Under an authoritarian government, there is neither left, nor right, nor civilian gun ownership.
Bold of you to assume that 2a will survive a coup for anyone not directly aligned with the new power structure, or for that matter, that any of the present US Constitution will survive a coup at all and not simply be replaced with martial law instantly and permanently: coups are slow until they’re not, and then they are lightning fast.
Someone’s clearly forgotten that every accusation is a confession, and has been tricked into looking at the wrong suspect. The ones who “are coming for your guns!” like the right wing propaganda machine so often screams these days, are not the “lefties” nor “liberals” nor even most of the right.
The ones who intend to take them are those who right now intend to be in power when democracy is gone, the Constitution is suspended, and they don’t want YOU pointing YOUR gun at the enforcers of the new order, whoever you are. If today you have a red Trump flag or a vote blue flag, tomorrow they will NOT give a shit: they are coming for EVERYONE’S guns.
“Lefties,” ha. Like there are going to be actual political parties under a dictatorship.
Trump supporters don’t care. They’re too stupid to realize anything you said. They think they’ll get special treatment under said dictatorship. It’s up to the “left” and whatever still sane centrists to turn out to vote regularly.
Do you believe gun ownership is as prevalent on that side as the right?
In rural areas, I’d say it’s even. In some parts of the country, even in non-rural areas it’s not a large divide. Many people have reasons for owning firearms, and the kinds of people that own them are as diverse as their reasons for wanting them in the first place. I myself am anything but right wing, and my first gun was purchased in and owned for many years in a large city. When I lived rurally, pretty much all my neighbors had guns, though I did not by that point (they assumed I did too, and I never indicated otherwise, so they spoke of it freely).
I gave it up for non-political reasons, but as an ex-gun owner who was a gun owner prior to all this craziness, I can tell you that NON-political gun owners are not shouting about their gun ownership and in general, don’t want anyone to know about it. I know I never did. Whose business is it but my own whether my home is armed or not? And if I do have a house full of guns, I also have a very attractive collection of theft targets I do not want to advertise. And even if I’m not armed, do I want anyone to know that for sure? No. Best to keep everyone guessing on all counts. Were I not writing anonymously, we would not now be having this conversation. But none of that will ever make the news, and never has, because it doesn’t rile anyone up in either direction.
Again, you’ve made the mistake of believing the media coverage you hear and assuming breadth of coverage equals breadth of real-life example. It does not. There are MANY more sane individual, non-political or liberal gun owners than you can imagine in the US. They’re just not talking about it or bringing media attention to it.
I should probably add, before you bring statistics into it, that gun ownership has only in the last couple of decades required real registration and tracking. When I bought and sold mine, I sold them through private sales, again decades ago. If some state thinks I still have a gun and wants me to produce it, all I have for them is a notarized bill of sale signed by both parties, and then they’re on their own, lol. There are a VAST number of untracked firearms in this country, owned by people who do not want to talk about them.
This is the kind of nuance that a mind attracted to authoritarianism just can’t understand.
I’ll be honest, I read about half of that. I’m just here to provide receipts.
According to the report by Statista, nearly half of Republicans (48%) reported that they own a gun, and 66% reported they live in a household with a gun. In comparison, only 20 percent of Democrats reported owning at least one gun, and 31 percent lived in a gun-owning household.
You’re not generally wrong here, but if trump were to become this dictator, in all likelihood he would call gun owners to kill the unarmed libs first. THEN take the guns from the righties. I’m not sure how that makes a huge difference from a self defense standpoint, but I thought it was an important step in the evolution of your described state
Yeah, I don’t see that happening at all, for a number of reasons. Trump is the useful idiot real dictators would hold out in front to get the rubes to sign up and make way for themselves. As soon as martial law was declared and the Constitution set aside, Trump would be too, probably for his legal replacement (VP or Speaker of the House, etc), who would hold the reins until the transfer of power was secure, less than a year. And then that person would be set aside for the real power, the one(s) orchestrating the coup to begin with.
