Please to explain for the hard of understanding...

[DanaC]

A thoughtful answer, thankyou.

I understand, I think, the historical roots of guns in America. It's really their place in modern American culture that occasionally baffles me *smiles*. Not the owning of them - I can see lots of very good and compelling reasons why someone might own a gun. Not least the practical applications in terms of hunting and home defence. Open carry though I find difficult to get my head around. Though some in this thread have offered some good reasons for why it is apprpriate in some instances.

It's the emotional place of guns I think I have the most difficulty with.

A few minor points from your resopnse:

Genocide was not something the Founding Fathers had any experience of

I suspect the Native peoples of America might argue with that one *smiles*. And given that the Founding Fathers were drawn primarily from European cultures, they were no doubt already aware of the genocides committed by their forefathers in places like South America. There's also an argument to be made that the slave labour which they and most of their peers made use of was itself the result of a form of genocide.

But no: they had no experience of being the victims of genocide.

But it's still true that armed populations do not suffer genocides, and genocides happen in places where the populations are not armed

That, I'm afraid, is not true. The genocide in Rwanda was the result of an armed population turning on itself. The power of one group lay in its semi-organised and rallied nature, not that it was armed and its victims unarmed. Most people on both sides had similar access to the kinds of weapons used in that genocide (mainly machetes).

Genocide by the state against a subject group within that state may usually have the features you describe, but even then it is far from absolute. And genocide by one nation's forces against another may be made possible by a disparity in the kinds of weapons available to the victim population as opposed to the invaders (as was the case for the Incas).

Unless your population is not just armed, but armed to the teeth with the most powerful weaponry available being armed is not a protection against genocide.

It may - may - be some protection against a state power that turns against its own people. But even then: it is more likely that state has the more powerful weapons and the more organised force. What is more likely to save a population from internal conflict in that scenario is not the presence of weapons in the general population, but the lack of appetite amongst the state's forces for use of deadly force agains their kith and kin (as in the early stages of the Russian Revolution).

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by DanaC

... It may - may - be some protection against a state power that turns against its own people. But even then: it is more likely that state has the more powerful weapons and the more organised force. What is more likely to save a population from internal conflict in that scenario is not the presence of weapons in the general population, but the lack of appetite amongst the state's forces for use of deadly force agains their kith and kin (as in the early stages of the Russian Revolution).

The state's forces don't typically turn on its entire population, it turns on one segment of the population at a time until enough of them fall that even family loyalties are corrupted when it comes to their survival.

“First they came …” is a famous statement and provocative poem attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

When this happens, as it has before and as it will again, the people become the insurgency. The presence of weapons in the general population enables them to do what ISIS is doing in Iraq and Syria, what the Taliban and Al Qaeda are doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It enables the people to take back their country from the state unless the state gets external support and even then they may just stalemate. That's a much more reliable recourse than depending on the lack of appetite amongst the state's forces for use of deadly force against their kith and kin. Too many such loyalties have fallen by the wayside under a state's gun to consider that alone a rational strategy. Guerrilla warfare has come a long way baby. You're livin' in the past as is the author of the article you posted.; but, even then there were people of vision - Foco theory:

Why does the guerrilla fighter fight?
We must come to the inevitable conclusion
that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer,
that he takes up arms responding to the angry
protest of the people against their oppressors,
and that he fights in order to change the social system
that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.

— Che Guevara

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

. . . It's the emotional place of guns I think I have the most difficulty with.

Mmm. You'd probably have to have been born into, and raised in, a republic to come to that place easily. But not liking genocide is easier.

Originally Posted by DanaC

A few minor points from your response:

I suspect the Native peoples of America might argue with that one *smiles*. And given that the Founding Fathers were drawn primarily from European cultures, they were no doubt already aware of the genocides committed by their forefathers in places like South America. There's also an argument to be made that the slave labour which they and most of their peers made use of was itself the result of a form of genocide.

But no: they had no experience of being the victims of genocide.

The tools to do genocide effectively and deliberately did not then exist, and what really did the execution on the Indians (political correctness is altogether incorrect here, those most intimately involved with the question can tell you, and I refuse to use clumsinesses), while of European origin, was also not under European control to any effectual degree: disease. Nor was it all one way; it looks a lot like there was an exchange of poxes: the great pox for the smallpox.

You'll want an information dictatorship to conceal the genocidal actions and obfuscate the matter in any way possible, to anyone. This wasn't around before the twentieth century on the necessary scale -- and in the twentieth century, the communications technology gave the overwhelming advantage to national-scale entities and operations. The balance has now shifted to private entities, down to a microcosm scale, which works to make classic information dictatorships very much harder to achieve in the last century's manner. It will be harder to conceal genocides in the twenty-first -- and without exception, every genocide in the twentieth was kept secret as long as practicable.

As for slavery being genocide, that argument too is defective as the objective was hardly one of mass slaughter: it was of monetary gain all round, at every link of the chain. Casualties were plenty heavy, and enough to give the whole thing a bad name just by themselves -- but unlike genocides, the fatalities were not the point of the slave trade. They were overhead, the cost of doing that business.

Originally Posted by DanaC

That, I'm afraid, is not true. The genocide in Rwanda was the result of an armed population turning on itself. The power of one group lay in its semi-organised and rallied nature, not that it was armed and its victims unarmed. Most people on both sides had similar access to the kinds of weapons used in that genocide (mainly machetes).

