The Gaming Den

So in another gun control/ownership debate thread, FrankTrollman had this observation:

FrankTrollman wrote:

npc310 wrote: Would things have been different in Germany in the 1930s if the citizens had been armed?

The citizens were armed. Hitler had a private army. You know what that means? That means citizens who are armed. The SA weren't "the government", they were just random dudes who happened to have military grade weapons. The word "Freikorps" means an organized, armed, nongovernmental gang. That's what it means. Hitler had one of those. Actually, he had several, and ended up having one such group murder the leaders of another such group in 1934.

Organized private militias were an integral part of the fascist takeover of Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and so on. And you know what organized, private militias are? Citizens with guns! The right-wing myth that Fascism could have been halted if there had only been right-wing gun owners at the time is completely insane. Fascism was right-wing gun owners. Not only did they exist, they were the actual problem.

-Username17

And on reflection, I totally agree. And even if you don't accept the above reasoning because you totally misunderstand Godwin's Law, there are quite a few American examples that support Frank's claim. Just off of the top of my head:

[*] The Ku Klux Klan. Every incarnation, though the second most come to mind.
[*] A large portion of the American Indian Genocide. Granted, the U.S. military shoulders the lion's share of the blame, but pre-American Civil War the opening phases of theft and discrimination came from private citizens. We can write volumes on how citizen-militias independent of the Second Continental Congress (hello thar, George Rogers Clark) during the American Revolution initiated a ton of land theft schemes under the guise of military action. But probably the example that EVERYONE is familiar with is that slaveowning, genocidal piece of shit known as Andrew Jackson. You will not be surprised to know that before he became President he was doing this crap during the War of 1812.
[*] During the period of time between the Texas Revolutionary War when Texas was a republic, Texas had a huge filibustering problem. Sam Houston was barely able to decommission the army after the war and had to use the classic 'furlough into retirement' trick. Or how about after President Mirabeau Lamar was unable to get the Texas Congress to fund another filibuster-but-in-name expedition to Santa Fe he took money from the treasure to fund his private army?
[*] Private detective agencies. Enough said.


The evidence that the Second Amendment, or rather, its guarantee of private gun ownership helps safeguard the rights of citizens post-Industrial Revolution democracies is just not there. As in, not only is it a useless defense against the power of a modern army, it does the exact opposite of what its proponents say that it does! The Second Amendment (or more broadly, widespread private gun ownership) directly enables authoritarian social movements and/or bands of criminals to credibly challenge and defeat democratic and human rights.

This massive history of authoritarian abuse begs a conservative defense, a defense that I feel isn't going to be adequately coming.

The conservative defense is quite obvious: your examples largely aren't governmental authority, but private individuals. You've then got then onus of extricating yourself from that argument and dragging the entire discussion back around to gun ownership is both bad and dangerous.

'Authoritarian' isn't the place to go with this argument, simply because it has too many potential strawmen and sidetracks. You also need to drag the lion's share of the argument out of the 19th century, because most Americans frankly don't give a shit, and don't even vaguely understand that a century and change isn't long enough ago to not matter.

Voss wrote:The conservative defense is quite obvious: your examples largely aren't governmental authority, but private individuals.

Does not compute. The point is that private ownership of firearms is subject to abuse, particularly when nominally civilian groups form paramilitias and private armies.

The fact is that the overwhelming majority of individuals in the United States do not require a firearm, either for their work or for their sustenance. Gone are the days when heading out to the woods for a couple weeks to shoot animals and bring back their meat, fur, bones, and/or teeth was a necessary or widely viable occupation, and so too the commercialization of livestock farming has made hunting for basic foodstuffs unnecessary and dangerous. The only remaining legitimate purposes of owning a gun are for self-defense, non-sustenance hunting, sportsmanship/hobby shooting, and gun collecting/tinkering as a hobby.

