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Mulva
Sep 13, 2011
It's about time for my once per decade ban for being a consistently terrible poster.

Xombie posted:

Once again, these arguments that an insurgency against the US government could definitely be successful all seem to rely on complete fantasy. "Oh it would have worked if they really tried".

There was literally gunfire through a door, on one side of which was a mob of angry people and on the other was a bunch of senators. The thing that stops them from being dead senators is nobody shot back the other way through that door. That's it.

Had as I said 3 people done so? Yeah that's probably more than the authorities on scene could have handled. That's not "Complete fantasy", that's talking about the events that happened and adding something very common in our country, angry people shooting folks they don't like. You know, the reason someone made a gun control thread?

And the government wasn't going to magically put a loving tank in front of that door the second the angry boomers started popping off.

You have a completely irrational level of esteem for the United States government and it's competence, and also a complete misunderstanding of how things like tanks and jets and nukes work. For instance, the US government had guns and jets and tanks and nukes when the insurrection happened. And even though the distance between people nominally calling for the death of senators and the senators themselves was at one point like.....20 feet? None of that sort of thing really showed up in force. Nothing actually showed up in force for quite awhile.

What do you imagine is the practical difference you can easily spot between a "For real coming to kill people" insurrection and the out of shape white people version we got? What magic pig signal do you think goes into the air to summon the real response team, and not the limp dick one that was there? How fast do you think they can respond at any given point?

Or, bottom line, if 3 people had started firing back through that door what is the difference in response you imagine that the government could have taken to immediately shut down their efforts?

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Xombie
May 22, 2004

Soul Thrashing
Black Sorcery

Bishyaler posted:

If a community of 100 people are being attacked, one dies, the other 99 who survived aren't throwing up their hands and saying "Aw shucks we lost!".

You can't seem to name a conflict with the US government on US soil where they didn't lose.

quote:

I like how you're discussing how nobody can slip by the governments' defenses as we're hearing reports on 1/6 how the national guard was ordered to stand down and the Capitol police were actually helping the rioters.

We're discussing 1/6 where the rioters lost, didn't achieve their goal, and hundreds are facing prosecution.

Do you think you're going to get a better result without having allies in the government and the help of authorities?

quote:

Regardless of how often you want to call government fallibility a "fantasy", its very much a real thing and recent events have done nothing but highlight that fact. Frankly its impressive you're trying to argue this in the face of a Supreme Court takeover and the future Congress takeover due to compromised voting rights.

I'm calling your scenario a fantasy because it is a fantasy. It is not a real thing, because real things have actually occurred. There is not actually anything you can say to force people to argue with you in the context of an invented scenario in your head where everything you say is automatically right because you can invent any hyperbolic future scenario to logically justify it. I have no interest in it, sorry.

Here in real life, actual real people are really dying to gun violence.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

by Fluffdaddy
Ok guys help me understand, so there are two options here. Either it's possible to achieve something against the government through (threats of) armed resistance, or it's not. I'm confused about the implications of either conclusion that you're getting at. Is one or the other a good or a bad thing? Which one supports stricter gun control?

Bishyaler
Dec 30, 2009
Megamarm

Xombie posted:

You can't seem to name a conflict with the US government on US soil where they didn't lose.

We're discussing 1/6 where the rioters lost, didn't achieve their goal, and hundreds are facing prosecution.

Do you think you're going to get a better result without having allies in the government and the help of authorities?

I'm calling your scenario a fantasy because it is a fantasy. It is not a real thing, because real things have actually occurred. There is not actually anything you can say to force people to argue with you in the context of an invented scenario in your head where everything you say is automatically right because you can invent any hyperbolic future scenario to logically justify it. I have no interest in it, sorry.

Here in real life, actual real people are really dying to gun violence.

I can name plenty of minor conflicts which completely altered government policy, in some cases completely neutering the agency like the ATF post-Waco. That's a huge victory.

The GOP is about to permanently control our institutions, 1/6 was part of that for better or for worse. If that's a loss I'd hate to see what a victory looks like.

Your entire argument is built on a foundation of "it hasn't happened so it won't ever happen", which is, in and of itself fantasy.

Jaxyon
Mar 7, 2016
I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Bishyaler posted:

I like how you're discussing how nobody can slip by the governments' defenses as we're hearing reports on 1/6 how the national guard was ordered to stand down and the Capitol police were actually helping the rioters.

