[honk]

You mean except for all the people in the government trying to explicitly ban guns from being owned by the public.

I think I'm interpreting "disarm" and "ban guns" a bit more broadly than you, but regardless, I'll rephrase - I strongly disagree with the notion that an armed population are somehow a check on the federal government or a deterrent to any undesirable activity on their part, and that if the government were planning to pass shitty, unpopular, or blatantly unconstitutional laws, they would first need to disarm the population. That's just something that gun enthusiasts like to tell themselves (and everyone else) so they can imagine that they're actually performing an important civic duty by pursuing their hobby.

This is correct. I have no intention of violent acts upon any individual or government entity. Violence is wrong and bad.

I'm not trying to call you specifically out. I'm just saying that the implied threat of an armed population in this country making trouble for or resisting an oppressive government is ultimately an empty one. Americans will not rise up against their government en masse, with or without their guns. Politicians know this. In fact, I'd say that anyone who has taken the time to actually think about this subject instead of immediately accepting gun enthusiasts' romanticized view of their hobby as the undisputed truth knows this. In light of this fact, I think that conspiracy theories about how gun control laws and policies are secretly intended to make the population compliant and unable to resist in the face of further tyranny fall apart.

[AATW]

I think I'm interpreting "disarm" and "ban guns" a bit more broadly than you, but regardless, I'll rephrase - I strongly disagree with the notion that an armed population are somehow a check on the federal government or a deterrent to any undesirable activity on their part, and that if the government were planning to pass shitty, unpopular, or blatantly unconstitutional laws, they would first need to disarm the population. That's just something that gun enthusiasts like to tell themselves (and everyone else) so they can imagine that they're actually performing an important civic duty by pursuing their hobby.

As Jim Jeffreys notes in his bit about guns in one of his stand up tours, there's only one argument for having guns, and that's "I like guns".
People don't need it for "protection", they're not going to rise up against the government, they just like guns.

[Rushy]

I think I'm interpreting "disarm" and "ban guns" a bit more broadly than you, but regardless, I'll rephrase - I strongly disagree with the notion that an armed population are somehow a check on the federal government or a deterrent to any undesirable activity on their part, and that if the government were planning to pass shitty, unpopular, or blatantly unconstitutional laws, they would first need to disarm the population. That's just something that gun enthusiasts like to tell themselves (and everyone else) so they can imagine that they're actually performing an important civic duty by pursuing their hobby.

This is certainly a strange opinion to have that runs contrary to recorded history. Do you have a lot of good examples of countries where the population was well armed but ended up widely suppressed by an authoritarian government anyway?

I'm not trying to call you specifically out. I'm just saying that the implied threat of an armed population in this country making trouble for or resisting an oppressive government is ultimately an empty one. Americans will not rise up against their government en masse, with or without their guns. Politicians know this. In fact, I'd say that anyone who has taken the time to actually think about this subject instead of immediately accepting gun enthusiasts' romanticized view of their hobby as the undisputed truth knows this. In light of this fact, I think that conspiracy theories about how gun control laws and policies are secretly intended to make the population compliant and unable to resist in the face of further tyranny fall apart.

Is your opinion seriously "rebellions against governments never happen"? Seems a bit silly, don't you think? We're barely a decade removed from Arab Spring. Surely you've heard about that one, at least?

As Jim Jeffreys notes in his bit about guns in one of his stand up tours, there's only one argument for having guns, and that's "I like guns".
People don't need it for "protection", they're not going to rise up against the government, they just like guns.

It's almost like guns have multiple uses simultaneously.

[honk]

This is certainly a strange opinion to have that runs contrary to recorded history. Do you have a lot of good examples of countries where the population was well armed but ended up widely suppressed by an authoritarian government anyway?

Is your opinion seriously "rebellions against governments never happen"? Seems a bit silly, don't you think? We're barely a decade removed from Arab Spring. Surely you've heard about that one, at least?

I'm talking about America in the current general period of time, not other countries and not other times in history. Short of the government doing something outrageously drastic like marching stormtroopers down the streets or sending people to death camps (which it has no reason to do, as there are far more effective and discreet ways to operate an authoritarian regime), Americans are not going to sacrifice their livelihoods and leave their families so that they can become unpaid freedom fighters and spend the rest of their lives as hunted fugitives. They have too much to live for.