(Note how Pence only backed out of the January 6 plan at the VERY last minute he could, and not prior: Pence knew there was a coup in progress, that it was already underway, and refused to get into the Secret Service vehicle specifically for that reason, though he claimed ignorance as to the rest.)
You can believe Trump would be a dictator, but he was president for a single term, he is no longer incumbent, and most importantly, Trump literally cannot string together a coherent sentence or even keep from shitting his pants publicly. It takes much more than Trump has to engineer and successfully execute a coup over the span of several years. Agree to disagree, I guess.
That makes it a much more interesting – and impossible to predict – question, most of which depends on at what point during the transfer of power an individual gun owner finally has enough personal, immediate cause to raise that gun against an individual enforcement of the new order.
Not all coups involve armies; not all coups involve immediate martial law or enforcement against non-government individuals, though all that comes in time. Compare Malaysia to pre-WWII Germany and you’ll see exactly what I mean: both countries had the same essential events involved in moving to an authoritarian government against the will of the majority, but differences in both size and culture made those same events look extremely different, and take place at different points in the transition of power.
So your guess is as good as mine. I will tell you this, though: if the US loses democracy, absolutely none of the players are unaware of how much firepower citizens now hold, and will not want any citizen owning a gun. Every imaginable resource and effort at drawing them out and seizing them will be made, at every level of government.
And all this will happen to the vast shock and surprise of those who are unfamiliar with just how much of a surveilled life we now lead and think this new government is there for them because they helped overturn the old one. Anyone having “wild West” fantasies about exercising their own 2a rights against an unwanted new government may find the reality very different: there has never been a coup in history enforced by a militia that was unwilling to kill to cement its place in power, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries. Once the military is on board, blood will run.
For example, Chile loaded civilians into stadiums for the killing, and Argentina loaded them into planes to dump them over the sea. These were civilized democratic countries, not backwaters or banana republics. And that’s just two examples of many from the 20th century; I haven’t even mentioned Cambodia or Brazil, or cartel-related coups like the one in Colombia.
So the question stands: if/when a new US authoritarian government arrives by coup in the 21st century, how will an 18th century right to bear arms stand against it? I honestly don’t know. I don’t think anyone else does either. But in the age of precisely-targeted drone warfare and mass surveillance, and speaking solely for myself, I think the odds of individual arms’ success after a coup have dropped significantly, and certainly well past the point their proponents now believe.
How does one resist a dictatorship in control of tanks, bombers, drones, and the largest surveillance state in history, with little rifles? How do other countries with strong gun control resist dictatorship? How many existing dictatorships can you name, where guns aren’t readily available?
Local cooperation. When it’s a foreign force it’s relatively easy to get cooperation from local civilians. When it’s your own government who has been installed by your own fascist faction I think it’s harder to resist without getting dobbed in.
First of all, you’ve responded apparently to the first of my sentences, and pretended the other two don’t exist, so I’m not feeling too optimistic about your good faith in this conversation. But ok.
There is a vast difference between a local authoritarian government intending to control the local populace, and a neoliberal government from far away that just wants to destabilize your region, increase oil profits for transnational corporations, and funnel a fortune into arms dealers. Our boondoggle in the Middle East was only a boondoggle if the goal was the one stated, which, I suspect you are smart enough to know, it wasn’t. The actual goals were very much accomplished, and the local resistance was a key part of that - how else could they justify all that spending?
I am pro 2a, I still haven’t ever voted for the right, I just know that if the side I vote for decides to try to remove my 2a right, there are checks and balances built into the government to prevent that from being permanent.
Edit to add that I know what you’re talking about, I see it to, but just know that some people who are pro 2a are not blind to rhe insanity that is the republican party.
Lefties, it’s time to start asking yourself if you wanna be disarming yourselves.
Under an authoritarian government, there is neither left, nor right, nor civilian gun ownership.
