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Post by MurphysLawAgain on Jan 30, 2011 9:13:14 GMT
Well, when the revolution comes in dear old Blighty we will just have to see ;D
I would add a point to the "guerilla uprising" piece. In both the cases of Vietnam and Afghanistan the fighers were getting a supply of explosives and assault weapons from other countries. There is lots of writing on the subject but some of the things that turn unrest into a civil war is an uncontested base for the rising and a supply of weaponry. It doesn't need exact parity but the US government was providing the Taliban with anti air missiles and explosives (training too) through the period of the Russian invasion. One of the current concerns with the current Afghan war is the supply of explosives arriving in country via the tribal areas in Pakistan.
The VC were getting aid and support via China - it didnt offer parity which is why the loss figures were so brutal for every stand up campaign fought in the war. The US lost because of popular will - they were killing the viet cong in very large numbers.
Please note that I did not state that a total ban on gunpowder weapons was desirable or necessary. I do see some case for private ownership of shotguns and maybe rifles. The case for private ownership of military weapons such as fully automated machine guns or even handguns is different. Arms have moved on from being a "one size fits all" tool to having specialised roles. Some of these roles seem very incompatible with a civilised lifestyle.
In a separate point to the "laissez-faire" approach there is a quotation that sums up my position on the "free for all" proposed. "Your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins". By all means own a weapon to defend yourself. But if your buying a weapon that endangers your neighbours is an infringement on their rights. Equally - supporting the free ownership of weapons that are better for criminals than the law abiding citizen is plain stupid.
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Post by holes573 on Jan 31, 2011 0:47:23 GMT
Let me be clear, I see it as an orienting legal principle (a right), not as the absence of law altogether. "That each individual be free to define and exercise his freedom for himself so long as in doing so he does not directly infringe on the freedom of others to do the same". What I am saying is that laws should necessarily adhere to that principle. What constitutes a "direct infringement" of course could be debated, and would be debated and decided by a legislature and most importantly, by the courts. I don't think we disagree on the general principle of limited freedoms. You agree that freedoms should be limited to the extent that they "directly infringe on the freedom of others." But what are the freedoms of others? A lot more than you seem to think. Let me show you: Bob lives in a city, but in order to fulfill his bucolic roots, he keeps chickens, hogs and a couple cows in his apartment. In order for Bob to live in an apartment in the first place, he is a leaseholder or has a contractual agreement as an owner with all of the other parties living in the apartment building. In either case contract law (written agreement between two or more parties) allows for the prohibition of livestock in the apartment without there ever being a law written to prohibit such. Beyond contracts, there are also health laws that prevent this activity. The question is how did those laws and contracts come into being? They were developed because people's freedom to keep farm animals in an apartment is in direct oposition to others' freedoms (freedom to live in a place without stench, freedom from health risks, freedom from having your roof crash in with the weight of two cows above you, etc.) In essence, those laws/contracts are based on the very principle you espouse, and it limits Bob's freedoms. Sharon feels that she is only safe if she continually sprinkles dangerous chemicals and poisons around her workstation. Assuming Sharon is an employee, she is working at the pleasure of and on the property of her employer on a contractual basis- again, without a single additional law being written the sprinkling of dangerous chemicals can be prohibited by contract ***Each of the above involves an infringe on the freedom of others, specifically through the breaking of contract. I know I have never signed an employment contract that says I can't spread dangerous chemicals around my desk, and I'll bet you haven't either. In fact, I don't think most employment contracts call out a more general principle of endangering the health of your coworkers. Instead, we would rely on laws to limit Sharon's behavior. But, regardless, both laws and any contracts that might contain this behavior are set up on the principle of endangering others, which limits their freedoms. Alex wants a successful baking business, so he takes his competitor's secret recipe. That is a touchy one because I am very very strong advocate of opensource, copyleft etc. I do not think information is something that really can or even should be protected by law. An exception would be the design and manufacture of nuclear weapons etc. And yet, by your very principle, this behavior cannot be allowed because it is restricting the freedom of Alex' competitor. Clearly inventors need to be compensated for their inventions, otherwise, who would invent or innovate? Depriving Alex' competitor of the benefits of his invention is a limitation on his competitor's freedoms (i.e., "I have the freedom to be able to think of something new and be rewarded for doing so."). Laws should prevent that kind of behavior that restricts the competitor's rights/freedoms. Teresa wants to buy a new house, so she decides not to pay her taxes for a couple years, so