From: amirza@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Anmar Caves)
Subject: Re: Gun Control:  A modern, REALISTIC view.
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 17:04:52 GMT


I'm answering this one more as a speculative view, not that I'm
planning on overthrowing the US govt, or that I expect them to wage
military war on the citizenry.  A war of attrition maybe.

In article <1992Nov16.085334.10791@nntp.uoregon.edu> davidw@cie.uoregon.edu (David Weingarten) writes:
>>you realize, of course, that every place such restrictions have been
>>put into place they've failed miserably.
>
>Like?

Washington DC, New York City, Chicago...

>Get real!  Do you honestly think you'd be able to get NEAR enough
>to anybody of any importance to shoot them?  Forget it!

Don't have to be all that close to drop a pipe bomb on them from a R/C
plane.  that'd be about $500.  Or, a $1000 rifle with a good scope you
could take them at 1000 yards.  Any noxious or poisonous gas would
work, and is cheap to boot.  Killing someone is easy, it's how much
effort you want to put forth.  Motivation is everything.


>Again, the military has much better technology than you could ever
>come up with.  They could pick people off in the middle of the night

Not too many of them before word gets out.  Then you have trouble.

>and you'd never know what happened.  They HAVE secure communications,
>you don't.  They have intelligence forces that could figure out 

Civilians are perfectly capable of operating radios all the way from
DC to Daylight (a radio term than means all of the radio spectrum),
and some types are hard to jam.

>who's doing what, and they have the special attack forces to take
>out every one of them.

I doubt that the intelligence service has enough manpower to take out
1 million people, let alone 1 thousand at once on an individual basis.

My point is that as long as it's only a few people the government is
after, then they have all these resources available and can bring them
to bear.  They do not have enough resources to do this on a large
scale however.

>to crack.  You could use some of the mathematical encryption that's
>on, for instance, typical UNIX systems, but if you did, they'd just
>shut down your phones.  You don't actually think they'd be nice
>and LET you send encrypted messages, do you?  How dumb are you?

Then why is the government trying to regulate encryption keys?


>Man, you've been reading "Soldier of Fortune" too much.  The quantity
>of explosive you'd need would fill a wharehouse.  And if they ever
>found out you had it (which they would) you'd "mysteriously" disappear.

I wonder what you would think if I told you I had enough explosive
power in the tank of my truck to level a good size building.  Ten
gallons of gasoline mixed with air will equal roughly 90 gallons of
TNT in explosive power, if prepared properly.  No warehouse needed, nd
no suspicious chemicals needed.  Improvising explosives is fairly easy
for anyone with the knowledge.  


>A) Our technology has increased since then.  B) As I said earlier
>in this post, they can cut off every means of communication you
>have.  You seem to have forgotten that they control the country,
>and you're a band of rebels.

I don't doubt the US govt has the strength to suppress a "band of
rebels" what we're talking about here is a good portion of the
population, say 1/10.  

>
>>or in Switzerland. it's difficult to have a military coup when the
>>citizens make up a good portion of the military.
>
>On the contrary.  Then you have more people in the military than you
>have regular citizens.  That's the weirdest logic I've heard in a 
>long time.  "If you have more military, it's harder for the military to 

This is somewhat true.  In the example involving Switzerland, most
Swiss are not part of an *active* army.  They are part of a home
guard, callable to active duty in defense of their homeland. 
How can you suppress a populace when the populace are the people you'd
have to use to do the suppressing?

>take over."  Huh?  In China there are 300,000,000 military.  That's
>more military than the US has citizens.  Do you think that if the
>students in Tienamen square had AK-47's they'd have won?  HA!

Maybe.  Maybe if the students had been expecting armed suppression
they might have.  For people on foot it's easy to disable a tank.
That's why tanks require an infantry to protect them.  What is not
easy to do is to disable a tank when you are in a stampede of people
who are trying to escape it.

>It always depresses me to find that people are actually so 
>self-deceived as to think they could overcome something as formidable
>as the US Military.  Isn't it more productive to try to work WITH

I don't think that *I* could take on the US govt.  I do think that I,
and a million others could.  Personally I'm going to try to work with
the govt, afterall, it's supposed to be govt for the people by the
people. When it gets away from thet is when the people need to take it
back.

>the government?  I mean, if the government got THAT out of hand,
>you can believe that I'd be one of the first to die trying to fight
>it, but I sure wouldn't expect to win.  I'd be fighting simply as a
>matter of principle.

I hope I don't have to share a bunker with you...
-- 
Anmar Mirza   # Chief of Tranquility  #My Opinions! NotIU's!#Purveyor of
EMT-D         # Base, Lawrence Co. IN # Legalize Explosives!#nontraditional
N9ISY (tech)  # Somewhere out on the  # Politicians prefer  #family values
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