The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central An Armed Society, is a politer Society

I see what you are saying Sini but don't have the time to type out another long scenario. It would be a messed up situation and a lot of bad decisions would be made.

Can't we at least agree that the American people would be better off in all of these evil government scenarios you are thinking up if they have access to a firearm to defend themselves?

You are confusing and mixing couple issues here. First, I assume "armed thugs" refers to actual thugs (and issue of self-defense against criminals) and not your view of US military. Second, I categorically disagree with your "speaking out does not change anything". Just Tienanmen alone is huge thorn in Chinese totalitarian government side, I am surprised you'd even try this argument when it is so demonstrably false.

I don't know, but lean toward "don't think so". From recent events: Egypt was largely peaceful so guns didn't play a big role, Syria isn't and perfect example of armed citizens vs. government going nowhere.

Give an assault rifle to every North Korean, are they any freer or safer?

Absolutely....

You may want to pick another country. That is a bad example.

Surely you can't believe if NKoreans were all armed they would continue putting up with the NKorean version of Augustus Gloop.

I don't think so. Otherwise solving problematic countries like Iran and N.Kore would be as simple as airlifting and parachuting crates with rifles and ammunition into all urban areas.

Information and ideas are by far stronger. Give every North Korean access to unfiltered internet and regime will fall in a year. Give them all guns - and they just turn them in to authorities.

I agree with you on the unfiltered internet part.

Sadly no one including ourselves have unfiltered internet anymore. We lost that right a long time ago and a majority of people did not even realize it happened. They pretty much monitor all forms of communication as they please now a days. Slippery slope huh....Funny how when you give them an inch they take a mile.

There limitations on the second amendment - nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, machine guns, etc.

The prior example + many more that could be cited.. are examples of people utilizing the 1st amendment with impunity. You talk about accountability, but where is the accountability for all the misuse of speech?

On the opposite end, people who do misuse guns are already prosecuted. Seems like speech is a far bigger danger than guns. Certainly many more people have died due to its misuse. Since it doesnt necessarily help vs tyranny (as one ex: Syrians recently found out. ) .... why not put more restrictions and accountability on it?

Egypt was a result of the military abandoning the leader. If you look at the current state of affairs there, it is hard to say the change ended up being for the better. Though time will tell. Tunisia was the same way.

If you look at the historical examples, people were disarmed before tyranny went into full effect. From Syria to Jordan to Myanmar to Tibet and etc... there has been plenty of unrest quashed by internal security apparatus.

The key though, is things dont get that bad where people refuse to give up their arms. Mobs in the street can be a danger to a regime if not handled correctly. Especially if it might give the USA or other powers a pretext to insert themselves.

Mass armed uprisings of a large percentage of your populace is extremely dangerous and can rob you of the control needed to continue exerting influence, extracting money, and paying/rewarding your thugs.

But we don't gag each person walking into a theater to prevent them yelling "fire." Nor do we hook folks under oath up to lie detectors. We prosecute them afterwards for the crime. I think that's the biggest rub with most of these massacres. The perpetrator invariably kills himself or is killed by police (or gets declared mentally unfit to stand trial, whatever in the name of the giant spaghetti monster that means) and the public doesn't get to slake their blood lust/righteous indignation by watching the criminal stand trial on TV. So, lacking the means to explain an event they cannot comprehend, the media lashes out at something else they don't understand, the tool used.

What does this statement have to do with your earlier assertion that gun laws would be guaranteed to be effective?


Your obscene accusations aside, you make an assumption with this line of thought that you have presented no evidence to be true: More gun laws will reduce mass shootings. In case you haven't gotten this message the last 9000 times it was stated, criminals don't give a fuck about laws. Taking guns away from law abiding citizens is not the correct course. Other options should be explored first, and the two that come to mind immediately are 1) doing more to identify and help the mentally unstable and 2) putting more armed police/guards in high security threat areas that we want protected. We already guard our politicians and movie stars, why not our children?