"On itself" only in a nation-state sense, and Africa's also about the biggest region where the whole-nation-state mentality is the weakest. Tutsi and Hutu were peoples not about to cut each other slack on the grounds both were Rwandan. Fair amount of rifles got used as well. Big, wet rocks were in even more abundant supply than machetes and would have been every bit as fatal to use.

Originally Posted by DanaC

Genocide by the state against a subject group within that state may usually have the features you describe, but even then it is far from absolute. And genocide by one nation's forces against another may be made possible by a disparity in the kinds of weapons available to the victim population as opposed to the invaders (as was the case for the Incas).

Per Simkin, Zelman, and Rice, there's really no such thing as private-sector genocide, and they can't find genuine occurrences in their research. Their theory of genocide has a lot to recommend it: Genocide needs three precursors. It needs hatred of one party by another. It needs governmental power, either to lend sinews to the genocidal effort motivated by hatreds or to shield the activities of those carrying the genocide out. It needs the targets disarmed -- or you run out of Einsatzkommandos quickly and fatally on the one hand, or have to fight a full-on civil war on the other. Those contests become considerably more chancy than matters were in Auschwitz, Dachau or Sobibor. As Warsaw Ghetto demonstrated. That was an expensive pogrom for those who initiated it, not so?

Originally Posted by DanaC

Unless your population is not just armed, but armed to the teeth with the most powerful weaponry available being armed is not a protection against genocide.

I cited Warsaw Ghetto already, and really: had every Jew in Europe had a Mauser rifle and 200 rounds ready ammunition, Nazi Germany couldn't have afforded Kristallnacht, let alone all that followed, having satisfactorily disarmed not only the Jews but everyone else under the Weapons Law of 18 March 1938. If you were not, under this law's provisions, military, Party, or officially Party authorized, you went unarmed and keeping anything more potent than a pellet rifle was disallowed. Even the most onerous, draconian "gun control" -- never control, always denial -- gets written in reasonable-sounding language, never in an Andrew Cuomo tone.

Further, I'll cite Israel and all those privately carried arms. That Israeli daily arms carriers have the enthusiastic support of their state is secondary. But somebody around there does want all the Jews dead or, er, trying to swim to Cyprus... Amazing how mad some people get when somebody moves in and makes a big success of a place.

Originally Posted by DanaC

It may - may - be some protection against a state power that turns against its own people. But even then: it is more likely that state has the more powerful weapons and the more organised force. What is more likely to save a population from internal conflict in that scenario is not the presence of weapons in the general population, but the lack of appetite amongst the state's forces for use of deadly force agains their kith and kin (as in the early stages of the Russian Revolution).

Much of this is right -- I'll add some protection beats no protection, simply by clogging planning of oppressions with both delays and imponderables. There are entirely too many governments around which are essentially based on the ruling autocrat being the only individual in the whole country with any rights. This is hardly, may I say, a good or right social order.

Some of it simply betrays an igorance of unconventional warfare, one truism of which is that the guerrilla can use a lesser weapon to gain control of a greater, and turn that greater weapon to his own ends. Organization any outfit can do. The baseline cleverness to manage organization is easily achieved. Success at organization is more variable after that, owing to factors which can be internal, or can be external factors striving to defeat the organization before it becomes dangerous.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Mmm. You'd probably have to have been born into, and raised in, a republic to come to that place easily. But not liking genocide is easier.
.

I take your point about the Warsaw Ghetto. And the definition of genocide as it applies to the situation in North America during the 18th and 19th centuries.

But there have been genocides where the population was not disarmed. And there are many places where the population is not armed in which there are no risks of genocide. As you say: certain things need to be in place.



Read this: On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (A Call to Historians); Harcourt, Bernard E.

It's interesting. It takes a different perspective.

To suggest that someone who supports gun control in a liberal democracy 'likes genocide' is ridiculous. It is a matter of risk assessment.

We have had genocide in Britain: during the 17th Century the British engaged in ethnic cleansing in Ireland (not strictly genocide, but certainly a crime against humanity). Prior to that there was what amounted to a genocide in the late 11th century (the Harrying of the North).

The components necessary for genocide do not exist in modern Britain. To be armed as a defence against a highly theoretical and I would argue vanishingly small risk of a total cultural and political volte face does not make sense when the risks that armament would bring are very real and measurable. It would make as much sense as everybody wearing radiation suits 24/7 to guard against a potential nuclear powerplant accident.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by DanaC

We have had genocide in Britain: during the 17th Century the British engaged in ethnic cleansing in Ireland (not strictly genocide, but certainly a crime against humanity). Prior to that there was what amounted to a genocide in the late 11th century (the Harrying of the North).

The components necessary for genocide do not exist in modern Britain. To be armed as a defence against a highly theoretical and I would argue vanishingly small risk of a total cultural and political volte face does not make sense when the risks that armament would bring are very real and measurable.

A couple points as you guys go back and forth.
At times the Plains Indians were better armed than the the American soldiers. It was really a game of numbers not armaments. Emigration doomed the native culture. I'd agree that it was genocide as it was intentional policy. As a descendant of the poorly armed Irish, I'd also call that genocide. That was a case where arms could have made a difference since they had numbers. As far as political about face goes, it would be well to remember that educated populations have lost their collective mind before. The scapegoating of your Muslim population could lead to similar outcomes. It is an interesting question whether that oppression would come from a government or the armed rabble...