she can afford it. This is probably the best one out of the group. Teresa is not directly infringing on anyone's rights by not paying taxes yet she should pay her taxes. An easy answer would be that upon becoming an adult, each person must sign a contract agreeing to pay taxes if they are going to live in a community that meets these two conditions: 1. The taxes pay for specific nescessary services 2. The body which decides what the tax money is used for is composed of individuals elected to it. So if you do not want to pay town taxes you cannot live in a town that requires taxes be paid. If you do not want to pay State taxes, you can live in a State which requires tax payment,s but cannot enjoy any of the services provided by that State. Likewise for Federal Taxes. Of course Teresa is infringing on other people's rights! By choosing not to pay taxes, the government has less money to carry out it's programs (programs, I might add, that are usually the will of the population, something you state that you support). How can a government paved its roads, provide education to its young citizens, pay its police and firefighters, defend the country against potential attacks, etc. without money? This last example is not the hardest problem, it's the easiest. Teresa has limited the rights and freedoms of everyone, by her actions. Your idea that we somehow have to come up with a massive number of contracts (agreeing to pay taxes, agreeing to the police's miranda warnings, agreeing not to spill toxic waste in your backyard, etc.) that every adult needs to sign is ridiculous. That's why we have a (relatively) simple set of laws to lay out the requirements for everyone. And, you don't get to pick and chose which laws you can obey. Doing so inevitably means the breakdown of the society (imagine how many people would pay taxes if it were optional, and the effect of that on your local fire department). More to the point, laws are there because the behavior in question will limit the rights and freedoms of others. Of course, there needs to be some assessment of how much a behavior limits others' freedoms, but that is what typically goes into debates about enacting laws. Hence, while we agree on the general principle of when to restrict individuals' freedoms, you don't seem to recognize how pervasive these are. Your position seems to overemphasize the freedoms of the individual and underemphasize the effects of that individual's actions on others' freedoms. Bringing it back to the main issue of guns, the same principle applies. People don't get complete freedom to decide whether they own guns, what types, what accessories, etc. They need to do this in the context of a set of laws that are based on the effect of that ownership on the rights and freedoms of the other individuals in the society. I'm sure we agree that an individual should be prevented from owning a nuclear warhead or quantities of poison gas in his basement. The possiblity that these can advertently or inadvertantly restrict other's freedoms (i.e., make them dead) is too high to allow. The debate going on is where you draw the line between the freedoms of the indivual (e.g., to defend their home and property) and the effects of widespread gun ownership on the rights of other citizens (e.g., making them dead, accidents with children). So, when you say: It is not so much about society wanting to allow almost anyone to buy (the weapons you mentioned), as it is about society generally agreeing that it is not the role of society to define the needs of the individual; that it is on the individual himself to define his own needs, and to have the right to fill those needs as he has defined them and as he sees fit. I must again make the point that it is exactly the role of society to define and limit the rights of an individual in owning guns, or any other behavior, to the extent that the impinge on the rights of others. And, those rights of others ... they occur in large doses in more places than you seem willing to admit. -Holes
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Post by Enius the White on Feb 23, 2011 19:42:32 GMT
Sorry for resurrecting this thread, but seeing as how it centers around a 220 year old document, "old" seems kinda relative. I suspect that the current events in Libya are an example of the intended founding purpose of the 2nd amendment: www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/02/23/libya-gadhafi-protesters.html"Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi have opened fire again in the streets of Libya's capital Tripoli..." When peaceful, democracy-seeking protesters are repeatedly shot down by government troops and government hired mercenaries, "2A remedies" may make perfect sense. Here, the right to bear arms could undoubtedly contribute to the likely success of such remedies. These events give us a little perspective, when contrasted against the "2A remedies" that were bandied about, by some, in the U.S, targeting democratically elected officials...
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Post by gollem9 on Feb 23, 2011 20:36:02 GMT
No it does not : - The fight will always be unfair : access to jet fighters (Just an example) that can bomb the military troops will never be available to citizens. The averse might happen : The military are taking more casualties -> Let's just bomb the place to limit casualties. - It would give the actions taken by the military more "validity". It is always easier to shoot someone down that is shooting at you. Seeing your "buddy" being shot down does not make it easier to remain objective and calm. Would these fighter pilots have done this www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/24/3147174.htm?section=justin if the protesters would have been making massive amounts of casualties?
