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Comment by wahsd | Hacker News Reader

You highlight a kind of social disconnect among a segment of the population that are kind of eternal liberal optimist loyalists that have no problem trusting their parent, the government with any and all sorts of individual rights. It is precisely why some people simply cannot look through or past the notion that the government could somehow not be a benevolent parent that only has our best interest in mind and are thereby more than willing to cede all sorts of responsibilities and rights.

It is the frame of mind behind many different dualistic issues like gun rights, state's rights vs strong central power consolidation, immigration, education, etc.

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People don't favor gun control because they're eternal optimists about the government's benevolence, that is a ridiculous straw man. Generally people favor gun control because -- to use the same language -- they are not eternal optimists about the benevolence of their fellow citizens who sometimes murder large groups of innocents.

If they bothered to crack a history book, of course, they'd come to understand that on a long-enough timeline, they're most likely to be shot by their own government, military, or police forces.

But of course, That Can't Happen Here, because We're Special. (How many times have you heard that schtick lately?)

After that, the person most likely to shoot you is a fellow criminal that you're either associated with or competing with, such as a rival gang member.

Then comes suicide and firearm-related accidents.

Everything else is just so much statistical noise.

Meanwhile, the American left's inexplicable insistence on gun control as a key platform element continues to cost them elections they otherwise could have won handily.

I don't even know where to start.

Do you have any sources on your first claim? Or on your other claims? Also, gun control costs elections that would otherwise be won handily? With so much going on on this last election, do you think the barely discussed topic of gun control was the single most important topic to blame for an election that could otherwise have been won, and won handily? Would you have Hillary be against gun control, offering the majority of people that favour it no major candidate reflecting their beliefs?

I don't even know where to start.

But you're going to anyway, right?

Do you have any sources on your first claim?

I'm not your personal reference librarian, but you might start with a few of the more reader-friendly popular accounts and see where your interests take you. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago is worthwhile; also Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free, and perhaps Ma Bo's Blood Red Sunset. The idea behind recommending these particular books is that they helped me move past the special pleading fallacy that is American exceptionalism ("It can't happen here.")

Hopefully others can point you toward some similar books on the Armenian, Cambodian, Rwandan, and other 20th century genocides, as I'm not as familiar with them.

All told, you'd have to cite about 100,000,000 civilian gun deaths to catch up with the records set by modern governments who weren't as afraid of their citizens as they should have been. It's going to take a lot of Columbines and Sandy Hooks to rack up that kind of score.

Would you have Hillary be against gun control, offering the majority of people that favour it no major candidate reflecting their beliefs?

Yes. It's not as if removing gun control from the Democratic platform would send those voters into the arms of the Republicans.

> All told, you'd have to cite about 100,000,000 civilian gun deaths to catch up with the records set by modern governments who weren't as afraid of their citizens and subjects as they should have been.

Yep, the thing that's going to scare the United States government out of killing its citizens is them armed with arsenals of M-16's against their… F-22s, B-52s, carrier groups, and tanks.

My goodness, this is an absolutely absurd argument, made more absurd by the lack of realization of how absurd it is. That it keeps being harped on by gun control opponents does their argument no favors. The government will not be afraid of guns should they come after their citizenry. The police literally have tanks. The only thing guns do is make one less afraid of one's government if one fails to comprehend the absolutely beastly military power that it can bring to bear against one were it to decide to do so.

In fact, the only thing protecting one from the government deciding to crush one with a single well-placed smart bomb is… Well, it turns out it's permeating the culture with “It can't happen here”, to the point where the military itself believes that such a thing happening here would be utterly unacceptable. Only when the system itself culturally considers it verboten is there any hope of the immense military might the government possesses not being turned against its citizens. Barring that, the guns will be a fun thing for the military to play with after a sniper takes a rebel's head off.

Your assertion (in this particular comment, not the original one) is, gun rights will deter the government from attacking its citizens. To support that, citing books that show the government attacking its citizens is insufficient. Present a book that shows that a government was prevented from attacking its citizens because they were armed. Then perhaps the posited argument can be considered more than a delectable fiction to make one feel in control.

(Gun control, by the way, is tangential to the question of how absurd this particular argument is. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's a bad idea, but it's certainly not a bad idea because the government is afraid of folks with guns.)

That's one opinion. Asymmetrical warfare amounts to another opinion. The Afghan mujahedeen, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Viet Cong can tell you more about that sort of thing. So can various warfighters with more formal credentials, from Sun Tzu Wu to Paul Van Riper.

It's hard to fight a guerilla war with tanks, carriers and stealth bombers. Some of those folks will probably outlast the US government at the rate we're going.

