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Comment by eplanit | Hacker News Reader

Australia and Venezuela are the 2 best most recent examples of why the 2nd Amendment is so unique and important.

I'm on the look-out for examples of private firearms preserving liberty and democratic government. Have any? Post-WWI strongly preferred.

(serious question)

1) Northern Syria (Rojava), during the latest Syrian Civil war. Local militias comprised of inhabitants of Kurdish northern Syria fought ISIS and other splintered forces to maintain the loose democratic confederacy that is Rojava.

2) Slightly worse example: Nationalistic unorganized militia in the Ukraine during the latest war in Crimea and Donbas.

3) US example? Battle of Athens (post WW-II) [1].

When I really start thinking about it, there are almost too many to name; especially if you count the times where there was an attempt but it failed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)

I'd look to the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and ask whether Americans have the same rights today as they did then. Couple of points I find interesting here.

(1) As I understand it, open carry is illegal in California and Washington as a direct response to armed BPP demonstrations on capitol buildings.

(2) Private enforcement like was carried out by the BPP was echoed in CHAZ/CHOP, and to put it mildly, I've never seen that celebrated by gun rights activists.

(3) The BPP and police forces of the time were fairly well matched in their armament. Since then, the police are now paramilitary forces replete with military arms and armor. Are American gun rights activists deluding themselves, that they'd stand a chance if the police and military decided they were gonna run shit? Or are they merely comfortable in the knowledge that the police and military are politically aligned with them?

I do think the history of the Black Panthers is one of the more likely veins to yield gold, in my search, and intend to do some reading there. I'm entirely serious that I could turn around on this position completely, if I found compelling evidence.

> (3) Are American gun rights activists deluding themselves, that they'd stand a chance if the police and military decided they were gonna run shit? Or are they merely comfortable in the knowledge that the police and military are politically aligned with them?

It's largely the latter, I think, which brings me to:

Ultimately, I think the fatal flaw in the argument that private gun ownership is necessary to protect democracy, is in the fact that authoritarian turns by democracies tend to be fairly popular, when they happen, and that the pro-authoritarian citizens, whose position is likely, if not the majority, at least quite popular, will have guns, too... plus the police, and the army (if they don't have those, what's the problem? No private arms needed, authoritarian take-over is done before it can start if the police and the military aren't on its side, or at least damn close to being on its side). It's not just a lack of history of private firearms being an important pro-liberty and pro-democracy force in democratic states (so far as I can see! Again, I'd love examples)—it's that I have trouble imagining scenarios in which they likely would be, while remaining within the realm of the plausible.

It's got to be some movement that's unpopular among the military and police, so they don't support it, but popular among enough of the rest of the populace that significant numbers would take up arms, and that almost none of them would be taking up arms in against liberty and democracy, rather than for them... and is that a remotely likely situation? I don't think it is. I think for practically the whole likely problem-space, if you will, private arms are one of 1) superfluous, 2) laughably insufficient, or 3) actively harmful to the very things they're allegedly there to preserve & protect.

the smart people who talk about guns as a way to resist a tyranny talk about asymetric warfare, the larger crowd of warrior lifestyle people just talk about rising up.

I don't think very many Western people will throw away a comfortable life for any given set of principals, but I know many people who would fight if they were in a bad situation and felt like there wasn't much to lose. this is why a slow erosion of rights is very effective, by the time you get to the point you are willing to resist, you have given up enough rights that it becomes difficult or impossible.

This is a very unpopular example, but Timothy McV*gh is probably the most well known example of someone who fought for a cause that in his mind was liberty from government in the united states using asymmetric warfare (he was very troubled by Waco and Ruby Ridge.) Of course, even those who are troubled by those events typically believe it was wrong that innocents such as children died in his acts.

But if you really want to know what asymmetric warfare looks like, unfortunately it looks very ugly. The populace doesn't appear to give any indication they endorse the results. I honestly think most people would be very much worried about the legacy their reputation would have; even if they fought for a cause they believed in and avoided collateral damage. The combination of nearly universal social shaming for taking violent action (except when police do it, then it is "valorous"), consolidation of federal power, and the complete ineffectiveness of voting in slowing erosion of rights has been a deadly trifecta for individual rights such as the erosion of fourth and second amendment protections.

> that they'd stand a chance if the police and military decided they were gonna run shit?

See Afghanistan. Full might of US military couldn't permanently suppress the will of the people. And afghans were significantly less wealthy, armed and organized than gun owners in america.

There is no way the police and military could occupy the US without the support of the people. They would win every battle and lose the war, like Vietnam and Afghanistan. The modern military is very dependant on supply chains, and would collapse after 6 months if US workers revolted.

Not to mention the massive defections if ordered to fire on their own people (why we swear an oath to the constitution and not an oath of allegiance to military commanders).

> Are American gun rights activists deluding themselves, that they'd stand a chance if the police and military decided they were gonna run shit?

In WACO a few "lunatics" took up the time of well over 1000 officers + a lot of hardware and well over a month. And this was just a few people with guns.

The goal isn't necessarily to be able to stand up to the military, but rather to make a tyranny as unappealing and arduous as possible. I have a writeup somewhere, but can't find it atm, so I'll get back to you with it later.

Branch Davidians weren't that different from the Taliban, were they? Not exactly a shining example of guns preserving democracy...

