Vegas Shooter Kills 50+

Nah they all lost in the end.

Hey man it’s happened before. There’s ton of examples in recent history of tyrannical govts forming and an armed population killing them into submission.

Just last year, was at the beach. Some little kid was gettin all tyrannical with the sand castles. Walked on up there with a stick and beat those castles down. Boom. Tyranny, over.

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There are plenty of examples of tyrannical governments who’s unarmed populations can do jack shit about it.

Those God damn libertarians and their “dumb” and “dumber” ideas…

“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.”
-Washington

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
-Jefferson

"To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them. "
-Mason

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”
-Franklin

“The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.”
-Monroe

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
-Jefferson

“The said Constitution [shall] be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.”
-Adams, Sam

“[Tyranny cannot be safe] without a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.”
-Madison

“Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would. Nor is there anything in the common law of England … inconsistent with that right.”
-Adams, John

“…but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights…”
-Hamilton

But, what the fuck do these idiots know?

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When was the last time a successful citizen militia overthrew a tyrannical government?

A formidable world superpower is just up north in their newly acquired former French possessions - considering that their effort was half-hearted at best, stands to reason they’ll try once more to force their former colonists into submission.

The Hurons and other fearsome tribes are just west and have shown their effectiveness in irregular warfare as French allies in the Seven Years War, inflicting large casualties on then colonial American troops, even almost killing a certain George Washington.

France is dead set on preserving their colonial empire and blocking the westward expansion. At that moment, the slave revolts at Santo Domingo haven’t yet killed tens of thousands of French soldiers souring France’s plans for an American Empire.

The Spanish are in the south, and although their Empire is slowly crumbling, they can still muster significant forces in the Americas.

And the new country is pretty much bankrupt, surrounded by enemies.

It makes sense that you’d set up a system similar to the one that was later honed in Finland* and Switzerland (and further evolved by Israel), by harnessing the power of armed citizens by fielding at short notice a citizen standing army when the need arises at a fraction of the cost.

*facing a constant threat from their much, much larger neighbor Russia, the Finns have developed a remarkably efficient training/recruiting system for a “citizen army” where their cadre of 3500 professional officers can be swelled by 900 000 military trained recruits in 72 hours should the need arise

So you see where I’m getting at? Geopolitical, strategic and population factors affected the thinking of the Founding Fathers as together with their tradition of English parlamentarianism shaped their response to certain challenges.

So the belief that the “citizen militia” will make the difference when the US has the largest army in the world and no geopolitical rivals on the same land mass is simply outdated.

Sure, people should be allowed to own guns in my opinion, but the belief that is some sort of feel-good fixation that by owning an AR-15 one is helping defend 'Murica from external and internal enemies is obsolete at best.

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You’re right, this is pointless.
You’re not comparing mass shootings to terrorist attacks but you keep on posting examples of terrorist attacks to try and for your point that other stuff is dangerous and lethal.
Incredible discovery, it appears that humans have been killing each other with every possible mean since we lived in caves. So yes, blades kill and yes, throwing planes inside buildings kills, even more than firearms.
Luckily enough, hijacked planes don’t happen on a regular basis. Mass shootings do, tho.

I don’t even want to get into the “but muh freedom” talks of armed population fighting the tyranny, it’s cringy and delusional, obviously coming from a lack of historic knowledge to anything related to dictatorships and how they rise. It’s ironic that someone living in a country that never experienced dictatorship guesses what would happen if there was one and how people would react, boasting some kind of ubermensch rethoric. Twice ironic that it’s the exact kind of sensationalistic rethoric propaganda used by regimes to recruit between the most enthusiasts.

With that said, I’m out for real - I’m not the one living in the country where parents have to be scared to drop off their children at school because one of the kids could go batshit crazy and kill a few dozen of other students. It’s none of my business, after all.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I have no idea. How many other countries even have militia’s (even if just on paper)? Probably not many is my guess.

Will speak to your other points later. You’ve certainly said some interesting things.

You are being a bit short sided. There is a movie quote that’s something like:
Man: you used to shove all that medicine down my throat as a kid, and I was never sick
Mom: Exactly.

