The utility of 2A in an armed insurrection / resistance of the US Government.

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This thread is a spin off of the Big Gun Control thread.

Does the Second Amendment offer protection from a tyrannical US government? If so, how?

I will put forth my opinion in a follow-on post so as not to clutter future pages.

The Second Amendment does not protect the citizen from a modern military. The access to small arms (defined as any non crew-served weapon system) is little more than an illusion of security.

The best case scenario for the modern prepper / anti-government / anarchist is one in which the military force is primarily a dismounted one engaging in a persistent campaign conducting various war crimes against a civilian populace which is in open revolt against that military's government.

This is the best case scenario and the only hypothetically winnable one.

It is, of course, a complete fantasy.

1. It relies on a government which is willing to deploy the standing military in order to suppress a civilian population. Given the runaway success of drone warfare, there would be little incentive to mobilize a military aside from taking and holding key locations. Which, of course, it would have to do if the general population were in complete revolt.

However, once those locations are taken, the military has won. The effects of snipers and IED's are minimal at best.

2. Modern technology provides such a degree of overmatch that there is not a civilian weapon system that is even remotely threatening in a long term campaign. Symbolic resistance is only effective if there is no will for the military to continue to fight in the face of popular resistance.

To whit: modern body armor provides significant protection against small arms munitions. Ceramic plates can stop very large bullets.

Detection methods for small arms fire, including point of origin triangulation are very accurate, happen in real time, and are readily deployed. Which means the response (typically a bigger gun) are very lethal.

3. Modern military training is specifically designed around reacting to insurgency tactics, countering them, and neutralizing future threats.

There is little a backwoods hillbilly in the US can come up with that the military hasn't actually encountered, fought, and learned from by fighting enemies that have been fighting actual real wars for decades.

Worst case scenario? A drone war in which the government controls information.

Huh.

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Tanglebones wrote:

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Jennifer Gray (before nose job) is seriously rockin that AK-74. "Nobody puts Toni in a corner!"

Reaper,

I'm going to copy and paste your post and send it to a number of my friends who I've been telling this for months. Well stated!

Reaper, I will agree with you that if a tyrannical government has complete control over all military units, air assets, nuclear weapons, etc, then a civilian insurrection would be completely pointless. Heck, in that case you'd probably have a Hunger Games scenario where the evil empire just nukes whatever city is causing the most trouble and waits for the rest to surrender.

But I have to have enough faith that a certain number of units and military leaders would fight to uphold the Constitution. Civilian guerillas backed up by regulars have been extremely successful throughout military history, and I don't see why that wouldn't be the case for the foreseeable future.

I'd like to ask the following question, and I'm not meaning it as a challenge but out of genuine curiosity. If the US military holds all the cards when it comes to superior weaponry and countermeasures, why are we having such a hard time stamping out the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Reaper81 wrote:

Does the Second Amendment offer protection from a tyrannical US government? If so, how?

No, it doesn't really, because it has been so watered down over the decades.

jdzappa wrote:

I'd like to ask the following question, and I'm not meaning it as a challenge but out of genuine curiosity. If the US military holds all the cards when it comes to superior weaponry and countermeasures, why are we having such a hard time stamping out the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Because they are not using them to the fullest of their capabilities. Despite what is being claimed by some people, the US does a heck of a lot to avoid civilian casualties. If they did not care, at all, they could effectively depopulate the areas of the country that grow the Taliban. Of course, that would just result in even *more* popping up somewhere else...

jdzappa wrote:

But I have to have enough faith that a certain number of units and military leaders would fight to uphold the Constitution.

But whose interpretation of the constitution? The supreme court or Cleetus in Mississippi?

You understand that the federal government acts with constitutional authority even when you don't agree with it, right?

jdzappa wrote:

But I have to have enough faith that a certain number of units and military leaders would fight to uphold the Constitution. Civilian guerillas backed up by regulars have been extremely successful throughout military history, and I don't see why that wouldn't be the case for the foreseeable future.

If parts of the military joined the revolution, they'd be handing out weapons to the rebels making the second amendment irrelevant.

jdzappa wrote:

Reaper, I will agree with you that if a tyrannical government has complete control over all military units, air assets, nuclear weapons, etc, then a civilian insurrection would be completely pointless. Heck, in that case you'd probably have a Hunger Games scenario where the evil empire just nukes whatever city is causing the most trouble and waits for the rest to surrender.

But I have to have enough faith that a certain number of units and military leaders would fight to uphold the Constitution. Civilian guerillas backed up by regulars have been extremely successful throughout military history, and I don't see why that wouldn't be the case for the foreseeable future.

