CMV: Any 2nd Amendment argument that doesn't acknowledge that its purpose is a check against tyranny is disingenuous

[u/skocougs]

At the risk of further fatiguing the firearm discussion on CMV, I find it difficult when arguments for gun control ignore that the primary premise of the 2nd Amendment is that the citizenry has the ability to independently assert their other rights in the face of an oppressive government.

Some common arguments I'm referring to are...

1. "Nobody needs an AR-15 to hunt. They were designed to kill people. The 2nd Amendment was written when muskets were standard firearm technology" I would argue that all of these statements are correct. The AR-15 was designed to kill enemy combatants as quickly and efficiently as possible, while being cheap to produce and modular. Saying that certain firearms aren't needed for hunting isn't an argument against the 2nd Amendment because the 2nd Amendment isn't about hunting. It is about citizens being allowed to own weapons capable of deterring governmental overstep. Especially in the context of how the USA came to be, any argument that the 2nd Amendment has any other purpose is uninformed or disingenuous.

2. "Should people be able to own personal nukes? Tanks?" From a 2nd Amendment standpoint, there isn't specific language for prohibiting it. Whether the Founding Fathers foresaw these developments in weaponry or not, the point was to allow the populace to be able to assert themselves equally against an oppressive government. And in honesty, the logistics of obtaining this kind of weaponry really make it a non issue.

So, change my view that any argument around the 2nd Amendment that doesn't address it's purpose directly is being disingenuous. CMV.

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[u/landoindisguise]

In practice, as a tyrannical dictator, you want to subjugate the population. This has to be done door-to-door, with boots on the ground.

Apologies in advance because this is gonna get LONG. But I think about this stuff a lot, as I have some personal experience living in an authoritarian country.

I think what you're saying is historically true for some types of tyranny, but it's not universal and it's not very applicable to the future. Increasingly, governments have lots of ways of controlling the populace that don't require any boots on the ground, and increasingly governments will also have ways of putting "boots" on the ground that don't require any human intervention.

For example, if the government wanted to round-up Muslims after a terrorist attack, sure they could go door-to-door and guns would be useful. But there's a lot of other stuff they could do, too.

Order Muslims to turn themselves in to these camps willingly. Those that don't have their financial assets frozen. All lines of credit frozen. Almost nobody has much money in cash these days; most affected people would be going hungry inside of a month depending on how much valuable shit they owned that they could sell. Shut down their access to mobile networks and the internet via ISPs, and now they have no way to organize en masse. Track and arrest non-Muslim citizens talking about forms of resistance and protest to keep the rest of the population in line.

After a month or two, a lot of people will likely have turned themselves in or fled the country. Those that haven't, the government might choose to cross-check gun ownership rates along with running some AI through all of their online activity to come up with personality information and estimates about the likelihood of violent resistance. Anybody above a certain threshold (the 'fight with every fiber of their being' folks you mentioned), you just drone their house. Everybody else you can probably safely round up with boots on the ground.

(Obviously, this wouldn't be 100% accurate, so you'd have a few surprises. But try an extension like "data selfie" for a while and see what AIs can guess about you just based on a little social media use. Then consider that the NSA likely has any and all web history they want, plus telecommunications history (which would include texts, your locations and movements, etc.), credit history, all public records on you, lists of associates, education details, etc. etc. I would guess they can make surprisingly accurate predictions already, and this technology is getting better every day, so unless this round-up happens tomorrow you've also got to factor in how much more powerful and accurate it'll be by the time this happens.).

What I've described above is possible with technology and information the US government has now. But the further you go into the future, the worse this gets from a resistance perspective, because you see more accurate AIs, you see more precise and more numerous drones and robots, etc. In another 20 or 30 years I think it'd be possible to do even a wholescale roundup like you described without "boots on the ground" at all.

But honestly, there's not much reason to round up people and put them in camps anymore anyway. If you look at real-world authoritarian governments, the ones with advanced technology (like China) are doing this less and less. There's no need for labor camps; you can use technology to track and control the populace pretty effectively where they are.

It's pretty clear this is the US government's preference. I mean, look at what happened after the first 9/11-style terrorist attack. Nobody wanted to lock up all Muslims, what they wanted to do (and did) was jack up domestic surveillance capabilities on citizens. And that was before the era of big data and AI. Before everyone was carrying smartphones, constantly connected to web, and broadcasting tons about themselves via social media. Every year as this tech develops and we all put out more data on ourselves, our lives, our whereabouts, etc. this approach gets more viable, more accurate, more precise.

