By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Rath on 08 March 2011
Edit Thread
badgenome said:
Rath said:

The people could not succesfully rebel against the American army as it stands. You're kidding yourself if you think that's a realistic possibility. Gun control just lowers the rate of gun crime/gun suicides.

Also unlike Communism which has never been succesfully implemented (and probably never will) socialism has been implemented to some degree in several of the most democratic, progressive and developed nations in the world. Also some of the nations with the highest free speech rankings.

I'm not sure it would be necessary to rebel against the U.S. army. I reckon that in the event of an Egypt like situation, the U.S. army has an even better chance of siding with the people than the Egyptian army did. I do think there is something to be said for the leadership of a country having a healthy fear of the citizenry, though.

I've seen a lot of studies and stats on gun control and what it does and doesn't do, but with all the cherrypicking that goes on by both the pros and antis, I'm not really sure what to make of it. There is one aspect of gun control that I really don't like, though, and that's the infantilization of the citizenry. When doctors groups start lobbying for knives to be banned and saying patronizing shit like, "No one really NEEDS a sharp knife, you can make do with a dull one," it just drives me up a fucking wall.

As far as free speech goes, I'd argue that while most European countries have obviously been relatively free, speech codes - especially laws against hate speech and blasphemy - have long been around and will only be used more and more as demographics continue to change and the experiment with multiculturalism continues to fail miserably. While restricting speech may not be a tenet of socialism per se, it is my experience that socialists are quite eager to do it if it's construed as being necessary to maintain domestic tranquility, crack down on spooky racists, or some other such nonsense.

I was using the freedom house rankings which put a couple of social democratic states - notably the Scandinavian ones - above America.

I'm not arguing for the complete banning of guns (or knives, though some types of knives such as switch blades and butterfly knives are clearly more dangerous than others) but America's controls seem horridly relaxed. Guns should be viewed as dangerous and a license needed to own one in my opinion - along with some basic psychological exam to make sure that the gun owner isn't a psychopath. Also some guns such as automatic weapons should have very very strict controls - they have no use for sport or hunting and only really exist to kill humans.

 

But you're right about America's army. Which means once again that there isn't really any need for an armed citizenry.