds before she even had a chance to go to trial. They would most likely storm her home with the sole intent on killing her and then claiming they thought she was armed and pointed a gun at her -- it's completely irrelevant if this is true because they would plant evidence and their word would not be questioned by the courts.

But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that somehow the woman lived to be arrested and brought to trial. What would happen then? In our court system, which is extremely corrupt, more than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury because the threat of severely unjustifiable punishment is used to make sure that even innocent persons plead guilty in order to not risk the rest of their whole lives being destroyed by the legal system.

But let's assume, again for the sake of argument, that the woman demanded a jury trial and waived no rights. How would the jury vote? In our cowardly society in which the common citizen has pissed his pants every night watching the hyped-up local news, which essentially is no different than an episode of cops and does not reflect the reality that we live in the most non-violent and crime-free time in all of history, almost every person -- yes, including Democrats -- thinks that
1. A person accused of a crime probably did it. Yes, that's guilty until proven innocent.
2. If the person didn't do it, he probably did something else that merits incarceration.
3. The cops are less likely to lie than the defendant. This ignores the fact that cops are professional witnesses paid to lie under oath and they are never prosecuted for perjury even when caught red-handed.
4. If a person commits any crime, that person is subhuman and society should inflict as much harm, physical, emotional, and financial, as possible to that person to "make him pay".

In such a society, a "cop killer", even one that was protecting his or her life or the life of his or her own children from a criminal cop, would be sentence to life in prison or the death penalty. There is an almost zero chance that a person killing a cop in self-defense would be found not guilty of any crime. And that's not even accounting for race. If a black man kills a cop, especially a white one, there is no fucking jury in the country that the courts would allow that would find the black man not guilty because he was acting in self-defense.

So, can the use of guns protect our human and civil rights in our society today? Hell, no. In order for guns to be a plausible means of protecting human and civil rights, we all must strongly support the killing of criminal cops in self-defense and the defense of others. We cannot expect the citizen to willing let his human and rights be violated and to wait for years going through the legal system to get a pitiful acknowledgement from the state that yes, indeed, his rights were violated (here's 50 grand, sorry about the anal cavity search).

The day that it is the norm for juries to vote not guilty after minutes of deliberation when a citizen shoots a cop dead who was committing an unlawful act is the day that I will whole-heartedly embrace the belief that guns indeed protect our human and civil rights. I look forward to that day, but I do not expect to see it in my lifetime. Case in point, if a black man shoots a NYC cop for stop-and-frisk, which is clearly Unconstitutional, and is found not guilty, I'd be shocked.

So tell me honestly, conservatives. If you were on a jury in which a black man in NYC refused to submit to stop-and-frisk and resisted arrest using lethal force by shooting the arresting officer dead, how would you vote? Unless it's a whole-hearted, the man is innocent because he was defending himself, then you are the reason that guns aren't a viable option for protecting human and civil rights. And if you claim you would vote not guilty, then explain why blacks disproportionally prosecuted for crimes that are committed by whites at the same rate and why the punishments are more severe?

I'd love for the public to use guns to keep government in check, but that's just a fantasy. In reality, trying it would simply get you killed and branded a terrorist, criminal scumbag.

Howdy There says

When the populace had the same muskets as the army, they could resist government.

Unless the populace can get their hands on Warthogs, Apaches, Bradleys, etc, the effect won't quite be the same.

Not the same, but still effective.

Howdy There says

When the populace had the same muskets as the army, they could resist government.

Unless the populace can get their hands on Warthogs, Apaches, Bradleys, etc, the effect won't quite be the same.

This is a really simplified view of things. First off, an awful lot of the US population has military experience. And as you know, foreign nations often intervene in civil conflicts with weapons support. Also it ignores that parts I the military might join the rebellion, which is most definitely the case in current times. For instance, God help Obama if he ordered the Air Force to fire on US civilians.

Btw Dan, if you ever wondered why I beleive you suffer from mental illness, just glance at your post. Proving people wrong on the inter webs is NEVER that important.

Ribas went looney tunes, not out of line to believe someone else might as well.