Do you consider this support for "we're going to win against the government with small arms" or "you win against the government when they allow you to"?

Xombie
May 22, 2004

Soul Thrashing
Black Sorcery

Mulva posted:

There was literally gunfire through a door, on one side of which was a mob of angry people and on the other was a bunch of senators. The thing that stops them from being dead senators is nobody shot back the other way through that door. That's it.

Do you understand that this just proves my point exactly? That the US government will always have a larger, more violent response in waiting to violence against it? If you break a window, they shoot you. If you shoot at the window with a gun, they shoot you with a bigger gun. They always have a bigger gun.

quote:

You have a completely irrational level of esteem for the United States government and it's competence,.

The fact that the government has a more violent response to any action you take against it isn't "esteem" for the government, it's an observation of reality. It doesn't need to be competent to kill you.

quote:

and also a complete misunderstanding of how things like tanks and jets and nukes work.

For instance, the US government had guns and jets and tanks and nukes when the insurrection happened. And even though the distance between people nominally calling for the death of senators and the senators themselves was at one point like.....20 feet? None of that sort of thing really showed up in force. Nothing actually showed up in force for quite awhile.

Because they didn't need tanks and jets and nukes. Did you notice that? Every single senator survived, the vote that the insurrection was intended to stop took place the next day in the same room.

As I've said repeatedly: the government does not actually need tanks and nukes to stop you. It has many levels of violence and capability you and a rifle can't scratch the surface of.

quote:

What do you imagine is the practical difference you can easily spot between a "For real coming to kill people" insurrection and the out of shape white people version we got? What magic pig signal do you think goes into the air to summon the real response team, and not the limp dick one that was there? How fast do you think they can respond at any given point?

Or, bottom line, if 3 people had started firing back through that door what is the difference in response you imagine that the government could have taken to immediately shut down their efforts?

I'm not sure what other way to put this: The government responded with a level of violence one notch above what they were facing. If you get people firing through the door, they respond with yet another one notch above that. You are shifting towards some argument about what you consider an appropriate response to 1/6. But the fact is that it isn't the topic of conversation. What is the topic is if you or some other poster or some imagined leftist insurrection could pull off "1/6 but successful".

History, including 1/6, says you can't, and you're already at a greater disadvantage than an insurgency backed by the sitting president.

Bishyaler
Dec 30, 2009
Megamarm

Jaxyon posted:

Do you consider this support for "we're going to win against the government with small arms" or "you win against the government when they allow you to"?

The latter, but they could both be true had the situation been a bit different. Like Mulva said, there wasn't much between the rioters and a whole bunch of congress critters. I have no idea what the government looks like with a bunch of missing congress people and emergency elections, but I imagine it comes with quite a bit of chaos.

Xombie
May 22, 2004

Soul Thrashing
Black Sorcery

Bishyaler posted:

I can name plenty of minor conflicts which completely altered government policy, in some cases completely neutering the agency like the ATF post-Waco. That's a huge victory.

Altered policy, or altered policy in a way that the belligerents advocated? Because I'm pretty sure "altering ATF response" was not what the Branch Davidians were trying to achieve.

quote:

The GOP is about to permanently control our institutions, 1/6 was part of that for better or for worse. If that's a loss I'd hate to see what a victory looks like.

Literally all of these goals, the groundwork for them, and people achieving them were in government long before 1/6. Most of them have been in the government for decades. Absolutely none of this is a result of the actions of 1/6.

In reality, 1/6 was attempt by Trump to mount a coup to keep him as president. Is he currently president? Nope.

quote:

Your entire argument is built on a foundation of "it hasn't happened so it won't ever happen", which is, in and of itself fantasy.

My entire argument is actually "armed victory against the US government hasn't happened, for these reasons that are currently still in place and will be in place for the foreseeable future". You're welcome to prove that they won't be in place, but you haven't. Your imaginary scenario where the US enters a fascist 1000 year reich just makes it less likely to succeed because there would be a more violent response to leftist insurrection.

So you're welcome to prove me wrong by actually coming up with an example where your "leftist armed revolution against the US government" has ever worked, but you don't seem interested in doing so. You can't come up with an example where the US government actually lost.

Mulva
Sep 13, 2011
It's about time for my once per decade ban for being a consistently terrible poster.