[garygreen]

there is actually a significant body of research on the effectiveness of violent vs. non-violent protest/revolution. we don't have to guess.

i have yet to see any literature coming out of this research that says violent revolutions are more likely to achieve their aims than non-violent ones. but there are many that find the converse.

[Tom Bishop]

Americans are not going to sacrifice their livelihoods and leave their families so that they can become unpaid freedom fighters and spend the rest of their lives as hunted fugitives. They have too much to live for.

You seem to conveniently forget your prior rantings about what you guys describe as the scary Jan 6 2020 insurrection.

There was an insurrection against the US Capitol in 2020, and they only stopped because their leader told them to go home.

Obviously, people are willing to participate in insurrection in modern America. Also, in a real civil war parts of the military would very likely be joining Trump. The insurrectionists wouldn't be on their own.

[AATW]

There was an insurrection against the US Capitol in 2020, and they only stopped because their leader told them to go home.

They didn't "storm the capitol." They were invited in.

[Tom Bishop]

There was an insurrection against the US Capitol in 2020, and they only stopped because their leader told them to go home.

They didn't "storm the capitol." They were invited in.

It is irrelevant that they were allowed in by police incompetence. They were calling to abolish Congress and to hang politicians while they were in the building, whether they were allowed in or not.

If Trump had given the go ahead instead of telling them to stop, America would be much different today.

[AATW]

It is irrelevant that they were allowed in by police incompetence. They were calling to abolish Congress and to hang politicians while they were in the building, whether they were allowed in or not.

If Trump had given the go ahead instead of telling them to stop, America would be much different today.

lol at anyone dumb enough to believe this Democrat stunt

[Tom Bishop]

Try being more honest in your life. The whole protest itself was not a democrat stunt. The democrat administration removing the barricades and keeping the front doors open and letting them into the building is the democrat stunt.

Quote all of it:

lol at anyone dumb enough to believe this Democrat stunt

If you tried to force your way into the country's capitol building on a normal weekday with a group of people do you think you could do it without all of you getting totally massacred?

Here are the protestors getting past the barricades. The barricades are pulled open for them and the police casually turn their backs to them and walk with the protestors towards the capitol building:

https://twitter.com/PollEveryday2/status/1346969946992029696

https://youtu.be/2Hpj-CAJB6Y

Here the protestors gain entrance into the building. The vigilant policeman is unarmed, waves a little stick, and just runs away from them, leading them into the interior:

https://twitter.com/IndigoLeo10/status/1346941327720796166

https://youtu.be/vsPIZk6MRyE

[AATW]

So they were invited in.
It was a Democrat stunt.
And it was also an insurrection which would have totally overthrown the government had Trump not called it off.
Logical consistency is overrated to be fair.

[Tom Bishop]

So they were invited in.
It was a Democrat stunt.
And it was also an insurrection which would have totally overthrown the government had Trump not called it off.
Logical consistency is overrated to be fair.

If someone goes into your capitol and hangs your politicians, they have overthrown the government.

The people were in the building and were chanting to hang the politicians, and it is irrelevant that the police allowed them in. Are you seriously arguing that if they had gotten to democrat senator Chuck Schumer, that they were there to just there to shake his hand and leave?

Honk's idea that people are unwilling to attempt to overthrow the government in modern America is obviously wrong.

[honk]

You seem to conveniently forget your prior rantings about what you guys describe as the scary Jan 6 2020 insurrection.

There was an insurrection against the US Capitol in 2020, and they only stopped because their leader told them to go home.

Obviously, people are willing to participate in insurrection in modern America.

I didn't say that people weren't willing to participate in insurrections or political violence. I'm specifically talking about the idea that gun owners will rise up against the government if it grows too oppressive and overthrow it via revolution. A coup involving a relatively tiny number of people and one specific, strategic act of violence to keep a president they liked in power is not, I imagine, what gun owners have in mind when they talk about how they're a check on the government. In fact, the Capitol attack itself pokes a hole in that mythology because of the limited role that guns played in it. The attackers swarmed the Capitol through sheer numbers (and also through complicit Democratic authorities, according to your contradictory take on it), not through force of arms. Only one person was shot, and it was by the police.