I'd like to ask the following question, and I'm not meaning it as a challenge but out of genuine curiosity. If the US military holds all the cards when it comes to superior weaponry and countermeasures, why are we having such a hard time stamping out the Taliban in Afghanistan?

It's a completely alien culture to a foreign military invasion force.

bombsfall wrote:
SallyNasty wrote:

The supreme court or Cleetus in Mississippi?

Part of the uprisin' fantasy is the idea that everyone would join together in facing down the fascists (loosely defined) that somehow suddenly came into power. I'd wager that most of us would not see insurgent war as the way to go, and would end up dodging bullets and roadside bombs set by a dude we used to see at the grocery store. Sounds great.

Pretty much. The uprising fantasy requires that a significant portion of the military join the insurgency to have any chance at being successful. If things are bad enough that large numbers of soldiers start deserting, I imagine the insurgency would start with them, not the local gun club.

It's also the case that the Taliban has significant government support, from Pakistan and possibly other governments. It has cross-border sanctuaries in which to plan, train, and resupply. It has large civilian support in border areas of Pakistan adjacent to Afghanistan. And it appears to have significant support in Pakistani intelligence and parts of their military as well.

The point here is that without some of the US military switching sides, the civilian components won't make the difference. The disconnect is that the early proponents of this theory were writing at a time when the *only* US armed forces were based on militias that were trained to be a temporary but fully fledged and equipped military force. Under that scenario, yes, the civilians were also the soldiers.

But that translates to the military fighting the military in a modern scenario, in which any number of civilians without actual military weapons, unit training and logistics will simply be the tail of the dog. If we want this capability, then we need to train all adults as members of the military, get rid of the standing army, and require yearly service with periodic training and the location of military weapons in each town. Then we will be back to the reality that the Second has as it's milieu.

Without that, the militia clause makes no sense.

I think the better example of a civilian originating insurgency would be Syria rather than Afghanistan.

SallyNasty wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

But I have to have enough faith that a certain number of units and military leaders would fight to uphold the Constitution.

But whose interpretation of the constitution? The supreme court or Cleetus in Mississippi?

You understand that the federal government acts with constitutional authority even when you don't agree with it, right?

If the "official" government seized power without being duly elected and began rounding up people for death camps, then I'd say they weren't upholding the Constitution. This was the only scenario I was talking about. If Cleetus and his buddies decide to rebel from a duly elected government, then I fully support the government crushing them.

At any rate, I think there are two more likely dystopian scenarios. The first is the majority of Americans support the slow slide into despotism, similar to how the ancient Romans accepted rule by ceasar for stability and the fact they got lots of free bread and circuses. In that case, civilian forces may not make a huge difference, but at the very least it's going to be a little harder to march the dissenters off to the gas chamber. And I'd much rather die quickly from a bullet on my feet than die on my knees chocking. A more likely dystopian scenario IMHO is economic/social collapse similar to what happened to the USSR. The elites still have military/police protection, but everyone else is SOL. In that case, having your own weapon would be critical for survival.

But that translates to the military fighting the military in a modern scenario, in which any number of civilians without actual military weapons, unit training and logistics will simply be the tail of the dog. If we want this capability, then we need to train all adults as members of the military, get rid of the standing army, and require yearly service with periodic training and the location of military weapons in each town. Then we will be back to the reality that the Second has as it's milieu.

As crazy as it sounds, there are benefits to this idea. First, regular military physical training and discipline would cut the obesity rates way down. Second, countries like Switzerland where everyone is part of the militia and maintain their own weapons have less gun deaths than America.

But I'm not sure why - except for discussion's sake - the GWJ board is so focused on shooting down the first clause of the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court has upheld that the second part clearly grants individual gun-owning rights regardless of the need for modern day militias. The First Amendment may have first and foremost been focused on ensuring liberty, but it also protects porn.

Thank you for bring up logistics and training, Ro. Even if this resistance force could figure out how to operate a Bradley, Stryker, or M1, it is a whole other issue to feed them beasts.

I agree with Reaper.

First, an insurgency would be fought primarily with IEDs, of which the right to make and possess explosive devices are not granted by the 2A.

