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 Grey Templar wrote:

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
The difference is "I'm a nice guy and women don't have sex with me! Those bitches just say they want nice guys when they really want jerks!" is depressingly common, whereas feminists who hate men are vanishingly rare to the point of almost being entirely fictional.

You aren't looking very hard then. It may have died down to be a little more subtle, but sexism against men is still horrifically common(as in the kind that believes men need to get torn down to uplift women's status)

While I agree that there is likely plenty of sexism against men, I think it is usually not done by, or on behalf of, feminists.

 friendlycommissar wrote:
I was involved in feminist activism for decades.

Who would have guessed?
So, then you can give us hindsight of the terrible feminist conspiracy .

 friendlycommissar wrote:
You're white knighting her, and she's already told you that she's not going to sleep with you.

What? What the bloody hell are you saying? I mean, you could have accused him of being partial to his friend's side of the story, but why did you felt the need to pretend he was doing this for sex? I mean, he explicitly said that he was not looking for that either. Can you not imagine friendly relation between a man and a woman that are not based on wanting to have sex with each other? Really?

 friendlycommissar wrote:
Typically the assumption is that a man white knights for a woman because he thinks it will make her sleep with him.

Yeah, I know, that is why I made my comment.

 friendlycommissar wrote:
I was just making a joke.

It hardly seemed out of tone with the rest of your posts, so that is why I did not understand it was actually a joke.

 Jihadin wrote:
Can you imagine He does the killing then gets out of country and joins the French Foreign Legion

Well, you know that murderers cannot join the Legion anymore. Especially not mass murderers like that. France is not the Imperium, we (kind of, somehow) have standards now .


Also, he would not pass the entrance test. He does not seem anywhere fit enough, and that is not even mentioning having the will to go through all those physically exhausting tests. He would feel entitled to enter without having to work for it, and would try to mass-murder the instructors. Except those are likely to kick his ass into a pulp .

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
Not having access to a gun probably would've helped him not kill as many people, or any at all. I'm not up on where the gun he used was actually from. If he had signs of being mentally disturbed (and the youtube video seems to be a pretty big sign) maybe someone should have confiscated it. I'm sure that would worry a lot of gun-owning Americans, though.

But do not forget, guns also gave his victims a chance. I have been told here how guns are a great equalizer and would allow a frail women to be on an equal footing with a big muscled man. Of course, that was a very theoretical statement. Of course, a better marksmen would still have an advantage. But really, this shooting opened my eyes on how we can now tell the victim that they should have had a gun, and that would have allowed them to survive. Because how hard could gunning that guy have been? A whole lot, I guess.

 -Shrike- wrote:
Anyway, I wouldn't use this as an example of gun problems. Three of his victims were stabbed, so you should also support knife control, to be consistent.

So, are you not aware that we do have laws regulating weapons in general, including knives and even knuckles. Amazing stuff!
Now, the difference between knives and guns is that not only knives, unlike guns, serve a lot of purposes that have nothing to do with killing stuff, but also it is way easier to outrun a guy holding a knife than it is to outrun a bullet, therefore a guy going on a killing rampage with a gun will usually make less victims while giving more time for the law enforcement forces to come to the rescue. That is why the laws on knifes, that do exists, are more lenient that the laws on guns. And there are still different rules for different category of knives, because a swiss army knife is definitely not as threatening as a machete, and not used the same way as a balisong. If you want to kill someone gory, you will use the machete. If you want to kill someone quick and unnoticed, you will use the balisong. If you want to kill someone with a swiss army knife, you are doing it completely wrong.
Does that make sense to you?

 Compel wrote:
Of course, 'Facebook have reviewed these reports and found the pages are not in breach of its guidelines.

If I understood things correctly, you need to put some naked woman picture on it, and then Facebook will instantly found those pages to have breached its guideline. I heard they are pretty reactive to that. I do not have an account there, though, so it is all second-hand information.

 Corpsesarefun wrote:
Who will pay the people to conduct the psych evaluations? Where will the money to pay these people come from?

That seems extremely easy to solve. The people that buy the gun must also pay for the evaluation.

 Corpsesarefun wrote:
Will the evaluations be retroactive?

