Why don't protestors who oppose Trump/ICE open carry their guns to prevent what's currently occuring in the US ie kidnapping, assaults etc?
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Is this not the reason the second amendment exists?
Regards
An Australian
Edit: I'm not advocating for violence. More so "a well regulated militia" which could be established by protesters or Democratic Governors for genuine self defence.The 2nd amendment was written in 1789 when information moved at the rate of the printing press and bullets came from muskets.
This takeover has been in planning since the 1970s. They courted the NRA and gun owners along with the attack on public schooling so said gun owners wouldn't understand what fascism is when the moment came.
In the grand scheme of things, it took the fascists 200 years to find a way around the 2nd amendment.
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Is this not the reason the second amendment exists?
Regards
An Australian
Edit: I'm not advocating for violence. More so "a well regulated militia" which could be established by protesters or Democratic Governors for genuine self defence.wrote last edited by [email protected]The No Kings protest in Utah ended tragically because armed "peacekeepers" (aka armed civilians) shot at a protester who was open-carrying an AR-15 at the protest. The protester had no ill intentions, but the peacekeepers didn't know that. The peacekeepers missed and killed a bystander.
That's why you don't open carry at protests. The untrained "good guy with a gun" is likely to shoot you. Carry concealed if you're going to carry, or don't bring a gun at all.
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It's the fact that US police regularly break up properly registered and approved peaceful protests by "less than lethal" force when they get to be incovenient for [insert power here]. Not live rounds, but "less than lethal" munitions. Rubber bullets, which often cause injury and sometimes death anyway. Tasers. Pepper spray. Tear gas smoke grenades.
You can find a decent amount of pictures and video of police pepper spraying protestors calmly sitting cross legged on the ground.
There are also psychological tactics they use to try and break up protests that often have the fun side benefit of fomenting response from otherwise peaceful protestors that is easily labeled as violent/threatening/resisting. At protests that camp in an area overnight, they will use flashing lights and loudspeakers playing audio specially designed to tap into anxiety centers of the brain to keep the protesters from resting. Literally borrowing some of the tactics our intelligence agencies used against the vietcong. They will "bottle" or "kettle" protestors, surrounding groups with riot shield equipped cops and squishing them into smaller and smaller space until the protester have to push back so people won't get literally crushed, then out come the batons.
The threat of police brutality is always there. With significant chance that there will be no legal recourse. Judges play softball (sometimes literally) with police here. Manslaughter in the line of duty? 3 months paid vacation, then we transfer you to another local police force somewhere they won't recognize your name. And decades of news media jumping at the chance to stir people up has cemented these fears in the public mind.
But here's the thing: the amount this happens is just barely rare enough that it's not international rights org level shit. And when it does happen, usually the police can justify it with some imagery or video of violent protesters.
So it's rare, just always possible it could escalate. If it does there's no rel recourse, and the news makes people feel that it's a more likely outcome than it is. Peaceful protests that go fine don't make the news.
What also isn't covered by the media is how to plan and take effective action despite these risks, or effective action from the past, so many Americans just see the pipeline as being directly from public peaceful protest to some sort of freedom fighter in active combat.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yeah, no shit, that happens everywhere.
Some people go back the next day, some societies react to this by protesting harder and longer. Other times this devolves into outright conflict or seismic political shifts. Sometimes it settles down over time.
The reaction isn't typically some combination of "Oh, well, what can you do" and "maybe if we bring actual firearms the natural conflict with authority baked into all civilian political action will dissipate fully and permanently".
That's some US-specific delusion and intrinsic tendency to violence right there.
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That's not accurate.
The person shot and killed (Mr. Ah-loo) was unarmed. He was struck by a round fired at someone (mr. Gamboa) who had snuck out of the protest and returned with an AR-15.
Gamboa was arrested for attempted murder, and the person who fired the shot is/was being investigated, but has not been arrested/charged at this time
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This is the dumbest statement ever. You have to have a gun to use it. So yes, carrying one increases that chance. Just like my chances of microwaving popcorn increases when I have fucking popcorn in the pantry.
That's exactly the point.
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That's why all of us Americans can quickly tell when someone is just trying to start shit when they get angry online..
There are ways to fight back. But they require patience, communication, planning, subterfuge, and more importantly OPSEC. Otherwise the regime just slaughters everyone like they want to.
Louder for the motherfuckers in the back!
There are so many fucking people online upset about this shit that amount to not much more than hot air. Chasing the perfect to the detriment of the good. Purity tests. Arguing for blatantly impossible courses of action, or at least ones that will nevet get enough buy in from the greater population to work. Sitting on their asses getting angry while worshipping some half-cocked idea of open revolution, full overthow of the government, and dissolution of the capitalist economic framework... without ever evaluating how the fuck the world could even get to that state except "magic unspecific mass violent revolution", "complete apocalypse scenario then rebuild", or "if we all wish upon a star really hard, all the bad people will have simultaneous fatal anuerysms". Not to mention how the fuck could that state ever be maintained afterwards.