Also, in a real civil war parts of the military would very likely be joining Trump. The insurrectionists wouldn't be on their own.

I never even mentioned Trump, but now that you mention it, if Trump or any other politician called for a civil war, very few people inside or outside of the military would join him. That's the power of de jure authority.

If Trump had given the go ahead instead of telling them to stop, America would be much different today.

Nice try, but this effort at rewriting history to portray Trump as magnanimous and merciful isn't going to work. Trump didn't tell anyone to stop until hours after the Capitol had been breached and the members of Congress had all long since been evacuated. At that point, the attackers - most of whom were already gone - were just hanging around in the empty building. There was nothing that any of them could have done at that time, regardless of what Trump did or didn't say to them.

[Rushy]

I'm talking about America in the current general period of time, not other countries and not other times in history. Short of the government doing something outrageously drastic like marching stormtroopers down the streets or sending people to death camps (which it has no reason to do, as there are far more effective and discreet ways to operate an authoritarian regime), Americans are not going to sacrifice their livelihoods and leave their families so that they can become unpaid freedom fighters and spend the rest of their lives as hunted fugitives. They have too much to live for.

So your overall point is "nothing happens until it does"? Let's say I want to send people to death camps, but I don't want to have a hard time with it, so I want to start trying to disarm people first. What would that look like?

[Tom Bishop]

I didn't say that people weren't willing to participate in insurrections or political violence. I'm specifically talking about the idea that gun owners will rise up against the government if it grows too oppressive and overthrow it via revolution.

Rising up against a government and overthrowing it via revolution is called an insurrection. 

The people marching through the Capitol on Jan 6th and calling to hang the politicians risked their freedom for doing what they did. Many of them did go to jail because of it, and would have faced a much harsher punishment if they had actually found a politician to hang. The claim that people are too scared to risk anything anymore is clearly false.

The attackers swarmed the Capitol through sheer numbers (and also through complicit Democratic authorities, according to your contradictory take on it), not through force of arms. Only one person was shot, and it was by the police.

The only reason more guns were not there at the event is because the crowd went through the Trump rally security, which involves going through high-tech weapon scanners for entrance. However, many guns were found in cars outside of the event.

There is video of people breaking down the windows of the Capitol building with bats. The characterization that this isn't violent enough is laughable. People were willing to insurrect even without the benefit of guns, which speaks more to their bravery and willingness to insurrect when they believe that the other side has crossed the line.

I never even mentioned Trump, but now that you mention it, if Trump or any other politician called for a civil war, very few people inside or outside of the military would join him. That's the power of de jure authority.

You will recall that at least 13 red states, including Texas, were telling the SCOTUS that the results of the election should not have been accepted with the concerning discrepancies.

In the 2020 election there was growing concern over a civil war. It would have been divided between the red states versus the blue states. In a civil war the military bases in those areas would go to the parent states, just as what happened during the first civil war. In a civil war the military in Texas will obviously be defending Texas regardless of what federal orders they receive.

Nice try, but this effort at rewriting history to portray Trump as magnanimous and merciful isn't going to work. Trump didn't tell anyone to stop until hours after the Capitol had been breached and the members of Congress had all long since been evacuated. At that point, the attackers - most of whom were already gone - were just hanging around in the empty building. There was nothing that any of them could have done at that time, regardless of what Trump did or didn't say to them.

Incorrect. Look any timeline:

https://www.jan-6.com/january-6-timeline

January 6th: Capitol Tunnel + Upper W. Terrace

3:30pm
Fighting resumes at the tunnel.
On the Upper W. Terrace, a large group of officers push rioters back from NW Courtyard.
Crow continues surging at tunnel until 4:17pm.

4:17pm
Police threaten lethal force.
 Trump tweets, “This was a fraudulent election, but..we have to have peace. So go home. We love you; you’re very special...But go home..

4:26pm
Rioters realize Roseanne Boyland is trampled after the one rioter trips over her body while leaving the tunnel.