Not retroactive, rather a regular occurrence. Something like every 5 years or something. If you do not want to do it anymore, you can just forfeit your gun.

 -Shrike- wrote:
Therefore, if you want to promulgate this as an example of lenient gun laws that must be tightened, you must do likewise for knives.

Alternatively, you could recognise that if someone wants to kill, they will do so by any means necessary.

That is where we differ. I am pretty sure that with only knives, this guy would have managed to kill less people. And that was not an example of lenient gun laws as much as an example of how the usual arguments for guns are just plain wrong. Can you quote one of those so many mass shooting were normal people having guns allowed them to stop the killer? Obviously, in every case, having guns more easily available only helped the killer. Whereas the argument to allow knives usually do not revolve around “But if I cannot carry a knife with me, how am I going to defend myself from the bad guys” (from the mass shooter to the evil government of death and his secret armies of mind-controlled drones ), it usually is more about “But if I cannot have a knife, how am I going to cook, or build cabin in the forest, or…”.

 Frazzled wrote:
Well he stabbed people to death. Do we need to get a psych eval for buying steak knives?

Can you cut your steak with a gun?

 Frazzled wrote:
He also ran over some people with his BMW. Do we need a psych eval for buying BMWs? Ok, maybe we do for that one...

Can you drive your gun, to go from one city to another? Beside, you need a license to drive.

I am pretty sure both the knife and the car actually serves a purpose other than killing people. I am not really sure what else the gun can do. Killing animals and destroying stuff, I guess. So, why do we need them? To defend ourselves? It does not work. That guy could stab people with a steak knife and get away with it without getting shot. He then took his car and run over people without being shot. He then shot at people without being shot. Guns favor the attacker over the victim.

 -Shrike- wrote:
But a prevalence of guns does not automatically result in more deaths. As an example, I give you Switzerland, where around 29% of the population own guns, yet it has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world.

I happen to be pretty familiar with Switzerland, because my family has an apartment in La Chaux de Fond, and we regularly go there for vacation. I even have the Swiss nationality. The relation Swiss have with their guns is totally unlike that of U.S. citizens. I do not remember any Swiss saying he needs a weapon to keep himself or herself safe. Ever. I do not know of any Swiss equivalent to the N.R.A. Why do Swiss people have so much weapons? Because they are basically all militia. They are all supposed to be ready to defend Switzerland if it ever gets attacked. They have to regularly go to mandatory training. And they are supposed to keep their service weapon at their place. This tradition is why many Swiss people have some military-grade weapon at home.
Now, some interesting detail that I feel is worth mentioning is that they do not have the ammunition needed to fire it, though. And they do not have the right to carry it with them except when going to training either, except if they get a license (like in pretty much every country in Europe).
So, hardly comparable directly to the U.S., where people feel they need their guns to defend themselves from their fellow U.S. citizens and from the government.
As a matter of fact, there are sometime debates about gun control in Switzerland, but they are just episodic, and never go into the full-blown hysteria that the U.S. is famous for.

 -Shrike- wrote:
In general, the problem lies not with the weapon, but with the person who wields it, which is why I support better mental health care over more restrictive gun laws.

I do not think Switzerland have less crime because they have better mental health care. I think the difference goes way deeper than that. It is a pretty different society than what you get in the U.S., for a bunch of reasons. That is just the tip of the iceberg.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You say defending yourself with a gun doesn't work, yet a ton of successful stories of people defending themselves says you are wrong.

Well, was it Columbine? Or Virginia Tech? Or… so many shootings, I cannot even remember their names.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Guns favor whoever has them.

Nope. When both people have guns, the attacker gets a very clear advantage over its unsuspecting victim. Even if the victim has one too.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Bad guys will get guns regardless of gun laws, cause criminals dont follow them.

And criminals will steal a billion dollars or two out of some bank too, because they do not care about the law. Except actually, not “caring about the law” is not some magical password that allows you to do everything the law forbid.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Gun control does nothing beyond disarming the law abiding citizens, and deprive them of their constitutional rights.

You are on the same level as eliminating freedom of speech or religion.

I do not know, which constitution are you talking about? And why is this constitution supposed to be a moral guide again? I am pretty sure eliminating freedom of speech would go against human rights. I am pretty sure gun control does not go against human rights. Because for some reason, “owning a gun” was not added to that list of human right. Why, why on earth would they forget to add it?

 Vaktathi wrote:
You're also not guaranteed the right to drive a motor vehicles by the constitution.

Why would I care about that constitution? Seriously, what is with this constitution fetish?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Put holes in paper? Every bullet I've ever fired has gone into a paper target or a piece of fruit.

There are firing ranges for that. Would you mind being forbidden to have ammunition outside of the firing range, like it works for Swiss militia that does not get a special permit?
Yeah, it would be annoying, just like those speed limits are annoying (and beside, criminals do not respect speed limits sometime, so why enforce them anyway?)

 Vaktathi wrote:
The enshrined protection on civilian ownership on firearms in the US is to ensure the state does not retain a monopoly on the means and use of force, and to provide the state a means of force when/if necessary.

And that is pure bs. First, because disorganized civilians do not stand a chance against the full-blown power of the U.S. army. Second, because last time I check, mind-sweep was not standard procedure upon entering the U.S. army. Even if by some bad science-fiction trick, the U.S. government suddenly became a fascist regime, the army would still be comprised of apple-pie loving, democracy-spreading Captain America rather than evil fascist overlords.
If even U.S. citizens cannot trust the U.S. army, how do you expect the people from countries it invades to see them .


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cincydooley wrote:
The constitution tells us otherwise, doesn't it.

More constitution fetish. You do know that this was written a long, long time ago in a society that had quite different values from your current ones (hint: slavery, racism, place of women, homosexuals, …), in a context that was very different from modern-day U.S.A. (hint: not the single biggest army in the world by a huge margin, and not a long-established democracy either)?
Why would you consider it relevant, then?

Keeping your toys is not a problem. Refusing to allow restriction in the use of said toys that could endanger the general public, however…
In my Call of Cthulhu RPG group, there is a girl that do shooting, among a ton of other cool stuff like fencing and learning tons of languages and visiting North Korea. She explained us some of the gun control laws in France, and damn that was though stuff. However, she just uses the gun they provide at the shooting range, so she has absolutely no problem whatsoever with those laws.
Would you have any problem with gun control laws that do not affect your ability to rent a gun at the shooting range and shoot only there?

 cincydooley wrote:
I'm sure it has nothing to do with a homogenous population or the vast disparity in population density.

That is pretty much a subset of why Swiss society is very different from U.S. society. I never meant to imply the Swiss society was something that could work outside of Switzerland.

 cincydooley wrote:
For the first shot, sure. Not for any subsequent ones.

Small comfort if you are dead from the first shot.

 cincydooley wrote:
We get it. You have no respect or need for the US constitution.

Why would I? Why do you?
I am not saying it is inherently bad or anything, I am saying it is not automatically right.

 cincydooley wrote:
History tells a different story.

I must have missed some history lessons, then. When was the U.S. invaded by some disorganized civilians? Because I can sure show a number of time where it happened the other way around .

 daedalus wrote:
Who's making this list of human rights that you're going off of?

Maybe you have heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is supposed to be, well… universal. Actually some islamic countries do not like it because it does not allow for enough suppression of religious minority and stuff, but I have never heard of any serious rival to this declaration neither in the U.S., nor in France, nor in any non-Islamic country.

 daedalus wrote:
WE care about it though because it's the groundwork for our government and the rights provided to us. We don't have much history or culture here in America; we have to cherish whatever scraps of whatever we can.

Keeping it as a testament to your founding is perfect. But basing your decisions on current issue on it is not. Stuff just change!
Beside… you have Lovecraft. And people riding with long white hoods and robes. That is not that bad, really.

 daedalus wrote:
Revenue generation. There's about 6.2 billion a year collected. Also this: http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2009-01/evidence-traffic-tickets-aren%E2%80%99t-just-about-road-safety
You thought they were about safety?

That was rhetorical, but yeah, I am pretty sure they are about safety too.

 daedalus wrote:
The Stanford Prison Experiment would like to have some words with you.

Geopolitics would like to have some word with you. If you need examples of the army not obeying to the government, there is a thread on it happening in Thailand on this very board.

