From: bu008@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Brandon D. Ray)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Gun Control:  A modern, REALISTIC view.
Date: 16 Nov 1992 13:40:23 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: bu008@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Brandon D. Ray)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, davidw@cie.uoregon.edu (David Weingarten) says:

>
>davidw@cie.uoregon.edu (David Weingarten) writes:
>>> OK, I've got to set some of this in perspective.  Let me start
>>> out by saying that I am TOTALLY anti-gun.  England has something
>>> like 7-10 gun deaths a year, and we have 20,000 or more.  That
>>> alone says something.  I am for STRICT gun restrictions.
>
>>you realize, of course, that every place such restrictions have been
>>put into place they've failed miserably.
>
>Like?
>
Chicago.  New York City.  Boston.  And don't forget the murder capital of the
U.S., and home of one of the strictest gun control ordinances in the country:
Washington, DC.
>
>>and the logic goes:
>>1. the founding fathers said we should be allowed to
>>2. we can't anymore (an arguable point, and i will)
>>3. therefore, we shouldn't be allowed to anymore
>>faulty.
>
>hardly.
>
Good comeback.
>
>>and then my wife will use a common 9mm pistol to kill you while you're
>>sleeping. ever heard of guerilla warefare? -that- is what would
>>happen, not a full out military conflict.
>
>Get real!  Do you honestly think you'd be able to get NEAR enough
>to anybody of any importance to shoot them?  Forget it!
>
You don't go for the big boys...you go for the mayor, the city councilors,
the CHief of Police.  Make it clear that anyone that cooperates with the
regime is dogmeat.  After awhile, people stop cooperating.
>
>
>>conquering a country with military force is -much- easier than
>>supressing a fiercely independent people who are defending
>>their own homes. in such a situation, a handful of people with 
>>automatic weapons are practically unbeatable.
>
>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
>and you'd never know what happened.  They HAVE secure communications,
>you don't.  They have intelligence forces that could figure out 
>who's doing what, and they have the special attack forces to take
>out every one of them.
>
That must be why we did so well in Vietnam, and why the Russians did so
well in Afghanistan.  Hm...
>
>>> If you want to overthrow the US government, you'll have to do a lot
>>> better than automatic weapons.  You'll have to have a lot more than
>>> teflon-coated bullets.  You'll need your own network of 
>>> communication that you KNOW is secure.  Good luck.
>
>>computers. modems. faxes. encryption programs. the kinds of things
>>the government is already trying to control. "for our own good", of
>>course.
>
>Not "trying."  They DO control them.  Wiretaps are easy for the 
>government.  And in the case of a civil war, they wouldn't bother
>with warrants.  Encryption programs are a joke to the military.
>One of my friends from college was Air Force Intelligence, and he
>said they got hundreds of letters a day with "uncrackable" codes.
>He said none of them took their computer more than about 2 minutes
>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?
>
HOw dumb are you?  You actually think the gov't has the wherewithal to
monitor *billions* of transmissions per day?  That's what it would take.
It's wonderful to have a lot of information, but if you have so much
that you are running days or weeks behind in analyzing it, the intelligence
value is strictly limited, especially on the tactical level.
> 
>>> You'll need MASSIVE quantities of explosives.  Good luck getting 
>>> those without the CIA/FBI paying you a visit.  
>
>>trip to the grocery store. let the CIA visit. after all, we've -only-
>>got a few assault rifles. and some plastique.
>
>Man, you've been reading "Soldier of Fortune" too much.  The quantity
>of explosive you'd need would fill a wharehouse.
>
But you don't need to fill a warehouse.  No lie...you probably have
enough household chemical supplies right now to blow up your house...
and you're not even trying.  Dispersion of resources is the key
to a guerilla movement.  Large stockpiles are for field armies.
>
>  And if they ever
>found out you had it (which they would) you'd "mysteriously" disappear.
>We're talking treason here, they're going to pull all the stops.
>
Bound to be some losses.  Can't be helped.  You minimize the damage by 
dispersing your resources...and remember, some of the people ostensibly
working for the gov't will turn out to be on the side of the rebels.
Intelligence is a two way street.
>
>>it's pretty difficult to apply force with extreme
>>prejudice when the "good guys" and "bad guys" are all mixed up together.
>>Viet Nam anyone?
>
>A) Our technology has increased since then. 
>
Not that much it hasn't.
>
> B) As I said earlier
>in this post, they can cut off every means of communication you
>have. 
>
Yes, you said it.  It doesn't make it true.  They cannot cut off all
communication without crippling themselves.
>
> You seem to have forgotten that they control the country,
>and you're a band of rebels.
>
>>> The United States has the biggest military in the world.  (China 
>>> outdoes us for pure manpower, but that's irrelevant.)
>
>>hardly. you can't threaten people with brute military force. they
>>tend to react with "so? nuke us if you like. destroy our homes &
>>factories. -you- need them as much as we do." the threat of a large
>>& vicious police force is a lot greater, just the sort of thing
>>that personal assault weapons would curb. at least, -i'd- hate
>>to be a gestapo agent walking into a neighborhood where every citizen
>>hates me & has an AK handy.
>
>Stalin, anybody?  History proves you wrong.  Stalin killed thousands
>of people, and nobody even noticed.  He took over the farms and
>put in his own people.  It worked quite well. 
>
Sure did.  Know why?  Because Stalin had previously disarmed those self-same
people.  Sound familiar?
>
>  And once again,
>a "whole neighborhood" of ak-wielders is going to get demolished.
>What was that college that got fired on in the 60's?  Open firing
>on a whole group of people is not something the US govt. has a big
>problem with.
>
Of course, none of the people at Kent State was armed with anything more
fearsome than a rock...but of course, the fact that these National Guardsmen
were willing to do this is just further evidence that the population needs to
be armed to protect itself.
>
>
>>> The NRA fools that expect to protect themselves from a US military 
>>> coup are living in the 1700's.
>
>>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 
>take over."  Huh? 
>
Very simple, actually.  A large fraction of our military are in the guard and
reserve...i.e., they are civilians who go play soldier once a month.  Think
*all* of these people are going to cooperate when they are called up and
 ordered to mow down their friends and neighbors?  Think some of them might
defect...taking some of their high priced military equipment with them?
The point is that the larger the military organization is, and especially
the larger it is as a fraction of the population, the more certain it becomes
that significant numbers will defect in a time of civil unrest.
>
> 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!
>
I think that if the students had been armed there would have been a lot of
dead soldiers to go with the dead students.  I think that if the general 
population had been armed it might have been the start of a civil war.

