I think the point is that millions of Americans feel so strongly about gun ownership that they would rather be felons (and 'molon labe' their guns) than give them up.

We don't have to take anyone's guns. Even if we made some currently legal weapons illegal, just grandfather current ones and let attrition weed them out. I'll accept a solution that takes 30 years over nothing.

> I'll accept a solution that takes 30 years over nothing.

Guns last a lot longer than 30 years. 80-120 years sounds more like it. They are not going away anytime soon even if you do ban them (which wont happen).

Then why do people keep buying them?

1) different guns do different things 2) they become collectors items 3) just because we can

Why do people buy tens of thousands of Magic cards when you only need 40 in a deck to play?

The whole point of having guns is so that if somebody tries to take them away from you, you have the tools of preventing that.

The police in Hong Kong would be a lot more respectful if the (massive, dense) crowd was armed with more than laser pointers. The riots in LA where Korean shop owners defended their property. Etc., etc. Hell there were violent protests in Ferguson, MO not long ago.

"Gun Control" was originally just a mechanism to keep the (black, brown) population from owning guns; just a way of disarming the black/brown population. Look at the past laws, and current policing!

Some people in the US think "It can't happen here, now we should get rid of guns!" - as we watch the authorities putting children in cages, and protests in other countries where the police beat up protesters, and riots where people defend their loved ones and property, the rise of White Nationalism from "simmer" to "boil" and people still think we shouldn't have guns?

There's absolutely no way, in hell, Americans would willingly disarm - nor should we.

> The police in Hong Kong would be a lot more respectful if the (massive, dense) crowd was armed with more than laser pointers

This statement is laughable, yet terrifying in its naiveté.

> "Gun Control" was originally just a mechanism to keep the (black, brown) population from owning guns; just a way of disarming the black/brown population. Look at the past laws, and current policing!

The history of gun politics is inextricably tied to race, but your comment is as dismissive of gun control as it is unsupported and vague, as if waving your hands and dropping a hint of racial bias categorically invalidates arguments in favour of restricting firearms rights.

His comment is exactly accurate. The US didn’t have gun control until the democrats enacted Jim Crow laws throughout the south.

The entire purpose and history of gun control in the US was to keep black people from being able to defend themselves from the KKK.

It WAY predates Jim Crow.

Yeah, terrifying for the CCP, but not for the people. "Disarm the populace" is authoritarianism 101. The IRA, Checnya, Afghanistan - armed and motivated populations are dangerous. Not sure how that's naivete; that's why it was written into the Constitution.

It isn't "a hint of racial bias" - gun control is directly racist, always has been. "Well it isn't now" doesn't hold much water.

China showed their willingness to deploy armored vehicles in civilian areas 30 years ago. If citizens had guns there'd be a bloodbath right now.

Would the Tiananmen Square protesters have rather had guns, or not?

They were all cool with being ground up by armored vehicles and washed down storm drains?

Would the Jews of the Holocaust have rather had guns, or not?

By not having guns, you're not preventing a bloodbath - you're delaying it, and ensuring that you're on the losing side 100% of the time.

Am I the only one who finds the use of "molon labe" farcical? I mean, the Persians did come and take them and killed the entire Spartan force in the process.

It makes more sense in context, take Patrick Henry's words in 1775 to understand what liberty and the preservation of constitutional rights means to Americans.

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

or Thomas Jefferson in 1787:

"We have had 13. states independent 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure."

That was at a time when wars were fought with such arms, and the police had the same. Heck, that was true for 100+ years afterwards still.

Now the police even has tanks and army level guns, and the army of course has 1000x the resources, airplanes, drones, etc.

And of course, at the time the states were indeed independent and fighting fiercely for that. Now (and ever after the Civil War) it's all a charade, from what I understand, and it's all as the Federal government says, not really a union of independent states (as independent countries), but a state divided in N prefectures that just happen to be called states...

In your reading, guns used to be able to preserve liberty, but now they're irrelevant because the state security forces can just brutally crush any resistance with their superior firepower? That's not good rhetoric, and it's not even true! Just look at the success all those tanks and airplanes and trillions of dollars had in Afghanistan, for example. I also disagree with the finer points of "guns means freedom", but I don't think yours is a valid argument.

>Just look at the success all those tanks and airplanes and trillions of dollars had in Afghanistan, for example.

Because the average law abiding, fast-food fed Joe Public is gonna fight a full on war? Or get guns, support, and people to come join "the cause" from abroad? Or have any advantage over the government forces in "knowing the area"?

All the more reason to preserve what is left, then.

It is said that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.".

I'd say this idea, that after you are guaranteed worse results, you should double down, is even more insane.

If anything, what I wrote is all the more reason to find new strategies that don't involve "we'll fight them with guns".

Besides who'll do the fighting? The kind of people that have guns are in more in favor of fascism and army rule than those who don't. So all it takes to get them on the side of the opressors it's to sell it to them as army control, as opposed to "big government" control.