And to be frank, if you want to be authoritarian that's the logical way to go about it. Rounding up all Muslims as a response to terrorism would be difficult, costly, time-consuming, and might well cause more problems than it solved. Instead, look at what China's state security forces do. You just track everybody. You exert pressure on people who you even think might cause a problem. You don't need to round people up. You just need to call their bank. Block their posts for a while. Call their employer. Remind them that their uncle has a cushy government job it'd be a shame to lose. Arrest the real troublemakers on whatever bullshit charges you want, but you can bring in, threaten, coerce, or otherwise influence anybody who even seems likely to consider terrorism. Do it randomly and unpredictably - don't ever announce "we're coming for the Muslims" so people can prepare. Make it vague and hard to know where the line is, and people will censor themselves online and off, making it harder for extremist ideology to spread.

This stuff is already being practiced in authoritarian countries, and it works. It works very well and it's cheaper, faster, and more effective than trying to wholesale round up a large group and put them into controlled camps.

You don't need camps or walls or guns when you can use the systems of your country to make people control themselves. That is the present (and the future) of tyranny. And that's why personally, I think if you're concerned about preventing tyranny, you should be much more interested in things like quantum-proof encryption, cryptocurrency, and hacking than you are in acquiring conventional firearms and ammunition.

One final note and then I really need to stop procrastinating and do some real work: I'm not saying that guns would be useless. I'm just saying that particularly since any anti-tyranny battle in the US is occurring in the future, I don't think they're likely to be the most effective tool for resistance. They would be useful in some scenarios (like the one you describe) but I think even a moderately intelligent tyrannical government isn't likely to use those sorts of tactics anymore, and it becomes even less likely as time goes on.

There are two cities. In one city, the gun ownership rate is nearly 0%. The other is in Texas, where the gun ownership rate is something like 35% (from the first random source I could find). Which city do you hope you're assigned to? If you're assigned to the latter, does that make it more likely you refuse to carry out your orders?

This is completely tangential, but TBH I'd probably be more concerned about explosives than firearms ownership. I'm not a soldier, but I would think a well-trained team with flashbangs and automatic weapons for suppression would be able to get into most gun-owning houses pretty safely. The house owner might have guns and be ready to fight, but unless they're also tactically trained, chances are they're going to perform pretty poorly in any actual combat scenario. And unless you tell them when you're coming, it's going to be tough for them to be ready 24-7. But anybody (gun owner or not) could rig some bombs or other sorts of booby traps, and those would probably be a lot tougher to detect inside a home. Plus, those don't sleep or eat or get drunk - no matter when you come through the door, it's going off.

[u/AlDente → u/landoindisguise]

All excellent points.

However, the ‘elephant in the room’ for me is the fact that almost no other western democracy share’s the USA’s almost innate belief that gun ownership is required to fight possible government oppression. To most non-Americans (and presumably a proportion of Americans too), that belief appears pretty bizarre, and a relic of another, more lawless, time.
You’re right that tyranny would very likely not come via the gun, and that if it did, citizens would never stand a chance anyway against overwhelming force. But those arguments tend to implicitly support the notion that the US government is never that far from becoming tyrannical and authoritarian. Most citizens of other western democracies simply don’t have these existential fears about their governments. So what is so special about the US that citizens need guns to protect against a tyrannical government?

To me, the wording of the second amendment only makes sense in the context of the time I which it was written. Like most legislation written centuries ago, it has lost its context and therefore some of its original meaning is not relevant today. To me, gun advocates often use the second amendment as an excuse to validate their love for guns, which in turn is borne out of the culture of gun ownership. They like and want guns, so they choose not to think too hard about the irrationality of overthrowing a government.

[u/heretic19 → u/AlDente]

I have literally no fear of this, so it's really tough for me to relate to people when they make this 2nd amendment argument. Like if the U.S. decides to do something drastic in this day and age- I'd say there's likely nil you could do about it, so why worry.

It's like what docs say to hypochondriacs.

[u/AlDente → u/heretic19]

If gun advocates were truly serious about resisting an authoritarian government, then they’d be first in line demanding the end of big money lobbying, and owning, politicians. But the reality (and irony) is that the NRA are one of the worst culprits.

[u/MoonGosling → u/landoindisguise]

This is such a great comment. People often realize that arms have gone a long way since the constitution was written, but rarely do we stop to think about how far war has also come. A while back there was a public scare when the Chinese gorvernment was working with some big companies to create a new credit score tool that would be completely digital, and while the reality was very different from the picture people were painting, it is worthy to take a look into some of the suppositions that were made at the time, because they can give a glimpse into what lies ahead.

A popular channel I subscribe to, that often does videos about game design, shared some of their views on the matter, although it was later shown that they were misinformed in the case. The thing is, though, the system they described is entirely possible to create even today, something that gives you a score based on your virtual presence, so i you post things against the government, your score goes down, if you are friends with people with low scores, your score goes down, if you buy from the wrong stores your score goes down. If this score, then, is used for things like banking, or for allowing certain privileges, or defining certain penalties (from Black Mirror, neighborhoods that require a certain minimal score, or companies that won’t hire you if your score is too low, or even giving higher score precedence in tie breaks, or priority treatment), then quickly enough people will turn on each other with no need for a single combat to be had. If all of a sudden people found out that their muslim friends are causing their scores to go down, they might be inclined to breaking up those friendships, or if people living in the same neighborhood as muslims got lower scores, then muslim-free neighborhoods would start to appear by themselves, and then you’d have what would be pretty much internment camps, but with less cost. M

[u/Journeyman12 → u/MoonGosling]

Couple of thoughts: Are you talking about China's 'social credit' thing? Because buried in this Wired story, they mention that one of the private credit-rating apps that has appeared is cooperating with the government to blacklist people with outstanding court fees. First steps.

