US Gun Laws

[MOBIUS]

Ogie's probably rounding up some Iraq war veterans to take down Obama as we speak!

[giblets]

I just love the culture of extreme paranoia in the US where every seems to be living in fear of a 'home invasion' at any moment and needs a shotgun under the bed just in case!

The paranoid nutcases are the must vocal about gun issues, that doesn't mean the speak for Americans...

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

@ Mobie Obviously.

Point being a number of folks indicated the improbability if not impossibility of armed citizenry in modern day resisting government (albeit local in this instance). A US historical example exists. Despite snarky comments to the contrary the deputies were unable to break the siege due in large part to the citizenry having guns (recognizing that they were augmented by depleted armory stores).


Earlier I alluded the fallacy of absolutes in arguements. This thread seems riddled with them.

[The Mad Monk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...ens_%281946%29

I was not aware of that.

Standing up against corruption

[MOBIUS]

@ Mobie Obviously.

Point being a number of folks indicated the improbability if not impossibility of armed citizenry in modern day resisting government (albeit local in this instance). A US historical example exists. Despite snarky comments to the contrary the deputies were unable to break the siege due in large part to the citizenry having guns (recognizing that they were augmented by depleted armory stores).


Earlier I alluded the fallacy of absolutes in arguements. This thread seems riddled with them.

Whatever dude...

A localised incident in the middle of last century under a host of special circumstances is not the same thing as trying that sort of thing on today.

Still, if you need a gun to feel all manly, go right ahead and I'll feel free to laugh at you like I am now.

[The Mad Monk]

1. They stole their guns from the armory.
2. They fired repeatedly at a bunch of sheriff's deputies, not professional soldiers.
3. As the deputies were safely ensconced inside a jail and the attackers had no radios to coordinate their movements, nothing happened until they started throwing explosives at the building. Then the deputies freaked out and surrendered.

Lessons learned:

1. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Rebels against the government are, by definition, outlaws.
2. If you're going to provoke a rebellion, get actual soldiers first.
3. The tree of liberty must be regularly watered with...misused explosives. Guns kinda suck by comparison.

Great example!

TIME Magazine, 1946:

TENNESSEE: Battle of the Ballots
Monday, Aug. 12, 1946

The restless crowd in the public square, the campaign posters on the courthouse maples and the granite-faced strangers swaggering in the streets of Athens, Tenn. (pop. 11,000) were all familiar portents. Election day was upon the "Friendly City."

A sharp sun drove a few voters to the shady courthouse lawn and its weathered wooden bench inscribed "Compliments of Paul Cantrell." But Sheriff Pat Mansfield, with a gold-plated badge glittering on his sports shirt, looked coolly confident in a knot of armed deputies. This was the day that Sheriff Mansfield and State Senator Cantrell, the iron-fisted bosses of McMinn County, had arranged to trade offices.

But as soon as the polls were opened it appeared that the arrangement might strike a snag. Poll watchers from the upstart G.I. Nonpartisan Ticket were embarrassingly overzealous. Sheriff Mansfield's deputies felt compelled to bundle one young watcher off to jail. When a Negro farmer turned up to vote in Precinct 11, an annoyed deputy shot him in the back. At the cramped polling place in the rear of the Dixie Cafe, khaki-shirted veterans could not seem to crowd their way up to the ballot box.

"Here It Comes." By afternoon the suggestions of hard feelings were growing firm. Half a dozen of Mansfield's deputies were beaten and carried out of town. When the polls closed at 4, a tense throng milled outside the voting place in the office of the Athens Water Co. to await the count. Suddenly two G.I. watchers burst through the shattering plate glass door, closely followed by a deputy wildly waving a pistol. A woman in the crowd screamed: "Oh God, here it comes."

Two carloads of deputies screeched to the curb. Holding back the crowd at pistol point, they threw the ballot box into one of the cars and carried it off to the jail for their own brand of safe counting.

When night fell rifles passed through the hands of muttering veterans rallying in front of G.I. election headquarters. A block away a movie marquee blazed its attraction: Gunning for Vengeance. Shadowy figures soon lurked along the ivy-covered ridge overlooking the two-story brick jail. A pale yellow light gleamed through the jail's tall front windows; the deputies were inside. Outside, the street was solidly lined with deputies' cars.

A black-haired veteran walked up to the jail front, and shouted: "We want the ballot boxes back where they belong or we'll open up on you."

From the jail came a single shot. From the ridge rang a deafening volley. From everywhere all hell broke loose in the Friendly City.

"Let Us Give Up." Flames burst from an auto parked in no-man's land. A woman screamed from an apartment next the jail, begging for safe conduct through the erratic cross fire. An ambulance seeking to rescue the wounded inside the jail hastily retired before sniper bullets from the trees. For six hours the night echoed with the unequal exchanges between 73 deputies and their besiegers, now swollen to hundreds of shouting, wild-firing volunteers. Once, the barricaded deputies called out a threat to kill three G.I. hostages, jailed during the day, unless the assault ceased.


Toward dawn a thundering explosion rocked the bullet-riddled jail front. A dynamite charge had ripped away the porch, and behind the billowing cloud of smoke and rubble the sporadic firing ceased. From within a voice called: "Stop it. You're killing us. Let us give up."

