mattttherman3 said:
Hypothetically of course. But what would YOU as a gun owner do? Hide your guns? Would you kill the person that comes to your house trying to take them? Is gun ownership worth your life or the life of another?
I don't own a gun, but I know people who do, and who would never give up their guns.
I'm also going to preempt people here, please refrain from quoting me as this thread is my baby and I will read all responses. (btw, this thread does not belong in the politics section IMO, were pretending the law is done, the gun burning mobile is already in your driveway. WE ARE NOT debating if the law could be, would be, or should be passed!!!) Glad I am a canadian!
What got me to ask this is I saw clips on the Colbert Report of a guy that said he would kill people if any new gun control laws were enacted. I'm curious if anyone else would do the same?
If it comes down to that I will engage in armed insurrection against the forces that have taken over our goverment. I believe the right to keep and bear arms is intended as a safeguard against the goverment itself, and there is a reason why it was the #2 Amendment. Losing that right is the beginning of the end for American principles IMO. In my mind it will no longer being the US goverment at this point.
I'll probably make my stand with other like minded citizens rather than acting alone, and the targets will ultimatly be the goverment itself, and those who stand with it, rather than random shootings. My basic attitude is likely to be that if your a goverment employee and don't want to be a target, simply refuse to go to work until it's over. If your a cop or member of the military/national guard either stand with us, or disarm/get out of the way or your a target. When it comes to unarmed protestors, again, you can say what you want, but if you get in our way (human shields, etc..) again you become a target for the greater good.
It would be very dark, and truthfully, no matter who won the US would be a mere shadow of what it is right now. Despite how it might sounds at times to people I don't WANT a civil war, nor do I have any paticular desire to run around shooting liberals/democrats, or whatever other insane things people try and put into my mouth. I'd fight in one if it was provoked, but I don't believe in starting one.
Arguably one of the reasons why I am so Anti-Obama is that the man is a total idiot, even bigger than Dubbya (who despite what people might think, I've also been very critical of, if not for the reasons people on a forum like this are). He held onto power by a 3% lead at a time when the country is more divided and polarized than ever before with elections being resolved on a hairs breadth. One of his first acts of his second term is to try and spin a national tradedy into a tool to pursue a pro-goverment disarmament agenda his party has been pushing for decades. As a direct result of his stupidity he has taken a polarized nation and polarized it even further, his desire to do things like ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines, and make owning guns even more of a privlege than the right it's supposed to be, has actually lead to a proliferation of all the things he claims to stand against as people are buying all of this stuff up, and stockpiling it unregistered (under the table) with the express purpose of getting ready to fight him.
Now don't get me wrong, I actually don't think a Civil War will happen tomorrow, even if some people think it will happen "soon". I don't think it's even likely under Obama's term. What I think is going to happen is Obama is going to use the panic to push for more censorship and increase gun control, forcing weapons increasingly underground. Inevitably these weapons which are underground are going to be used for crimes, which is going to lead to more legislation down the road, which is going to eventually lead to people turning those guns on the goverment.
Basically, Obama is creating the very gun nightmare he claims to be out to avoid, while attacking a fundemental American right, and turning people against him for that reason. The reason why people want things like Assault Rifles with huge bananna clips is to fight people who have similar weapons, say complete outlaws like drug dealers and gang bangers, or say goverment storm troopers. Take a bunch of people who don't bother anyone but generally don't like the goverment up in their business and arm themselves to ensure a degree of freedom, safety, and options (ie you can choose to go down shooting, not that you ever want to be in that position), then do exactly the kind of thing that they are afraid of by setting out to disarm them, and your basically creating a problem where there wasn't one before. These guys are instead going to stockpile, not register their weapons, and get ready for the goverment to do other things, even if the goverment never does, someone is eventually going to learn there are 24 AKs buried in this dude's yard (for example) to protect them from the goverment "just in case", steal them, and then go on a shooting/criminal rampage. You juat made it easier for the actual outlaws, by turning the guy who never would have been an outlaw into a passive one, and encouraging him to have a huge unregistered arsenal when it might have been content to have one registered assault
rifle he could keep a better eye on.
I'll also say yet again, that one of your biggest safeguards against stupid laws is that at the end of the day some cop has to take his life in his hands to enforce that law. As pro-law enforcement as I am, I am pretty happy with that arrangement, and it prevents things from becoming a police state. Cops generally wind up being fairly committed to doing the right thing, and what's "worth it" rather than being willing to engage in political vanity projects, and sanctioned shake downs and bullying without reason due to the risk. If some politician decided to ban, oh say, images of Spongebob Squarepants (you can pick anything stupid here), and assign strong prison terms for it, somehow passing it into law, at the end of the day some cop has to decide he's going to go through a door and try and take your Spongebob collection by force and throw you in jail. If your unarmed it's easy to be a thug and just do it for your paycheck, "I don't make the law, I just enforce it", "I'm just following orders", on the other hand if you might be armed and willing to shoot the cops in the name of protecting your property, the cops are far less likely to do it, thinking "is it really worth the risk of my life to take away some dude's Spongebob pillowcase?". People do not realize how much of their freedom, and how much societal balance, is based on an armed population.
I'll also point out that other nations that "make fun" of the US for having such a heavily armed population, and all the gun violence, tend to have bigger problems. Looking at the UK for example we see regular cases of people complaining about the stupid things their goverment does and how little power the people have to do anything about it. Truthfully if the populance was armed the goverment wouldn't be able to be so reckless. If you stop and think about some of those bigger issues that cause the largest amount of QQing, weighing the cost of the occasional school shooting against the goverment doing whatever the hell it wants, whenever it wants, and the police running around like a bunch of jackbooted thugs (which Brits complain about heavily, when it's not directly tied to an American comparison), it's pretty obvious the occasional school shooting is a small price (nothing comes without cost). Especially when you consider that many of the nations that criticize the US have so little control that they could never give their population the abillity to be armed if there was a popular demand for it, the goverment would never let it happen, and at the end of the day it has all the guns and the population doesn't have enough firepower to stand up to them.