Second, the only hope for an American insurgency is to convince military units to switch sides. Yet the message being passed to these units would be controlled by the government. The government has gotten pretty good at controlling the mesasge over the last 30 years or so. So, back to sqaure one on that. Any budding insurgency would be painted as a fringe militia group (a la Ruby Ridge) and not gain popular support.

jdzappa wrote:

At any rate, I think there are two more likely dystopian scenarios. The first is the majority of Americans support the slow slide into despotism, similar to how the ancient Romans accepted rule by ceasar for stability and the fact they got lots of free bread and circuses. In that case, civilian forces may not make a huge difference, but at the very least it's going to be a little harder to march the dissenters off to the gas chamber. And I'd much rather die quickly from a bullet on my feet than die on my knees chocking. A more likely dystopian scenario IMHO is economic/social collapse similar to what happened to the USSR. The elites still have military/police protection, but everyone else is SOL. In that case, having your own weapon would be critical for survival.

Neither situations have you overthrowing or protecting yourself from an evil government though. In one you just want a quick death, in the other your gun protects you from random looters and the like, but the elites (and by extension the government) could still do what they want to you. In the former situation, the government would most likely declare it illegal for any private citizen to own any kind of firearm (or any other weapon that would enable them to put up a fight) long before they get to the point where they're killing dissenters. Also, gas chambers? Why capture you, bring you to a death camp, then gas you when they could just send a drone to blow up your house? If they aren't ready to openly kill dissenters as a warning to others, they could say it was a gas pipeline accident, a meth-lab explosion, or that you were a terrorist who blew himself up while trying to build a bomb. That would be much easier to cover up than the existence of death camps and gas chambers.

Paleocon wrote:

I think the better example of a civilian originating insurgency would be Syria rather than Afghanistan.

And they're not doing so hot, quite frankly.

I think the reason Afghanistan and Iraq are brought up in discussions like this is because they're more in the cultural conscious than something like Syria or Lebanon.

jdzappa wrote:

At any rate, I think there are two more likely dystopian scenarios. The first is the majority of Americans support the slow slide into despotism, similar to how the ancient Romans accepted rule by ceasar for stability and the fact they got lots of free bread and circuses. In that case, civilian forces may not make a huge difference, but at the very least it's going to be a little harder to march the dissenters off to the gas chamber. And I'd much rather die quickly from a bullet on my feet than die on my knees chocking. A more likely dystopian scenario IMHO is economic/social collapse similar to what happened to the USSR. The elites still have military/police protection, but everyone else is SOL. In that case, having your own weapon would be critical for survival.

The first is vanishingly unlikely (and the US is nothing like the Roman Republic in it's governance, military or social situation). The second has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

As crazy as it sounds, there are benefits to this idea. First, regular military physical training and discipline would cut the obesity rates way down. Second, countries like Switzerland where everyone is part of the militia and maintain their own weapons have less gun deaths than America.

I've recommended this many times here. However, in Switzerland's case, the population and society are almost uniquely uniform in the West. That probably plays into this effect (as it does for the unusually stubborn racism that's seen there, as well.) It's not a good argument for universal carry. Also, the government keeps track of every one of the militia weapons, as well as what we'd call "assault weapons". They are required to be licensed. Militia ammunition is held in government armories, not in private homes. The Swiss rate of both handgun possession and firearms owning households is also about 2/3 of those in the US. Ammo sales are recorded. Semi-auto long arms are only sold after requirements are met, like the ownership of a regulated gun cabinet. (Bolt action you don't need a license for). And they require a registration of every private sale, and every weapon sold in the ten years prior to the sales registration law had to be registered as well. The government has a record of all these transactions and I'm not aware of restrictions on their use of that data.

I'd *love* to have Switzerland's gun laws here. The NRA would not allow 1/10 of what they do to pass here.

The Syrians have had to bring in outside fighters and units; train their troops and equip them with military weapons; bring in professional military leaders with combat experience; train troops outside the country; and accept lots of covert aid. And they are, as noted, struggling, although I think they will win. (Why? Because they now have enough experienced and supplied militias that they are effectively fielding a modern light infantry army with some armor support. In other words, it's no longer a civilian force. But it's taken nearly the entire male population of towns and cities to put this together. And guess what? Military conscription has been mandatory for Syrian males for decades, ranging from 2 years to 18 months training. So can one say they are actually untrained civilians? I don't think that is really true.

The US is very different, with only a tiny percentage of US citizens with military experience. In 2011, there were about 12 million vets between the ages of 35 and 65, with only 1.8 million under the age of 35. There were about 75 million Americans between the age of 18 and 35 in 2011. If we tried to put together militias in the face of military opposition like Syria, we'd have utterly failed.

One of the things that came out of the Katrina mess, where the local government actually did collapse for a few days, was that the responsible gun owner crowd were some of the worst actors in the aftermath.

http://www.thenation.com/article/kat...

