****A well armed populace is the best defense against tyranny.
9 out of 10 Somalis agree!
The difference is they'd just be killing each other with swords and rocks otherwise. Don't foresee that happening in my neighborhood anytime soon.
My mistake, you should have made your quote more clear: "A well armed patriotic, American, and probably white populace is the best defense against tyranny."
You can take all of those away and replace it with civilized and law abiding and I'd be quite happy thank you!
But if you intend to use the weapons to oppose tyranny, do the citizens by definition become no longer law abiding? And what measure of tyranny sufficient to take up arms?
If you believe weapons are for toppling a tyrannical government, then you should not oppose arming yourself with any type of weapon. And if everyone is armed with such weapons, your cause must logically be strengthened. Therefore do you support giving away a truck's worth of RPG-7s to any citizen who wants one. If not, why not?
If a government is deemed "tyrannical" by the people than their laws no longer apply. Like it or not, the second amendment protects the first. Weapons aren't for "toppling" a tyrannical government, they're a check and balance to assure that a government never becomes tyrannical. A government should fear its people, NOT the other way around.
And your argument about giving away rocket propelled grenades is ridiculous, obtuse, and borderline trolling. You can't just walk into a gun store and guy a fully automatic weapon with the same background checks and licensing you can for a handgun, and a shotgun can be even easier. I don't recall seeing an RPG-7 in my my local gun store.
My point is that you intend to oppose a tyrannical regime with nothing more than small arms. Seems like a bad plan.
No, my point is that the US will never deploy its army and take over the US by force, not because it's impossible, but because of the world we live in today. News of it would reach the opposite end of the earth in minutes, and unfortunately when we live in a global economy and most countries rely on each other for trade, you'll never see it happen. The US Government has too many allies to lose. What small arms DOES protect against is home intruders, attempted robbers/muggers/murderers. It also is a very sobering reminder to the US government that 40% of home owners owns at least one gun. My point is you will never see the citizens of the united states subjugated by their government in the way that the Chinese have. Ever. And it's not because our politicians are any less corrupt than theirs.
Home defense = Keeping the government from subjugating people. Interesting. So you can stop politicians from raising unreasonable taxes, or from forcing permanent ID checkpoints, or completely censoring your internet (or any assortment of ills perpetrated by China, etc.) by the virtue of simply owning a weapon. But you argue the weapon is not for use against the government. Is this rifle a blessed talisman which wards off evil? Don't make this conversation about home defense, you started with keeping free from tyranny and moved to shooting crooks when that argument cracked.
The word "also" in my sentence was pretty important in linking those two separate, but related ideas. My argument hasn't cracked, I just don't think you see the point in explaining my position 3 different ways. I think most or all of your experience with guns has been shaped by the media and movies, and not by real experience.
I'm not some tea party attending, assault rifle owning nutbag. I'm as liberal and as left as they come in regards to the right to choose, gay marriage, equal rights, you name it; but I believe the constitution is the final word. You don't have to like that I own a gun, but you damn well better respect and tolerate it because that's what the constitution outlined from the very beginning. It's second only to our freedom of speech. I'm done here, I'm not going to change your mind and you aren't going to convince me otherwise so lets just agree to disagree. I've got some work piling up on my desk. And in regards to the talisman thing, I think I summed it up pretty well above you:
" It also is a very sobering reminder to the US government that 40% of home owners owns at least one gun. My point is you will never see the citizens of the united states subjugated by their government in the way that the Chinese have. Ever. And it's not because our politicians are any less corrupt than theirs."
Cheerio!
This other guy chimed in for a drive-by comment:
So I'm not nearly as anti-gun as I come off in debates like this, but I do like playing Devil's Advocate to see what happens and to strengthen my debating skills. On the internet this gives me a bit of a stealth advantage because people simply assume I am a ultra-left hippy type (see my opponent's comment towards the end. He assumed my thoughts on other issues without us ever having talked about them.) The fact that I actually have knowledge of firearms tends to throw them for a loop when they try to boggle me in that direction (didn't happen in this debate.)The trick here is to get a majority or a better organized part of these armed citizens on your side and then deal with the rest. You can shoot on sight as you are dealing with armed resistance.
Oh good. So your group will organize its members and weapons. And other groups with anti-government agendas will as well. But if some groups deem each other too dangerous, they may start shooting at eachother and at the government.
Hmmm...what country does that remind me of?
My standard opening argument against gun owners who own them for the purpose of "standing up to the government" is to scale the weaponry up to a somewhat ridiculous level (in this case RPG-7s). It seems a bit Strawman-ish to me, but it follows a logic that to defeat a tyranny by force of arms, you should use all available arms and sticking to "I own guns to keep the government in check" but being against larger weapons is silly because you could never defeat a tyranny with just rifles. This is the heart of my debate. The general reactions seem to be:
A: Only responsible people will buy them (Yes, really, I've heard this.Silly libertarians.)
B: Criminals can already get them, so they should be legal! (People seem to think the black market in America is like a very hard to find Wal-Mart.)
C: Call it trolling/try to ignore it. (This person did.) Basically the argument rankles them, but they can't find a good reason why.
Thoughts on this method?
Also, the bit the opponent repeats in his last post. I believe that I sufficiently commented on it initially, and he is attempting to ignore me. Yes? No?