Xombie posted:

You can't come up with an example where the US government actually lost.

Because once a government loses it doesn't tend to exist anymore, so there's generally only one example. It's not the sort of thing you get a do-over to.

Dietrich
Sep 11, 2001

I sure wish the gun nuts would make up their mind on if a AR-15 and other military style semi-auto rifles are a lethal necessity that will let them stand up to the full weight of the entire army, or absolutely no different than a hand-gun and we're only banning it 'cause it looks scary.

Because it can't be both.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
The more infallible the government is the more I don't want to give up my guns right before Republicans take it over permanently. You've got a serious messaging problem on your hands even if you're right

Bishyaler
Dec 30, 2009
Megamarm

Dietrich posted:

I sure wish the gun nuts would make up their mind on if a AR-15 and other military style semi-auto rifles are a lethal necessity that will let them stand up to the full weight of the entire army, or absolutely no different than a hand-gun and we're only banning it 'cause it looks scary.

Because it can't be both.

I sure wish liberals would stop trying to empower the government right before it tips into the GOP's hands forever.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Yeah be even more suspicious of anything the GOP is willing to let get to biden's desk.

I'm okay with background checks and handgun bans but we're never getting those. We're probably never getting anything.

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jun 6, 2022

Kalit
Nov 6, 2006

The great thing about the thousands of slaughtered Palestinian children is that they can't pull away when you fondle them or sniff their hair.

That's a Biden success story.

Bishyaler posted:

I sure wish liberals would stop trying to empower the government right before it tips into the GOP's hands forever.

:rolleyes: The government is already empowered, your delusions about your political enemies are getting the best of you.

Mulva posted:

Because once a government loses it doesn't tend to exist anymore, so there's generally only one example. It's not the sort of thing you get a do-over to.

No... it doesn't? There's been lots of revolutions in lots of different countries. Those countries still exist, their government just changed forms/policies/etc. Hell, I would even count the civil war in the US as an example.

Kalit fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Jun 6, 2022

Dietrich
Sep 11, 2001

Bishyaler posted:

I sure wish liberals would stop trying to empower the government right before it tips into the GOP's hands forever.

You guys should move out to idaho and form a commune or something.

Xombie
May 22, 2004

Soul Thrashing
Black Sorcery

Mulva posted:

Because once a government loses it doesn't tend to exist anymore, so there's generally only one example. It's not the sort of thing you get a do-over to.

This is demonstrably untrue. Autonomous, breakaway, and secessionist regions exist the world over with governments that continued to exist after capitulating or brokering ceasefires. Free Derry, MAREZ, etc.

There is no successful example of this in US history.

Xombie
May 22, 2004

Soul Thrashing
Black Sorcery

Bishyaler posted:

I sure wish liberals would stop trying to empower the government right before it tips into the GOP's hands forever.

Stating "there are tanks" doesn't create tanks. The tanks are there whether you admit them or not. It isn't Schroedinger's cat.

Dietrich
Sep 11, 2001

Xombie posted:

Stating "there are tanks" doesn't create tanks. The tanks are there whether you admit them or not. It isn't Schroedinger's cat.

No, the point is that hundreds of children must die every year so that leftists can have zero-friction access to military style semi-automatic weapons, it's actually the lesser of two evils. Ignore the fact that the fascists are actually way more likely to have them.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

Dietrich posted:

No, the point is that hundreds of children must die every year so that leftists can have zero-friction access to military style semi-automatic weapons, it's actually the lesser of two evils. Ignore the fact that the fascists are actually way more likely to have them.

You're confusing correlation with causation and somehow that has you attacking people with the least power to do any of the things you want.

get a loving grip

Mulva
Sep 13, 2011
It's about time for my once per decade ban for being a consistently terrible poster.

Xombie posted:

This is demonstrably untrue. Autonomous, breakaway, and secessionist regions exist the world over with governments that continued to exist after capitulating or brokering ceasefires. Free Derry, MAREZ, etc.

There is no successful example of this in US history.

....there aren't successful examples of it in your sentence. The Free Derrys, of which there were a few, all ended bloody. The Zapatistas have their own shitshow going on, but it's not exactly been a banner.....like 30 loving years in Chiapas.

Jaxyon
Mar 7, 2016
I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Bishyaler posted:

I sure wish liberals would stop trying to empower the government right before it tips into the GOP's hands forever.

