Weak.

Violate the 2nd amendment according to SCOTUS. Federal assault weapons bans and arbitrary magazine capacity limitations also have been nearly struck down for the same reason and would have been if the AWB had been re authorized.

Uncle Sam ain't coming for anyone's artificial spine yet and they won't.

But the government tried.

So a 2008 case strikes down parts of a 1975 law...and this is proof that there has been no governmental action against the RKBA?

If I stole your car, kept it for 33 years, and gave it back - would I still be guilty of theft?

are worth a fuck against the military's weakest firepower? A mouse facing off against a hawk.

The Taliban have been fighting such a war for more than 20 years and aren't close to being beaten.

Some militias here and there just won't do the trick.

It might start that way, but I think it would quickly spiral into something much bigger with a large portion of the population siding with the militias and helping them. That is how civil wars start. A scenario like that would be extremely difficult to contain.

The US still cares somewhat about our reputation in Afghanistan, so we aren't being as brutal as we could be.

If the battle was for the US government's survival, as in your proposed civil war, they would unleash far more upon the rebels.

We'd be back to carpet-bombing cities and other massive destruction to break the rebellion. I'm not completely sure nukes would be off the table - they could get used as part of a last-ditch effort. Because it really doesn't matter if your government behaved relatively nicely when it no longer exists. Survival first, then deal with the backlash.

At which point the massively superior weaponry means your militia gets blown to smithereens, leaving an unorganized, low-grade insurrection. And that can be contained well enough to keep the government in power.

As brutal as they were, they could have been more brutal.

Fundamentally, the way insurrections like Afghanistan and Vietnam work is to make it painful enough for long enough that the superpower gives up and goes home. They are won by outlasting, not by out-fighting.

When the battle is already at home, that doesn't work.

If that happened, I think anyone who was on the fence would quickly make up their mind.

So they deserved to be carpet bombed.

We're talking about a situation like Syria, not Afghanistan. Assad has bombed his own people. Including his supporters. And he's used chemical weapons. He's still got about half the country behind him. His government is fighting for survival, so they're willing to do ANYTHING to win.

In your theoretical new US civil war, if the government thinks it will lose it will do ANYTHING to win.

First off, you are assuming that the US military would be willing to bomb US cities.

If that order was given, you would likely see a large portion of the military defect, and a lot would take their fancy equipment with them.

Also, in a civil war similar to the 1850's it be pretty safe to go in and bomb weapons factories, etc. But in a civil war like today, you might have one person who supports the revolution, living right next to a person against it. Are you going to bomb both of them?

In the Russian revolution the Tzar had the support of all of his troops. Until one day he didn't. It was an almost bloodless takeover even though the Bolsheviks had almost no military at the time.

like all civil wars there would be mass disobedience and desertions from whatever stripe of government ordered them to carpet bomb US cities. as to this fantasy that all the rebels would be middle aged fat guys running around there are shit loads of combat hardened disaffected people ou there and other competent nutters to make a fight of it. we would see car bombs, infrastructure attacks and the whole nine yards if it ever came to it. also this glee that the US military woukd happily kill all the militia members, remember if they can kill all right wingers at the drop of a hat whats to stop a radically different government ordering them to kill all with a left political slant. it is scarey to see people wish for a civil war, and the fact that they would sit safely in their basement wishing death on their neighbours makes them no more different from the people tjey want destroyed.

Drones are flying robots that kill.

They are nominally controlled by humans...for now.

and they will all crash back to a blue screen of death.

They always have a weak spot!

Some will believe it's wrong and defect.

Many won't. They'll believe the government's story and follow orders.

At least, not enough of them to turn the war.

Physical combat with guns would likely be a very small aspect of a confrontation.

I and many millions of gun owning liberals would be shooting your asses for trying to overthrow our government. We'd be helping the military. Bet you never considered that angle.

And not just a liberal, corporate tool government..?