Leaving their wounded bleeding on the floor inside, the defeated garrison of Cantrell-Mansfield followers filed out, hands high in the air. Under a glaring spotlight beamed on the damaged entrance, the onetime law of McMinn County squinted wearily at a jeering, taunting mob.

At week's end McMinn County Politicos Paul Cantrell and Pat Mansfield, whose Democratic machine had bullied the fertile East Tennessee valley for ten years, were still absent and in hiding. The entire G.I. Nonpartisan ticket (including two Republicans) had been declared elected. The new Sheriff will be Knox Henry, 34, filling-station owner and an overseas Air Corps sergeant.

In Athens' white, gingerbread courthouse a public mass meeting chose a minister and two businessmen to run governmentless McMinn County until the G.I.s could take over. Shootings and car-wreckings by armed bands of vigilantes continued. Big-jawed, towering Jim Buttram, twice-wounded corporal with the Ninth Division and manager of the G.I. Ticket, promised "to help maintain order."

McMinn County's shooting veterans had spectacularly rid themselves of one type of tyranny. But thoughtful citizens knew they had set an ominous precedent. Abraham Lincoln had made the point:

"Among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and. . . they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,793138,00.html

[MOBIUS]

So, basically it was Republicans Vs Democrats - just like in Arizona the other week...

[Elok]

The particulars of that example undermine the point you're trying to make. Local law enforcement got too big for its boots, and there was a clumsy confrontation with irritated war veterans that amounted to a draw until they got the idea of using explosives. It was not a rebellion in any sense, and at no point did actual serving soldiers of the government become involved.

If you want to get an idea of how well civilian volunteers with hand-held weapons stand up to the U.S. armed forces, look at Iraq--bearing in mind the numerous differences:

1. US forces are there as an occupying power. They obviously have to leave sometime, and are vulnerable to political pressures.
2. Few US soldiers speak Arabic or are intimately familiar with the situation in the way the locals are.
3. The whole damned region is awash in AK-47s. How many American citizens own Kalashnikovs?

Even with those advantages, the Iraqi insurrection went poorly. Any time they tried to take a stand, they got butchered. After seven years of occupation, they've whittled down our numbers by what, 5000 people? And the substantial majority of those deaths were inflicted by IEDs, not guns. Finally, if the Feds get so pesky that armed insurrection is the best option, do you think they'll play more or less clean, the way we did in Iraq? I.E., no shooting people who merely look a little shifty, no paramilitary thug squads terrorizing uppity neighborhoods, no responding to gunfire from a house by destroying the house...

[MOBIUS]

Elok, you're not going to get through to them. This is about needing to find a substitute for having a small penis - if these guys can daydream about playing toy militia and fighting the evil gummint with their 'guns', they get to forget about their tiny peckers...

[Lorizael]

Whereas you anonymously belittle people on the internet to make up for yours.

[The Mad Monk]

The particulars of that example undermine the point you're trying to make. Local law enforcement got too big for its boots, and there was a clumsy confrontation with irritated war veterans that amounted to a draw until they got the idea of using explosives. It was not a rebellion in any sense, and at no point did actual serving soldiers of the government become involved.

If you want to get an idea of how well civilian volunteers with hand-held weapons stand up to the U.S. armed forces, look at Iraq--bearing in mind the numerous differences:

1. US forces are there as an occupying power. They obviously have to leave sometime, and are vulnerable to political pressures.
2. Few US soldiers speak Arabic or are intimately familiar with the situation in the way the locals are.
3. The whole damned region is awash in AK-47s. How many American citizens own Kalashnikovs?

Even with those advantages, the Iraqi insurrection went poorly. Any time they tried to take a stand, they got butchered. After seven years of occupation, they've whittled down our numbers by what, 5000 people? And the substantial majority of those deaths were inflicted by IEDs, not guns. Finally, if the Feds get so pesky that armed insurrection is the best option, do you think they'll play more or less clean, the way we did in Iraq? I.E., no shooting people who merely look a little shifty, no paramilitary thug squads terrorizing uppity neighborhoods, no responding to gunfire from a house by destroying the house...

You are missing the point. They won. They succeeded in removing a corrupt and abusive government, and the one person ever prosecuted for any of it was one of the deputies.

edit: Further, the candidate the GIs supported for Sheriff was confirmed by the Governor and went on to serve two terms.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Earlier I alluded the fallacy of absolutes in arguements. This thread seems riddled with them.

Only exceeded by the gratuitous baseless ad hominem.

Truly a spectacular showing.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

You are missing the point. They won. They succeeded in removing a corrupt and abusive government, and the one person ever prosecuted for any of it was one of the deputies.

They won and more to the point the role in which small arms played is not in doubt. They forced a siege upon the deputies (local governance). The breaking of the siege due to explosives is rather immaterial. The deputies were forced to the defensive posture.

[Asher]

They won and more to the point the role in which small arms played is not in doubt. They forced a siege upon the deputies (local governance). The breaking of the siege due to explosives is rather immaterial. The deputies were forced to the defensive posture.

WACO

Patriots taken from us too soon.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Funny you mention WACO. The repurcussions and fallout of federal over zealous reactions still haunts the American psyche today, regardless that the WACO folk were bat ****e crazy.