 Frazzled wrote:
Says the feren guy on a US Board. Didn't Switzerland get rich on stolen Nazi gold that they conveniently kept after the war? Just asking.

Feren?
They were already rich beforehand. Confused about why you want to turn some argument about “Should we base our current decisions on some paper wrote hundred of years ago” into “Hey, let us have a pissing contest at which country behave as the biggest donkey-cave”.

 Grey Templar wrote:
That also doesn't include any national guard units

Would those not join the army? Oh, wait, actually that whole scenario makes no sense whatsoever, I forgot. It is all based on the U.S.A. suddenly becoming a fascist regime overnight. I am strangely not really worried about it actually happening.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Because it's the fundamental underlying legal document of the United States, the nation where the shooting that spawned this thread occurred and the document upon which all other law in the US must comply with.

Does that make what it says inherently right? Does that mean you should not change it on this point, even though you changed it on tons of other points?

 Vaktathi wrote:
It would likely drive the cost way up, and mean that my property is suddenly not something that is under my control.

It would maybe drive the cost up, but yeah, it would make shooting akin to how about everyone plays bowling. You go to the place, rent the equipment, have fun, give back the equipment and then leave.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It would also mean I can only shoot at that one range

What? Why?

 Vaktathi wrote:
It they're closed, my (expensive) firearms are not accessible

Yeah, surely renting the firearm too would be a better idea. This could maybe actually lower the cost, because one given firearm will serve for more people.

 Vaktathi wrote:
and such a system would make hunting (for people that are into that) and shooting on BLM land (essentially empty land that is managed by the government where shooting is permissible, think the deserts of Nevada and eastern California and the like) very difficult or impossible.

Yes, that would be something that would need its own rules. But while I can care for people who like shooting at range, I have a very hard time feeling any kind of empathy for those that actually enjoy causing voluntary suffering in animals as a past-time. That is just… wrong.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Speed Limits only apply on public streets. If I'm on private property, assuming I have enough space, I can go as fast or as slow as I like. If I'm on public property, I'm not expecting to be able to walk around with my Kalashnikov loaded and ready to go, nor am I expecting to be able to run through the streets at 95MPH to get to work. But I expect to be able to park my car in my own garage and keep my gun in my own home so that either are accessible when I desire to use them.

Different dangers means different restrictions.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Which has only existed as a powerful standing army for ~70 years (out of nearly 240) and may not exist in its current form in the future (maintaining it is extraordinarily expensive).

Well, less army means even less need for guns, because the government will have even less brainwashed faceless goon to send to kill you if you just disobey it.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Regardless, that's not the point, ultimately it's a lot harder for a government to start doing bad things to its populace if it is armed.

I disagree.

 Vaktathi wrote:
One of the first things the NSDAP did when it came to power in Germany was confiscate civilian arms to prevent civilian challenge to their rule.

So apparently the guns of the Germans did not helped them in the slightest. Because the Nazis had both the cops and their own paramilitary unit by their side. Actually, I think banning paramilitary unit is more efficient than giving guns to the population.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Um, some maybe? Soldiers are people like anyone else.

That is my point. They are people like anyone else. They do not want to shoot on their fellow citizen if said citizen go on demonstrating against the government. They will refuse to do it, and likely side with the protesters if the government goes too far.

 Vaktathi wrote:
That said, the rise of Fascism and other abusive governments hasn't always been a creepingly slow process, the Italians, Russians and Germans managed it in just a couple years each.

For the Russian, it implied a civil war, and they went from an autocracy to another.
For the Italians and the Germans, since in both case the leaders came into power with quite a big popular support, more armed population would just mean that those leader would have had a more armed militia.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I forgot that.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You never had very many guns/weapons period, because of the feudal legacy of keeping the peasants unarmed. You also don't have it as a fundamental right.

Well, in Switzerland we do have many guns. And people used to have the ammunition to go with it, though they do not anymore. And that is not recent. Switzerland was a small country surrounded by bigger, scarier ones. They have a tradition of turtling up. That is where their constitutional neutrality comes from .

 daedalus wrote:
I wouldn't cite Thailand as a location where the system is working the way it's supposed to.

