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On HN downvoting a comment you don’t like has always been part of the social contract. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691
Do not fear. The popular ideas will rise to the top which is good for people looking for validation. The less popular ideas, but often more interesting stuff will slip down the list, and the downright atrocious stuff will be down voted and sent to the very bottom.
I made the Reddit comment because I have notice that HN community is often voting for popular ideas over intellectually curios ones.
This is so common that there is a point specifically about it in the HN guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
But I always make a point to downvote people complaining of downvotes, even when I agree with their points of view.
Man up and stop caring about internet points. They are meaningless.
Man up and stop caring about people caring about internet points. They are just people with options
Poke me when internet points can be used to pay the mortgage.
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943?
Semaine sanglante (Paris) in 1871?
Edit:
> Anyway don't support this view, I don't own guns. I'm just saying that blatant disregard for peoples safety is why...
+1, but yes and no. These sort of "+5 sigma" clicky stories really push some people's buttons...but I think the real drivers of "don't trust the Government" are elsewhere. I'd point to the routine crap of American municipal government - which often resembles the daily drama of a bunch of low-functioning Junior High students. The whole "rich get richer, everyone else gets screwed" shift in the U.S. economy (and Democratic Party) over the past ~60 years. And the endless, strident screams of right-wing political edgelords.
I think the primary example that's going to come to mind for all Americans is the American Revolution, which was successful, if I recall correctly.
I don't really like this tone of 'lecturing' people, as though they don't understand and you do. Well-informed people have legitimate differences of opinion on these questions.
The British homeland was 1) an ocean away in the 1700s and 2) extremely distracted by numerous other conflicts and 3) had pretty much the same firepower that a civilian and privateers would have.
None of those things apply now.
IMO the Taliban is a much better analog. And you of course have to mix in the horror of a true civil war which in America’s case pretty much everyone came out of thinking no one won.
I'm merely pointing out that attempting to argue against guns from the perspective of 'popular resistance against tyranny never going to be successful' is far from the best way to argue against guns. It has been successful before, and the country's entire foundation myth rests on one of those instances.
There's many ways to argue against gun proliferation. This is a bad one. It's particularly bad one to use on right-of-centre Americans. But people on the Internet disagree, love using it, and they've been incredibly successful in using it to win over suppo- oh, wait.
I agree with the overall thrust though: this is not a winning line of argument. But I'm not sure what is, to be honest, given that this issue has become quasi-religious. Eventually we'll have enough dead kids (and enough dead old people) to start questioning this religious conviction, but yeah, logic or history won't get us there.
So much of life has become political, and so much of the political has become pseudo-religious. People no longer have positions on policies, they have articles of faith on politics. It's not a great basis for a dialogue, unfortunately.
Vietnam War (1955 - 1975) - Textile workers defeat the most powerful military on earth
American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) - Pilgrims defeat the most powerful military on earth
Also note Germany had strong gun laws after WW1 while France was limited to shotguns and hunting rifles.
American Revolution was not actually "Pilgrims against Britain", it was one of the western theaters in the Anglo-French(-Spanish) War.
Yes. That's what they were going for.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attrition_warfare
The British didn't think it was worth the cost either.
Perhaps the U.S. pro-gun folks need to advertise more widely that their imagined "victory scenario" is "turn the U.S. into a smoking crater/basket case, which the U.S. Army won't think is worth holding onto"?
These days, nothing individuals (or even groups of individuals) can acquire holds a candle to what governments (the US being a world leader in this regard) are equipped with, so there is no endgame for gun ownership as a means of defense against one's government.
Even back in colonial times, your single musket was no match for the hundreds of muskets and handful of cannon that the government was equipped with. If the government wants to kill you -specifically- then it's going to do that.
As a defense against tyranny, firearm ownership is effective in the same way that putting your valuables in a safe is effective. Neither are an absolute defense, but both raise the level of effort required from the attacker.
For example, regardless of whether you think there actions were reasonably justifiable, the conflict between the Bundys and the BLM would have gone _very_ differently had the Bundys not been armed. They would have absolutely been quietly steamrolled by the government: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff>
FedGov could have rolled in tanks, helicopters, or jets to eliminate the Bundys with zero friendly casualties, but that was a cost that they were entirely unwilling to pay.
Again. If the USian government really wants to get you or your people, specifically, you cannot (and have never been able to) stop them. They've more money and men and materiale than you could ever hope to accumulate. This has pretty much always been true.
If the locals _are_ armed, you have to decide how much blood you're willing to spill.
I think that's very wrong. The second point, is that around 44% of US households are armed. That's a couple hundred million. The only hope the army would have of suppressing them is if half of the US households assisted the army.
If it was an actual popular uprising, the army would be absolutely incapable of stopping it.
It's a big ask for people who almost have a religious belief in the right to bear arms to give them away.
Stories like this one, and countless others, including the poor treatment of whistleblowers are why we Americans can't have nice things.
Individual gun rights are just a culture war topic. It’s collective gun rights for workers as a class that could actually make a difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
[Note: MOVE had more than a few criminal members; I'm making no claim about the righteousness of their actions before or during the standoff]
In the context of the parent comment? No idea.
Of course, it's unlikely the capitalist ruling class would willingly allow legalising such practices.
It's not quite the story of the little guy standing up for what's right against a tyrannical government though, just suggests that in some parts of the US if you show up with enough guns and outnumber someone you can intimidate them and get away with it.
[0] - no that is not a typo, his name is "Cliven"
> On January 8, 2018, Judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial and dismissed the charges because the federal government had withheld potentially exculpatory evidence
"We need guns to protect us from authoritarianism" has always been a fucking lie. No gun owners protested and started a rebellion after the patriot act.
The few times gun owners HAVE "rebelled" it has been for incredibly stupid reasons like "I don't want to pay taxes for the land my cattle have grazed on"
An aberration. Great Britain was a little fuckin busy during that period, what with the existential threat of the hundred years war, and a largely inept King.
Great Britain sent only about 50k troops during the entire affair.
Had they not been so busy, it likely would have looked a lot more like all the times India tried to get uppity.
In the last few decades, a rag-tag group of goat herders and farmers managed to kick out multiple empires using only basic fighting equipment. This is all despite having air supremacy, satellite imagery, night vision, tanks, body armor, and a 10:1 ratio of troops.
The overwhelming majority of experienced combat veterans have been out of the US military for almost a decade. You can see this reflected it in how ineffective the current organization is.
If tyranny does strike the US again, I wouldn't want to be on the side of the tyrants.
40K Americans and lots of assistance from the French, including their navy.
The American war for independence was a proxy war between empires in which the colonies were pawns, and if not for one of those empires the American insurgency would have been crushed, regardless of whatever the myth of American exceptionalism has probably taught you.
You are, obviously, free to have any opinion you like. But my existence is not a rhetorical device for you to exploit while trying to take away my rights.
I am trying to disabuse people of the idea that the right-wing "2A warrior" actually gives a fuck about anyone's rights. We should have seen them all out in protest for what happened to Daniel Shaver, where were they?
Merely owning guns isn't going to stop the government from infringing rights, we need collective action that is not being taken by the people who claim they need guns to defend their rights. Meanwhile children are being murdered in numbers. So we get the worst of both sides of the argument.
"By creating a world in which anyone CAN own a gun, we've forced ourselves to live in a world in which everyone MUST carry a gun?"