A weird fetish for guns and a completely unregulated gun lobby.
In Switzerland every male between 18 and 40 that hasn’t actively decided against it, has an assault riffle under their bed (for some that’s meant literally…). Althoughwe don’t let them have ammunition as well.
Anyway, you can buy guns here and people do. It’s just not that we think we need them to defend ourselves against the government (which judging by the power of the us military is totally ridiculous anyway). We also don’t allow you to carry it around, let alone loaded ones.
America is a ridiculous cesspool of stupidity, missed educational opportunities and weird, culty patriotism that guns are somehow a part of. The internet made it easier tk spread this and so conservatives have been more successful in spreading their crap around.
The US military hasn’t ever won an asymmetrical guerrilla war, so it’s not as absurd as you think. In that Instance, millions of people would likely die, but it’s still more likely that guerrillas survive for decades than it is the US wins.
The US has won against guerrillas before. They won in the Philippines and had mostly won in Iraq before the Iraqi government pissed off their Sunni minority and ISIS spilled over from Syria. The US also crushed the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive and most of the war after that was fought by regular North Vietnamese Army units not VC guerrillas.
Most insurgencies fail Max Boot wrote a book called Invisible Armies where he analyzed insurgencies throughout the 20th century and determined that only about a quarter of them succeeded and more than half failed outright. Not only that, many of the successful ones took place in the context of colonization and the Cold Warz where they had weak imperial opponents, super power backers, or both.
It’s also unlikely the US Military, being citizens of the United States themselves, would have a high degree of adherence to such orders to bomb and destroy their fellow man.
That anyone thinks such is realistic is indicative of the depth of delusion.
And this fact would be true regardless if their populations had guns or not, which means once again, the guns dont factor in all that much at success of resistance of government
I mean the US has a history of bombing city blocks from helicopters, commiting unethical human experimentation, both on individual people and by releasing poisonous agents into the air around their own cities and generally not being particular human rights focused with their own citizens.
Believing that the US army is above turning on their “fellow man” seems a bit optimistic to me.
The naivety there isn’t so much that soldiers would be incapable of fighting the US citizenry in a large scale war, but more that the framing of the question is false to begin with. It’s way easier for soldiers to commit small scale acts of terror than large scale genocides, and it’s always easier to commit acts of terror on minorities or the “other” rather than on the gen pop. If we were to see any domestic american guerilla warfare (I find this kind of unlikely compared to the rising amount of lone wolf, stochastic incidents), then it’s likely that even the regular population would get fed a ton of bullshit about the opposition being subhuman, or something to that effect. Larger scale versions of how, every time a black guy gets shot by the police, everyone trots out every encounter he’s ever had with the police within like 12 hours of the incident. Character assassination, but at a group level, instead of on the individual level.
In the context of the Ukraine war i’ve read something akin to “once someone close to you, a fellow friend and comrade is killed, it is less about the original how and why, but just about revenge.”
Using cult of personality, the in-group mentality that is strongly advanced in the military, dehumanising of the enemy and other tactics have shown very effective time and time again in human history. There is many countries in history and today, where the military is turned against its own population and i fail to see any moral highground the US could claim to protect against that. The US society is too hungry, too injust, too tribalist and too violent, for there to be effective safeguards. Heck we all saw what happened January 6
Hollywood powered violence desensitization baby. The US army police force has bombed civilian cities in US soil. They were against black communities, but it has happened. No one in the chain of command even protested the order. Anything is possible when you have R A C I S M
EDIT: corrected the state security force involved, but the explosives were provided by the army.
My two pennies: We had a generation of people raised by baby boomers, people notorious for their inability to manage emotions, or empathize with different or morally ambiguous people. It’s intergenerational trauma from such an upbringing, manifesting as mental illness and marked by delusions of grandeur, paranoia, victim mentality, and stunted emotional and social development. That, and obviously the proliferation of weapons has made mass murder accessible, and in the minds of some people as described above, acceptable.
