It's also not cool to characterize people who have assault rifles or support the 2nd amendment as rednecks. I'm certainly not one. It's actually kind of offensive to even use that term anyway if you ask me.

Is that why I had to vouch for the comment, because you misread it and became offended?

Wait what. Did you mean, literally any rifle that isn’t some antiquated bolt-action one or something like a sniper rifle? Because iirc pretty much any even remotely non-vintage rifle/handgun is semi-auto, aside from a few novelty/specialty guns.

>> Because iirc pretty

Thanks for the compliment! Let's address what was said, and what I meant.

Here's the part of the post I was responding to specifically: >>It's also not cool to characterize people who have assault rifles or support the 2nd amendment as rednecks.

Now, most gun people will go out of their way to inform you that AR-15s and similar civilian weapons aren't "assault rifles", even though that's what most people are talking about in these kinds of discussions. You can't (technically) own a full-auto weapon in the US. Based on my general understanding of guns in the US, when most people see an AR-15, a "Modern Sporting Rifle" but I hate that term so I just described the gun, they think it's an "Assault Rifle" but that's not true.

I don't really know what you're point is here? The original (now flagged) post was pointing talking about redneck 2A-loving gun nuts. I was pointing out that 1- I don't like rednecks, 2- not everyone who owns a gun is a redneck, and 3- the Afghanistan War and a second US civil war would be very different conflicts.

ALSO, fwiw, there's plenty of modern bolt-action rifles being produced theses days because they're reliable AF, and if you're good at hunting you shouldn't need a clip (yea yea, "true Scotsman", whatever). Also, there are plenty of shotguns that are not semi-auto. There's all kinds of guns!

You chose to use term "redneck". When used like you did that's clearly a snide derogatory term that blankets a certain class of disadvantaged folks. Not only is that term insulting when used by you to a whole class of struggling people but you also then applied the implication of that term to a whopping 30% of Americans.

Overall crime, no, there is no correlation, but there is for guns used in crimes, which dramatically increases the rate of deaths and severity of those crimes.

https://medium.com/@tgof137/gun-ownership-rates-do-not-predi...

The studies in your link are after "controlling for poverty and urbanization", "after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation", etc.

I'm not a statistician enough to argue the methodology of the papers, but I'll say given that the trend only emerges after lots of adjustments, it makes me a little skeptical. At least, it would be pretty easy to let some bias or motivated reasoning slip in.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...

A criminal mind would use the tools available and a gun makes throwing rocks (chunks of lead) at people deadly more often than using your hand.

Look at criminal states, those leaders use armies instead of guns because they have an army available.

"Firearm prevalence is significantly related to total violent crime (B = .600, p < .05). With each unit increase in firearm prevalence, the expected count of the violent crime index increases by .600. This also indicates that the percent change in the total violent crime is an 82% increase for every unit increase in firearm ownership. The prevalence of guns does significantly increase the violent crime in the county. This finding is consistent with previous research on firearm prevalence and crime both in the United States and internationally."

[1]: http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/jpj_firearm_owner...

>Firearm prevalence in the United States is difficult to determine because there is no database that collects information on firearm ownership and prevalence. Thus, analyses that study firearm prevalence have had to develop proxies for firearm ownership. As a proxy for firearm ownership, the current analysis used the percentage of suicides by a firearm from 2000 to 2010.

Little tricks like this are why people lose faith in science.

Exactly, if the same logic for guns were used on other things then you'd have people up in arms saying nobody should be able to drive cars because of how many people kill others with them.

There is another one you are missing: deterring people from violence against other people, given the knowledge they might be carrying a gun. In a similar way to how nukes are actually used in 21st century.

I'm genuinely wondering.

If anything the war in Afghanistan has proven that technology is no match for resilience and grit.

Get saved by the French?

ducks

They did bankrupt themselves. The Crown treasury was completely empty in 1788.

If the US had the desire and stomach to wage total war against the people of Afghanistan (gladly we do not), there would not be a lingering quagmire.

