It's time to show all you assault rifle hating flower weenies the truth!!!!

[NeOmega]

Fallujah.... look it up.

[NeOmega]

For various reasons, both Great Britain and the United States felt they could not deal with Ghandi and MLK by killing them, at least not right away. Remember the velvet revolutions. Just because you have a gun doesn't mean you're willing to use it, in which case, you do not have power. How could one man stop a column of tanks with no weapons?

You sidestepped the issue... note power was granted by the people with the guns. It did not have to be that way. And in tianemen, nothing was granted.

So respect for the law, not control of the guns, is what has power.

Who is controlling those guns again? The soldier or the general?

Yes, there would be nothing you leftists could do either, except get rounded up and sent to re-education camps by your fellow right wing Americans in arms. Maybe even liquidated if you were mouthy, or had treasonous messages linked to you from internet forums.

And if I had a gun this would somehow change things? Oh, maybe I could kill one cop before I became a puff of red mist under a hail of police bullets. Having guns didn't stop people from being disappeared by Hussein. Having guns doesn't stop cops from catching criminals.

A communist who has no idea what solidarity means.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by NeOmega
The second amendment is pro-revolution.

It is there to keep the power in the hands of the people.

Power flows from the barrel of a gun.

Power flows much better from a high-tech bomb or nuclear weapon. If the 2nd Amendment was designed to ensure the ability of the populace to revolt, well, it's failed utterly now.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ned
As to the Second Amendment -- it protects only the right to bear "military" style weapons. There are Supreme Court cases that actually say this. The Second Amendment is not there to protect "hunters" or people trying to defend their homes. It exists solely so that the people may form military units in defense of the nation.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" bears NO possible interpretion other than you can't frigging ban guns! It doesn't say "except when blah blah", or anything. It is a definate statement that has exactly one possible meaning.

And wrt SCOTUS, it may be argued that it has usurped its power in "interpreting" the Constitution to have a meaning almost diametrically opposed to what it literally says.

[GePap]

Originally posted by NeOmega
Yup. Why do you find that funny. Guns or no guns, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands were slaughtered. So blaming guns for wars etc is simplistic at best.

given that no one ever blamed Rwanda on guns....

Oh, and Fallujah.... look it up.

Sorry, I won't. So either make the point, or give it up.

Right, those durned rebels, why can't they just accept their dictatorships?

Yup, Sabimvi, Taylor, Kabila- what a collection of democracy champions we are talking about

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Originally posted by NeOmega
The second amendment is pro-revolution.

It is there to keep the power in the hands of the people.

Power flows from the barrel of a gun.

Power flows much better from a high-tech bomb or nuclear weapon. If the 2nd Amendment was designed to ensure the ability of the populace to revolt, well, it's failed utterly now.

The pilots gotta live somewhere. The generals gotta take a dump sometime.

[NeOmega]

given that no one ever blamed Rwanda on guns....

Given that you tried to peg hostilities in Africa to guns....

Oh, and Fallujah.... look it up.

Saddam's army rarely dared to step foot in fallujah. The hotbed of resistance is a lot older than the american occupation.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by NeOmega
The pilots gotta live somewhere. The generals gotta take a dump sometime.

On base, maybe?

Do you really think a bunch of untrained civilians, even with assault rifles, could take out a military base?

They'd be cut to pieces before they got within twenty miles.

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


On base, maybe?

Do you really think a bunch of untrained civilians, even with assault rifles, could take out a military base?

They'd be cut to pieces before they got within twenty miles.

Do you really think they couldn't?

The history of revolution always pits "impossible" odds against a much more powerful establishment.... yet many times these odds are overcome.

You are imagining a revolution against the US army, not the US government.... and it would depend greatly on the parameters of the revolution.

But I can name dozens of ways to penetrate and destroy an army base.... most of them require a level of compliance from with in.

There really shouldn't be any resistance in Iraq right now... but there is. Never underestimate the resourcefulness of people.

[GePap]

At best a guerrila campaign could be waged in forest and mountain regions, were terrain is difficult, roads few and narrow. But the problem with such a campaign is that it would be isolated and easy for any central government to fight it while painting the enemy as terrorists out there wanting to hurt the general populace.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by NeOmega
Do you really think they couldn't?

Hell yes. Trained troops armed with high-tech weapons using heavily armored tanks supported by aircraft with laser-guided bombs and "daisy cutters" and nuclear weapons beat an untrained mob with assualt rifles any day, if they want to.

The history of revolution always pits "impossible" odds against a much more powerful establishment.... yet many times these odds are overcome.

Many. And never this much more impossible.

You are imagining a revolution against the US army, not the US government.... and it would depend greatly on the parameters of the revolution.

But I can name dozens of ways to penetrate and destroy an army base.... most of them require a level of compliance from with in.

Exactly. You're assuming you'll have part of the military on your side. You concede my point.

[GePap]

Originally posted by NeOmega
There really shouldn't be any resistance in Iraq right now... but there is. Never underestimate the resourcefulness of people.

There is a significant difference to the political underpinnings of a revolt against a weak regime backed by outside occupying forces and an internal regime backed even by weaker forces (hence the failure of a Shiite revolt vs Saddam)

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by GePap


There is a significant difference to the political underpinnings of a revolt against a weak regime backed by outside occupying forces and an internal regime backed even by weaker forces (hence the failure of a Shiite revolt vs Saddam)

Do guns play any part in these complexities?

[NeOmega]

Exactly. You're assuming you'll have part of the military on your side. You concede my point.

The discussion is not the politics, the discussion is the weapons. So I was not discussing compliance of military materiel, I was pointing to the fact that having people "on the inside" can allow for ak-47's to take out f-16s. It doesn't require having an armored divison defect, it just takes pulling political strings.

[GePap]

No, but the realities mean that at this point, having the civilian populace armed with assault or even automatic weapons would not make a difference in case #2 (revolt ves internal dictatorship). Without outright and vocal support from a large section of the masses AND dissention amongs the military any armed revolt vs your local dictator will fail, period.

And I don;t see how people having assualt rifles or beyond would quicken dissention in the military or make the masses like the rebels.