The federal government isn't going to pass gun control before November and the people most rabidly against gun control are the GOP who will be in power starting then.

Bishyaler
Dec 30, 2009
Megamarm

Xombie posted:

Stating "there are tanks" doesn't create tanks. The tanks are there whether you admit them or not. It isn't Schroedinger's cat.

You know there are guides on how to handle insurgencies and you don't attempt to brutally crush them with indiscriminate violence, right?

It's pretty disappointing that people could see exactly why Trump sending a bunch of blackmask Feds in unmarked vans to disappear Portlanders in 2020 was a giant misstep, but somehow think that the public will react positively toward the government if tanks are firing shells past the local retirement home. Heck, even The Troubles in Ireland didn't really get their start until the government was heavy handed and tipped public favor toward the IRA.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

The Lord of Hats posted:

I'm strongly in favor of gun control, to make my position clear from the start.

But I did read some of TFR's gun control thread, and while I disagree with a lot of it, a question that did make sense to me as a practical concern is enforcement. Namely, that enforcement would pretty inevitably be in the hands of the police. Who are... well, the police.

Not that I think that owning a gun is any kind of protection against cops (and neither is not owning a gun). And it's not like cops don't already indiscriminately harass the poor and minorities. But at the same time, it's hard to have faith that any kind of gun control measure doesn't just get turned into the war on drugs all over again. It's tempting to say that poo poo already sucks in that department, gun control can't make it suck worse, but that's a declaration I really don't want to be boldly making from a position of unaffected privilege.

Is this something that's blown out of proportion? Is it something that's been thought through already? Or is it just "yeah, poo poo sucks but we have to do something"

That's already the current state of affairs. The War on Drugs has a bunch of anti-gun stuff baked directly into it.

First of all, existing US law makes it illegal for anyone who's been sentenced to more than a year in prison to possess firearms, and thanks to the existing biases in our law enforcement system, about one-third of black men are convicted felons. This naturally played a part in policies like stop-and-frisk and other police practices involving the police inventing excuses to pretextually and preferentially search non-white people. It can also be involved in other sorts of police-state excesses - for example, I recently posted somewhere about a case where police officers were monitoring the social media accounts of black men with criminal records, saw one post a picture of himself at a firing range, and sent him to prison for illegal firearm possession.

Second of all, many state and federal drug laws impose an increased sentence if the person being charged possessed a firearm, even if it wasn't involved in the crime in any way. For example, in US v Denmark, Fosque Kinte Denmark (who, in a sting, sold meth to law enforcement agents over Facetime) was hit with a weapons enhancement because guns were found in his house. Even though the government found no evidence that the meth had ever been in his home, and found no evidence that the guns had been with him when he shipped the meth, the mere fact that guns were present in the same house he made the calls from was sufficient to add a dangerous weapons enhancement to his drug trafficking charges. As a Court of Appeals put it:

quote:

Besides the drug paraphernalia on the first floor, the Government does not have any evidence that Denmark ever had meth in his home. Moreover, the paraphernalia and the guns were found in different rooms and on different floors. Denmark essentially argues that these facts resolve the case.

Our threshold inquiry, then, is whether a firearm must be physically close to drugs or drug paraphernalia for the enhancement in U.S.S.G. §2D1.1(b)(1) to apply. The answer is no.

Section2D1.1(b)(1) provides that, in a conviction for unlawful manufacturing, importing, exporting, or trafficking of drugs, “If a dangerous weapon (including a firearm) was possessed, increase [the offense level] by 2 levels.” Application Note 11(A) to this provision provides: The enhancement for weapon possession in subsection (b)(1) reflects the increased danger of violence when drug traffickers possess weapons. The enhancement should be applied if the weapon was present, unless it is clearly improbable that the weapon was connected with the offense. For example, the enhancement would not be applied if the defendant, arrested at the defendant’s residence, had an unloaded hunting rifle in the closet.