And I have to reiterate: if such a scenario really did include millions and millions of people, then there's no way in hell the military would be intact at that point.

If we can't rely on democratic rule of law, we may as well just mail it in and bring on the apocalypse.

You're forgetting how a former cop named dorner and two scumbags named muhammad and malvo - three individuals - caused massive chaos in the areas in which they were operating.


Me, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss what things might look like if it were say...a thousand people doing this nationwide, instead of just three individuals in two locales.

Hard to shoot your way to victory without water, communication or transport, innit?

The Taliban is not as limited in that manner.

The government also depends on the same infrastructure which is woefully insecure. I've worked in the electric power business for most of my career and know it well. It is very vulnerable to attack, both physical (e.g. damaging critical transmission lines and substations) and cyber attacks (disabling the controls that keep the power grid stable). There are thousands of people in the country with the knowledge to quickly bring the power grid down. The same is probably true with telecommunications. Do you think all of them would remain loyal to the government?

Sorry, civilians don't have a clue what battle is like. Everyone has watched too many movies. A bunch of soft, overweight, untrained, middle aged men, are no match for a highly trained team of professional soldiers. Just because the Afghani's have successfully waged a guerrilla campaign against two "superpowers", don't believe for a minute that that can be done anywhere. Remember that the Afghani's have been doing this for literally centuries.

What makes you think that the members of that military would blindly follow a government that mass numbers of citizens considers corrupt enough to take to arms against? Soldiers are people....dis proportionally patriotic in more fundamental ways (IE they swear to uphold the constitution, not the current government in power) and geographically from conservative areas.

I believe some of the first to take up arms would be the exact "professional soldiers" you assume will forget their oaths and fire upon crowds of citizens.

I think it is safe to assume that you never served in the military.

The hillbilly contingent in America not so much. That is not to say they could not learn the tactics of such fighting, but they will still be pikers compared to the Afghanis even after decades of learning such warfare.

Small arms fire can take down an Apache Helicopter. No Matter how many tools they field it's no match for 150 million armed Americans. It boils down to numbers.

It is rather embarrassing to see it here on a progressive board. I expect that kinda talk from my uniformed neighbors and relatives.

that's what happened in Somalia. Why is repeating an historical fact, a face palm?

eom

The silly comment is just sad.

I swear a few of my neighbors have like a thousand guns and shoot every weekend. None of them have been in the military but the way they act they could win a war single handed. My Husband and BIL, both Nam vets just laugh at them when this subject comes up.

That is EXACTLY what it is like here...neighbors that never served, but are all certified urban Rambos!

Out east of this idiot. His wife was killed filming a show for The Military Channel .

https://www.dragonmans.com/

Have a good friend that lives in Denver and he said the state is divided up among hardcore democrats down south and crazy RWing preppers and that the preppers all live in North Colorado.

pink with the taxes from it.

and all local convenient stores!

I am SO stealing that phrase! It's a lot the same here, except we do have active military all over the town. They, however, don't generally celebrate a full moon by shooting their MP4's............

Well I will say there are a lot of normal ordinary hunters and farmers around here that really only hate the IRS...but mostly the gun nuts are a group all to themselves. What most of them believe goes way beyond anything I've ever seen posted here in seriousness. IE birthers and preppers. They eat up the shit that comes out of Alex Jone's and Glenn Beck's er mouth like it was candy on halloween!

If anyone wants to really understand the crazy mindset...google 'stormfront.org' but know beforehand it is a hate site.

20,000 to 50,000 insurgents in a geographical area of a single, mid-sized US state without any countryside.

The US has approximately 150 million gun owners scattered across its entire area. In Connecticut alone as many as 100,000 citizens have openly defied the "assault weapon" registration law. The US Army currently has around 550,000 soldiers but less than 1 in 5 are "trigger pullers" -- assuming they want to pull the trigger as 3/4 to 4/5 tend to vote Republican.