I don't think they were nearly as bad as they were made out to be.

Also: It was meant more as an example that the 2nd provides a way to make it infeasable to practice tyranny over the US population through the military.

Sure, child brides are totally chill in the Taliban too, if that's what you mean by not bad.

Edit: My point here is that this is another example where private gun ownership allows upstart tyrannies to defend themselves. This is a negative example, not what handrous was seeking.

That's absolutely not what I meant by not bad. I specifically meant the that they were accused of having a stash of illegal weapons, which got the ATF involved. Where it is unclear who shot first, but a firefight broke out that killed a agent. Which then got the FBI involved and it spiraled from there. And you obviously can't forget the incendiary grenades later found in a evidence locker, labelled as benign, where the ID's indicated them belonging to the FBI.

I am not defending child brides. But to me, it seemed like a VAST governmental overreach to be there in the first place. Where after the fact they tried to make the davidians look less sympathetic through the allegations. I came to this conclusion because those allegations never, not once, showed up before the siege.

My point was that a few dozen people tied up over 1000 agents for over a month + lots of other resources. If just a few dozen such cases happen at or near the same time, it'd basically paralyze the whole governmental military apparatus.

Also: I found the post again that puts my thoughts into good wording: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/483595139562995722/88...

I'm not going to defend the government's action, but when it's the actual Taliban, they skip straight to drone strikes, nevermind the collateral. That the Davidians held an army off with a few peashooters is a question of military restraint much more than effectiveness of the militia

Afghanistan.

Um.

> examples of private firearms preserving liberty and democratic government.

How many times do you have to fight off a foreign power seeking to impose its will on your society before you get a pass for not setting up a democracy when you're done?

OK, so they can be handy, in the hands of a government-in-exile looking to replace a foreign-imposed kleptocracy with a restoration of their own religious authoritarian state. That's granting that we can call enough of what they've got "private arms" for them to be a significant factor in the first place (I truly don't know how that would break down—maybe most of their soldiers really do go out and buy their own guns, before joining the cause). Even so, none of that seems to have much to do with keeping one's own government liberal and democratic, though, which is what I'm interested in.

The taliban are now removing those in the ANA who kept 12-year old boys as unwilling catamites. Perhaps they need US State Dept. functionaries to educate them about the liberal necessity of this practice. Do you think that the late, plausibly democratic, US Gov't supported regime there for the last 20 years was somehow unaware of this problem?

What the fuck? No, I just don't think an exiled authoritarian government overthrowing a foreign-imposed kleptocracy is a great example of private firearms playing a vital role in preserving liberty & democracy, which is what I asked for. Do you?

At worst, it's a wash. At best... I'd have to have a better idea about what you mean by "liberty & democracy". For starters, it's not clear that the Taliban have less popular support than the ruling coalitions in many western governments.

I mean the usual things that are meant by both those words, no special meaning. To address the simpler of the two directly: it's not necessary that an authoritarian state be unpopular—often they're not, especially at first—but that doesn't make them democratic, obviously. As for where the new Afghan government is likely to fall on the liberal-to-illiberal spectrum, I think most folks agree it's likely to, at best, lean toward the latter. That this may, nonetheless, in some ways, still be an improvement over the regime they're replacing, is irrelevant for my purposes.

The reason all this matters is that the question I'm concerned with is whether the standard argument for why private gun ownership is vital to a liberal democracy—that is, that they're indispensable tools for preserving both the "liberal" and the "democracy" parts of that term—is actually true. My suspicion, from what I have turned up so far, is that they're more often used (when effective, that is—they're used ineffectively too, sometimes) as a tool for imposing popular but illiberal positions, than for preserving liberty & democracy, but it's possible I've just not looked at the right evidence yet.

Without a sufficiently precise definition for liberal, the most that I can say is that private ownership of firearms has been a feature of Anglo-American political practice since Charles Stuart. This, for the purpose of having a decentralized fighting force to oppose a centralized standing army that served the government.

You might say that the Stuarts were an unpopular but (in the modern sense ) more liberal...absolutist monarchy than the populist, puritan Protectorate was an illiberal theocracy, but I'd be wary of going too far retconning modern sensibilities to 17th century England.

And, it isn't necessary.

Simply liberal as in "liberal democracy", which I'm using in the normal way, since the argument goes that that's the system and the general state of things that the 2nd amendment is vital to preserving.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Again, I'm actually open to other forms of argument for gun ownership, and despite how my posts here have probably looked I consider measures to limit private firearms ownership unimportant, at best—I just don't find the particular position that they're extremely important to the preservation of liberal democracy such that one might reason "of course Australia is turning authoritarian—if more people there could legally own guns, that wouldn't be happening", compelling.

Both of those countries disarmed their citizens relatively recently -- and now, neither is an example of liberty.

Negative examples don't work too well, since I can point at, say, the US at many points and say "doesn't look like a great example of liberty"—meanwhile, progress toward such doesn't seem to have had much to do with our having lots and lots of private firearms. Meanwhile, there are plenty of relatively "disarmed" countries that remain quite free. So what factor, if any, do private arms play in the preservation of liberty and democracy? That's what I'm trying to get at. We take it as true that the 2nd amendment is absolutely vital to maintaining freedom, but... is there any reason to think that's true? I'm genuinely trying to figure that out.

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