Yeah. I tried hard to find a good example of a democracy turning suddenly into a fascist regime against the will of the majority of its people, but I could not, so I choose something else. Do I need to start looking for events where soldiers refused to shoot on innocent protesters?

 daedalus wrote:
We don't throw it out until it does though, and most people here appear to be actually okay with it

Well, actually, consensus and agreement is not what pops to mind when the question of gun control pops up between U.S. citizens. Unlike France or Switzerland were most people do not know much about it, and do not care either, so the discussions are way; way milder and calmer.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I hate bowling.

Well, pool, then. Or movie theater.

 Vaktathi wrote:
That said, you do have the option to own your own bowling equipment and bring it to the alley and back home.

Yeah, but that is not the point.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If I store it there, taking it elsewhere will be very onerous indeed, especially if I have to bring it back.

If you can go with your gun, and only need to buy and use ammunition on the spot, then you can just go to any range that sell your ammunition type. If you do rent the gun and the ammunition, you can go wherever you want to.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Which makes it much more expensive over the long run (having to rent a gun every time i want to go shooting) and restricts where you can go shooting and what events you can attend further.

It makes it more expensive if you do shoot a lot, maybe. Not necessarily. I mean, if three people are using the gun, and over the full life of the gun they pay each half of the price of the gun, the owner will still make a profit. How long is the life of a gun?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Well, ideally there isn't suffering, when hunting you're supposed to aim for as clean and instant a kill as possible by going for the heart or head. […] If the animal suffers, the hunter fethed up, simple as that.

I am still not okay with people willing to take that risk for their personal pleasure. But then again, I am one of those annoying vegetarians…

 Vaktathi wrote:
To a point yes, but keep in mind, unless you include suicides, cars kill far more people in the US than guns do (if you include suicides then firearms kill about as many people as cars).

On the other hand, even though range shooting can be a pretty neat hobby, let us be honest here, cars bring much, much, much more than guns to society.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Well, basically they made everyone register their firearms and started going door to door collecting them, and did so before they started going to town on the major bad things they're remembered for today.

Hitler wrote a book explaining what he wanted to do. It is called Mein Kampf.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I don't like random, independently operating paramilitary groups much either without a clear and present reason for them to exist, but that's a different thing than simply owning firearms.

Different, but directly linked.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Potentially yes, who knows, but either way there'd be a greater civilian capability to resist.

Are you really expecting to see this in your lifetime?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Smacks wrote:
Activities like fox hunting in the UK and bull fighting in Spain were also heavily steeped in tradition, but they have gone now because ultimately they are barbaric.

I am pretty sure bull-fighting is still happening. Even in France IIRC. And stuff like foie gras.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It would also require ranges to then have storage space for every person who shoots there, which could get very large and expensive indeed.

Well, bowlings can do that, why would firing range be unable to?

 Vaktathi wrote:
That said, given the huge number of people killed by cars *completely unintentionally*, we're talking about something at least as dangerous if not moreso.

Yeah, but a risk that is more worthwhile.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Different, but directly linked.

And so is drunk driving to normal driving.

Well, the argument of “But people can organize themselves to combat the government using their guns” seems awfully close to “But people can form armed paramilitary units”, much more so than “But people can use car to visit their relatives that live far away” is close to “But people can just drink a lot before driving”.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I guess nothing super critical but many would need to make construction additions, and it would certainly make ammunition much more expensive (as the range now has a captive market) and limit the types of weapons you could shoot (as they wouldn't stock everything, I'd probably never get to shoot my K-31 again).

It would maybe make ammunition more expensive (the competition would be between firing ranges rather than between ammunition stores), and it would certainly decrease the number of available weapon types, yes.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Then there's also the issue of the uncounted billions of rounds of ammunition already in civilian hands.

I do not know, but I guess even just letting it be would work in the long term though.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I've only ever met one person who's ever been part of any sort of group that could be remotely considered a "paramilitary", he really was just a dude that sat with his Glock in a holster while he sat on a hill in his yard with a buddy with some binoculars and bothered the Border Patrol everytime they saw something "strange".