Bold of you to assume that 2a will survive a coup for anyone not directly aligned with the new power structure, or for that matter, that any of the present US Constitution will survive a coup at all and not simply be replaced with martial law instantly and permanently: coups are slow until they’re not, and then they are lightning fast.
Someone’s clearly forgotten that every accusation is a confession, and has been tricked into looking at the wrong suspect. The ones who “are coming for your guns!” like the right wing propaganda machine so often screams these days, are not the “lefties” nor “liberals” nor even most of the right.
The ones who intend to take them are those who right now intend to be in power when democracy is gone, the Constitution is suspended, and they don’t want YOU pointing YOUR gun at the enforcers of the new order, whoever you are. If today you have a red Trump flag or a vote blue flag, tomorrow they will NOT give a shit: they are coming for EVERYONE’S guns.
“Lefties,” ha. Like there are going to be actual political parties under a dictatorship.
Trump supporters don’t care. They’re too stupid to realize anything you said. They think they’ll get special treatment under said dictatorship. It’s up to the “left” and whatever still sane centrists to turn out to vote regularly.
I’m clearly talking about who currently identifies more with the left side of the spectrum.
Do you believe gun ownership is as prevalent on that side as the right?
In rural areas, I’d say it’s even. In some parts of the country, even in non-rural areas it’s not a large divide. Many people have reasons for owning firearms, and the kinds of people that own them are as diverse as their reasons for wanting them in the first place. I myself am anything but right wing, and my first gun was purchased in and owned for many years in a large city. When I lived rurally, pretty much all my neighbors had guns, though I did not by that point (they assumed I did too, and I never indicated otherwise, so they spoke of it freely).
I gave it up for non-political reasons, but as an ex-gun owner who was a gun owner prior to all this craziness, I can tell you that NON-political gun owners are not shouting about their gun ownership and in general, don’t want anyone to know about it. I know I never did. Whose business is it but my own whether my home is armed or not? And if I do have a house full of guns, I also have a very attractive collection of theft targets I do not want to advertise. And even if I’m not armed, do I want anyone to know that for sure? No. Best to keep everyone guessing on all counts. Were I not writing anonymously, we would not now be having this conversation. But none of that will ever make the news, and never has, because it doesn’t rile anyone up in either direction.
Again, you’ve made the mistake of believing the media coverage you hear and assuming breadth of coverage equals breadth of real-life example. It does not. There are MANY more sane individual, non-political or liberal gun owners than you can imagine in the US. They’re just not talking about it or bringing media attention to it.
I should probably add, before you bring statistics into it, that gun ownership has only in the last couple of decades required real registration and tracking. When I bought and sold mine, I sold them through private sales, again decades ago. If some state thinks I still have a gun and wants me to produce it, all I have for them is a notarized bill of sale signed by both parties, and then they’re on their own, lol. There are a VAST number of untracked firearms in this country, owned by people who do not want to talk about them.
This is the kind of nuance that a mind attracted to authoritarianism just can’t understand.
I’ll be honest, I read about half of that. I’m just here to provide receipts.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/who-owns-more-guns-democrats-or-republicans/ar-AA17ibLK
So, lefties, don’t give up your guns.
You’re not generally wrong here, but if trump were to become this dictator, in all likelihood he would call gun owners to kill the unarmed libs first. THEN take the guns from the righties. I’m not sure how that makes a huge difference from a self defense standpoint, but I thought it was an important step in the evolution of your described state
Yeah, I don’t see that happening at all, for a number of reasons. Trump is the useful idiot real dictators would hold out in front to get the rubes to sign up and make way for themselves. As soon as martial law was declared and the Constitution set aside, Trump would be too, probably for his legal replacement (VP or Speaker of the House, etc), who would hold the reins until the transfer of power was secure, less than a year. And then that person would be set aside for the real power, the one(s) orchestrating the coup to begin with.
(Note how Pence only backed out of the January 6 plan at the VERY last minute he could, and not prior: Pence knew there was a coup in progress, that it was already underway, and refused to get into the Secret Service vehicle specifically for that reason, though he claimed ignorance as to the rest.)