You cannot continue to prove that an armed population is helpless by
citing examples where the population is disarmed.  There is a logical
flaw in that.... 
>
>>> With this in mind, is gun control a reasonable thing?  Well, the 
>>> original intent of the 2nd amendment having been outdated by the 
>>> size and strength of our military, the obvious answer is YES!  
>
>>then maybe it's time to return the military to the people, as the
>>framers intended?
>
>Did they?  I don't think "voluntary service" means "every citizen
>should be in the military."  Where did you take your logic class?
>Catatonic State?
>
BZZT!  Wrong!  The Supreme Court ruled in 1938 that the founders did,
indeed, consider all able bodied males to be in the militia, and that
these individuals are expected to report, on short notice, for military
duty in defense of the nation, bringing their own weapons with them.
This is also codified in federal law...the militia consists of all
able bodied men between 17 and 45, all National Guard officers of
any age and sex, and all former military personnel.
>
>>the answer is far from obvious. your premises are false, your
>>logic is faulty and your conclusion is one proven not to work.
>
>You're AWFULLY sure of yourself.  Try again.
>
>>> In England, the COPS don't even carry guns.  If somebody is 
>>> reported breaking in somewhere with a gun, they don't surround the 
>>> place with unarmed cops, they call in a special force of snipers 
>>> and pick the guy off.  It works.  Less than 20 gun deaths a year.  
>>> More than 20,000 here.  Which side of this argument looks most 
>>> reasonable? Let's get real.
>
>>on the other hand, we don't get mortar attacks on the White House either.
>>let's do get real. English styles just happen to be a bit different
>>than ours.
>
>Yeah, they're civil, we're barbarians.  I'd rather have mortar attacks
>on the White House (which is pretty damn unlikely to happen just
>because we illegalize guns) than to have 20,000 people/year get killed
>by guns.  The White House could be reinforced to withstand it.  The
>Common Man can't afford or acquire heavy-duty body armour.
>
>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
>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.
>
>			-- David
>
>

-- 
******************************************************************************
The opinions expressed by the author are insightful, intelligent and very
carefully thought out.  It is therefore unlikely that they are shared by the
University of Iowa or Case Western Reserve University.