Yeah, I agree that the argument “We need guns to protect ourselves from the government” does not represent any kind of present reality. However, what I am saying is that this argument is extremely similar to “We need guns so that we can create armed militia”, so it is neither grounded in reality nor necessarily a good thing.

 cincydooley wrote:
The coolest thing about the United States is that we're like, allowed to own property and stuff.

Oh, you are? I thought actually there was a bunch of stuff that even just owning could send you right into prison in the U.S.A. How does that relate to your nice picture about the coolest thing in there? I mean, certainly that must be a mistake, they cannot take you in prison for owning cocaine, because in the U.S.A., you allowed to own property and stuff!
Nah, I think actually that is the coolest thing about Somalia. There, you can pretty much own anything you want and the government will not send you in jail. Because, what government? It is truly the land of the free!

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's a safeguard in case of duress that dates back nearly 240 years.

How many time was it used during those 240 years?

 LumenPraebeo wrote:
It was used during the western expansion era's.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
I'm no American but off the top of my head...

French & Indian Wars.
War of Independence.
War of 1812.
Civil War.

And all manner of conflicts, skirmishes and periods of lawlessness.

Those would have surely all involved civilian Militias involved in armed conflict, resisting invasion and oppression or just simply defending themselves in lawless regions (the Frontier) against Indian tribes, bands of outlaws and each other? Having been founded as a nation of Colonial settlers spread out over huge distances far from Authorities and security forces, people had to fend for themselves.

So, are you both speaking about just using guns, or specifically using guns to keep the government in check? Because I am of course familiar with the whole western/cowboy/civil war thing. I mean, the Italians did such a good job at making movies out of it . But I was wondering about examples specifically against the government of the U.S.A.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The downside of not having an armed populace is unacceptable, no matter how low the chance of such a situation happening.

I disagree. I even disagree with the idea that this is a downside. I believe I live in a society developed enough that people can get their voice heard and can even overthrow government without needing guns. Revolutions and regime change have been known to happen without armed populace/mob and heavy fighting in several occasions. Actually, I think those tend to lead on with better, more democratic and stable regime imho.

 Grey Templar wrote:
You know the Nazis were pretty popular in Germany, they took over democratically.

Yeah. That is precisely why Germans having guns would not have prevented them rising to power. Especially since gun-toting SA and SS would have certainly out-violenced those that would have faced them.
Guns will not prevent fascism from rising to power through subversion of our democratic systems. And fascism will not be able to gain power by other means in western European countries, or the U.S.A. Hence, if we are to focus on preventing fascism from taking over our countries, really we should focus on educating people about its danger rather than getting more weapons out into the public.

 stanman wrote:
Can you please provide some instances for peaceful revolution on a national level?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_revolution_%28German%29
That is some pretty well-known and major event imho, since the Cold War was something quite global, and that started the crumbling of the whole Communist side of it.
You can find more here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_revolution
Now, I do not think this page is complete. For instance, stuff like this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Democracy_Movement could certainly fit in too.

 Peregrine wrote:
And how exactly is private gun ownership in the US going to change anything if that happens here? Any government that is legitimately evil enough to justify violent revolution is unlikely to show any reluctance to crush the revolution with overwhelming firepower. It might be fun to lovingly stroke your AR-15 and fantasize about leading a revolution, but your gun isn't going to do anything to stop a tank or B-52 strike. And if the military supports the revolution then a few untrained civilians with fancy toys are completely redundant, and at absolute most your contribution to the revolution will consist of sitting around guarding something worthless (just to keep you out of the way) while the military does all the real work.

That is precisely what I think, but apparently I am wrong and the civilians with their guns would somehow crush the army. Apparently they have proof of that from the fact Afghanistan won the war against the U.S.A. thanks to the insurgents or something. I somehow felt like the fact there were many U.S. troops in Afghanistan and no Afghan forces in the U.S. was as a clear sign that the U.S. won, but apparently it is the other way around.

 Grey Templar wrote:
An armed populace keeps the politicians scared.

Nope. Vote keeps the politicians scared.

 Grey Templar wrote:
That ultimate power rests with the people.

Yeah, I am pretty sure you will do very well against special forces. Or tanks. Or carpet bombing. Or maybe combat gas. Or… well, the possibility to kill you and your puny gun are endless for some fascist overlord, really.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The power behind that vote is a .45 in one hand and a Molotov in the other.