It's not really technology holding us back, in either situation. Fear the day technology is good enough that the few can act without the restraint of civilization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_partisans

>The partisans made significant contributions to the war by frustrating German plans to exploit occupied Soviet territories economically, gave considerable help to the Soviet Army by conducting systematic strikes against Germany's rear communication network, disseminated political work among the local population by publishing newspapers and leaflets, and succeeded in creating and maintaining a feeling of insecurity among German forces.[1]

Personally, I'd expect the main skirmishes in a US civil war to be factions of the military fighting against each other.

The US supported the anti-communist opposition, and the Soviets withdrew and Afghanistan returned to democratic elections.

Like all things politics, its all how you spin it. Perhaps the real loss was what happened after the US spent over $1T to spread democracy in Afghanistan, they began electing the Taliban as their democratic leaders, and we ultimately went to war against the Taliban costing even more. That firmly established the US believes in democracy so long as we also support the party that wins the elections.

Yes, this is the event we're talking about. Not the one in the 80s.

FYI we spent over $1T to spread democracy in Afghanistan pre-2001.

The Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and the illegitimate communist government was ousted right?

It would be like equating WWI Germany with WWII Nazi Germany...but who knows, maybe people do that.

Even the previous US civil war isn't a great example because that was a regional war before modern technology. You could have guerilla forces hiding out in southern backwaters that the Union wasn't familiar with. It would be much harder to do that in a country as massively surveilled as the modern US.

These wars would not be the same, and this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the scope of the conflict.

The point is to increase the cost of violence against the population. The Swiss bunker / guerrilla strategy.

Also, there is no reason to suspect asymmetric vectors like autonomous drone armies would accrue solely to state actors.

As an American living in Switzerland, this is not a fair comparison. The Swiss strategy involves mandatory service (with the backing of the government), short and long term preparations against an outside invading force (with the backing of the government), highly regulated gun ownership (with the backing of the government). It's always wielded with the backing of the government against an outside force.

In stark contrast, the U.S. mindset around gun ownership has always been about wielding the weapons against the government itself. Instead, what this effectively means is that this will be an easily hijacked ideal if, in our politically charged era, portions of the government are viewed as "illegitimate" and one part of the government backs a coup with gun-toting civilians against "the government" (the part not liked).

As a Swiss American, I agree. Today’s Second Amendment debate is perverted.

My argument was to the point of the Second Amendment, its intent. America is currently on an extreme end of the gun-debate spectrum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

I think it's weird how American gun advocates didn't get upset when SCOTUS took some white-out to the amendment they claim to hold so sacred.

Your statement is forced just to make the point. I don't think the gun control topic was ever related to law enforcement or military personnel carrying guns. It's more about having guns easily accessible to violent and repeat offenders, mentally unstable people, etc.

Even in locations where firearms are heavily restricted from the civilian populace, the police remain armed. The funny thing is that individuals wanting bodyguards hire armed bodyguards. The fact is that LEOs and private bodyguards carry guns because they are an effective method of stopping an attacker.

> Your statement is forced just to make the point. I don't think the gun control topic was ever related to law enforcement or military personnel carrying guns.

The lack of relation is purely due to the limits of your rational thinking and ability to apply logical principles.

> It's more about having guns easily accessible to violent and repeat offenders, mentally unstable people, etc.

The most recent talk by presidential candidates(even if their actual election is gratefully a longshot) has shown that to be a lie.

The police and bodyguards are there specifically to deal with dangerous situations and attractive targets. You are not authority, not trained, and not a target that attracts attacks. You don't need the gun, you want it "just in case", makes you feel "bigger". What else must you be allowed to use just because someone else is? There are bigger hurdles to clear for many other things that are less critical than obtaining and using guns. Why not have some formal training, medical checks, background checks, exams, etc. for getting/using something close to an assault rifle?

