No, that's what the legal system is for. The idea of trying to have some sort of legal right to political violence (terrorism) is bonkers. Maybe it comes from the Lost Cause or something.
The AR-15 has been mentioned in a couple of places in this thread. It has rather different connotations in the UK, being one of the favoured weapons of the IRA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_A...
(The Troubles seems like the exact nightmare scenario pro-gun people talk about when they talk of armed resistance to the government firing on demonstrators, coming round to the houses of dissidents in the middle of the night, etc., and yet I've never seen it discussed)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide#Rwandan_Patri...
However, I've never understood the logic behind it. Do people really think their handgun is going to help them resist a predator drone strike? The US military is vastly more powerful than any gun owner. Do people really think they can compete? What's more, advocates of legal gun ownership often also push for more military spending (though that might be less true here on HN). Am I missing something here?
Edit: To be clear, I certainly don't mean to be dismissive of legal gun ownership - I tend to argue in favor of it. What I don't understand is the argument that gun ownership curbs government power in any meaningful way. Guns and/or shooting and/or hunting seem like great hobbies.
For a single person, or a small group? I know of no one who believes that.
> The US military is vastly more powerful than any gun owner. Do people really think they can compete?
The US military is composed predominately of gun owners :).
> What's more, advocates of legal gun ownership often also push for more military spending (though that might be less true here on HN). Am I missing something here?
From my perspective, this is almost pure cognitive dissonance. They also tend to support things like NSA spying and restrictions on effective encryption.
Fair enough. Neither do I. I meant it as a rhetorical question because it's such an absurd thing to think, but I realize that wasn't necessarily clear.
> The US military is composed predominately of gun owners :).
So is the thinking that people in the military would disobey commands and join the uprising? (Or are you being entirely facetious, like the smile might suggest?)
> From my perspective, this is almost pure cognitive dissonance.
Exactly. But there are presumably smart people who make this argument. There's got to some kind of reasoning behind it. Right?
Yes. tl;have work to do: The knowledge of the potential for large portions of the population to resist oppression by use of small arms is sufficient to deter governments from radical, direct assaults on human rights.
No it isn't; the US has massive gun ownership and direct assaults on human rights. Especially of nonwhite people. The US never really "signed up to" human rights in the modern (postwar) sense.
What you are actually missing is that guns are part of (some American's) tribal culture. The move to ban guns is mainly, at this point in time, a front in the culture wars. (Historically it was also about disarming blacks in order to empower terrorists.) There are many cultural artifacts and other enjoyable practices which kill people; Britain's drinking culture, gay sex (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/statistics.html), etc.
Gun control is mainly about attacking one of the cherished cultural values of our tribal enemies, in much the same way that Bush-era "faith based $X" or opposing various gay things is.
And I guess experienced combatants with surface to air missiles are "regular people with guns".
Various insurgencies have given the US military a run for their money, even with all the advanced weaponry at its disposal. I think that a similar insurgency of Americans on American soil would be even harder for the US military do deal with than those foreign ones.
No, but as a group the people of the US would most certainly defeat the US military. As others pointed out much less armed and smaller groups have held the military at bay, and for long periods of time. But there are two much bigger factors in US military vs US people.
1) Telling soldiers to attack their own people is not going to be as smooth as telling to attack foreigners, especially in any size.
2) The biggest issue by far is that the US military needs a massive functioning economy to provide support for them to function any length of time. Look how much war costs - that represents acquisitions, salaries for civilians, replacement, etc. If they disrupted their own economic base they'd fall pretty quickly.
So comparing a handgun to a drone is shortsighted. In reality the people are a massive check on the current form of the military.
It can do some damage to the person flying the drone. Or maybe "right to bear arms" will include the right to own our own drones?