4:27pm
The mob drags out Officer Miller & beats him with fists and weapons.

Ten minutes after Trump made that announcement the crowd was beating policemen with fists and weapons. The situation clearly wasn't over.

[honk]

So your overall point is "nothing happens until it does"? Let's say I want to send people to death camps, but I don't want to have a hard time with it, so I want to start trying to disarm people first. What would that look like?

You would have a hard time with it regardless, because sending people to death camps is exactly the kind of outrageous "I am evil!" stunt that actually could spark mass resistance, regardless of whether or not people have guns. But like I said, that won't happen, because a modern authoritarian government has nothing to gain from that kind of mustache-twirling stunt.

Rising up against a government and overthrowing it via revolution is called an insurrection. 

The people marching through the Capitol on Jan 6th and calling to hang the politicians risked their freedom for doing what they did. Many of them did go to jail because of it, and would have faced a much harsher punishment if they had actually found a politician to hang. The claim that people are too scared to risk anything anymore is clearly false.

Now you're just quibbling about definitions, as if that's at all my point. Mobbing a building with the encouragement of the president in the belief that he's being unlawfully forced out of office is objectively not the same thing as gun owners rising up in response to government tyranny and setting out to overthrow it. And if we're going to talk about their motivations and sacrifices, then it's also worth pointing out that many of the attackers have since said that they thought Trump had their backs and were astonished when the election went on to be certified and they ended up being prosecuted. They weren't willfully sacrificing anything.

The only reason more guns were not there at the event is because the crowd went through the Trump rally security, which involves going through high-tech weapon scanners for entrance. However, many guns were found in cars outside of the event.

I don't care about why they didn't have guns. That isn't at all relevant to what I'm arguing, which is that in stark contrast to the "we need guns to fight the government" narrative, this attack happened without the use of guns.

There is video of people breaking down the windows of the Capitol building with bats. The characterization that this isn't violent enough is laughable. People were willing to insurrect even without the benefit of guns, which speaks more to their bravery and willingness to insurrect when they believe that the other side has crossed the line.

I never said that it wasn't "violent enough." I said it was done without the use of guns, which it was.

You will recall that at least 13 red states, including Texas, were telling the SCOTUS that the results of the election should not have been accepted with the concerning discrepancies.

Putting the name "Texas" on a lawsuit for legal reasons does not mean that Texas as a whole objected to the election. It was a group of Trump lawyers and Texas AG Ken Paxton who filed the lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania, and I'm pretty sure that any other lawsuit you might have in mind developed along similar lines.

In the 2020 election there was growing concern over a civil war. It would have been divided between the red states vs. the blue states. In a civil war the military bases in those areas would go to the parent states, just as what happened during the first civil war. In a civil war the military in Texas will obviously be defending Texas regardless of what federal orders they receive.

This is all thrilling worldbuilding for the alternate-history story you're presumably writing, but here in the real world, the military (outside of the National Guard and Coast Guard) all take their orders from the same central authority. 99.9% of them will continue to obey the conventional chain of command, regardless of whom the president is.

Incorrect. Look any timeline:

https://www.jan-6.com/january-6-timeline

January 6th: Capitol Tunnel + Upper W. Terrace

3:30pm
Fighting resumes at the tunnel.
On the Upper W. Terrace, a large group of officers push rioters back from NW Courtyard.
Crow continues surging at tunnel until 4:17pm.

4:17pm
Police threaten lethal force.
 Trump tweets, “This was a fraudulent election, but..we have to have peace. So go home. We love you; you’re very special...But go home..

4:26pm
Rioters realize Roseanne Boyland is trampled after the one rioter trips over her body while leaving the tunnel.

4:27pm
The mob drags out Officer Miller & beats him with fists and weapons.

Ten minutes after Trump made that announcement the crowd was beating policemen with fists and weapons. The situation clearly wasn't over.

Unless you think that beating up a policeman was somehow going to overturn the election, then you're making an incredibly pedantic nitpick.  We got on this subject because you claimed that Trump calling the attackers off was the reason why the attack didn't secede. I pointed out that wasn't true because Congress had already been evacuated and so the attackers were just hanging around in an empty building, and your response is to say that, no, the attackers weren't just hanging around in an empty building, they were actually beating up cops. Do you really think this is a good, germane response? Do you really think pointing out this fact changes anything?