We explained the mechanics of this analysis in United States v. Napolitan, where we observed that the Government must first prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, “only that the defendant possessed a dangerous weapon.” 762 F.3d at 309(internal quotation marks omitted). The burden of production then shifts to the defendant to “demonstrate that the connection between the weapon and the drug offense was clearly improbable.” . Under this approach, then, the Government does not have to prove any relationship between the weapons and the drugs. Rather, the “general rule” is that “the enhancement should be applied if a firearm was present.” It is the defendant’s burden to show the lack of a connection. Denmark argues that “the record must show ‘that a temporal and spatial relation existed between the weapon, the drug[-]trafficking activity, and the defendant.’” Denmark’s Br. at 6 (quoting Napolitan, 762 F.3d at 309). Napolitan, as noted, instructs otherwise; the Government “must show only that the defendant possessed a dangerous weapon,”, and it “can” make that showing “by establishing ‘that a temporal and spatial relation existed between the weapon, the drug trafficking activity, and the defendant,’”. The use of “can” provides a path to proving possession, but it is not the only one. Thus the Government is not required to prove a “temporal and spatial relation”—or any relation at all—between the firearms and the drugs to carry its initial burden.

...

Although Denmark may never have possessed meth at his residence, police watched him agree to sell the meth via FaceTime in the same home where the guns were found a month later. That alone makes it difficult for him to show that the guns were not connected with his drug offense.

Which brings us to point three: the courts wholly endorse the idea that there's a connection between drugs and guns, and will frequently expand the power of law enforcement and prosecutors to tie the two things together. For example, cases like United States v. Guerrero have established that under drug trafficking charges you can be hit with a weapons enhancement because one of your co-defendants had a weapon, even if you didn't know they had a weapon. According to the courts, firearms are a "tool of the trade" for drug dealers, and therefore it's "reasonably foreseeable" that someone involved in the transaction would have a gun. As such, the courts consider it extremely implausible to say you genuinely thought that none of the people involved in the drug deals owned a gun. Or as another example, take State v. Guy, where the Supreme Court of Wisconsin found that it's legal to frisk anyone suspected of drug crimes because weapons are a "tool of the trade" for drug dealers (that one comes up a lot in drug cases), because "the violence associated with drug trafficking today places law enforcement officers in extreme danger", and because "Several cases have found that drug dealers and weapons go hand in hand".

And just to bring up a fourth angle, let's not forget how much more latitude the courts give to cops when they claim the presence of a firearm or even that they suspected the presence of a firearm, to the point where "I thought I saw a gun" is already a magic phrase that essentially makes murder legal. Cases like Philando Castile, shot simply for informing the officer of his legally-possessed firearm, just go to show that the Second Amendment is already a whites-only right - and the NRA's long silence in his case is an example of how the gun lobby already only cares about gun rights for whites.

That's what it comes down to. There's already strong gun control policies in place against African-Americans. Gun control is already run pretty much exactly like the War on Drugs - in fact, the two are often coupled tightly together. And you sure as hell don't see the NRA or the gun lobby lining up to get any of this poo poo repealed. The question now is whether we're going to apply all this poo poo to white people too, or if we're going to maintain the status quo of applying anti-gun policies exclusively to non-whites.

Groovelord Neato
Dec 6, 2014


The dumbest part of the "disarming the population is the first step towards oppression" is gun owners in this country are overwhelmingly supporters of authoritarianism.

Dietrich
Sep 11, 2001

Harold Fjord posted:

You're confusing correlation with causation and somehow that has you attacking people with the least power to do any of the things you want.

get a loving grip

No, you're right, zero-friction access to weapons that only exists in america can't possibly be related to our several orders of magnitude higher levels of gun violence and deaths both here and in all the countries that our guns end up being smuggled into, it's just a coincidence.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

Dietrich posted:

No, you're right, zero-friction access to weapons that only exists in america can't possibly be related to our several orders of magnitude higher levels of gun violence and deaths both here and in all the countries that our guns end up being smuggled into, it's just a coincidence.

Correlation is in fact a relationship. You may notice some etymological similarity if you examine the words closely.

Bishyaler
Dec 30, 2009
Megamarm

Groovelord Neato posted:

The dumbest part of the "disarming the population is the first step towards oppression" is gun owners in this country are overwhelmingly supporters of authoritarianism.

Yes, the right-wingers with all the guns are about to oppress a bunch of people who don't believe in guns, probably with the future GOP governments tacit approval. This is not the own you think it is.

Jaxyon
Mar 7, 2016
I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Groovelord Neato posted:

The dumbest part of the "disarming the population is the first step towards oppression" is gun owners in this country are overwhelmingly supporters of authoritarianism.

