Facts.
TBH, the stockpiles of weapons that some Americans have in their basements doesn't seem to make them any more inclined to openly defy the government.
It's the opposite: the portion of the population with fewer weapons is more willing to protest.
It's because the people with guns have stake in the continued functioning of civilization, and would not engage in any behavior to destabilize said society.
That being said we were the closest to societal collapse these last four years.
The reason extremist progressives don't own fire arms but commit violence is because they don't have the self-control, or restraint with their unbridled rage is because their anger originates from themselves.
I don't think many would be alive if they possessed firearms, and they also admit it themselves.
You apparently have no idea how many people accidentally or purposefully shoot themselves or their loved ones, every year.
People with malicious intents will find ways to harm others, and themselves with, or without a firearm.
And yes, accidents happen also.
Same goes for people who want to overthrow the government.
It's a check, and balance for citizens.
The check is direct, swift, citizen protest.
The balance is the governance and military/police power devolved to the individual states.
Unarmed protestors get mowed down quickly.
Imagine if Protestors in Hong Kong, and Other Parts of China were armed, they would have way more social, economic, and personal freedoms than they do today, that's why Taiwan although "technically "Chinese"" haven't fallen to The CCP is because they armed themselves against an oppressive government.
You are comparing an state commanding a military with individual protestors. One of the protections protestors have is the reluctance of the state to use their full capabilities against them because they are not armed.
Peaceful protest movements are highly effective.
I agree that usually the best, and most productive movements have been peaceful ones.
However, governments shouldn't have unanimous power to decide who gets to live or die, they shouldn't be the sole bearer of the ability to engage in violence.
It's simple tit for tat, everyone knows they're worse off if they engage in violence, so they choose peace instead because it's the most beneficial tactic overall.
The strongest pro-gun argument I’ve heard (besides the fact that it’s literally the second amendment of the US Constitution) is that sure the military or police could easily kill a bunch of people trying to defend themselves with their basement arsenals, but those military and police have families and friends, and so do the gun owners.
In other words, once you declare war on your citizens, and 100M of them are armed, you are in big trouble. So an armed citizenry is an effective deterrent. If the government murders a bunch of your family and friends, protesting won’t work. They discovered this in the 20th century communist regimes where they just killed whoever they wanted, and no one could do anything about it.
I'm not against the Second Amendment or private gun ownership. I live in Germany's version of Texas, and many of my neighbors are gun owners.
I'm against people pacifying themselves with comfort pistols instead of actively working to change things.
What the 21st century brought was citizen journalism and online communications, such as Nostr. That shifted effectivity back to peaceful protests. Murdering peaceful protestors can bring down the wrath of the wider citizenry, and international backlash, and destabilize the entire country and economy. You can't just shoot everyone. Not anymore.
There's definitely way more of a spotlight on everything, that's true. But I’m not convinced they wouldn’t shoot everyone if it came to it, and there were no credible threat of force.
Agree owning a gun is not sufficient — you still have to speak up. But I’m sure glad those gun nuts in the US exist!
What the 21st century also brought was 24/7 all-source surveillance.
You can't kill everyone without destroying your tax base, but you can kill everyone who knows or believes something in particular with a precision never before possible.
I'm also of the opinion that peaceful protest is more inherently noble, and that it therefore is a sacrifice that resonates more deeply, with those who witness it. It's a form of martyrdom.
Would Jesus have been more effective with a bunch of guns, instead of a cross? 🤔 Doubt.
Would the founding fathers on the US have been able to create a republic based on human rights and the rule of law had they been unarmed? Doubtful.
I’m dubious of extrapolating Jesus’ teachings to matters of state and politics. If everyone were enlightened, willing to be martyrs rather than complying, maybe. But much more likely they’d just be enslaved.
Hunger strikes and sit-ins against the British Empire didn't become effective until they were broadcast live. Information is the best weapon, now.
Information, yes, but backed by force if it’s ignored.
All governments rule at the consent of the governed.
“Consent” can be coerced which is why the 2nd A was deemed important enough to be put in the Bill of Rights, right after free speech.