> carry guns because they are an effective method of stopping an attacker

No, the effective method is to prevent the attack altogether. Something the rest of the western world is far closer to, even without guns. Education is a wonderful thing. It's the inability to educate and prevent this kind of behavior that makes you live in a society where you "have to" walk around armed "just in case". Instead of preventing a fire, you're letting it start and then soaking the house in water. That's just what you do when you failed at every other step and there's literally nothing else to do.

> The lack of relation

Now you're just hiding your failed argumentation under a layer of insults. Is it working yet? Nobody asks police/military to not carry guns, surgeons to not use scalpels, pilots to not fly planes, or physicists to not fire lasers. Just make sure guns (and all other examples) don't get in the hands of people who can't make or understand a rational argument, let alone take life or death decisions.

> The most recent talk

The most recent mass shootings have shown that unstable people (especially children) with easy access to guns leads to tragedy. But by all means, if "the talk" said something else don't let reality spoil it.

Again, guns are not the problem with the proper brains behind them. Just look at Switzerland or Germany if you need proof.

Your argument regarding surgeons and scalpels looks superficially reasonable at first, but no one has proposed restricting scalpels to ordinary people. We shouldn't prohibit external defibrillators or occupant firehoses because these are items "for professionals".

The comment about "the talk" is also a huge strike on your position. That statement was about the policy positions of candidates for the highest elected office. If you're this out of touch, then hopefully you do not participate in the presidential election(if you are a legal US voter). The country is better off without you.

Assault rifles are select fire, that is capable of automatic fire. These are legal to own/transfer provided they have been previously registered with the ATF and made before 1986. They also tend to be quite expensive, tens of thousands of dollars, and the process to get one is rather lengthy, usually the better part of a year. This is primarily governed by the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Firearms Protection Act of 1986.

You may be confusing the phrase "assault rifle" with "assault weapon" which is often used in politics and media. Assault weapons are semi-automatic, but what is and is not an assault weapon tends to come down to jurisdiction and a combination of features (pistol grip, stock configuration, etc). Regardless, these are much more readily available and considerably cheaper.

Laws governing firearms in the US are actually quite complicated, and the terminology is also pretty verbose. Hopefully this helps.

The thing to keep in mind is that the U.S. Revolution was not what we would call today a grassroots movement. It was based in the pre-existing State-level representative governments. It wasn't a mob of people spontaneously deciding to take to the streets and push the bastards out, it was a functional system of government deciding to shave off the layer above.

When the States decided to switch from a looser confederation to form a more perfect Union, they wanted to keep that option open to repeat the process -- it was not originally about John Doe using his musket to chase off the local tax collector but about the State of Virginia using its own Army of Virginia to drive out anyone trying to interfere overly much in its business.

Incidentally, most States still have standing forces that report to the Governor.

This didn't go so well for the slave states.

So, no, it doesn't make any sense in the current age to say you own guns to protect yourself from the government.

Except that an army cannot fight on 10 fronts at the same time. When you have a whole country turning against you, you can't be there at every single place every second with a regular army. On the contrary a regular army would be beaten up in no time.

You also have to take in account that it's much more likely there would be rogue generals turnings against the power in place so general + armed people is a good catalyst.

The CIA also has a document (sorry, I don't remember the name) detailing ways that civilians can sabotage efforts by doing things like holding extra meetings, etc.

I wonder if anyone would stay in the military to better thwart it.

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...

That's probably not the case for HK.

So the US civilian population has an out of shape military with small arms at around 10x the size of the standing military.

Truth is, we have no idea what a US civil war might look like. There would be military defections as well as citizens joining the government. With no understanding of what the factions would look like, it's difficult to forecast blindly (not that you couldn't make projections based on certain groups leading the antagonists side and how the public at large might react).

A demonstration like happening in Hong Kong likely wouldnt ever happen. I use the nevada rancher incident as an example.

Govt agents backed down from armed "militia" to avoid the bloodshed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff

Govt agents

In the Bundy incident(s) no shots were fired. I believe that's because as much as the Bundy group believe their own bullshit (about land rights and white supremacy and whatnot) they also know that this is a fight about taxation currently and that they can keep enough support on their side by making that the principle issue. The government isn't going to go in hot to collect taxes, because jesus christ that's a terrible look for them and they don't want another Waco.