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Post by Enius the White on Feb 23, 2011 22:27:39 GMT
Gollem, you may well be right. Egypt seems like a good example of your peaceful model. Unfortunately, peaceful democratic protesters winning the "hearts and minds" of the entire military is the exception, not the rule. Tiananmen Square is one example of the more common outcome: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989In Libya, as you point out, we see yet another potential outcome of peaceful democratic revolutionary protest: a fragmentation of the military. Some soldiers shoot at protesters, some defect/abandon their posts, and others shoot at those shooting at protesters. It is precisely in this type of potential revolution that the will of the people, bolstered by the weapons of the people, could tip the balance of power. People cowardly enough to fire on unarmed civilians are generally no match for the type of person willing to shoot back at them.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 24, 2011 0:41:52 GMT
Completely agree, Enius. Unless a dictator is willing to step down, as in Egypt, resort to violence is almost inevitable, and yes, that's where the guns come in handy. Libya is a paragon case. Those jet fighters and tanks are far less useful than you'd think in guerrilla warfare, golly. And while the sides may be mismatched, making them moreso is dangerous. Power corrupts, remember. The notion that because there will always be an imbalance, we shouldn't care about the degree of power imbalance, doesn't hold up to the light of day (binary thinking, again).
Funky
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2011 2:41:40 GMT
sorry I haven't kept up so much here....this sub-forum is kind of like the enter-exit vestibule of the game for me, been so busy playing I haven't posted. Will read and respond soon though.
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Post by gollem9 on Feb 24, 2011 17:20:47 GMT
Totally agree, but i can assure you that that person would have been killed much quicker if he would have been armed.
Tipping the balance .... hmm "might" happen, but I think that the chance of other countries coming to Khadafi's aid also increase the moment the public starts going guerilla. So it will anyway lead to more bloodshed and imo less chances of the "people" to prevail.
That was not what I was saying, since peacefull protests contradict not caring about the balance of power.
A lot of revolutions revolutions have been won by gaining the side of the military (Look at Romania) : attacking them closes that option immediately.
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Post by holes573 on Feb 24, 2011 17:45:37 GMT
I agree with Gollem. The citizen's guns are not likely to change the outcome in Libya. Clearly, the government has the the greater firepower.
Ghadafi will be out of power quite soon, but it won't be because some citzens have guns. It will be because he used brutal force on citizens who did not have guns. That action, and his intention to continue to do so, has alienated him even further from his population, from many in his military and police, from his own diplomats at the UN and from the international community. All of those forces will inevitably bring him down soon.
If he had started shooting protesters who showed up in demonstrations brandishing weapons and firing back on troops, the internal and international reaction would have been much less. He would have been seen much more along the lines of keeping the peace from an out of control mob.
-Holes
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 25, 2011 1:06:33 GMT
That was not what I was saying, since peacefull protests contradict not caring about the balance of power. Actually, it was implicit in your argument: 'the fight will always be unfair'. I'm pointing out that that isn't a valid reason to allow it to be MORE unfair. Power is a matter of degrees. No one is advocating attacking them 'immediately'. And, in point of fact, in Libya, it's not even an issue of fighting the military - Gaddafi is using mercenaries (search for 'yellow hat mercenaries'), and his military pilots are defecting instead of bombing the citizenry. It would be MUCH easier to overthrow him if the protesters were better armed (and yes, they do have some guns, and some vehicles). Further, the notion that he and other dictators are magically going to disappear anyway, just doesn't hold water. Look at Iran. Or North Korea. Funky
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Post by Enius the White on Feb 25, 2011 3:06:40 GMT
As it stands now in Libya, the balance of firepower seems to be split between the 2 sides, more or less geographically. In about half of the country the military has sided with the protesters or walked away. International pressure or sanctions (e.g. today's proposal to suspend Libya from the United Nations Human Rights Council... ) seem a trivial deterrent to a tyrant prepared to bomb his own cities. People cowardly enough to fire on unarmed civilians generally do so out of fear. They fear the consequences of defying the order. Once they decide to shoot, they must then also fear the consequences of the other side winning. The line between being a hero/protector of the state who crushed a terrorist uprising, and a war criminal, is often determined by the outcome of the conflict (thus my Tiananmen example, where those who machine gunned over 1000 unarmed protesters have been promoted and honored to this day). Once a tyrant can get his army to fire on his people, a reasonably peaceful, successful revolution becomes difficult at best. If, however, the cowards who would fire on unarmed civilians fear the people's bullets more than those of their commanders then maybe, sometimes, a start down this gruesome path can be avoided. While I share everyone's hope, that Gadhafi will leave soon, history suggests that using brutal force on unarmed citizens is an effective way to maintain power, not loose it. When, as now in Libya, a tyrant states that his intention is to "fight to the last bullet", against the people, you better hope that either a) the entire military abandons him or b) the next bullet becomes the last bullet by finding him. Btw, I'm not a fan of excessive gun ownership rights at all. Here in Canada gun ownership is very limited compared to the U.S, and I like it. The only time I've carried a rifle was as a university summer student, working in grizzly bear country for a forest company. I enjoyed growing up knowing that the stupid bar brawl you found yourself in would likely end in a bloodied lip and bruised ribs, instead of a bullet in the back. I think that the human cost of the current proliferation of guns in the U.S. is too high. Still, I am prepared to acknowledge that stringent gun control may come with a certain blissful ignorance of the kind of atrocities that a worst case political scenario can unleash on a population. I can understand why the issue is a heated one. What I cannot understand is how "the right to bear arms", arguably useful and justifiable in perhaps deposing a murderous tyrant in Libya, was invoked or incited (veiled as it may have been), in the U.S, against democratically elected political targets. Seems like an unconscionable and brutal loss of perspective.