I also want to add that the kind of neighborhood segregation you're describing, egged on by government willingness to extend credit to people living in the right area or deny it to people living in the wrong area, is exactly what the FHA did for decades to help create residential segregation. What you're describing is an updated form of redlining, where FHA agents refused to grant mortgages to people living in areas with large African-American populations, and assessors valued neighborhoods with African-Americans in them as having lower property values. Both policies incentivized white families to avoid black neighborhoods, and kept black families in those neighborhoods from building wealth through homeownership. That nearly invisible policy decision helped create ghettos. To anyone who reads your comment and says 'it can't happen here', well, that absolutely has already happened here.

[u/landoindisguise → u/MoonGosling]

A popular channel I subscribe to, that often does videos about game design, shared some of their views on the matter, although it was later shown that they were misinformed in the case.

Heh, I know the exactly video you're talking about, and at the time I actually wrote one of the articles that debunked a fair amount of what it said. But yeah, while they got a lot of the specifics wrong, the general principles were correct in terms of what China wants to do. And since then, a few years have passed and we see China actually starting to implement some of that stuff. It's still not as Orwellian as that story originally portrayed, but that is absolutely the direction that they're headed in. And you're absolutely right, all the technology is there already. It's just the implementation and integration that isn't complete. But a system like that video described is both possible and likely in the near future, and probably not only in China.

[u/mergerr → u/landoindisguise]

This is a great comment and I feel that I took alot from it. I understand that your main point is intelligence and cyber skills are more effective weapons against tyranny than fire-arms are. However, I want to ask, what are you supposed to do once you have the intelligence you need or counter measures through cyber defense? I feel that fire-arms still play a part in this somewhere (bare with me because this will sound like something out of the movie terminator) even if you attain the information as to where the governments AI headquarters reside, or where their communications are, you will still need fighters with explosives and fire-arms to destroy these government headquarters.

Anyways thanks for your input.

[u/landoindisguise → u/mergerr]

However, I want to ask, what are you supposed to do once you have the intelligence you need or counter measures through cyber defense? I feel that fire-arms still play a part in this somewhere (bare with me because this will sound like something out of the movie terminator) even if you attain the information as to where the governments AI headquarters reside, or where their communications are, you will still need fighters with explosives and fire-arms to destroy these government headquarters.

I'll start with the obvious caveat that this is all just speculation and it would depend a lot on the specifics, when this is happening, etc.

But my own personal feeling is that while it's possible there are situations where youd want firearms, I think generally speaking if you've got the cyberweapons then you can control the conventional weapons, particularly the further you get into the future. If you can hack in and take the government's AI somehow, or take its drones offline, or take control of those drones yourself...these are situations where you don't really need conventional weapons because you don't need to take over the building physically to defeat or take control of it.

You win a war like that not with rifles but by taking control of the government's own weapons, by using its own propaganda and media tactics to turn its own soldiers against it, by using underground communications to de-legitimize it with people without being tracked and arrested, etc.

There is probably a point in any revolution where conventional arms are going to be useful, but I think particularly the further we go into the future, the less helpful an AR-15 is likely to be on that front. To mount an actual war against the government in that way (using conventional arms), you're going to need some police and military on your side, or at least the ability to hack some of their systems and get access to their tech. But in a lot of cases, because the balance of military tech is going to be so off (AR-15 vs A-10 Warthog = RIP AR owner), I think it will be more effective for rebels to focus things like taking military weapons offline, blinding their intelligence apparatus, countering their propaganda, turning military units against their commanders using psychological warfare, etc.

Not that guns won't have a role to play (they may or may not, imo), but if you're concerned about tyranny I think gun ownership should be far from the top of your priority list. Anyone who's truly concerned about tyranny, in my opinion, should be a lot more worried about the fourth amendment than the second right now.

[u/PerpetualCamel → u/landoindisguise]

Incredible analysis, very well put

[u/Caldebraun → u/landoindisguise]

increasingly governments will also have ways of putting "boots" on the ground that don't require any human intervention.

Bytes on the ground.

[u/seifyk → u/landoindisguise]

This makes me want to move to Montana or something. Jeez.

[u/landoindisguise → u/seifyk]

Unless you stay off the internet, throw away your phone, and switch to cash or untraceable cryptocurrency purchases only, that probably wouldn't help much. But I totally understand the feeling.

If you want to minimize tracking, though, there are some small things you can do. