From: dougnews@access.digex.com (Doug Humphrey)
Newsgroups: dc.talk.guns
Subject: Re: Gun control
Date: 4 Jan 1993 04:02:07 GMT
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: access.digex.com

In article <1993Jan2.185928.20721@clsi.COM> kevin@clsi.com writes:
>
>In article <1i2fatINN3k0@mirror.digex.com>, dougnews@access.digex.com (Doug Humphrey) writes:
>>
>> [Points 1-3 deleted]
>>
>> None of this is a good situation to be in, but frankly if you get to
>> the point where the people are so pissed at the government that they
>> are willing to risk death to get them out of power, the odds are good
>> that the military, or more correctly the individuals in the military,
>> are also of the same point of view.
>> 
>
>So, is your conclusion that civilians don't need guns to defend themselves
>against the government ? 
>
>Kev.
>-- 

No.  

The original post concerned military involvement making the private 
ownership of guns moot.  

In a situation where the government vs. the populace happens, the 
military can:

1) back the government - odds are good that they could suppress the 
entire country for a while, though it could be ugly in the long term.

2) back the people - the government is easier to overthrow than the 
people, since it is nicely centralized, and not tenacious. 

3) Sit out the fight - the military may decide to confine to barracks
and just sit it out.  There is historical precedent (though not in the
US).  There is also the possibility that the military itself would be 
divided, and that due to it's own internal fights it would effectivly
be sitting it out, at least until it got the problem resolved.


In all cases, an armed populace is in a better place to 1) fight for 
its freedom and individual rights, and 2) negotiate its terms when 
the shooting is over.  Even in the case of a military assisted win 
by the people, that will be an uncertain time (to say the least) and
an armed populace will have more say than an unarmed.  

You can not deal with these issues in the context os January 1993, and 
all is peaceful and fine.  You have to deal with these things in the 
context of some other time (February 1993?) when things suck so bad
that people feel that they have to risk their lives to fight for their
rights.  If you can't put yourself into that perspective at least a bit,
then you will really have difficulty making decision that will effect
that type of situation.

-------
On another note, an observation about the balance of power in 
the domestic US.  Comments are welcome.

I just spent a lot of time pointing out that the actions
of "the government" do not always cause or control the actions 
of "the military".  This is an important concept, because if the
military were a machine which automatically backed up what the 
civilian government did, no matter how horrible, then personal 
arms in the hands of the people would indeed seem pretty useless.

If, however, you are in a country where the civilian authorities can 
only count on the civilian law enforcement establishment, then it is
completely a different story.  Personal arms, an armed populace, are
a serious threat to civilian authority if the majority of the people
decided to move in a single direction.  That is just as it should be!

As long as the government is doing basically the will of the people,
plus or minus some percentage, then the only opposition that the 
civilian authorities will encounter will be sporadic, and they are 
set up to deal with that.  They are NOT designed to force the populace
to do things that it, in the majority, does not WANT to do.  Again, 
this is as it should be.  They are not there to force you and I to
do things, they are there to enforce the rules that we together have 
agreed to abide by, and to take care of rare situations where someone
decides that they want to disobey one of those laws. 

So, I think that this all makes the perfect case for the armed populace.
IF the point of the country is that the PEOPLE are in ultimate control,
then there must be the three things extant:

1) civilian authority that is strong enough to enfoce laws that the 
   majority favor, but is not strong enough to force the populace to 
   do something that the majority objects strongly to.

2) military authority that is able to step in and deal with serious
   threats, but which is independent in its thinking and control, 
   and which is made up of the people, and not of a seperate "caste"
   of favored elites.  Thus the military, through its people, is subject
   to the same conditions that the general populace is subject to.

3) civilian capability to make the threat of throwing out a government
   real.  Remember, it need not be a sure thing; too many people these
   days are looking for the "sure thing".  The threat must be real, so
   that someone elected to a powerful position realizes that they may
   be voted out, and if they disregard the vote, the populace  will 
   risk life and limb (theirs and his or hers!) to throw them out.
   As an exercise, imagine the Bush administration refusing to honor the
   vote, and announcing that it was suspending the electoral process, and
   staying in power.  

I hope that this has made my position much clearer.
think that through a lack of clear explaining on my part someone
had gotten the wrong idea.

Doug
   
-- 
Doug Humphrey    Express Access Public Access Internet   Voice (301) 220-2020
doug@digex.com   Dialup: (301) 220-0462 Login as "new"   Email info@digex.com
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