That, and obviously the proliferation of weapons has made mass murder accessible, and in the minds of some people as described above.
Are you under the impression such things were ever not accessible?
At what point did we start regularly testing and proving out water? When did we start ensuring school bake sale food must be store-bought? You seem incredibly short-sighted.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to as a “fetish” or an “unregulated” lobby. If you were referring to nonsense like the NRA and their fundraising efforts, you’d be obligated to highlight Everytown etc. and their blue-aligned fundraising. You can’t point out a wedge issue and one side without recognizing the other side and its equivalent benefit.
If one has a clean criminal history, is a legal adult, and - in most states - has undergone some additional scrutiny or proof of proficiency, then sure - they can buy a firearm.
Given how Afghanistan turned out, I’m not sure how you think the concept of resisting the armed forces of a government as a distributed and well-armed populace is somehow unthinkable.
It’s fair to say we’ve a cesspool of stupidity - but only due to our politicians continued neglect of actual underlying issues in favor of partisan wedge-driving and profiteering of the ad revenue of sensationalized violence.
It’s also worth noting (though Lemmy is a horrible venue for discourse on the topic) that the prevalence of firearm ownership in the US is itself a function (likely an intended one, by the framers) of 2A.
So many of the measures that could, immediately or eventually, be used either directly or as a legal springboard, to move toward gun restrictions or confiscations see immediate and stiff resistance from the GOP, gun lobby, and most importantly big chunks of the population who are fun owners, who are basically given a personal stake and being incentivized to do so.
So many of the gun control measures being proposed would be dead on arrival due to the dual truths that guns are already widespread in the country and that many such laws would make criminals out of law abiding citizens. This makes it hard or impossible for them to gain any traction whatsoever.
While I agree that the “I need my guns for when the government turns on its people next week” crowd is delusional, I also feel that it’s a chicken/egg situation: part of the reason why that’s an unreasonable threat is because guns are so ubiquitous. The government doesn’t even attempt to go down that rabbit hole partially because it’s such an impossible feat.
I also think that while yes, that doomsday scenario isn’t happening anytime soon, that it certainly could happen, after many decades of gradual change and gradual decline. And while personal gun ownership may not do much good against the government now, in the event that the course of the future took us down that dark route, personal firearms could very well do a private citizen a lot of good then in resisting any opponent, government or otherwise. But of course they wouldn’t be able to get their guns back in that scenario if they allowed them to be taken away beforehand…and prevalence of ownership and political resistance is the best and easiest insurance against all of that.
the prevalence of firearm ownership in the US is itself a function (likely an intended one, by the framers) of 2A.
No, it was 100% intentional. All able bodied men below a certain age were legally obligated to muster with their local militia, and they were likewise legally obligated to provide their own firearm. The gov’t had already granted itself the right to raise and equip an army, so the idea that 2A applies to the gov’t being allowed to arm itself is patently ridiculous. No, the idea was that individuals would own firearms, and would undertake some form of training (or regulation) in their use, and that would make them fit for militia duty.
From that perspective, it’s clear that the founders intended the people to have access to and own weapons fit for military service.
I agree that it’s unlikely that the people should need arms to resist the gov’t, buuuuuuuuuuut it’s happened, and it’s happened in recent memory. The Bundy clan had an armed standoff with the gov’t in the 2010s over their illegal grazing on BLM land, and the gov’t ended up being the ones to blink first. (Also, the Bundy’s won in court over that; the gov’t did some pretty egregiously illegal things, and te judge tossed the whole case out with prejudice.) You can also go back to standoffs and insurrections by Native Americans in the 70s, standoffs that the Native Americans ultimately won. Moreover, we have a strong current of fascism running through our current politics; IMO, the idea of willingly giving up arms when the fascism supporters control the House, and have overrun the judiciary is madness.
It’s part of your army kit. As we have a mandatory military service. But, soldiers have now the option to leave it at their military Base.
Which was introduced to lower the risk of suicide. No idea the impact of this policy though.
One important point is that, swiss people aren’t strongly divided or proudly displaying their, political affiliations. I think their are fights, protest and riot. But never it would come in the mind of anyone to bring a gun to such events.
Mass shooting are very rare and even though OP says people buy guns. I dont know anyone who has one. Beside for hunting.
We also have a pretty good social security and different safety nets. So this help.
All great information, but none of it really answers the original question.
Not meaning that as an insult, but I was also wondering what point it serves to have the weapon at home but to not be allowed to have ammunition for said weapon.
It being part of the “army kit” certainly makes sense, but that only reinforces the validity of the question; if the rifle is part of the kit, surely the ammo is too. And if the ammo is part of the kit but has to stay on base, then it seems nonsensical to have the weapon stored in a different location…for the same stated reason.
Well, they’re both wrong. If you have a permit to own a particular type of weapon, you can buy the ammunition. Military rifles are a weird category of their own. Up until fairly recently, you were given a sealed, 50-round box of ammo for your service rifle, so that you could respond quickly if the militia was called up. That’s been discontinued. But you can still quite legally buy ammunition for your service rifle as long as you have permits for that type of firearm otherwise. (This is based on what I can find and read regarding gun regulation in Switzerland, although some of this may have changed since the EU imposed new restrictions on member states.)
There is some variance in application of gun laws, as many of the permits are ‘may issue’ rather than ‘shall issue’.
I could be wrong. I would suggest consulting with someone that specializes in Swiss firearms law, as some writeups are giving contradictory answers.
Regardless: Swiss gun ownership is estimated to be among the highest in the world, with the US being highest by far. Despite their very high rates of gun ownership, they also have a very, very low homicide rate in general, and their rate of gun crime is microscopic.
Assuming the guns are target trained, it is much more easy to store a pile of ammunition somewhere and tell everyone to come and get some in an emergency, than having to transfer the rifles whenever someone decides to move. The alternative of course is no personal ownership of the rifles, but aside from the familiarity and training it also adds a symbolic sense of responsibility and association. The scene in jarhead comes to my mind where they are told to make this “there is many like this, but this one is mine” chant over their marksman rifles.
Right on. Part of the weird fetish is that perceived need to defend themselves from the government.
It’s as stupid as it is antiquated and was never a thing among patriots and decent Americans, only among people who were literally rebels: slavers and separatists, the exact people the Second Amendment was written to protect against.
The words “security of the state” are the express, stated purpose of the Second Amendment, right there in the text, and rebellion was expressly cited at the Convention by the framers.
Ah - I see we’re not only cherry-picking, but we’re depending on a preamble e.g. a preparatory or introductory statement as somehow limiting of scope or indicative of audience to which a right was granted.
If you’re under the impression that the military could win against the armed populace of the United States, you really shouldn’t be commenting on this topic due to your lack of knowledge.
And you are going to do what exactly against an F-35 or drone strike with your guns? Please explain how you would stop the US military with any amount of guns.
You’re one nuke away from getting proven how shit your take is.
This isn’t the 1800s. War isn’t just whose side has the biggest numbers or the fanciest guns or the smartest strategies. You will die in a full-on confrontation against your government. You and your quickly propelled metal hold no power in the face of the type of destruction that has now been possible for decades.
But yeah, go ahead and hold on to those guns, it seems like it helps you sleep at night.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Oh yeah, America is totally gonna use that second amendment to rise up against an oppresive government, not just buy guns from corpos and be distracted from any form of oppression because they just have to stand in line to get the newest iphone /s
That would really depend on some kind of big event that riles everyone up. That’s precisely why the goalposts are moved slowly.
The important thing I think is to be able to defend against crooked cops on a smaller scale as well as the crack heads problem they’re not really fixing.
A weird fetish for guns and a completely unregulated gun lobby.
In Switzerland every male between 18 and 40 that hasn’t actively decided against it, has an assault riffle under their bed (for some that’s meant literally…). Althoughwe don’t let them have ammunition as well.