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Post by holes573 on Feb 25, 2011 17:17:49 GMT
Ah c'mon Enius, imagine you are a red-blooded American patriot and a bunch of commie pinkos elected a (gasp) Black president who is an Islamic socialist, who wasn't even born in this country. Sounds like it's pretty much identical to Libya!
(Applications for guns rose 42% in the month after Obama was elected.)
And, by the way, I'm assuming that your enjoyment of bar brawls was just your researching for better use of your HG tanks.
-Holes
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Post by tomaan on Feb 25, 2011 18:32:36 GMT
Ah c'mon Enius, imagine you are a red-blooded American patriot and a bunch of commie pinkos elected a (gasp) Black president who is an Islamic socialist, who wasn't even born in this country. Sounds like it's pretty much identical to Libya! (Applications for guns rose 42% in the month after Obama was elected.) And weren't stores running out of ammo too or something like that? Given that the President hasn't pushed for any gun control initiatives, I can only assume somebody is laughing all the way to the bank on that one!
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Post by gollem9 on Feb 25, 2011 21:45:00 GMT
Hmm now how do you come to the conclusion that I think that he is going to magically dissapear? ("gaining the side of the military")
Some excerpt that puts it much more eloquently (English is not my native tongue)
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Post by FunkySwerve on Feb 26, 2011 2:10:43 GMT
Hmm now how do you come to the conclusion that I think that he is going to magically dissapear? ("gaining the side of the military") Let me rephrase. How do you propose that North Koreans 'gain the side of the military'? Nonviolent operatives working out of China have been engaged in that struggle for decades. Not being a believer in the afterlife, I find the notion of having to wait for this distinctly unappealing. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big believer in nonviolent tactics, when they work. They don't always. The section you quoted was Jack DuVall - bad form not to cite. The key point is this: That misses the point, unfortunately, as well as being just dead wrong. First of all, there is no fundamental divide between those who believe in external/internal sources of delivery. I, for one, believe BOTH must be present. People must assert their demand to be free - you cannot simply impose democracy from on high. This is part of the reason why you still saw demonstrations in Iraq after the (so far) successful revolution in Egypt. That is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of successful claim to political voice. Likewise, some force external to the person must also be present - you cannot have a revolution of one (though you can, of course, have a figurehead, like Mandela). I think trying to carry the external/internal dichotomy any further than that, causes it collapse. Put more accurately, you need people to assert a right or right in numbers not easily ignored, and you need some form of leverage - political, economic, or violent. Trying to boil it all down to external/internal as DuVall did is a drastic oversimplification - one I'm not suprised to see, given his ideology. The second major problem is the notion that 'individual has the innate right to be free and the ability to become free'. This is utter hogwash. Or, as I've said before in this thread, Hobbes was right, Locke was wrong. The only natural rights an individual has is the right to think and the right to act. All others must be negotiated with society. I really don't feel like restating the same case, so I'm going to quote it en masse: Or, in summary: the notion that we have a natural, intrinsic right to be 'free' is misguided. Rights arise out of societal conflict, and evolve over time. If that society doesn't recognize rights demanded by individuals, conflict is inevitable. In some cases, that conflict will remain civil. One party may change their position, fold to external pressure, rethink their priorities, or decide that the cost of maintaining their position is too high. However, if this does not happen, violence is the ultimate recourse. This is an inescapable fact, a result of the human condition. It typically occurs when there's a breakdown of rational assessment of cost and benefit. Libya is a paradigm example of this. Korea sure looks like another to me. Iran...I'm still holding out hope. Funky
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