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Comment by WJW | Hacker News Reader

As a European I've always thought that this bit of US law has not aged all that well. Imagine a tyrant takes hold of the US armed forces and uses that to overthrow the rest of government so they can rule alone. The US armed forces have equipment going up to tanks, fighter jets, bombers, drones and nuclear weapons. A militia is going to struggle to field even heavy machine guns, let alone an air force. I doubt they'd have the logistics either.

In short, 2nd amendment militias don't seem a very realistic deterrent to a modern army.

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I have saved a post about this from 4chan, they passed it around on some pro-gun rights forums. Will paraphrase it and spare you the expletives.

"You cannot control an entire country and its people with tanks, jets, battleships and drone or any of these things you believe trump's citizen ownership of firearms.

A fighter jet, tank, drone, battleship or whatever cannot stand on street corners. And enforce "no assembly" edicts. A fighter jet cannot kick down your door at 3am and search your house for contraband.

None of these things can maintain the needed police state to completely subjugate and enslave the people of a nation. Those weapons are for decimating, flattening and glassing large areas and many people at once and fighting other state militaries. The government does not want to kill all of its people and blow up its own infrastructure. These are the very things they need to be tyrants in the first place. If they decided to turn everything outside of Washington DC into glowing green glass they would be the absolute rulers of a big, worthless, radioactive pile of [excrement].

Police are needed to maintain a police state, boots on the ground. And no matter how many police you have on the ground they will always be vastly outnumbered by civilians which is why is a police state it is vital that your police have automatic weapons while civilians are unarmed.

BUT when every random pedestrian could have a Glock in their waistband and every random homeowner an AR-15 all of that goes out of the window because now the police are outnumbered and face the reality of bullets coming back at them.

If you want living examples of this look at every insurgency that the US military has tried to destroy. They're all still kicking with nothing but AK-47s, pick-up trucks and improvised explosives because these big weapons you talk about are useless for dealing with them. ".

> If you want living examples of this look at every insurgency that the US military has tried to destroy. They're all still kicking with nothing but AK-47s, pick-up trucks and improvised explosives because these big weapons you talk about are useless for dealing with them.

Guerilla warfare is a sharp reminder that the biggest weapon a soldier has is the one between his ears. Standing armies, like the story of david and goliath, "deploy" troops with the expectation that the other side will play by their rules. The result? David ain't about that life and uses his head, sling and a rock. You can have all the weapons in the world, nothing can garuantee your victory.

So how do the politicians and top brass justify the dead sons and no real, tangible success? They order the army to kill civilians ofcourse. Can you imagine training soldiers for a million bucks a pop, then he gets killed by a homemade bomb in some wadhi?

In short, war is a mess. It's not more guns needed, it's diplomacy.

You don't need any of the above if you have an effective media machine that tells people what to think.

Which you very much do in the US. The militias aren't there to protect "freedom", they're kept on hand in case they're ever needed to protect privilege.

So basically, it can't protect against all out war on it's citizens, or a oppressive government willing to kill innocents in order to terrorise the population; but it could protect against softer power grabs or coups.

> A fighter jet, tank, drone, battleship or whatever cannot stand on street corners. And enforce "no assembly" edicts.

Loitering drones sure could.

The US seems to have one of the most widely deployed sets of them (so far), spends lots of R&D money to improve (and automate) them, and has already shown they'll be covertly used within US borders for (at least) surveillance operations.

You are thinking of a traditional force on force battle, which is not what it would be. Looking at the Taliban in Afghanistan would be a more accurate picture of how it would look. It would be an insurgency of mostly unknown members that lived with and among average citizens, as well as a larger support network of citizens that provided material support (food, equipment, medical supplies, etc) to “the cause”.

You would have a small percent of “full time” insurgents that would probably operate in rural areas of the US, in order to better hide larger equipment, but that would be the minority. Most of the time they would be avoiding conflict with military forces, only attacking vulnerable areas and forcing the military to guard everything. I remember reading that trying to surveil Afghanistan was already using the majority of the US’ aerial surveillance assets. The US is massive, with huge rural areas and tons of regular traffic to hide amongst.

A dictator would likely attempt to crush opposition with a heavy handed military response. That would likely serve in the insurgents favor, as it would turn the average citizen against the military strangers with tanks in the streets, checkpoints, and extra judiciary killings of civilians. Just look at the police protests and riots over the summer. The heavy police response stoked more anger and resolve and grew protests and people willing to provide support.