If it's not outright impossible, it will require an astronomical amount of prep and planning. None of this is shit that just "happens" through sheer desire or will without slow supportive action to build what is neccessary.
People getting their emotional catharsis ranting, venting, and shit stirring without taking any true action. Stirring other people up into the same state.
Get offline, get involved locally, become an expert on the spaces and people around you. Form local connections. Accept that you aren't an action hero, and if the US military is turned on you, as a civilian you cannot win through force. Build relevant skills for a crisis. Build relevant skills for ongoing resistance. Build skills for organizing locally and securely.
Most importantly: Shut the absolute fuck up. Just shut the fuck up. As far as it's within your power, don't make yourself a target and blend in.
I'm already not a good example, as my OPSEC on this account is abysmal. I take solace in that none of my plans or actions involve abject resistance, and are all local good type shit.
Having a Lemmy account at all is bad OPSEC. Gotta have active accounts on state-approved social media for that.
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We “lost” those wars because of morale. Like especially in Vietnam we were destroying them in terms of kill death ratios and the Vietcong had been mostly eliminated by 1969. Also Vietnam wasn’t just a bunch of farmers with hunting rifles the NVA was being funded and trained by the USSR and China. By the end of the war Vietnam lost around 20x the people and their population had been poisoned with agent orange.
We also didn’t use our nukes, if the military through enough brainwashing and propaganda could be convinced that these protesters are an insider threat we could easily be looking at the deaths of 10-100s of thousands
We lost those wars because there were political chains holding us back from being able to commit fully to the theater. Vietnam especially. It was a bunch of rules and laws we knew would make it incredibly difficult to win, and we did it anyway because of capitalism.
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Is this not the reason the second amendment exists?
Regards
An Australian
Edit: I'm not advocating for violence. More so "a well regulated militia" which could be established by protesters or Democratic Governors for genuine self defence.wrote last edited by [email protected]Guns are the other guys's thing. Democrats fight with hope and dignity and going high.
Wait, why are we losing? /s
Edit: Ignore all the other people giving reasons. Maybe some of them are true, but it's not why.
I'm close enough to the country to know that taking up arms is too taboo and "other" for the blue Americans to have ever considered in the first place. Lemmy is full of blue Americans, who have an emotional incentive to make it rational, though.
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I never understood this dumb argument from anti-2a people. We, the strongest military to have ever existed in the history of the world...lost Vietnam, lost iraq, lost Afghanistan, and tied in Korea.
Planes can't patrol street corners. You need boots and they need to be willing to kill their countrymen and be doing it for a paycheck.
Planes can't patrol street corners
Sure, but tanks/armored vehicles can, and police absolutely use those
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That's not accurate.
The person shot and killed (Mr. Ah-loo) was unarmed. He was struck by a round fired at someone (mr. Gamboa) who had snuck out of the protest and returned with an AR-15.
Gamboa was arrested for attempted murder, and the person who fired the shot is/was being investigated, but has not been arrested/charged at this time
wrote last edited by [email protected]What are you saying is wrong? When I read the comment you reply to, they do say “The peacekeepers missed and killed a bystander.”, and “shot at a protester who was open-carrying an AR-15 at the protest”, which is what you're saying too.
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Is this not the reason the second amendment exists?
Regards
An Australian
Edit: I'm not advocating for violence. More so "a well regulated militia" which could be established by protesters or Democratic Governors for genuine self defence.Because the White House is looking for an excuse to have the military start slaughtering civilians and imprisoning democrats. A general strike is what we need to do
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Is this not the reason the second amendment exists?
Regards
An Australian
Edit: I'm not advocating for violence. More so "a well regulated militia" which could be established by protesters or Democratic Governors for genuine self defence.Im an american who does not believe in guns as effective. They have bigger guns after all. Im a city boy though and do think gun laws should be local but never disallowed on private property where the owner allows it. I compare it to the old westerns were you had to give up your gun to the sheriff while you were in town.
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What are you saying is wrong? When I read the comment you reply to, they do say “The peacekeepers missed and killed a bystander.”, and “shot at a protester who was open-carrying an AR-15 at the protest”, which is what you're saying too.
The protester had no ill intentions, but the peacekeepers didn't know that.
Gamboa snuck away, retrieved a hidden gun, came back and pointed out at someone. He very clearly had ill intentions, and was arrested for attempted murder.
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Arguably the morale was because we were fighting enemies we didn't know how to fight, nor did we have a way to respond to tactics they used.
We went into all those wars with overwhelming firepower, which caused the opposition to resort to pure guerrilla tactics. In Vietnam, they faced Chinese and USSR pilots in the air - which did not go as planned. We stomped the shit out of the Iraq army, but Saddam was holding the 3 opposing factions in check. When they splintered and became guerrillas they fought with suicide bombers. Same in Afghanistan. They waged a psychological war where the enemy was everywhere and nowhere.