Anyway, you can buy guns here and people do. It’s just not that we think we need them to defend ourselves against the government (which judging by the power of the us military is totally ridiculous anyway). We also don’t allow you to carry it around, let alone loaded ones.
America is a ridiculous cesspool of stupidity, missed educational opportunities and weird, culty patriotism that guns are somehow a part of. The internet made it easier tk spread this and so conservatives have been more successful in spreading their crap around.
The US military hasn’t ever won an asymmetrical guerrilla war, so it’s not as absurd as you think. In that Instance, millions of people would likely die, but it’s still more likely that guerrillas survive for decades than it is the US wins.
The US has won against guerrillas before. They won in the Philippines and had mostly won in Iraq before the Iraqi government pissed off their Sunni minority and ISIS spilled over from Syria. The US also crushed the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive and most of the war after that was fought by regular North Vietnamese Army units not VC guerrillas.
Most insurgencies fail Max Boot wrote a book called Invisible Armies where he analyzed insurgencies throughout the 20th century and determined that only about a quarter of them succeeded and more than half failed outright. Not only that, many of the successful ones took place in the context of colonization and the Cold Warz where they had weak imperial opponents, super power backers, or both.
Appreciate the book, I’ll give it a read, thank you!!
We the people so badly need to organize in the face of the threat of our own government. 🤦🤦🤦
It’s also unlikely the US Military, being citizens of the United States themselves, would have a high degree of adherence to such orders to bomb and destroy their fellow man.
That anyone thinks such is realistic is indicative of the depth of delusion.
And this fact would be true regardless if their populations had guns or not, which means once again, the guns dont factor in all that much at success of resistance of government
I mean the US has a history of bombing city blocks from helicopters, commiting unethical human experimentation, both on individual people and by releasing poisonous agents into the air around their own cities and generally not being particular human rights focused with their own citizens.
Believing that the US army is above turning on their “fellow man” seems a bit optimistic to me.
The naivety there isn’t so much that soldiers would be incapable of fighting the US citizenry in a large scale war, but more that the framing of the question is false to begin with. It’s way easier for soldiers to commit small scale acts of terror than large scale genocides, and it’s always easier to commit acts of terror on minorities or the “other” rather than on the gen pop. If we were to see any domestic american guerilla warfare (I find this kind of unlikely compared to the rising amount of lone wolf, stochastic incidents), then it’s likely that even the regular population would get fed a ton of bullshit about the opposition being subhuman, or something to that effect. Larger scale versions of how, every time a black guy gets shot by the police, everyone trots out every encounter he’s ever had with the police within like 12 hours of the incident. Character assassination, but at a group level, instead of on the individual level.
In the context of the Ukraine war i’ve read something akin to “once someone close to you, a fellow friend and comrade is killed, it is less about the original how and why, but just about revenge.”
Using cult of personality, the in-group mentality that is strongly advanced in the military, dehumanising of the enemy and other tactics have shown very effective time and time again in human history. There is many countries in history and today, where the military is turned against its own population and i fail to see any moral highground the US could claim to protect against that. The US society is too hungry, too injust, too tribalist and too violent, for there to be effective safeguards. Heck we all saw what happened January 6
Hollywood powered violence desensitization baby. The US
armypolice force has bombed civilian cities in US soil. They were against black communities, but it has happened. No one in the chain of command even protested the order. Anything is possible when you have R A C I S MEDIT: corrected the state security force involved, but the explosives were provided by the army.
I think it’s also more likely that the cops would be the main problem
My two pennies: We had a generation of people raised by baby boomers, people notorious for their inability to manage emotions, or empathize with different or morally ambiguous people. It’s intergenerational trauma from such an upbringing, manifesting as mental illness and marked by delusions of grandeur, paranoia, victim mentality, and stunted emotional and social development. That, and obviously the proliferation of weapons has made mass murder accessible, and in the minds of some people as described above, acceptable.
Possibly also lead poisoning.
Are you under the impression such things were ever not accessible?