Please do not confuse the Constitution, which was designed to limit the power of the federal government, with some general call to violent anarchy.
That’s a a non-sequitur. We’re talking about whether governments necessarily govern via consent. The founders thought otherwise which is why they expressly prohibited theirs from taking away your guns.
Lolwut?
Peaceful protests are useless, unless a good chunk of the elite is already on your side.
Google what happened to people protesting against COVID lockdown here. Govt didn't dare do that in the USA.
Google what happened to people protesting the same thing, here. The protest was effective.
And I said they were effective, not that they were safe for the protestors. Agitating against the government is always dangerous, but peaceful protest is less likely to end up with as many people dead as violent protests.
Skipping peaceful demonstration and civil disobedience and threatening to just kill everyone, instead, is maybe not the best political strategy. But whatever.
"Pen and sword in accord".
I don't suggest skipping peaceful protest, but I suggest it should always be backed by an "or else".
Have you ever read "Public Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich"? I think you'd like it. The "crosses in schools" protests of '34 are particularly salient to this discussion...
Every word is backed by an "or else", unless they person speaking is an absolute pacifist. The "or else" doesn't require everyone to bunker weapons in their house.
On that, ma'am, I must respectfully disagree
Yes, it doesn’t require weapons bunkers.
Provided that is, there’s plenty of guillotines setup and ready to lop heads.
Because without consequences nothing changes and the parasites just become more egregious as evidenced by *waves hand at everything in the fucking world* 
Or fertilizer.
Not on food crops, ma'am, please.
I would treat politician residues the same as other sewage sludge. Always assume infectious, and full of heavy metals (or at least poor-quality cocaine).
Guillotines presuppose you already won, by preventing revenue coercion until the paid security forces disperse or switch sides.
I'd rather see Anthony Albanese in a fenced pool, trying to fill out useless paperwork but theres a hungry Saltie after him. If he does his paperwork right the crowd may throw him a rope.
Nonsense.
Guillotines presuppose nothing. They’re basic contraptions which lop heads - that’s it.
What they *induce* is a parasite class reckoning with the reality of their own flesh-and-bone-ness. Something they’ve spent decades shielding themselves from.
No-one has to have won anything for a guillotine to successfully lop a head - it just requires lifting and dropping a blade.
Security forces aren’t going to risk themselves when a parasite is dragged to the guillotine lest they be lopped next.
You might not like the solution for how far it might go, I get that. But my counter is this class have faced basically zero threats until that CEO was shot 2 days ago - they’ve run rampant for literally decades and forgotten their own flesh-and-bone-ness.
That last paragraph I agree with. But I think buzzing them with a drone would have a stronger effect than the sight of any guillotine.
That’s 5-10 years from now.
The parasites have already been found out. Their only chance at redemption and avoiding the guillotine is joining the Bitcoiners.
This is already baked in.
Maybe the Bitcoiners will be generous and treat them like anyone else with a wholecoin. Maybe not.
My point was more that the decision making is already out of their hands. They can only play this game to where it’s headed. But staying the course is going to get heads lopped, that’s basically certain from here.
You can’t leave a big class of opposition unemployed, ready to agitate against your new system. They’ve got to go.
„Is it not He whose immortal hand... has written there the death sentence of tyrants? He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power“
That might mean something in a secular world.
It means nothing in this world.
If even 2% decide they’re ready to guillotine parasites, it’s all over.
Again I’m not encouraging sides. I’m just commenting on how precarious the current balance is.
No where near as many than commit suicide with them.
I included suicide. That seems to be what guns are mainly used for, especially once you consider that many of the murders are actually murder-suicides.
Unfortunately there's not a lot of talk about defensive gun use. Mostly because dgu spent get reported because the crime is stopped. But here's a good resource
A lot of crime is stopped without guns, too, tho. And DGU doesn't require someone to own an entire arsenal. One can usually only shoot one gun at a time.
Americans own crazy amounts of handguns, but other countries actually have lots of households with firearms. Especially, once you consider how peaceful and low-crime most other countries are, in comparison. Americans aren't safer because of their guns.