Present a book that shows that a government was prevented from attacking its citizens because they were armed.

This is like claiming that the Y2K bug would have been no big deal if we hadn't spent millions of dollars preventing it from popping up, or that polio would have gone away on its own if Jonas Salk had slacked off. It's a bit of an unfair demand.

Well, it turns out it's permeating the culture with “It can't happen here”, to the point where the military itself believes that such a thing happening here would be utterly unacceptable

Before digging into Mayer and Solzhenitsyn, try some Zimbardo and Milgram. Their work was flawed but also very revealing. (Spoiler: if someone refuses to commit an atrocity for you, all you have to do is ask the next guy in line.)

If the US government decided to attack its own citizens on American land, I'd expect they wouldn't be too worried about waging a humane war. So perhaps the more educational recent example here is Aleppo. The rebels haven't lost... But the cost is most definitely not heaviest on the Syrian government.

As for the Y2K/polio analogy... I'm not really following, to be honest. You make an extraordinary assertion ("guns prevent governments from waging war on their people") that's arguably provably false (Colombia should be example enough that an armed and organized force is hardly sufficient to prevent the government's continued attack---at best it ensures a split nation and years of warfare and strife). You present readings that show governments have waged war on an unarmed citizenry as proof that they won't wage war on an armed citizenry, but that's not proof---it's just not disproof. You can say that it's impossible to prove it (because it's a negative), but then all you can do is disprove it (which I'd say the world has already done).

I hear what you're saying, don't get me wrong. It sounds like you're in a better position to comment on the situation in Colombia if nothing else. But we're both playing some simplistic hands here. As soon as other players turn a local conflict into a proxy war -- as the Russians and US are in danger of doing in Syria and as the US drug warriors have done in Columbia -- life gets more complicated. Still, I'd argue that you're better off in such situations if you haven't delegated all of the responsibility for protecting yourself and your family and property to a government who may or may not have other interests in mind.

Even the American Revolution was basically a proxy war between England and the continental powers, for that matter. But when the dust settled, you didn't see the French moving in to claim their just rewards. As the apocryphal quote credited to Yamamoto goes, "There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." We were then, as we are now, more trouble to mess with than we're worth.

That's the kind of relationship that many American citizens like to maintain with their own government. I don't see that as a bad thing.

I find the asymmetrical warfare argument…weird. Afghanistan as a nation has been in a state of massive system failure for decades. Is that really the hope guns offer? “If the government goes ballistic, our guns will ensure we end up like Afghanistan”?

For 2500 years their way of life has survived Alexander the Great, the Sassanids, Genghis Khan and the mongol hordes, the USSR, and possibly the United States. In that same time many other peoples have ceased to exist entirely.

We may hold different values but we can learn from their longevity and resistance.

What wrong with Afghanistan? They are still free after number of massive invasions.

"Afghanistan is an impoverished least developed country, one of the world's poorest because of decades of war and lack of foreign investment. As of 2014, the nation's GDP stands at about $60.58 billion with an exchange rate of $20.31 billion, and the GDP per capita is $1,900. The country's exports totaled $2.7 billion in 2012. Its unemployment rate was reported in 2008 at about 35%. According to a 2009 report, about 42% of the population lives on less than $1 a day."

"A January 2010 report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that bribery consumed an amount equal to 23% of the GDP of the nation."

What's wrong indeed.

I don't think that Afghanistan makes a good citation for any side of a general argument about gun control policy in the US. Like s_m_t said, their geopolitical milieu is just too different to be relevant. (I'm tempted to say the same of their culture, but I don't really believe that, having grown up in a Bible Belt state.)

However, the Afghan example does effectively rebut shadowfiend's specific point about guerilla warfare being ineffective against a superpower. They call Afghanistan the "Grave of Empires" for a reason, and it's not because they have a really awesome regular army.

Now, in defense of shadowfiend, it's easy to show that he or she is wrong historically, but I suspect that technological development is beginning to favor state power. Guns or no guns, to be an effective guerilla you have to be able to blend in. But you can't really hide anymore... not in the jungles, not in caves, not in the streets and alleys and suburbs and slums, and not in cyberspace. I guess that's sorta our fault.

"Yep, the thing that's going to scare the United States government out of killing its citizens is them armed with arsenals of M-16's against their… F-22s, B-52s, carrier groups, and tanks."

Do not underestimate guerrilla warfare. There are many examples in history when a small, armed group managed to resist huge regular armies for years, decades or even achieve victory. See Afghanistan for example: two biggest military powers on the entire planet (USSR, NATO) failed there. Bombers and tanks won't be very useful against small, mobile groups of fighters, especially in urban environment, unless you are going to raze everything to the ground (like Chechnya or Aleppo).