[Rushy]

So your overall point is "nothing happens until it does"? Let's say I want to send people to death camps, but I don't want to have a hard time with it, so I want to start trying to disarm people first. What would that look like?

You would have a hard time with it regardless, because sending people to death camps is exactly the kind of outrageous "I am evil!" stunt that actually could spark mass resistance, regardless of whether or not people have guns. But like I said, that won't happen, because a modern authoritarian government has nothing to gain from that kind of mustache-twirling stunt.

You're right. Nothing ever happens. Violence is a thing of the past. Revolutions, riots, rebellions and wars are nonsense of a bygone era.

But, with this argument in mind, why ban guns in the first place? If gun owners are already doomed to never use them (they're too comfortable), then why go through the effort of taking them away? Surely the outcome is the same regardless, so the government's energy is better spent doing quite literally anything else.

[honk]

I don't know how to even begin engaging with that wave of non sequiturs, so I'll just reiterate - the American people will not in meaningful numbers engage in anything that could be reasonably described as a revolution, rebellion, or mass armed resistance to the de jure government. Joe down the street is not going to say goodbye to his wife and kids and leave home so he can fight in the Battle of Washington or whatever. Very few people would make that kind of sacrifice for the sake of their ideals.

[Tom Bishop]

Joe down the street is not going to say goodbye to his wife and kids and leave home so he can fight in the Battle of Washington or whatever. Very few people would make that kind of sacrifice for the sake of their ideals.

Wrong. You have spent years posting that thousands of people decided to mutiny against the United States with violence. Simply look into the congressional investigation on this:

https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-167/issue-25/senate-section/article/S615-4

President Trump had truly made them believe that their election had
been stolen and that it was their patriotic duty to fight to steal it
back--``patriotic,'' a term he gave those who use violence for him--and
they were willing to say goodbye to their children for this fight.
  These supporters didn't just rely on entering the Capitol with guns
haphazardly. They had maps of this building. They talked through which
tunnels to use and how to get to the Senate Chamber. Some posted
specific floor plan layouts of the Capitol alongside hopes of
overwhelming law enforcement to ``find the tunnels; arrest the worst
traitors.''
...
The day before the rioters stormed the Congress, an FBI office in
Virginia also issued an explicit warning that extremists were preparing
to travel to Washington to commit violence and ``war,'' according to
internal reports.

  The FBI report cited to an online post where the user declared that
Trump supporters should go to Washington and get violent. The supporter
said:

       Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there
     ready for war. We get our President or we die.

  These threat warnings were not just hypothetical. Actual arrests
occurred in the days leading to the attack.
...
 On January 4, 2 days before the rally, one extremely well-publicized
arrest was of a Proud Boy leader who destroyed a church's Black Lives
Matter banner a month earlier during the December 12, second Million
MAGA March. The report emphasized that when he was arrested, he was
carrying high-capacity firearms magazines, which he claimed were meant
to be supplied to another rally attendee for January 6.

By the night before the January 6 attack, DC police had already made
six arrests in connection with the planned protests on charges of
carrying weapons, ammunitions, assault, assaulting police.
...
And leading up to the event, there were hundreds--hundreds--of posts
online showing that his supporters took this as a call to arms to
attack the Capitol. There were detailed posts of the plan to attack
online. Law enforcement warned that these posts were real threats and
even made arrests days leading up to the attack.

[Rushy]

I don't know how to even begin engaging with that wave of non sequiturs, so I'll just reiterate - the American people will not in meaningful numbers engage in anything that could be reasonably described as a revolution, rebellion, or mass armed resistance to the de jure government. Joe down the street is not going to say goodbye to his wife and kids and leave home so he can fight in the Battle of Washington or whatever. Very few people would make that kind of sacrifice for the sake of their ideals.

Thanks to the plummeting birth and marriage rates, most of your average joes don't need to say goodbye to the wife and kids anymore. There's no one to say goodbye to.