So, do you mean that were people do not have .45 or Molotov, they have no power and are not living in a democracy?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
The Civil War would qualify as armed civilians "specifically resisting the Government of the USA".

Was it not the confederate against the union? Like, two governments facing each other? With armies, training, chain of commands, all that stuff?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Other than that, just because Americans have never since been in open, armed conflict with their own government doesn't mean they haven't needed their firearms against invading Foreign powers.

Which is something completely different, which is now taken care of by the army.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Because they would literally have to kill 80%+ of the population to do that.

Are you serious? Do you actually believe people will all choose death over oppression and fight to the last men? Yeah, the army is not the best placed to suppress dissent. Your hypothetical fascist government will therefore use SS/pasdaran/death squads-type militia/police forces for the job. Terror tactics. Massive surveillance of the population. That kind of stuff.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Would private gun ownership stop it once it started? No.

Would it help end it and provide one heck of a deterrent? Hell yes.

How would it help end it exactly, and why would it act as a deterrent? You do not need mob with guns to execute a dictator after he has been overthrown. The fascist government would have no problem disarming people once it has reached power, and has no mean of reaching power without either massive popular support (in which case guns will help them) or a military coup (in which case they outgun people by a thousand time, and no, people will not jump gladly to their death.

 Jihadin wrote:
Whoa. We're losing the war in Afghanistan?!?

Apparently, you are. I am expecting to see an Afghan flagged raised at the White House any minutes now.

So, I somehow managed to make people discuss about an hypothetical war between hypothetical armed U.S. citizen against and hypothetical evil dictatorial U.S. regime. That is pretty neat. Now let us try to put that thread somehow, maybe, a little on topic.

 Bromsy wrote:
My plan: Step 1 - legalize prostitution.



that's it.

I do not think it would have helped at all. I mean, obviously this guy had delusions about his own grandeur. It was not about sex to him, it was about status and respect. From what he said, it seems pretty clear to me he would have scorned the prostitutes anyway. I mean, people do not kill over not having sex. They do kill, however, about (perceived) insufferable injustice. And what this horrible human being perceived as an insufferable injustice was not being recognized as The Most Awesomest Ever. Prostitutes would not have changed that at all.

 Bromsy wrote:
I think it would have helped at least as much if not more than anything else discussed in the thread.

Which does not mean much if “more than anything else” still accounts for nothing.
And I am not advocating a ban on prostitution, I am just talking about this specific issue.

 Bromsy wrote:
so we might as well have clean, healthy and safe prostitutes to help get us through these times.

Which times? The time where a self-inflated horrible human being believe himself above everyone and everything else, and consider not everyone being amazed at him an injustice big enough to be worth killing random bystanders? Because that is what we are looking at. It really has nothing to do with sex in the end.

 Jihadin wrote:
If I remember correctly
Mandatory military service
Keep their issued weapon
Keep their issued gear
Free ammo to keep current marksmanship skill
Free weapon locker (might have three generations of issued rifles in the household)

I explained it all earlier in this thread.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/210/596717.page#6872137
I only avoid the Swiss military service because I took the French one instead. It is a one-day-long service with a free meal and very close to my home, rather than some life-long service where I need to go all the way into Switzerland. But if I go to live in Switzerland, maybe I will check if I can still get the Swiss one, because firing seems fun.

 cincydooley wrote:
France maintains a military?

Yeah. They are pretty much like the U.S., i.e., an invasion force whose task is to enter foreign countries to enforce our interest with a gun. We also have nukes.

 cincydooley wrote:
Does your one day of service consist of making indignant faces, rolling your eyes in derision, and waving your arms to simulating waving a flag?

Nope. I was at the mountain artillery base. We got to see those nice cannons. Apparently when they train, the shooters cannot even see their target because there is a whole mountain between them and the target. It was quite interesting.
It is also where they make everyone pass a test to see who is illiterate. I was surprised to learn there are still illiterate people here. We get first aid instructions too, and some generic information about the army.
Do you even have a mandatory military service in the U.S.?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
unfortunately the Germans have a very poor sense of smell, enabling them to win three wars against France back to back.

Which ones?