This isn't particularly unusual, incidentally. In most countries where repressive governments have taken over, the gun owners in those countries have been equally or more likely to support the repressive measures than to oppose them. Particularly if the measures are against some ethnic, religious, or political minority. It's no different in this country. Access to firearms didn't help the Native American tribes, it never led to freeing the slaves, didn't keep Japanese-American citizens from being interred, and it didn't break Jim Crow. The truth is, we've tested this "resistance against repressive government" thing over and over again throughout our history, and it has failed each and every time.

I'm somewhere in the middle in the gun control debate, but I find the standing militia argument to be pretty specious. The second amendment is sometimes described as an ejection seat for the country. But in that sense, it's less like the ejection seat in an F-16 and more like the escape system in the space shuttle: only usable in very specific situations where you are likely to be dead in the first place.

What we really should be doing in this country is having an adult conversation about what kinds of impacts guns have on our society, what can realistically be done to mitigate those negative impacts, and how the Second Amendment fits into all of that.

Robear's excellent post on the cross-board support of Taliban has an aspect which I would like to expand upon. Afghan Taliban depends on Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Pakistan for funding, political cover, logistics, save havens etc. Who is going to be interesting in supporting and sustaining American Taliban from abroad? Canada? Mexico? Cuba, or some EU country, perhaps?

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Who is going to be interesting in supporting and sustaining American Taliban from abroad? Canada? Mexico? Cuba, or some EU country, perhaps? :)

It doesn't matter if someone wanted to or not. They simply couldn't afford the cost of supporting an American insurgency.

What I find interesting is that if a fascist government would be put in place there is a good likelihood they would do so on a platform of non-acceptance and bigotry. There is a decent amount of Americans who would go all in on that in a second.

The people who would come to power wouldn't be stupid (or they wouldn't even come close). They would know that having the populous come along makes things many many times easier. A message would be crafted to get the most militant portions of the American people on their side.

It isn't like there was a massive insurrection in Germany in 1933.

OG_slinger wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Who is going to be interesting in supporting and sustaining American Taliban from abroad? Canada? Mexico? Cuba, or some EU country, perhaps? :)

It doesn't matter if someone wanted to or not. They simply couldn't afford the cost of supporting an American insurgency.

And even if the EU wanted to, there is the small issue of a few thousand miles of ocean and the world's largest Navy.

Based on this weekend's gun show here in Syracuse, it appears that a large number of the most vocal 2A advocates are physically incapable of sustaining any resistance much past people walking onto their front porch.

Apparently the authors of the 2a forgot to mention that it's difficult to defend your freedom when you're so fat you need an electric scooter to propel you around the gun show.

Bear wrote:

Based on this weekend's gun show here in Syracuse, it appears that a large number of the most vocal 2A advocates are physically incapable of sustaining any resistance much past people walking onto their front porch.

Apparently the authors of the 2a forgot to mention that it's difficult to defend your freedom when you're so fat you need an electric scooter to propel you around the gun show.

I call this the "Doomsday Prepper Workout". Every time I see someone who espouses the paranoid fantasies of societal collapse, they invariably look like folks who would fare the worst in such a scenario. They never look like they could actually run three blocks to evade a mass of zombies or lift a roll up door to get to a defensible area. It sort of goes into the very American mentality that one can simply purchase one's way to a safer, more prepared, healthier, or more attractive life.

Oh, and it isn't exclusive to 2A folks.

Paleocon wrote:
Bear wrote:

Based on this weekend's gun show here in Syracuse, it appears that a large number of the most vocal 2A advocates are physically incapable of sustaining any resistance much past people walking onto their front porch.

Apparently the authors of the 2a forgot to mention that it's difficult to defend your freedom when you're so fat you need an electric scooter to propel you around the gun show.

I call this the "Doomsday Prepper Workout". Every time I see someone who espouses the paranoid fantasies of societal collapse, they invariably look like folks who would fare the worst in such a scenario. They never look like they could actually run three blocks to evade a mass of zombies or lift a roll up door to get to a defensible area. It sort of goes into the very American mentality that one can simply purchase one's way to a safer, more prepared, healthier, or more attractive life.

Oh, and it isn't exclusive to 2A folks.

What are you gonna do with that fancy AR when the gubmint man knocks over your power chair?

Reaper81 wrote:

What are you gonna do with that fancy AR when the gubmint man knocks over your power chair?

Based on what I saw this weekend, all the gubmint needs to do is cut off the insulin supply. It apprears that diabetes and coronary artery disease is a much bigger threat then gubmint tyranny.

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