Large numbers of arms in the hands of the people works as a hedge against tyranny without fighting. We have all these guns and nothing has ever happened in modern history. That argument goes both ways.

For example, though it seems like a joke now, you can bet that in the cold war Russia had to account for all the private arms in anything they might have planned.

They know plenty, and everything you quoted is wise - for their time, when there was distrust over standing armies and a need for men of the countryside to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice.

But I can’t repeat this enough - we don’t live in those times.

We long ago accepted a standing, professional army - and it’s the pride and joy of our nation. And we no longer need men of the countryside to be ready at a moment’s notice to repel an invasion.

Doesn’t mean the people need to be disarmed - but it does mean there’s no reason to pretend we live in a world we no longer do.

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Well of course you have to leave handguns at the minimum. How else would we duel?!

Whole post was very well said, and this part nails it.

Kindergarten Cop.

Weapons in the hands of the people does don’t work as you believe. Again, you assume that large numbers of those people won’t be backing the government. Germans owned weapons but that didn’t stop Hitler. The German army drew it’s troops from that same populace and they didn’t stop Hitler.

I doubt the Soviets had to account for anything. The way the military was organised it would have suppressed any rebellion. Never underestimate people’s willingness to follow orders.

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They weren’t libertarians.

Good call.

It didn’t stop Hitler in Germany.

My Russian reference was more in regards to a foreign invasion of the US. While we don’t have any real adversarial rivals at the moment, we certainly have recently and easily could again.

And I wouldn’t count on my fellow Americans, armed or not, to do much. I see something more like Vichy France. We have the right atmosphere for it.

I don’t think anyone really has any idea. It’s also fair to point out this sort of modern hedge against Tyranny may not be worth the same sort of price the old militia system was.

The old militia system is not a bad idea to me but I don’t see how it would stand up to a larger, better trained and equipped force sent by the federal government.

Okay, then re-write the 2A as I’ve repeatedly said.

Before we do, let me just remind everyone that a populist with zero understanding of statecraft and/or diplomacy was just elected on promises of, among other things, Muh Wall. That doesn’t exactly give me the warm and fuzzies.

I didn’t mean to imply that they were.

Your points are well taken; however, as I said earlier, my concern (not the best term because I’m not really concern about it - apprehension might be better) is internal. I mean, we literally joke about the NSA spying on us… There are so many examples throughout our history that could be cited to point our the Fed and even state and local governments can and do encroach on our liberty. That’s not libertarian fantasy either. People, in my lifetime, couldn’t ride in the front of the bus here in these free United States.

I disagree. External maybe, but not internal. Yes, we have the finest, largest, most advanced military in the world. There are also only about 2 million members of the armed services, both active and reserve, at a given time. While many of those 2M are the cream of the crop many of them are not. Many of them are “turds” as we called them. I’ve literally watched corporal’s of Marines nearly go into cardiac arrest (not being figurative here, on at least one occasion I was legitimately concerned for a dude’s health) from running a 3 mile PFT.

Putting aside the nuclear ramifications of a China, for example, invading, they outnumber us, a lot. And this isn’t the 1700s, it doesn’t take months to sail here so there’s no time to train citizen soldiers.

Now, is that likely to happen? No, not really and it doesn’t make a lot of sense for China to want to dominate the US militarily. However, it didn’t make sense for Hitler to invade Russia in the winter either, but it happened.

Don’t read too much into what I’m saying either. I don’t think armed incursion is all that likely. Nor do I think a revolution would occur even if scary black “assault” rifles are taken, but I’m not going to just dismiss the very real threat of a federal government or any government trampling on the liberties of her people particularly if they have no real means to counter their power.

Exactly.

“You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.”*

*MIght not be a real quote, but it’s accurate hyperbole aside.

The same way every Gorilla force does.

*Was literally one of the arguments against fighting the British in the Revolution…

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That’s an excellent point. So many that argue for various freedoms forget that a standing army is contraindicated.

People seem to feel that a citizen militia would be attempting to take over Washington, D.C. or something. A militia would just have to convince opposing leadership that the juice is not worth the squeeze. Of course, the U.S. has been spinning its wheels in the Middle East for quite sometime, so who knows.