It is also worth noting that we don’t know how much of the military would fall in line with this. And even if they did, how many would secretly help the insurgency. How many insurgents would be tipped off to unguarded National Guard bases with military hardware? Do you really think the military would willingly use nukes on its own people? Bombers? Tanks? Just because the military has them, doesn’t mean they could be used effectively.

You don't have to win open battles. You just have to make it not worthwhile to keep fighting. Think Vietnam war. Also, in this scenario the army will not be united. In our civil war, many army units joined the rebels.

Why do you assume the US military is united against the people like that. If a tyrant takes over the US military you can expect a large number of the existing military will leave. They might have jets, but it doesn't do any good when whoever is flying them takes off and then uses the bombs on yet, then ejects over enemy territory thus ensuring that you cannot use that jet anymore while they survive as a hero.

Others have replied to the other points.

Vietnamese farmers have a different view point. It's not about competing on an open field, its about not being able to be subjugated. Another historical example would be American snipers in trees picking off the British commanders during the revolution.

Remember those guys who let their house guest attack the US a little under 20yr ago? Last I checked they're in the process of getting their country back.

The "but they have tanks and nukes" argument has been long debunked. To actually run an oppressive nation you need boots on the ground which requires very strong support from a very sizeable minority (e.g South Africa, Northern Ireland). The less firepower the peasants have the smaller the minority you need is. You can't fight a insurgency with tanks and bombs without destroying the things you seek to protect. If you're England crapping all over Ireland or if you're the US crapping all over Iraq you can kind of make it work as long as you have political will and keep the death tolls low because your supply lines and political support are isolated from the violence (notice how quickly the Troubles wrapped up once the bombs started going off in England). It's much harder to fight an insurgency when people are sabotaging your supply chains. See the 4chan copypasta someone else posted for other details.

>quickly the Troubles wrapped up once the bombs started going off in England

The Birmingham pub bombings (for example) happened in 1974. The Belfast agreement (ending the troubles so far) was signed in 1998.

>requires very strong support from a very sizeable minority (e.g South Africa, Northern Ireland)

Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Northern_Ireland.

You will note that Northern Ireland has a plurality of Protestants (48%) compared to a sizable Catholic community (45%). The majority of people in Northern Ireland do not support a united Ireland up to this point. At some point in the future that may change and a referendum for reunification may be held (if the Irish government agrees). And, note, it is not at all for sure that the Irish government would agree because Northern Ireland is a cats cradle of trouble and problem - demographically, economically, politically and in terms of civil order. I think only with very significant backing from the EU could Ireland contemplate taking it on.

Currently the UK (read England, because the Welsh and Scots are also net recipients of significant monies from England) subsidizes every subject in Northern Ireland to the tune of $7k per year, if that is "crapping all over Ireland" frankly I'd like a bag of that shit please.

And frankly there is peace in Ireland now because the IRA lost, it lost support in it's communities and it lost interest in freedom fighting because one element of it realized that a political solution had been available for at least 10 years, and one element realised it was far more interested in trading drugs and protection.

Anyway : please do some research and reading and don't use straight falsehoods to support an otherwise reasonable argument. Perhaps traveling to Ireland would be a good start.

You're getting caught up in the technical details because this is an ideologically driven issue.

NA had two minorities with opposite enough ideologies that they got violent. The UK would have never succeeded in keeping the peace there were it not for having a good chunk of the population on "their side". The violence eventually came to mostly an end because the IRA blew up enough crap that the British were willing to mostly throw them a bone in the Good Friday agreement and everyone was sick enough of the fighting to reach an agreement. The agreement was satisfactory enough for enough people that most combatants laid down their arms. An agreement so favorable (i.e. favorable enough to get them to stop fighting) to the republican faction(s) would never have been reached without the violence spilling over into England to a greater extent in the 1980s and making people ask tough questions like "why does what they do even matter to us?". You can call that a "loss" or a "win" or a "pivot to drug trafficking" or whatever you want to make it compatible with your politics. The framing doesn't really change what happened. Considering your characterization of North Ireland I don't expect you to frame the issue in a neutral way.

Consider how the troubles might have played out without loyalist factions. Starts looking a lot like some other, nastier, more resource sucking conflicts. Local support is required any time you want to make a bunch of people do stuff you don't want them to.

You say technical details, I say relevant facts. I don't have any ideological perspective, my family are 1/2 irish catholic and I live in the UK - I don't care what happens in northern ireland at all.