Taking guns away from fascists is bad actually, I guess?

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004

Jaxyon posted:

Taking guns away from fascists is bad actually, I guess?

Passing more antigun laws won't actually get the fascist police to take the guns away from their fascist friends but it will give them cover of law to take them away from people they would like to abuse who aren't already involved in drugs

Dietrich
Sep 11, 2001

Harold Fjord posted:

Correlation is in fact a relationship. You may notice some etymological similarity if you examine the words closely.

And masterbation ends with the same suffix, you might be on to something.

Harold Fjord
Jan 3, 2004
Edit- Very good Dietrich. Now that we have reached this understanding can you see where you went wrong in saying that some dumb internet leftist's opinion lead to a bunch of people dying?

The problem isn't "criminals don't follow the law" its that we don't actually have law enforcement that we can rely on as a nation. Doesn't look like there's really much in the way of solutions going forward for us though

Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jun 6, 2022

Jaxyon
Mar 7, 2016
I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Harold Fjord posted:

Passing more antigun laws won't actually get the fascist police to take the guns away from their fascist friends but it will give them cover of law to take them away from people they would like to abuse who aren't already involved in drugs

Not passing more antigun laws isn't going to prevent the fascist cops and their fascist friends from killing whomever they want to.

However, nobody is going to be passing gun laws at the federal levels because the fascists are rabidly antigun so this is a thought experiment at best.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

Liquid Communism posted:

You might want to update your understanding there. Between Cliven Bundy and company's little standoff out west and the Jan 6 insurrection, the will of the US government to crack down seems to have softened immensely.

I wonder what these two groups have in common that would make that the case.

The enthusiastic support of a significant part of the political establishment and law enforcement community.

During the 2014 Bundy standoff, Nevada's junior senator publicly called them patriots and personally called up BLM to tell them to stop being mean to the Bundy clan, and Nevada's governor backed the Bundys as well. And as for the Jan 6th insurrection, they literally had informers and co-conspirators in the administration and inside Congress itself.

And even then, both movements have so far completely failed at their objectives. The best they've been able to accomplish is "only some of them went to jail, instead of all of them". Not exactly a successful insurgency!

mobby_6kl posted:

Ok guys help me understand, so there are two options here. Either it's possible to achieve something against the government through (threats of) armed resistance, or it's not. I'm confused about the implications of either conclusion that you're getting at. Is one or the other a good or a bad thing? Which one supports stricter gun control?

It can be possible or not possible, and it can be good or bad. It depends on who is attempting to achieve what, and how much support they have among local, state, and national populations and power-holders! This is because the primary political impact of gun ownership is in the relationship between lower levels of government and higher levels of government. Depending on the relative positions of those different levels of government, guns can have a positive political impact or a negative political impact.

Probably the number one case of a successful insurgency against the US federal government would be the southern slave states during the Reconstruction Era. But that had the overwhelming support of the local armed populace of trained military veterans, as well as the solid support of local law enforcement, local politicians, and powerful and influential state figures. Moreover, this successful insurgency happened in the wake of a failed armed uprising against the federal government. Instead, they found success by avoiding direct conflict with federal troops. They got much more mileage out of using force and terror to consolidate their political power in areas where federal oversight was weak, and then using that political power to reduce the will of the federal government to intervene in the South, allowing them to expand their political power even further, in a general feedback loop that continued until they were able to gain enough federal political leverage to force the withdrawal of federal troops.

Xombie
May 22, 2004

Soul Thrashing
Black Sorcery

Bishyaler posted:

You know there are guides on how to handle insurgencies and you don't attempt to brutally crush them with indiscriminate violence, right?

I'm just going to repeat myself here:

The thing is that they don't need to. You will never get that far. The local police has enough firepower to put down an insurgency. Failing that, the National Guard can do it with just their basic infantry. That's assuming you don't get the FBI to arrest you long before it gets that far.

quote:

It's pretty disappointing that people could see exactly why Trump sending a bunch of blackmask Feds in unmarked vans to disappear Portlanders in 2020 was a giant misstep, but somehow think that the public will react positively toward the government if tanks are firing shells past the local retirement home. Heck, even The Troubles in Ireland didn't really get their start until the government was heavy handed and tipped public favor toward the IRA.