> The kind of people that have guns are in more in favor of fascism and army rule than those who don't. So all it takes to get them on the side of the opressors it's to sell it to them as army control, as opposed to "big government" control.

I feel like you have never talked to a gun owner before. Though they may lean towards the pro police/pro military side, they absolutely would not bow to the government implementing some kind of mass martial law.

Lastly, our military swears an oath to the people and the constitution, not the government. Every Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, and Guardsman is bound by oath to refuse unlawful orders. Any hint of stuff like you're talking about would lead to mass revolt within military ranks themselves. Militias would form, and armaments would be taken from the military's caches to launch a resistance.

>I feel like you have never talked to a gun owner before. Though they may lean towards the pro police/pro military side, they absolutely would not bow to the government implementing some kind of mass martial law.

That's what they pay lip service too. In practice the huge majority are chickens, when they're not pro-army (and the first to cheer for an actual martial law, as long it was done by favorable politicians to them).

>Lastly, our military swears an oath to the people and the constitution, not the government. Every Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, and Guardsman is bound by oath to refuse unlawful orders.

Yeah, good luck with that if push comes to shove.

Well put. Second-amendment gun fanatics dwell so intently on their fantasies of bravely exchanging fire with government soldiers, when in fact their government has figured out how to oppress people in less physical and more effective ways than direct military action could ever achieve.

Have you ever met a gun owner? Most do not want government overreach, hate facism(the real definition, not the “any Trump supporter” definition the left made up last year), and would outright revolt over a military dictatorship.

Wars are still fought with such arms. It's important to remember that many of the civilians who are proponents of the 2nd Amendment were trained by the military and fought in recent wars; and understand full well what it means to prosecute a modern war.

This constant obsession about the US government potentially launching overt, ground-based military action against its own people makes me envision a doomsday prepper who invests tons of resources into a fallout shelter, but rides a motorcycle without a helmet or something. The risk assessment just doesn't make sense to me at all.

Get with the times: our governments oppress and control us in ways that don't require open conflict. The 1860s are gone forever.

Disclaimer: I've never owned a gun, and I have no military or government experience.

Given what happened in New Orleans, many aspects of prepping (the food and water and all that) are not that stupid. Only have to be without food or water or security once to be dead forever.

I would consider starving in New Orleans despite the resources of the US Military being available government oppression.

> It makes more sense in context

I disagree, especially with these quotations, which are disingenuous.

Patrick Henry was a firebrand. His words were meant to incite violence and insurrection for the financial advantage of the order of people to which he belonged.

The Jefferson letter you are quoting[1] doesn't mean what you imply with how you quote it. The real meaning, if you use the sentences right before that, says that some part of the population is always going to be ignorant and misinformed and discontent in proportion to that, and that it's better they rebel openly so they can be corrected, patted on the head, and sent home instead of stewing silently. From that point of view, the people should be minimally armed so this could be accomplished with as little bloodshed as possible.

It's also fraught to impute anything about constitutional matters to Jefferson, since he regarded a constitution perpetuated more than a generation or two as a form of tyranny.

The scholarship on Sparta has been pretty thoroughly revised over the past few decades. Any reference to Sparta rooted before that is of at best suspect legitimacy.

[1]: https://thefederalistpapers.org/founders/jefferson/thomas-je...

It was a successful delaying action. They were outnumbered hundreds to one and never expected to defeat the entire enemy army themselves. They knew they were going to lose that battle, but the intent was to help win the overall war, which the Greeks did.

And if you kill many more of the enemy than they do of you despite being vastly outnumbered, you can justifiably say you gave a lot more than you got, which is a victory of sorts in its own right.

> And if you kill many more of the enemy than they do of you despite being vastly outnumbered, you can justifiably say you gave a lot more than you got

Getting (benefitting) a lot more than you gave (spent) makes more sense to me.

In this context we're talking about death: giving more death to the enemy than they could give to you. Ultimately the meaning is the same as your rewording. Just a bit more grim.

A different reading of the history is that it was a political move by the other Spartan king to force Leonidas to die in a lost cause with a small force in order to remove a rival.

Meanwhile it allowed the rest of Greece to organize a defense and it also inspired them to fight, defeating their enemies later.

Or rather: killed a small percentage of Spartans (the "300" + some allies), hardly "the entire Spartan force", while having huge losses themselves, and giving time to the rest of the Greeks to prepare and ultimately kick them off.

So there's that...

I mean, if millions of New Zealanders (and Germans, and Brits, and...) feel like that, why would we expect the US to be any different? (compliance rates for previous gun confiscation efforts overseas have been laughable - like, "I don't think there's been one with over 50% compliance" tier laughable)

The Trump administration actually did this with bump stocks with an administrative determination that bump stocks constitute an automatic weapon. Granted, it wasn't millions, but probably at least tens of thousands of people had a few weeks notice to destroy their bump stocks or be in felony possession of an automatic weapon. At the federal level, this is already more gun control than the Obama administration implemented.