The whole incident involve those yahoos is a mess, but a really great example of a militia strong arming the feds (it sucks that the feds screwed the pooch in the trial of the 2016 standoff and let them get off because of procedural misconduct).

As I watch our govt in action I think this is the norm and to be expected.

I am shocked the judge actually let the Bundy's off TBH. I wonder if it wasn't just an appeasement thing. Usually testing the crowns authority ends up poorly

High profile cases like that are high risk high reward for the prosecution. You can't let private militias start dictating how the country works, but you also can't fire up extremists and provide sympathy for their cause.

Judge Navarro admonished the government for “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct” and withholding “potentially exculpatory” evidence, including FBI logs on surveillance and sniper activity, threat-assessment reports indicating that the Bundys were not dangerous, and internal reports about misconduct involving BLM agents.

There have actually been recent cases where federal agents were held off by armed citizens and later deemed to be in the right by the courts. It's not hypothetical.

As an American, the thought of an actual armed uprising feels so outlandish in 2019 that I'm pretty certain that no one in government takes it seriously (c.f. the steady erosion of civil liberties)

Against Russia and the US

You don't win revolutionary wars through brute force, you win them by getting public opinion on your side, which makes the current government in place illegitimate.

With persistent surveillance, some will be reluctant to take up arms knowing the feds could capture you later at a time of their choosing.

There is a substantial portion of the US that hunts or otherwise use guns as protection (for them and livestock) from animals.

Additionally, there are many parts of the US where police may really be 30+ min away.

The 2nd Amendment was arguably about having volunteer state militias where the citizens supplied their own guns, but because of quirks of history and grammar, that isn't the only reason gun ownership is allowed.

Americans, on the whole, are also pretty distrusting of government, even in the best of times.

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" said Mao.

In Europe that would be countries like Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland (interestingly, those countries are well-known producers and exporters of firearms).

The common refrain goes “about as well as the Taliban,” who currently negotiating an American withdrawal after 18 years of serious U.S. military attention.

So you mean that living standards drop back by 100 (or 1000) years?

But seriously - asymmetric warfare works best against scrupulous adversaries who claim the moral high ground and stop short of "salt the earth" warfare. China doesn't, the CCP won't mind starving out an entire city or state to get them to stop resisting, just like the Soviets didn't.

And on the flip side, the Russian troops there were badly equipped and half starved at times too - Boys In Zinc by Svetlana Alexievich is a depressing series of accounts from there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:War_crimes_in_Afgha...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare?wprov=sfla1

Ultimatum style anything always creates unpredictability

The fantasy of standing up to The Gubment comes from two things:

1) a rambo fantasy. a serious overestimate of your own skills where now YOU are the one in charge

2) a supposition that "if it ever came to that" the military and the police wouldn't actually pull the trigger.

We know this is nonsense from historical analysis. From the other side you can look at how the Vietnamese people defended themselves from invasion and if you really think those conditions exist here then you've never been to, say, arizona where this sort of thinking is prevalent.

Edit: I wanna be clear that i don't think this is a good thing. I wish there was some way citizenry could hold their government to account directly like in the 1700s but I think we live in a different world now. One where people enjoy not having a random street war kick off on a tuesday when they'd rather be at a coffee shop.

I'm certainly not endorsing any of these actions and I believe the government responses were warranted, but there is a clear history of rebellious armed civilian groups being huge problems for governments.

I wonder what a government response might look like after a few continuous years of dealing with clearly-organized civil unrest and violence. After it, perhaps, decides that waging direct war on its own citizenry is acceptable for the sake of the State. Or that such agitants have forfeited their right to citizenship.

A US civil war would be incredibly messy, but it would not be easy to predict any sort of outcome. Everyone would interpret for themselves what "sworn to the constitution" meant for them and pick a side. There would certainly be more than 2 sides too, given how different the 50 states are.