-The reason a small guerilla may 'win' over a large power is simply (IMHO) because the success criteria are different.

The large power needs to eradicate the guerilla (preferably without too much collateral damage in the population the guerilla is hiding in, as that would -in addition to be plain wrong - increase recruitment to said guerilla.).

The guerilla simply needs to not be eradicated. As long as it exists in any meaningful sense, it will tie up vast resources for the adversary.

Or, phrased simply - the large power needs to win to win. The guerilla needs to not lose to win.

You should read up on.... well, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and the Vietnam war.

> Yep, the thing that's going to scare the United States government out of killing its citizens is them armed with arsenals of M-16's against their… F-22s, B-52s, carrier groups, and tanks.

That's a red-herring though because it doesn't describe an ethnic cleansing.

In an ethnic cleansing police move house to house, dragging the unwanted people into the street. In that scenario, small arms are effective in slowing or stopping the problem, at least long enough to receive foreign aid, etc.

> The only thing guns do is make one less afraid of one's government if one fails to comprehend the absolutely beastly military power that it can bring to bear against one were it to decide to do so.

They probably won't be bombing many cities because they see themselves as ruling that area. (Even in Syria, the dictator isn't using building-levelling bombs very much because he wants to take the city back.)

The situation for those in Aleppo is horrible but if they weren't fighting back they'd all be dead in a ditch already.

> Gun control, by the way, is tangential to the question of how absurd this particular argument is. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's a bad idea, but it's certainly not a bad idea because the government is afraid of folks with guns.

No, that's not what history shows. Gun control (a lack thereof) wouldn't have changed the course of our wars, but would have changed the genocides. Scapegoats are only valuable if they're weak.

Liberal segment of the population checking in; that's a complete strawman - we're in favour of gun control because we don't trust our fellow citizens to be responsible with them, NOT because we trust the government.

Regarding state vs federal control; I think you'll be surprised how many liberals are happy with individual states de-criminalizing marihuana and such, there's actually a lot of agreement with libertarians regarding governement power amongst many liberals.

Many of us are concerned about abuses of state power to roll back progress on abortion, teaching evolution, secularism etc. and I don't know your political leanings, but I suspect you'd agree with a lot of these, weren't it coming from the....pfff...liberals - they can never be right, can they?

> Many of us are concerned about abuses of state power to roll back progress on abortion, teaching evolution, secularism etc.

The problem is that you can't pick and choose. If you want limited federal government you have to protest just as loudly against Common Core (federal involvement in education), gun control, environmental action, etc. And the same applies with regards to executive overreach - re: border control and immigration policy.

I think you may be surprised to realize that many conservatives (obviously it depends who we're talking about) will gladly ally with you to prevent both of these, but unfortunately no one on the left was willing to do anything as long as they held the reins of power. I only hope that now that Republicans are in charge, conservatives will not get too giddy with power (and I think there is hope).

Limited government and constitutionalism are the only way to ensure an even balance, and prevent the other 51% (give or take) of the country from forcing their views down your throat.

> The problem is that you can't pick and choose.

This is absolutely false. Governments throughout the world can have extreme levels of control over certain aspects of life while being powerless in other, due in no small part to the willingness of people to accept this control, culturally and politically.

Germans are big on effective bureaucracy and a social safety net that works, yet they're some of the biggest sceptics in privacy, to the point where most people use cash for most transactions.

Americans have a complete unwillingness for a unified ID to the point where all states have to improvise with drivers' licenses and other forms of ID which are not uniform and imperfect next to most other countries' ID cards. Again it's a cultural issue.

Even though most of the state's power comes through the form of silent bureaucracies, people's willingness to accept that power always factors in. If people care enough, the state just can't push on with certain things.

The tone and word choice in this post throws into stark relief the enormity of what you don't understand about left-leaning people.

What I understand is that nobody should fear a state monopoly on violence more than the left.

What I don't understand is why they don't understand that.

>What I don't understand is why they don't understand that.

Propaganda. Miseducation. Appeals to emotion. The usual totalitarian work. But don't think these tactics only work on the "left". We're all being played.

my only regret is that I have but one vote to give. bravo.

What they understand, that you don't, is that arms are not the only means to resistance and that they are not a particularly effective one at that.

Furthermore they are watching the Black Lives Matter movement (which you apparently have never heard of) and how the 2nd Amendment Crowd (not all, but probably most) is responding by expressing their support for state violence.

Personally I'm not a fan of gun control (guns are overrated) but I also laugh at suggestions like yours in light of how subservient and ingratiating the 2nd Amendment zealots are towards the police and military.

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