From: yarvin@cs.yale.edu (Norman Yarvin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Registering "Assault Keys"
Date: 8 Nov 1992 05:16:34 -0500
Organization: Yale Computer Science Department
NNTP-Posting-Host: cathy.na.cs.yale.edu

k@hprnd.rose.hp.com (Steve Kao) writes:
>Piet van Oostrum asks:
>> But how many times, say in the last 200 years, have guns be used against
>> government oppression in the USA, compared to being used to shoot innocent
>> people?

Well, we have shot three presidents!  (Perhaps more?  I think I am only
counting the ones who died from the incident.)  If that isn't resistance
against government oppression, then I don't know what is.  Of course I have
not the slightest idea of whether these particular acts of resistance were
justified.

But other than by such means I cannot see any form of government oppression
emerging which could be remedied by small arms.  I mean, what is a person
whose house has been wrongly confiscated to do?  Barricade himself inside
and be shot to death in an exchange of gunfire with the police?  I think not.
Certainly the press would not report him as the martyr he would actually be.

No, the reason why gun owning is practical has everything to do with
criminals and little to do with governments.  And the US is not the only
country from which one can draw enlightening examples.  Consider, for
instance, the former South Vietnam.  Certain propaganda would have us
believe that the Vietnamese villagers inherently sympathized with the
Communists and were eager to support them.  This is in fact 180 degrees away
from reality.  The Communists had to take over villages by force.  They
would enter a village in a small group, and kill the wealthiest peasants,
the schoolteachers, and all who disagreed with their doctrines.  After a
while, of course, the villagers would come to espouse the Communist
doctrines with which they were constantly brainwashed.

Given this it is not surprising that one of the most successful American
efforts in Vietnam consisted essentially of giving Vietnamese villagers
rifles, and training them in their proper use.  With their intimate
knowledge of the surrounding area, the villagers could defend themselves
quite well against the small groups of enemy which were otherwise a great
problem.

The methods of the Communists then are not so different from the current
methods of organized crime in the United States.  Of course the Mafia has no
desire for world conquest.  But it uses the same time-honored methods of
terrorizing a community or organization: bribe or intimidate most of the
people, and kill the few who might serve as leaders of resistance.  It goes
without saying that small arms would be useful in such a situation.  If
those who would ban guns think that they can take guns away from a nationwide
organization which measures its money in millions of dollars, and which has
corrupted the local police in many areas, they should think again.

--
Norman Yarvin						yarvin@cs.yale.edu
 "The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any
  force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens
  in time of peace." -- H. L. Mencken, 1951
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns