Side story on the recent gun spree

[carl]

Yeah, sure. Slavery, Native Americans, joining a World War needlessly after everyone else understood it's a folly, having had a messy civil war, torture, wars of aggression, oppressing Latin America for a century, propping up evil dictators abroad by the dozens ... all was fine in the U.S..

Well I could respond to this in kind, about Europe in general and some European countries in particular, but that would serve no real purpose so I won't. No, I won't. Oh no. Like hell I won't. Joining WWI may not have been viewed with favor by Germany but France and Great Britain thought it a fine idea.

Look, the problem is the American society is simply not working well, and paranoia as well as a huge susceptibility to distraction from what's important why fantasy and unimportant stuff is part of the mess.

Oh.

Keep your military from developing stuff like this, disband militarised SWAT teams, repeal the Patriot Act if you want to be cautious about the government.

All modern militaries with the wherewithal are developing technologies such as the one linked to. SWAT teams with military appearing equipment have their uses, though there are probably far too many. But that is sort of the police dept equivalent of keeping up with the Jones'. Repealing the Patriot Act or large portions thereof is a good idea. But we ain't perfect, just better than most European countries in most ways.

Don't get locked into power fantasies like assault rifles being what keeps the government from turning to Stalinism.

This is a bit of a surprise coming from a guy like you. In many or your past posts you have displayed a very well developed sense of the human factor in things and yet you miss the psychological importance that having a weapon has to a human. A human with a weapon, especially a serious one, is much more likely to think of themselves a person with some control over their life. Humans can't fight sans weapons. A human without a weapon in a society where other humans are permitted weapons, is a servant, a person of no real worth or stature in that society. The import of being actually able to defend yourself if need be, isn't in the technical comparison of a having a rifle vs an infantry platoon with MGs and small mortars, the importance is that you are a person who, if they are to be taken, can at least make a fight of it, and also a person whose personhood merely in and of itself gives the right to defend themselves and possess the means to effectively do so.

Besides if 'assault rifles' aren't all that important, why do you care so much that us Yanks have them?

Guns are not decisive against an evil government (if there's one). Relevant is whether this government has the required support and tolerance from the people. If it has not, soldiers will allow civilians to plunder weapons depots and there are the real guns. The Romanians and Syrians did not need lots of AR-15s under their beds to turn violent against their dictators.

If weapons aren't decisive, why do people try so hard to get them when trouble comes? Because you can't fight without weapons.

Whether that evil gov has the required support and tolerance from the people?! I think it is more a matter of how strong the apparatus of the police state is. You have talked to some former East Germans about what it was like there I hope. Well developed police states are extremely difficult to overthrow from within.

Of course with us backward Yanks, we prefer to keep weapons available to the people to discourage the development of a police state. It may not be a foolproof thing but the Founders thought it would be helpful and might have a dissuasive effect. So do I.

The U.S. is pushing more than any other country the development of technology that lowers the threshold for required support (by making surveillance that much easier and more effective) and it's the world leader in pushing for acceptance (tolerance) of evil government practices, such as torture.

Tech has nothing to do with the efficacy of a police state. The history of the 20th century proves that. There are lots of European examples to choose from.

We had a brief and horribly shameful flirtation with torture in the early 2000s. It is a blot on our national honor and will be there forever. But I would note, that we officially gave up that tool of the weak and twisted years ago and I pray to God we don't go back. It is interesting, and disturbing, that the prime pusher of torture in the US now is the entertainment industry, an industry that marches almost in political lockstep with the superzip establishment.

On top of this, it has developed the approach for how to capture a large share of a population in a bubble of fantasyland where the people don't listen to dissenting news sources any more, think their president is a foreigner, think Iraq had WMD and so on. Until this development, it was much harder if not unknown to create such an encompassing fantasyland without the propaganda means of a dictatorship.

Translation: Fuchs disapproves of Fox News and figures it has mind melded with most of the Americans and brainwashed them.

Yeah, but you guys think having an AR-15 under your bed is an insurance. Ridiculous.

I'll tell you what. You come over here, live in a place somewhat remote or maybe not so remote that it will take 20, 30 or 45 minutes to an hour for the cops to show up after you call them (if they can find the place) and you tell me it might not be such a bad idea to have an AR-15 with a 30 round magazine and a good optic propped in the corner.

Besides, having that about will save the trouble of breaking into an armory if the need arises.