SpontaneousFury, on 05 January 2013 - 09:21 PM, said:
To clarify, I didn't say anything about a country "taking on the US with handguns and assault rifles". I was actually talking about situations in which the United States has invaded other countries and had to deal with fighting their citizens who were willing to lose their lives in an attempt to remove the US from their country. The United States could have just, as you suggested, used nuclear weapons but it doesn't even accomplish their goal, not to mention brings with it numerous other obvious problems. Using a nuclear weapons against your own people to deal with a revolution is pretty unlikely, not to mention nonsensical. You should never be so naive to think that things could not get worse, in any country on the planet. If people are desperate enough, hungry enough, etc and become resentful of the ruling class, history has shown us that revolutions are often not far behind.
To clarify for you, I was talking about gun laws in the United States. I was also referencing the most similar situation to a revolution, as it relates to citizens vs. a government military.
finally something sensical. let's talk recent history a little bit.
most of the revolutions in the last decade or two have been relatively non-violent. people became hungry enough, desperate enough, reached a critical mass, too big a mass for the government to imprison or gun down. and they won - governments were toppled, new consititutions set up (e.g., Argentina, Egypt). in many cases, significant changes were won through the electoral process (e.g., Venezuela, Bolivia).
in the US, "all" it would take would be for sufficient numbers of people to realize that the republicans and democrats were part of the same corporate- and finance-ruled system, and to vote for third parties. there are a number of excellent third party choices in the US and their election would instantly make things almost unimaginably better for the US and the world. THAT's something to try to attain, not stockpiling handguns for the big siege of the whitehouse.
when a government is determined to keep a people down, guns are not going to get you anywhere. where have they gotten the Palestinians? In Libya and Syria, the only reason armed "popular" (I use that very loosely here) insurrections succeeded (or might succeed in Syria's case) is that the insurgents received heavy-duty weapons from foreign governments. good luck toppling Assad with handguns and M16s.
I'm just scratching the surface here, this is a much deeper discussion, but the essence is that in the US, change can most surely be won through the electoral process. even peaceful protests like Occupy are getting nowhere because they don't have nearly that critical mass. we have to raise political awareness, not nonsense about the right to bear arms.
0