Self-defense is an iffy category, because it depends on the idea that gun ownership acts as a deterrent because of their deadly potential. But, and I think this is significant, most of that potential goes unrealized because very few civilians are actually trained in gun combat, particularly at close range where a majority of encounters is likely to occur. Any cop or soldier will tell you that squeezing a couple rounds off at the range is not the same as trying to return fire on someone ducking, weaving, and shooting at you. So holding a gun as self-defense may give a false sense of protection, but in terms of actual value against potential human opponents it depends strongly on training, equipment, and luck - and if the opponent is better trained and armed, you might be better not presenting yourself as a threat by trying to pull a gun on them. (Self-defense against animals is another story, but again that's not something a lot of people in the US have to worry about - and they'd probably do better to run or climb a tree or play dead anyway.)

And "self-defense" does not cover bullshit like "preparing for the apocalypse/2nd American Revolution/keep the government in check." Since 1865 the United States has had one of the most stable governments in the world - and that's counting when the active home terrorist groups like the Weathermen were operating; compare that shit to what the Brits had to deal with in the IRA. A popular uprising is not, and has not been on the menu since the Civil War. Even if it was an issue, private firearm ownership isn't a tremendous advantage - keep in mind that all (legal) firearms are registered with the government who have bigger and better weapons and know where you live and what you have and are much better organized.

As far as non-sustenance hunting goes, the only reason this is considered a sport is because of guns. Very few hunters these days want to go out there with a bow and arrow, or crossbows, or spears, or fucking slingshot - because guns make things easy. You can be a hundred years old and set up a gun on a motorized tripod in the woods with a webcame and shoot at the fucking deer /over the internet/ with a click of the mouse from the other side of the country. If you had to actually go out there with a muscle-powered piece of equipment, the majority of sports hunters would disappear overnight, and the main causes of injury/fatality from hunting would go from "firearm mishaps" and "falling from deer stands" to shit like "mauled by animal."

Even if you accept that hunting is necessary to curb game populations - and that's a different subject for debate - there is a definite limit as to what you need to kill a game animal versus military-grade weapons. We have no elephants in the bush in the United States; the most ferocious creature you might encounter is a bear, and you're not supposed to shoot those anyway. So presuming you're hunting - which is already a bit fucking silly in this day and age, and we've got lots of laws on the book to keep people from shooting the last couple bald eagles and shit just for grins - you're generally looking at relatively precision shooting with small-to-medium caliber or you're just going to bring a shotgun and try not to shoot the grousebeater in the face like Cheney did. So hunting is not an excuse for owning big guns.

Shooting at a range as a sport/hobby; gun collecting and tinkering - I can see the appeal, as pasttimes, but it's like playing with firecrackers - small, barely-controlled demolitions and statistically speaking someone is going to get hurt. Except these tiny explosives are built in things designed to kill people. You want to do target shooting, an air rifle or paint gun will do you just fine and the chances of severe injury and death are much lower. I guarantee you there is as much geek factor in collecting and modding paintball weapons as actual firearms.

And the truth is, if firearms were outlawed tomorrow, it would not be the end of the world. The government can restrict ownership if they want to, but it's like restricting drugs - the knowledge and capabilities to make guns will still be out there, but without the supporting infrastructure you're left with much shoddier and dangerous home products, and those in the hands of criminals. Potential revolutionaries can take heart that if Big Brother does come, they can take up their home-manufactued saturday night special and hope it doesn't blow up in their fucking hand.

Voss wrote:'Authoritarian' isn't the place to go with this argument, simply because it has too many potential strawmen and sidetracks.

Look, if in an actual democracy (as opposed to a weak democracy like late 18th century United States) you are using private force for the express purpose of suppressing or chilling peoples' de jure democratic or human rights you are either a garden variety self-interested criminal or an authoritarian. And I think it's pretty obvious that assholes like the Milwaukee shooters are authoritarian. I mean, fuck.

There is an argument to be made that the government won't enforce minority rights unless the minorities force it to, and that disarmament will usually be targeted at the poor and disenfranchised, making it easier for the armed majority to oppress them while the government looks the other way.

Ancient History wrote:

Voss wrote:The conservative defense is quite obvious: your examples largely aren't governmental authority, but private individuals.

Does not compute. The point is that private ownership of firearms is subject to abuse, particularly when nominally civilian groups form paramilitias and private armies.

Woosh. The point wasn't that I support gun ownership, but that Lago's approach will quickly be bogged down in bullshit counter arguments that have nothing to do with gun ownership. It is a bad approach to dealing with actual problem, because there are two centuries of counterspin and strawmen designed to deal with that exact argument.