The Taliban are not Family men either. They were raised and trained without their families and consider women and children as possessions. The result in Afghanistan has been horrific collateral damage in families caught in the crossfire with thousands of children killed and injured and orphaned.

But wait a minute, we have had 7 to 8 thousand American children shot since Newtown - many in their own homes where guns were left out. Maybe there is an American Taliban who value guns more than children.

Uh no.

That number is in the hundreds, not the thousands.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/children-killed-guns-newtown-anniversary

Every damn year this is what happens.

The number is not in the 100s. It is in the 1000s.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4171208/

http://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/adolescents-and-teen-health-news-719/children-and-firearms-684203.html

http://m.pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/133/2/219

Don't assume "all" gun owning citizens would stand by while right wing nut jobs tried overthrowing our government. Of that 150 million, you can probably deduct 30% and figure on fighting them as well as the US Military.

They believe everything is going to fall apart and people will start rioting, fires will burn, food riots, cannibalism, mutant hoards....

They have this fantasy of loading up the SUV with guns and heading for the hills until things calm down and mankind has deteriorated to the stone age and then they will come back as a warlord,...neigh,...a GOD to the primitives.

Their first act will be to have their pick of the women.

One look at many places where a major disaster has occurred makes that obvious. A certain, not-insignificant percentage of the population goes feral. Civilization doesn't disappear (and more people try to work together to help than don't), but things definitely can take a very big step backwards.

However, if someone who's trying to prepare for such a scenario is stocking up on bullets instead of food (and seeds/cultivation equipment/etc., if they believe the problem is long-term), they they're Doing It Wrong. If someone is a situation like that finds themselves getting into firefights often enough to need thousands of rounds of ammunition, then no matter how good they are, the odds are going to catch up with them. At some point, they're going to stop a bullet (and in a situation in which modern trauma care probably won't be available). If they're not avoiding violent conflict and trying to find people to band together with and start fixing things, then they're unlikely to survive.

But so many of that sort have failed to think things through, quite possibly because they harbor the sort of infantile fantasies you describe.

But it DOESN'T.

People are very patient after a disaster to get the comforts of civilization BACK.

There is this myth popular amongst white people that they INVENTED civilization and the other races are little more than trained primitives. It's the mindset of the "Great White Hunter" and the Apartheid Government in South Africa. We had people like Cheney claiming is was nonsense to think black people could govern themselves. On the contrary, according to the mindset, those types should be under constant guard to prevent an uprising.

Face it. A LOT of this "civilization falling" is just CODE for a race war that bigots WANT because they dream of the day when white people will take to the streets and execute all non-whites on sight.

Such a thing has happened before in this country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot

Then there's this gem of history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_River_Massacre (Read the section: Massacre and actions of U.S. soldiers)

As far as the whole "reverting to savages" it seems white people are the ones to do it and all this talk of "freedom" is the freedom to run amok.

As I said, "a certain non-insignificant percentage" does indeed abandon civilized behavior in disaster situations. To argue otherwise is to deny that looting (etc.) takes place under these conditions. That's absurd.

Are the majority disinclined to do this? Of course. I already stated that.

You seem more interested in making this a racial discussion, though. While that's certainly a legitimate area of discussion (and one in which I suspect we'd have little disagreement), it's not the focus of my point, nor is it a conversation I'm particularly interested in having.

So I guess we're done. Best wishes!

It seems to me the only one fantasizing about a race war is you. No idea where this became about "white people" claiming to invent civilization and hoping it will fail in a masked code to start a race war.

Take off your race-themed tinfoil hat.

You use your small arms to kill the pilots as they leave their houses in the morning. Or other things I won't even mention due to some of the faint hearts around here.

Against a few "rebel" yahoos in the hills, that's what we'd see. Against a much broader insurrection? Nope. A fractured military would fall out on both sides of the conflict (as in the majority of civil wars).