I have specific story about the Korean war too. At the time in Korea, the US war machine couldn't break through the Chinese supplied artillery and forces. They actually had forward air bases (extremely well guarded) have several occurrences where they got Intel they were targets of a North Korean force, and the air force servicemen, most of who were various technicians, mechanics, and logistics get fully prepared to meet infantry head on. (My grandpa explained that they weren't even that close to North Korean territory, and when they scrambled all available jets at their base, he recalls him and even his superiors being shook.). They got helmets, a choice of an M1911A1 or an M1, and a few clips of ammo. Most of them took the handgun since it was the only one they remembered how to operate. He doesn't remember how long they were in that defensive position, but apparently the North Koreans changed targets a few miles out and went elsewhere. He said back then, at 6'4" him and all the other tall guys were always at the forward bases, probably to make the south Koreans feel safer and scare the North Koreans abit.
Toward Vietnam, at the end of his contract, they approached him and a group of 8 others for air commando training. He said fuck no, 5 said sure. 1 came back, and the last time my granpa talked with him they still hadn't recovered their bodies (who knows when that was).
The biggest problem especially with Vietnam was we just shouldn’t have been there in the first place, we were fighting a war halfway across the globe for the abstract defense of “democracy”. If our goal was just the total extermination of the north Vietnamese we could have just nuked them into oblivion and if the other countries didn’t have nukes we very well might have. The tactics they used were different than ours and our actual end goal wasn’t even very clear but the way they “won” is we gave up. We didn’t lose any territory and while 58k lives lost isn’t nothing that’s from a country of over 200m compared to north Vietnam that lost 1.1m from a country of around 25m so 0.029% vs 4.4%
But even forgetting all that I would personally consider the U.S. military targeting the civilian population and hunting down “those antifa terrorists” like Israel is doing to hamas as a situation so horrible it should be avoided at all costs like we can pretend that our military would never do that, however we have many example from history showing the opposite to be true with Germany rounding up people who spoke out against the governement and putting them into extermination camps or slightly more recently pol pot in Cambodia
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That's why all of us Americans can quickly tell when someone is just trying to start shit when they get angry online..
There are ways to fight back. But they require patience, communication, planning, subterfuge, and more importantly OPSEC. Otherwise the regime just slaughters everyone like they want to.
Louder for the motherfuckers in the back!
There are so many fucking people online upset about this shit that amount to not much more than hot air. Chasing the perfect to the detriment of the good. Purity tests. Arguing for blatantly impossible courses of action, or at least ones that will nevet get enough buy in from the greater population to work. Sitting on their asses getting angry while worshipping some half-cocked idea of open revolution, full overthow of the government, and dissolution of the capitalist economic framework... without ever evaluating how the fuck the world could even get to that state except "magic unspecific mass violent revolution", "complete apocalypse scenario then rebuild", or "if we all wish upon a star really hard, all the bad people will have simultaneous fatal anuerysms". Not to mention how the fuck could that state ever be maintained afterwards.
If it's not outright impossible, it will require an astronomical amount of prep and planning. None of this is shit that just "happens" through sheer desire or will without slow supportive action to build what is neccessary.
People getting their emotional catharsis ranting, venting, and shit stirring without taking any true action. Stirring other people up into the same state.
Get offline, get involved locally, become an expert on the spaces and people around you. Form local connections. Accept that you aren't an action hero, and if the US military is turned on you, as a civilian you cannot win through force. Build relevant skills for a crisis. Build relevant skills for ongoing resistance. Build skills for organizing locally and securely.
Most importantly: Shut the absolute fuck up. Just shut the fuck up. As far as it's within your power, don't make yourself a target and blend in.
I'm already not a good example, as my OPSEC on this account is abysmal. I take solace in that none of my plans or actions involve abject resistance, and are all local good type shit.
Thank you for having a post that helps me hope everyone is not insane.
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I love the choice of standard to hold yourself up to.
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Because the White House is looking for an excuse to have the military start slaughtering civilians and imprisoning democrats. A general strike is what we need to do
At a certain point we have to fight back.
The argument of "we can't respond to their violence with violence or they will become more violent" doesn't hold water when they are getting increasingly violent anyway.
It's a coward's fallacy
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Is this not the reason the second amendment exists?
Regards
An Australian
Edit: I'm not advocating for violence. More so "a well regulated militia" which could be established by protesters or Democratic Governors for genuine self defence.wrote last edited by [email protected]Americans are domesticated cowards
Don't have kids, leave the country if you can afford to.
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At a certain point we have to fight back.
The argument of "we can't respond to their violence with violence or they will become more violent" doesn't hold water when they are getting increasingly violent anyway.
It's a coward's fallacy
I do understand your point but the military was told to attack and commit war crimes on American civilians so I just think that a general strike would be the most effective strategy in the situation we currently face. That’s just my opinion on the approach that would be the most efficient at this time.
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I mean, you see something terrifying, I see something that works. Armed demonstrations are a tried and true tactic for all kinds of militant activism.