At what point did we start regularly testing and proving out water? When did we start ensuring school bake sale food must be store-bought? You seem incredibly short-sighted.
What kind of idiot point are you attempting and failing to make?
Flint, MI would like a word
I’m not sure what you’re referring to as a “fetish” or an “unregulated” lobby. If you were referring to nonsense like the NRA and their fundraising efforts, you’d be obligated to highlight Everytown etc. and their blue-aligned fundraising. You can’t point out a wedge issue and one side without recognizing the other side and its equivalent benefit.
If one has a clean criminal history, is a legal adult, and - in most states - has undergone some additional scrutiny or proof of proficiency, then sure - they can buy a firearm.
Given how Afghanistan turned out, I’m not sure how you think the concept of resisting the armed forces of a government as a distributed and well-armed populace is somehow unthinkable.
It’s fair to say we’ve a cesspool of stupidity - but only due to our politicians continued neglect of actual underlying issues in favor of partisan wedge-driving and profiteering of the ad revenue of sensationalized violence.
It’s also worth noting (though Lemmy is a horrible venue for discourse on the topic) that the prevalence of firearm ownership in the US is itself a function (likely an intended one, by the framers) of 2A.
So many of the measures that could, immediately or eventually, be used either directly or as a legal springboard, to move toward gun restrictions or confiscations see immediate and stiff resistance from the GOP, gun lobby, and most importantly big chunks of the population who are fun owners, who are basically given a personal stake and being incentivized to do so.
So many of the gun control measures being proposed would be dead on arrival due to the dual truths that guns are already widespread in the country and that many such laws would make criminals out of law abiding citizens. This makes it hard or impossible for them to gain any traction whatsoever.
While I agree that the “I need my guns for when the government turns on its people next week” crowd is delusional, I also feel that it’s a chicken/egg situation: part of the reason why that’s an unreasonable threat is because guns are so ubiquitous. The government doesn’t even attempt to go down that rabbit hole partially because it’s such an impossible feat.
I also think that while yes, that doomsday scenario isn’t happening anytime soon, that it certainly could happen, after many decades of gradual change and gradual decline. And while personal gun ownership may not do much good against the government now, in the event that the course of the future took us down that dark route, personal firearms could very well do a private citizen a lot of good then in resisting any opponent, government or otherwise. But of course they wouldn’t be able to get their guns back in that scenario if they allowed them to be taken away beforehand…and prevalence of ownership and political resistance is the best and easiest insurance against all of that.
No, it was 100% intentional. All able bodied men below a certain age were legally obligated to muster with their local militia, and they were likewise legally obligated to provide their own firearm. The gov’t had already granted itself the right to raise and equip an army, so the idea that 2A applies to the gov’t being allowed to arm itself is patently ridiculous. No, the idea was that individuals would own firearms, and would undertake some form of training (or regulation) in their use, and that would make them fit for militia duty.
From that perspective, it’s clear that the founders intended the people to have access to and own weapons fit for military service.
I agree that it’s unlikely that the people should need arms to resist the gov’t, buuuuuuuuuuut it’s happened, and it’s happened in recent memory. The Bundy clan had an armed standoff with the gov’t in the 2010s over their illegal grazing on BLM land, and the gov’t ended up being the ones to blink first. (Also, the Bundy’s won in court over that; the gov’t did some pretty egregiously illegal things, and te judge tossed the whole case out with prejudice.) You can also go back to standoffs and insurrections by Native Americans in the 70s, standoffs that the Native Americans ultimately won. Moreover, we have a strong current of fascism running through our current politics; IMO, the idea of willingly giving up arms when the fascism supporters control the House, and have overrun the judiciary is madness.
Genuinely asking: what’s the point of everyone having a rifle if no one has ammo?
It’s part of your army kit. As we have a mandatory military service. But, soldiers have now the option to leave it at their military Base.
Which was introduced to lower the risk of suicide. No idea the impact of this policy though.
One important point is that, swiss people aren’t strongly divided or proudly displaying their, political affiliations. I think their are fights, protest and riot. But never it would come in the mind of anyone to bring a gun to such events.
