Race Relations

[DanaC]

The haters of guns are the makers and facilitators of genocide -- or on the retail scale, murder and other savagery. The sacred principle of self-defense, which is inalienable, must in consequence of its sacredness never be messed with. Prohibiting it makes genocide possible -- and it's the most efficient way to make genocide possible.

Yeah man. It's the fucking pacifists who make the world dangerous. Bet that was the problem in Rwanda eh? People just didn't want to have weaponry. There just wasn't enough weaponry about to end the bloodshed. Mayube if they'd had a handful more machetes, just a sprinkling more of AK-47s, maybe then there'd have been a pleasanter outcome.

Generally speaking my country leaves its guns in the hands of the professionals. Occasionally that leads to an unnecessary and unjust death. It has never, and I don't believe it ever will, lead to a genocide at the hands of an armed state.

However much you guys arm, you will never and can never arm yourselves to the extent that your military can. Your guns may well protect you from armed robbers or intruders with ill intent. They may even cause any government who chose to commit genocide against any people within the USA some measure of concern and cost. But they wouldn't save you against the world's most advanced and well-funded military. An armed populace is no defence against genocide. It may, theoretically, be a defence against governmental oppression, inasmuch as it may make the cost of success rise too high to be paid. If the government wanted to conduct a war against its own people, and had military or vigilante support for that war, all the underground survival shelters and serried rows of tinned beans won't save them, and nor would hunting rifles, however loosely that term is applied.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Yeah man. It's the fucking pacifists who make the world dangerous.

Pacifists like Neville Chamberlain? He made the world safer?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

An armed populace is no defence against genocide.

You might as well claim there is no defense whatsoever against genocide -- that we all owe our lives to the suffrance of our governments. Sounds untenable to me.

It's actually the sole known defense against genocide. The state is no bulwark against it, not when the state's power is needed to carry it out. I can't name a private genocide. Armed populaces also don't suffer genocides -- they only work that way when the targets can't shoot back. Civil wars don't amount to genocides, everything taken into consideration.

Three things need to line up before you can get a genocide going: gun control -- bans, that is; hatred, however rationalized, be it class, race, religion, whatever -- hatred must drive the egregious action; and governmental power, either to do the genocide directly or cover the activities of those who perform it. Of these three, gun control by law is the most efficient tool and the most vulnerable one -- you can repeal a law. Once that leg is off the stool, genocide becomes impracticable. Remove another, and it ends up unthinkable.

It may, theoretically, be a defence against governmental oppression, inasmuch as it may make the cost of success rise too high to be paid.

That approach has worked rather well in keeping our Republic a republic and politically stable. Arms keeping also did not affect the sociopolitical stability of the UK, either.

If the government wanted to conduct a war against its own people, and had military or vigilante support for that war, all the underground survival shelters and serried rows of tinned beans won't save them, and nor would hunting rifles, however loosely that term is applied.

This sort of remark is a reliable indicator that the speaker has never studied how guerrilla warfare works, and is ignorant of the principle that a lesser weapon may be used and directed to obtain a greater. I've never seen any of such people exhibit any understanding of guerrilla or unconventional strategy, either.