That's all speculation with little chance of actually occurring, of course. We're far to complacent and distracted by bullshit to actually take that sort of action. That's not such a bad thing, given the horror of war (especially civil war). But with the democratic process so utterly corrupted by the plutocrats, I don't see meaningful change coming from within the system, either. I think for those of us who find the status quo intolerable, the real choices are emigration or hunkering down and waiting for the current nation to fragment into smaller polities in a relatively peaceful manner (Soviet-Union-style).

Yeah, feeling a bit of despair today... =(

it would be from things like launching a bomber and having it do a U-turn and carpet bombing the air field.

There are almost as many armed liberals as there are right wing yahoos*, so it's quite probable it would be multiple factions of citizens shooting at each other while factions of the military shoot at one another. Which would be just about the biggest mess imaginable.

*They tend to have a different kind of guns entirely, but an AR-15 with 30 rail attachments, a 200 round drum, and a holographic American flag paint job with Bible verses is still going to lose to a bolt action 30.06 if you don't know it's coming.

even when the military has not been called in: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017176946

And if you think the cops and/or military will intervene on the side of the people against the 1%, think again. They're paid to keep things orderly and rebellion is not orderly.

intervene on the side of the people against the 1%.

It's pretty hard to keep trumpeting that one when not a single shot has been fired over the last 25 years while the corporations and their whores in DC have completely crushed democracy.

We're pretty much fucked (until the nation breaks up into smaller polities...the only "reset button" I can think of that needn't be bloody).

i favor the multi-state solution, but the ward states are the ones whose governors and other "reps" are always threatening to secede, as if they would detach themselves from the gravy train.

Issues like gun control, compliance with the ACA, SP HC, union rights, and so on seem like and excellent platform for the real American to decouple the red states. Probably our best hope to not turn into Haiti.

we even have an established political party in the state that promotes (and has for 40+ years) secession.

about government actions to take away the right to vote.

Suspension or curtailment of same day registration, early voting.

Hmm... which country do you live in?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_ID_laws_in_the_United_States

Those laws do not specifically state they are to take away the right to vote. That the end result of those laws will take away the right to vote is nothing but opinion.

Thought the post said it didn't want rumors, CT or bar talk?

Lots of voters did not get to cast their ballots in 2012, thanks to those laws. It wasn't enough to change the outcome of the presidential election, but they're already disenfranchising people.

But please, tell us about how they are needed to desperately fight the evil scourge of in-person voter fraud.

The OP basically states that there are no laws with the intent to 'come for the guns,' and that it is dumb to believe the end results will lead to them taking guns. But then, they want us to blindly accept their opinion that the end result of voter ID will lead to them taking our voting rights.

Point is, the 'sky is falling' tactic isn't more valid simply because you support the persons position on an issue.

Have all sorts of reasons to go get a drivers license so they can vote.

Oh, a state ID instead? Well, the DMV is the one that issues that, and it's across town, and only open during 'business' hours. And since that's when you're working, and your boss will fire you if you say "I need to take a day off to go to the DMV", getting that ID is super-easy.

And the fee for either ID is nothing like a poll tax.

Show a utility bill instead? Why do you assume all over-18 people pay utility bills? Live with your parents, and you won't be paying the electric bill. Or have a lease to show.

People have already lost their right to vote due to voter ID laws. This is not 'the end result will be'. The end result already is.

Additionally, the laws in question are not just voter ID laws. Laws to take away early voting and reduce the number of precincts in Democratically-aligned areas have also cost people their right to vote. Remember the stories about the many-hour lines in FL in 2012? You think no one had to give up and go to work, or pick up the kids, after hour 4 in line?

it's basically the same as the Jim Crow laws in the South - you are required to be able to read and write, etc. In some states? Recite the constitution/state poem/whatever. These are RESTRICTIONS, granted - but blatant, obvious ones, and are precisely and specifically designed to do one thing - deny a person a vote. The law has since been struck down:

That wouldn't stand up in any court. There is no other reason for these laws as there has been little to none voter fraud in this country. These laws are no different than the poll taxes.