@Lago
a) no, random murdersprees by a single guy on what is likely the wrong fucking minority group aren't necessarily authoritarian. They are more targeted than shooting up a movie theatre, but they aren't likely to accomplish anything approaching control.
b) That 'or' is key, and rather my point. You begged for a conservative defense- they will likely focus specifically on the ambiguity of that 'or' and focus on how it isn't the fault of society or guns, but evil criminal bastards who have to be fought. And then you are dealing with that argument rather than 'guns are bad,' which undermines what you are trying to achieve.

And have an eyeroll for use of the phrase 'actual democracy,' which is functionally equivalent to 'actual sasquatch sighting.'

Voss wrote:You also need to drag the lion's share of the argument out of the 19th century, because most Americans frankly don't give a shit, and don't even vaguely understand that a century and change isn't long enough ago to not matter.

How about Nazi Germany and the 3rd incarnation of the KKK? Is that recent enough for people?

Voss wrote:And have an eyeroll for use of the phrase 'actual democracy,' which is functionally equivalent to 'actual sasquatch sighting.'

Look, at the turn of the 18th century only a very tiny subset of the population (read: literate property owners who paid poll taxes) voted. There is no way you can describe that setup other than 'very weak democracy'.

I think that the term "well-regulated militia" referred to armies maintained by state and federal government oversight, and not private organizations.

I disagree with this thread's title.

The aims of the Second Amendment were to empower citizens to resist governmental over-reach of authority and defend their rights against tyranny

It's actual effect of the Second Amendment which has been the massive enabling of wealthy private interests to trample on other citizen's rights and enable non-governmental tyranny.

As an additional point, look at organizations like the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement: heavily armed minority movements who were, one could claim, only able to achieve their goals because of their ability to privately have firearms.

That rather depends on whether or not you think those movements have accomplished any of their goals.

Considering that the BPP, Puerto Rican Independent Movement, and AIM got completely gutted by a better-armed FBI and are more-or-less vilified in the (white) history books... I'd say that they didn't.

Even if you think that despite Huey Newton getting straight-up assassinated they provided a net benefit, the fact is that American centrists fap to omission bias, passive-aggressive politeness, and Overton window shoving. Thus protecting your rights through violence is the suboptimal way to do things if you're in the minority.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: American centrists fap to omission bias, passive-aggressive politeness, and Overton window shoving.

I hate how true that is. Probably my favorite example is the way heads explode when people try to reconcile the fact that John Brown was an extremist and also absolutely right about slavery being unacceptable.

Actually not on the Overton window shifting.

The entire point of being an extremist is to move the Overton window in your direction. (Well, and being right.) So centrists are completely against overton window shifting.

Whipstitch wrote:

Lago PARANOIA wrote: American centrists fap to omission bias, passive-aggressive politeness, and Overton window shoving.

I hate how true that is. Probably my favorite example is the way heads explode when people try to reconcile the fact that John Brown was an extremist and also absolutely right about slavery being unacceptable.

Brown was extreme for his time, in that abolitionism was a "radical" ideology. Extremism in and of itself is not inherently bad, even though it's used that way all the time in political discourse.

From what I read in textbooks and academic courses, John Brown was portrayed more as a mentally unstable person than a political extremist. This was due to a concerted effort by Neoconfederate revisionists trying to convince people that he wasn't in his right mind and didn't know what he was doing.

But John Brown knew what he was doing, and why. Even if he was suffering from some mental problems in his life, the definition of insanity bandied about is a very specific term in an attempt to claim that "he couldn't seriously have cared about African-American slaves!"

Libertad wrote: From what I read in textbooks and academic courses, John Brown was portrayed more as a mentally unstable person than a political extremist. This was due to a concerted effort by Neoconfederate revisionists trying to convince people that he wasn't in his right mind and didn't know what he was doing.

Right, but people are sufficiently freaked out by militant politics that such figures are particularly vulnerable to being characterized as mentally unhinged--the notion that the boat rockers and revolutionaries of the world are just a bunch of crazy people is a really seductive one for those of us who are treated OK by the status quo.