DugMachine said:
elvor0 said:
I tend to stay away from these threads, as being a 2nd Amendment-supporting American seems to be on par with being a baby-eating puppy kicker, but I feel a point must be made.
You're right. We're not to be underestimated.
This relates to the point I hope to make. One of the big things here against the "defense against government" argument is that the government has access to fantastical stuff and they'd kick our ass regardless of what legal weaponry we had.
They have trouble with rag-tag terrorist organizations with nowhere near the highest quality equipment. And these are people they're
trying to kill.
Guns are a threat to them because the government
can't afford a rebellion. You can only kill so many protective gun owners in the US before you realize that your population's been dramatically reduced and those left aren't feeling very inspired to obey their newly viciously oppressive government.
I suppose, but then, it's a different kind of military doctrine when you're fighting the Taliban, as they use suicide bombers and rely heavily on guerilla warfare, as well as hiding in plain site, it worked pretty well for the Viet Kong as well, until the US Government decided they were just going to Napalm suspected hold outs, which cost a LOT of innocent lives, these days they're not allowed to do that(for good reason), and are trying to avoid all out war. An army vs a guerilla group has very different combat dynamics and military strategy to say... WW2, which was armies fighting each other all over the shop.
They have to be careful not to kill civilians and innocents, because the Taliban use them as cover and to hide themselves, as well as hiding out in ratholes and underground, so it's very difficult to find them in the first place, alongside minimizing civil unrest and trying to keep some sort of peace in the area. I have no doubt the CIA tortures Taliban captives for information, but the problem arises in not only do they have to make sure they don't get caught by the media, the sort of people that fight for the Taliban are insane religious zealots, they genuinely believe that what they are doing is right, making it very difficult to crack them, and they can't just interrogate every civilian to discover Taliban hide outs.
In my hypothetical 1984 scenario, geneva convention would go out the window, employing a shock and awe doctrine, followed by a fear doctrine, where they would employ weapons so fearsome, that people would be too scared to fight back, as a tyrannical government would likely just glass areas of extreme civil unrest, to showcase what they're capable of, and to show people they're not fucking about. You will obey, or you will be crushed.
On Lord Beautifuls comment about the 2nd amendment: I'll assume that encompases the right to bear arms and the bit about it being to make sure the government doesn't clamp down on the people. I don't think it's that bad, just having a gun doesn't make you a bad person and you're obviously not some gun wielding nutter, as I can see just from your post, and I said somewhere else that unfortunetly America is so saturated with guns, that it becomes a requirement to have guns just to be able to defend yourself from an ever increasing localized arms race. So no, I don't berate you for you that, as far as I can see, you're a victim of circumstance, and it's really the governments fault for letting it get to this point, from allowing civilians to buy automatic weaponry, pistols sure, I don't like it, but your society is just different from mine, but there was no reason to allow civilians easy access to that sort of hardware in the first place. If a situation arises that heavy hardware is required, that should be what the police and military are for.