In my town they moved the DPS (drivers' license) office out on the northern edge of town. There are plans to move the tax office (in charge of voter registration) to the far south end of town. There is limited public transit here so how does one get the pile of paper work necessary to have a photo id when they do not drive?

But, just as you have done here, the pro 2nd Amendment side can come up with their own justifications as to why they believe gun control laws are meant to take guns from the people.

Instead of arguing that it is ok in one instance, but wrong in another, we should be arguing that it is wrong on both.

It's a variation on the old poll tax or literacy tests which were used to keep people from voting.

Which country is it that you live in?

Here's a link - http://www.advancementproject.org/issues/voter-protection/pages/protecting-the-vote

And another - https://www.aclu.org/voting-rights

don't state that their intention is to take guns from the people either, but many people have links "proving" that is their intent. Your links and opinions are no more valid than theirs.

Apparently, I live in a country full of hypocrisy.

But we guessed that.

Start here for actual government actions to implement that agenda:

http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/election-2013-voting-laws-roundup

More info here on how to protect your right to vote:
http://www.lwv.org

Meanwhile, there is no comparable effort to take away our guns.

The gun banner-controllers have been politically smash-mouthed enough (with significant collateral damage to the Party), that only the loudest yappers keep pushing their prohibition. IOW, even a barroom brawler knows when to stumble out the door.

The plutocrats' corruption of the democratic system continues apace, and your vote becomes less meaningful all the time.

when Republicans have a chance they actually do take those guns away...

Imagine this. To Norway and a friend of my dads said America has the most liberal <----- rules in the world on guns. Conservatives would take this away.. Have no idea why I have Zombies who think otherwise. Although it's really not funny walking into a gun show and having almost every table say if I'm a democrat I will not be served. So who's banning guns??

No kidding! That's right!

has Alex Jones on the brain! Of all the STUPID things I've heard over the years, that ranks in the top 10!

I will protect the constitution from all enemies foriegn or domestic. So the government has no fear at all from 2nd amendment crackpots.

One is also obligated to ignore an illegal order as the Nuremberg Defense is not valid at all.

Look at the fire power the US has and look at the guns you have.

Pure damage dealing? No comparison. Actual control and profit though cannot be accomplished with high tech navies, or fighter planes and bombers, and even the heavy armor is of only limited use.

Wipe us out? Yes. Subjugation? Not so much.

I guess gorilla warfare is tough for Americans to really think about. Maybe that is why we seem to always lose such things despite being a significant reason we won our own independence from the world superpower of that day.

But it does not provide evidence of active governmental activity to take away our guns.

Voting by those who does not normally have a drivers license, etc by imposing a photo I'd presented at voting is a problem. Republicans claim voter fraud but do not produce evidence, has their party convinced the reason Democrats win is because of fraud. The GOP pushes for voter photo id but will vote down sensible gun control. They sponsor anti-abortion laws but vote down healthcare and food stamps. They claim to err on the side of life but no health care. The worst thing is people voting for Republicans against their own interest.

It is a golden age for gun rights with state after state liberalizing their gun laws. Of course government is not scared of gun owners or their guns.

If the government wants to control the population, it may be already there. Loss of the fourth amendment, NSA information and, yes, possibly drones may do the trick. As a matter of fact we have seen it some time ago working just fine against the OWS groups everywhere. If those people or the civil rights groups had carried guns, do you really think the government would not have reacted differently? The civil rights marches forced the government to cave in precisely because the blood of unarmed peaceful people was spilled and seen on TV by millions. The fear of an overly intrusive government should direct us rather to stop the NSA spying and return to the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendment. You don't need to control all 300 millions, you just take out the probable "trouble makers". And the government can do that very quietly and even peacefully.