I'll give props to Dan for taking the time to really write out a hell of a manifesto. I don't agree with all of it, but I would say he's 90% right. I don't think cops were the people that MLK was defending himself against. It was more like KKK terrorists he needed the defense against.
Force must be opposed by equal force to avoid oppression and harm. It's a thorny issue though, and one that's been explored for millennia. I don't think we will see and end to that debate in this thread.

That rifle hanging on the wall
of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage
is the symbol of democracy.
It is our job to see that it stays there.
~ George Orwell

'Nuff said.

FortWayne says

Guns make it very hard for government to oppress population.

Far from it.

You just tell the gun nuts that Filthy Subaru Liberals, Scary mooslims, homosexuals, and dirty crimigrants are trying to take all their rights and money away.

Said gun nuts will then support tax cuts for billionaires, heueuge wars, and all anti-homo and anti-foreignal legislation, as well as the expansion of the national security state, while hating on those dirty liberals who want to give all the gun nuts' money to homosexual criminorities.

Works every time.

Ay Cabronsito, you're not even funny :(

"This is a really simplified view of things. First off, an awful lot of the US population has military experience...Also it ignores that parts I the military might join the rebellion, which is most definitely the case in current times."

Part 1, experience is great, but I was talking equipment not personnel. An experienced guy on the ground isn't much different than an amateur on the ground during an A10 strafing run. Tech can have an outsized effect.

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode2.html

Part 2. Who knows whether parts of the military might change sides. It's arguable that units might be more inclined to defend an unarmed populace than an armed one.

Either way, it doesn't change my original thought that rifles now are worth less than muskets then.

We saw how well an armed population did in Nazi Germany.

Look at Iraq today.

And if we do have a a violent revolution. It sure as hell would be best for all of us not to have an armed populace.

What is the good of a higher body count?

We saw in the Ukraine how guns perverted the will of the People.

If we all don't all have guns,how will we shoot drones when then come to visit?

dodgerfanjohn says

Btw Dan, if you ever wondered why I beleive you suffer from mental illness, just glance at your post. Proving people wrong on the inter webs is NEVER that important.

It's truly sad that an American thinks that engaging in free political speech on an open network that spans the globe is "mental illness".

The printing press taught the public how to read. The Internet is teaching the public how to write.

Quigley says

I don't think cops were the people that MLK was defending himself against.

I would disagree with this assessment. Although the KKK was a serious domestic terrorist group, we should not forget that the police were, and to a large extent still are, a major part of the problem.

To illustrate,

On May 26, 1951, a white police officer named Sam Applebaum rammed his car into the vehicle of Henry Fields, an African American, to stop him for a traffic violation. Witnesses noted that Fields exited his car with his hands raised. Applebaum nevertheless fired his gun twice, killing the motorist. An all- white jury refused to indict the officer, although Fields's widow won $130,000 in a wrongful death suit in 1961. The Fields tragedy was but one of many cases of police brutality in the 1950s. During a four-month period in 1951, police officers killed ten African-American males.

Police racist brutality was common in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The age of camera and the Internet has decreased this, but not ended it.

Dan8267 says

It's truly sad that an American thinks that engaging in free political speech on an open network that spans the globe is "mental illness".

It's an old act for them. Remember how many times they called Iraq War opponents traitors and mentally ill for doubting Colon Powell and Bush?

Charles Krauthammer made a career of it, until 2007, when it was impossible to pretend that anything productive would ever come of the Iraq invasion.

HuggyBumbers McLovkins says

It's an old act for them. Remember how many times they called Iraq War opponents traitors and mentally ill for doubting Colon Powell and Bush?

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

Göring is the quintessential Republican.

An armed society is a polite society Robert A. Heinlein

Fuck America until I can carry a personal nuclear defensive device.

StillLooking says

We saw in the Ukraine how guns perverted the will of the People.

This sentence makes no sense. There is no "gun rights" in Ukraine, Russia or any other post-Soviet country. And the only thing which perverts the will of the People there is foreign armed invasion.