Mass shooting are very rare and even though OP says people buy guns. I dont know anyone who has one. Beside for hunting.
We also have a pretty good social security and different safety nets. So this help.
All great information, but none of it really answers the original question.
Not meaning that as an insult, but I was also wondering what point it serves to have the weapon at home but to not be allowed to have ammunition for said weapon.
It being part of the “army kit” certainly makes sense, but that only reinforces the validity of the question; if the rifle is part of the kit, surely the ammo is too. And if the ammo is part of the kit but has to stay on base, then it seems nonsensical to have the weapon stored in a different location…for the same stated reason.
Well, they’re both wrong. If you have a permit to own a particular type of weapon, you can buy the ammunition. Military rifles are a weird category of their own. Up until fairly recently, you were given a sealed, 50-round box of ammo for your service rifle, so that you could respond quickly if the militia was called up. That’s been discontinued. But you can still quite legally buy ammunition for your service rifle as long as you have permits for that type of firearm otherwise. (This is based on what I can find and read regarding gun regulation in Switzerland, although some of this may have changed since the EU imposed new restrictions on member states.)
There is some variance in application of gun laws, as many of the permits are ‘may issue’ rather than ‘shall issue’.
I could be wrong. I would suggest consulting with someone that specializes in Swiss firearms law, as some writeups are giving contradictory answers.
Regardless: Swiss gun ownership is estimated to be among the highest in the world, with the US being highest by far. Despite their very high rates of gun ownership, they also have a very, very low homicide rate in general, and their rate of gun crime is microscopic.
Assuming the guns are target trained, it is much more easy to store a pile of ammunition somewhere and tell everyone to come and get some in an emergency, than having to transfer the rifles whenever someone decides to move. The alternative of course is no personal ownership of the rifles, but aside from the familiarity and training it also adds a symbolic sense of responsibility and association. The scene in jarhead comes to my mind where they are told to make this “there is many like this, but this one is mine” chant over their marksman rifles.
Right on. Part of the weird fetish is that perceived need to defend themselves from the government.
It’s as stupid as it is antiquated and was never a thing among patriots and decent Americans, only among people who were literally rebels: slavers and separatists, the exact people the Second Amendment was written to protect against.
The words “security of the state” are the express, stated purpose of the Second Amendment, right there in the text, and rebellion was expressly cited at the Convention by the framers.
I guess the workers at Blair Mountain were “slavers and separatists”.
“decent” seems to be doing some heavy lifting here. A linguistic analysis of writings of the Framers cross-referenced against era culture and stats highlights the depth of your misunderstanding.
Ah - I see we’re not only cherry-picking, but we’re depending on a preamble e.g. a preparatory or introductory statement as somehow limiting of scope or indicative of audience to which a right was granted.
Delusional. Learn to read.
If you’re under the impression that the military could win against the armed populace of the United States, you really shouldn’t be commenting on this topic due to your lack of knowledge.
And you are going to do what exactly against an F-35 or drone strike with your guns? Please explain how you would stop the US military with any amount of guns.
You’re one nuke away from getting proven how shit your take is.
This isn’t the 1800s. War isn’t just whose side has the biggest numbers or the fanciest guns or the smartest strategies. You will die in a full-on confrontation against your government. You and your quickly propelled metal hold no power in the face of the type of destruction that has now been possible for decades.
But yeah, go ahead and hold on to those guns, it seems like it helps you sleep at night.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Oh yeah, America is gonna nuke itself and the soldiers will totally rampage in their hometowns. /s
Oh yeah, America is totally gonna use that second amendment to rise up against an oppresive government, not just buy guns from corpos and be distracted from any form of oppression because they just have to stand in line to get the newest iphone /s
That would really depend on some kind of big event that riles everyone up. That’s precisely why the goalposts are moved slowly.
The important thing I think is to be able to defend against crooked cops on a smaller scale as well as the crack heads problem they’re not really fixing.