But, the loyalist factions were the majority, post WW2 it's just for sure that the UK wouldn't have (and certainly wouldn't now) hang around in Northern Ireland, apart from most of the people in Northern Ireland historically wanted to stay as part of the UK. A minority wanted to leave and fought a violent campaign to do so. The minority was ruthlessly discriminated against and terrorized by the majority - which complicated matters to say the least. These issues do not boil down in the way that you indicate, things are complicated. An agreement like the Belfast agreement had been on the table for the IRA for many years - and frankly it's not very favorable, the only major concession that I can think of was the dissolution of the RUC - but is the police service of northern ireland really that different? I mean it is vs the RUC of 1975 (that's for sure) but vs the RUC of 1998? The big issue that the IRA's final spurt of bombing decided was that they didn't disarm before the agreement was negotiated and signed - but instead after it was agreed and signed. The two truck bombs were painful, but Manchester would not be the city it is now without the last one - and docklands doesn't seem to have suffered much tbh. The Bishop's gate bomb in 1993 was probably more economically impactful than either, and there was no hint of compromise after that.

The UK has very limited economic, military or geographic interest in Northern Ireland. The oil was elsewhere, there is fishing - but we are talking $10M's per year at the most there, and most of that goes to NI boats in any case. There's no reason for the UK to be there apart from the fact that a) the bulk of the population think that they are part of the UK and b) the irish government would be in the mire trying to deal with it if it suddenly came to be their job. Without these two factors there wouldn't have been a conflict, because the UK would have dropped it like a hot coal.

We have modern examples of this situation, and that’s not how it works. In the 1971 Bangladesh independence war, the Pakistani military started conducting a genocide of Bangladeshis. (They didn’t do it with fighter jets, which they had plenty of, but infantry with rifles.) Bangladesh was mostly disarmed, but arms were funneled to it from India. Civilians also raised army supply depots to steal guns. They then put up a resistance with the arms they had or could get. That caused large swaths of the Pakistani military—many of whom were Bangladeshis—to defect and fight for independence. A citizen military’s willingness to fight their own people is limited. Having enough arms to start the armed resistance was the most important thing. And I suspect a lot fewer Bangladeshis would have been killed in the genocide had they been as well-armed as Americans are.

At the end of the day, holding territory is hard. Look at how much trouble Americans have had subduing the Taliban in Afghanistan. The bombs, tanks, planes, etc., are largely useless in holding a city. Now, combine that with the fact that the US military is comprised of citizen soldiers, who would be in the position of fighting against their own communities.

It’s when a community is totally disarmed, and when the mere show of military force would force total capitulation without violence, that a citizen military could rationalize aiding tyranny.

It’s also worth pointing out that there are 50 governors who command national guards that have fighter planes and tanks and whatnot. In a real civil war, armed citizenry would likely be fighting alongside state forces.

In short, 2nd amendment militias don't seem a very realistic deterrent to a modern army.

The militias of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia would disagree.

It’s doable if you have the support of the majority of the population, such as Nazi occupation of France and later US/UK occupation of Germany.

I'm very sorry, but the militia presence in the US has never served to protect against tyranny, but rather to preserve it. You've truly been mislead if you believe that is its purpose. I grew up around lots of these sorts of people and what those guys are really for is to keep the blacks and immigrants properly terrorized and subjugated. My experiences with them were that they were uniformly from the most racist and ignorant class of whites, usually the ones the military wouldn't take, and they were essentially another version of KKK. That crap in the 2nd amendment about a well regulated militia is a nice cover to let these dudes do their thing, but please do not confuse that with the actual purpose of these people in US society. They maintain white supremacy.

The US military is the militia >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_%281946%29

And how did all that military might fare in Vietnam? How has it fared in the Middle East?

Now imagine turning all that might against itself where much of the population has small arms of some sorts.

Was the US trying to tyrannically attack those places? The government had to constantly answer to it's populace for those wars; if it had to answer to no one, things may have been different.

How about Russia in Afghanistan? Surely they had much less accountability and a similar technology gap (yes, I know the US supplied the fighters with some advanced weaponry). Yet, the had the same outcome as the US.

Here's a short documentary that captures some the post-Soviet dissolution mood of the Russian troops in Afghanistan, following the glasnost.[1]

[1]: Afgan - The Soviet Experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfqAHOpGd0g

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