You are safer carrying a gun in a country where most people are allowed to carry a gun. No you don't need an arsenal for dgu. I have one because it's fun and happens to be a damn good asset that doesn't depreciate .
You can just buy Rheinmetal shares, for that.
I prefer to live in a country, where I'm safe and nobody around me is walking around with a gun. Walking around, strapped, as if you live in a war zone, is just confirmation that you really do live in a war zone.
People in genuinely safe places simply don't feel that urge because guns aren't toys.
We don't walk around with swords, either.
I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. I prefer that for all individuals.
Scary inanimate objects are scary
Oh yes. Your normalcy bias has confirmed your safety
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Germany
The USA is the second-safest large country in its hemisphere. Context matters...
Unpopular opinion:
nostr:nprofile1qqsg5h65kw0vz5w2u00n7lkq994lza4rsdlf6w3e9rx7na4m8wy2mnspz4mhxue69uhkwun9v4h8xmm4dsh8xurpvdjszrmhwden5te0dehhxarj9ekk7mgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduu748ay has more balls than most of the guys stockpiling military-grade equipment in their shed.
I wish they'd more openly defy them, I think the nationalistic brain-rot got to them. Sadly.
I've long suspected that the armament industry encourages them to buy lots of guns because it's an emotional pacifier.
A bunch of trucks and tractors and cardboard signs and silent marches and software developers are what is changing things, not the gun they'll never shoot.
True, but keep in mind:
Owning weapons usually moves your trigger-point to the side of more serenity, like "ok, come for me, i am waiting". Once they pass this point and the red line of the ability to suffer, their will be not protest, but civil war.
Protest > Civil War
I have a lot of guns. I know the government has more and they're better. I think most gun owners are like myself. We have the for defensive reasons. Self preservation. Not offensive ones, like using them against the government because of some policy that affects us. That would only end badly for us. We will use them against direct offenses to ourselves. Not indirect ones from people in DC against people who have families and are not part in making that policy.
Perhaps the gun owners are less likely to protest because the government is less likely to do things that they don't like that are obvious enough to upset them?
"Whatever happens,
We have got,
The Maxim Gun,
And they have not"
- Belloc Hillaire, and every government that isn't the USA.
Last century, at least twenty different governments killed at least a million of their own subjects ("democide"). Democracies, autocracies, single-party regimes. Right-wing and Left-wing. Religious and secular.
But none of them was the US of A. Even though it is #4 or so for population, and has at least as many bad politicians as anywhere else.
Something is very unusual about the US of A, and I think its likely the way the tax base can shoot back.
The US federal government constantly does stuff the populace hates and they pay absolutely onerous federal taxes.
What the USA has, that nobody else has to that extent, is strong state governments. The closest is probably Germany, where the Americans wrote the Basic Law for the Federal Republic. Or Switzerland.
I would argue US federal taxes are not particularly onerous. Only half of taxpayers are liable for federal income tax at all!
The govt does many things its populace hates, but they maintain deniability and point fingers in many directions. Unfortunately, people are stupid, busy and disorganised, but USians still doing better than most.
Strong state governments can only survive long where the Federal govt does not have an effective monopoly on force. Or where the Federal politicians slavishly imitate a foreign govt that does not.
Great points. One correction: it's more like 260,000,000 not 1,000,000.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM
First rule of gun use, don't pull it out unless your life is credibly threatened and you are prepared to use it.
Similarly, we won't use them when our job is threatened if we don't get the experimental jab. However if they came door to door and tried to force it into us and/or our children then I'm pretty confident there would have been serious push back.
For people who either willingly gave up their guns or never considered or still don't understand their necessity to criticize us for not giving up our lives over lower priority issues is a bit comicsl and also demonstrates childish immaturity or maybe something uglier.
When they are necessary it will be obvious.
Your point is astute. The fact that we have so many guns and attentive gun owners definitely limits the creative imaginations of our "ruling class". It's a power balancer sort of like a cold war.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