I'm sorry, but what? The IRA was established 1-3 years after the Easter Rising, and at the same time Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in the 1918 Irish elections.

Groovelord Neato
Dec 6, 2014


Bishyaler posted:

Yes, the right-wingers with all the guns are about to oppress a bunch of people who don't believe in guns, probably with the future GOP governments tacit approval. This is not the own you think it is.

Yes it is. It's why I made the post.

A gun in the home is 11 times more likely to be used to end or attempt to end one's life, 7 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, and 4 times more likely to accidentally injure someone than to ever be used in self-defense.

Bishyaler
Dec 30, 2009
Megamarm

Xombie posted:

I'm just going to repeat myself here:

The thing is that they don't need to. You will never get that far. The local police has enough firepower to put down an insurgency. Failing that, the National Guard can do it with just their basic infantry. That's assuming you don't get the FBI to arrest you long before it gets that far.

I'm sorry, but what? The IRA was established 1-3 years after the Easter Rising, and at the same time Sinn Féin won a landslide victory in the 1918 Irish elections.

I can repeat myself too: There is significant overlap between the insurrectionist right, the police, and the national guard. The FBI utterly failed to prevent 1/6 and they were advertising that on the open internet like Coachella. We can go round and round on this forever, so its probably about time we dropped it.

Re: Ireland - I'm talking about the late 60s, early 70s

Bishyaler
Dec 30, 2009
Megamarm

Groovelord Neato posted:

Yes it is. It's why I made the post.

A gun in the home is 11 times more likely to be used to end or attempt to end one's life, 7 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, and 4 times more likely to accidentally injure someone than to ever be used in self-defense.

Statistics don't map neatly onto people.

You made the post to jab at the authoritarian right by saying "Look they have guns and they don't fight tyranny!". And I'm saying, like others have in this thread, that the people with guns often oppress those who don't. Which is exactly what's about to happen in this country, or is already happening if you count all the political violence by the far-right.

Groovelord Neato
Dec 6, 2014


It wasn't a jab at the authoritarian right it was a jab at people making the silly dictators disarming the populace argument.

Xombie
May 22, 2004

Soul Thrashing
Black Sorcery

Bishyaler posted:

I can repeat myself too: There is significant overlap between the insurrectionist right, the police, and the national guard.

This has absolutely no bearing on their capability to put down whatever insurrection you believe leftists will mount. It also doesn't make you more likely to succeed, it makes you more likely to fail.

quote:

The FBI utterly failed to prevent 1/6 and they were advertising that on the open internet like Coachella. We can go round and round on this forever, so its probably about time we dropped it.

Once again, the participants in 1/6 lost. It was explicitly endorsed by the sitting president at the time, who personally held back the National Guard and still failed to achieve its goal. The vote it was intended to stop occurred the very next day in the same spot. But you think you're going to be more successful against the sitting government who is fighting your insurrection? 1/6 was not a scrappy grassroots uprising against the entire government, it was one branch pitting a riot against the other.

None of your argument makes sense using 1/6 as an example. It fails to prove your point on any level. It proves you wrong on several.

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Bishyaler
Dec 30, 2009
Megamarm

Xombie posted:

This has absolutely no bearing on their capability to put down whatever insurrection you believe leftists will mount. It also doesn't make you more likely to succeed, it makes you more likely to fail.

Once again, the participants in 1/6 lost. It was explicitly endorsed by the sitting president at the time, who personally held back the National Guard and still failed to achieve its goal. The vote it was intended to stop occurred the very next day in the same spot. But you think you're going to be more successful against the sitting government who is fighting your insurrection? 1/6 was not a scrappy grassroots uprising against the entire government, it was one branch pitting a riot against the other.

None of your argument makes sense using 1/6 as an example. It fails to prove your point on any level. It proves you wrong on several.

I wasn't only talking about leftist insurrections, the right is far better positioned to use violence to get what they want, but they'll have control of the government soon enough through Democrat inaction and voter suppression so its a moot point.

The people in 1/6 lost? Not a single organizer was punished, the rubes on the ground barely got a slap on the wrist, Trump is still living his best life, and they've made the Democrats look weaker than ever. Sure they didn't manage to reinstall Trump into the WH, but they had a great trial-run for future action and they barely suffered any consequences for it. If by some miracle they don't mop the floor with you guys in 2024, they're going to do it again.

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