You can believe Trump would be a dictator, but he was president for a single term, he is no longer incumbent, and most importantly, Trump literally cannot string together a coherent sentence or even keep from shitting his pants publicly. It takes much more than Trump has to engineer and successfully execute a coup over the span of several years. Agree to disagree, I guess.
So far, I’ve ever only seen pro 2A types side with the dictators.
How does one resist dictatorship without weapons?
Right now, with votes.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/07/american-democracy-heather-cox-richardson-trump-biden
Sure, I do that too. I meant an active dictatorship.
That makes it a much more interesting – and impossible to predict – question, most of which depends on at what point during the transfer of power an individual gun owner finally has enough personal, immediate cause to raise that gun against an individual enforcement of the new order.
Not all coups involve armies; not all coups involve immediate martial law or enforcement against non-government individuals, though all that comes in time. Compare Malaysia to pre-WWII Germany and you’ll see exactly what I mean: both countries had the same essential events involved in moving to an authoritarian government against the will of the majority, but differences in both size and culture made those same events look extremely different, and take place at different points in the transition of power.
So your guess is as good as mine. I will tell you this, though: if the US loses democracy, absolutely none of the players are unaware of how much firepower citizens now hold, and will not want any citizen owning a gun. Every imaginable resource and effort at drawing them out and seizing them will be made, at every level of government.
And all this will happen to the vast shock and surprise of those who are unfamiliar with just how much of a surveilled life we now lead and think this new government is there for them because they helped overturn the old one. Anyone having “wild West” fantasies about exercising their own 2a rights against an unwanted new government may find the reality very different: there has never been a coup in history enforced by a militia that was unwilling to kill to cement its place in power, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries. Once the military is on board, blood will run.
For example, Chile loaded civilians into stadiums for the killing, and Argentina loaded them into planes to dump them over the sea. These were civilized democratic countries, not backwaters or banana republics. And that’s just two examples of many from the 20th century; I haven’t even mentioned Cambodia or Brazil, or cartel-related coups like the one in Colombia.
So the question stands: if/when a new US authoritarian government arrives by coup in the 21st century, how will an 18th century right to bear arms stand against it? I honestly don’t know. I don’t think anyone else does either. But in the age of precisely-targeted drone warfare and mass surveillance, and speaking solely for myself, I think the odds of individual arms’ success after a coup have dropped significantly, and certainly well past the point their proponents now believe.
How does one resist a dictatorship in control of tanks, bombers, drones, and the largest surveillance state in history, with little rifles? How do other countries with strong gun control resist dictatorship? How many existing dictatorships can you name, where guns aren’t readily available?
You already forgot about our 20 yr boondoggle in the Middle East?
What resources did those guys have?
Local cooperation. When it’s a foreign force it’s relatively easy to get cooperation from local civilians. When it’s your own government who has been installed by your own fascist faction I think it’s harder to resist without getting dobbed in.
First of all, you’ve responded apparently to the first of my sentences, and pretended the other two don’t exist, so I’m not feeling too optimistic about your good faith in this conversation. But ok.
There is a vast difference between a local authoritarian government intending to control the local populace, and a neoliberal government from far away that just wants to destabilize your region, increase oil profits for transnational corporations, and funnel a fortune into arms dealers. Our boondoggle in the Middle East was only a boondoggle if the goal was the one stated, which, I suspect you are smart enough to know, it wasn’t. The actual goals were very much accomplished, and the local resistance was a key part of that - how else could they justify all that spending?
I am pro 2a, I still haven’t ever voted for the right, I just know that if the side I vote for decides to try to remove my 2a right, there are checks and balances built into the government to prevent that from being permanent.
Edit to add that I know what you’re talking about, I see it to, but just know that some people who are pro 2a are not blind to rhe insanity that is the republican party.
That’s why WE need to be pro 2A
Btw now you’ve met one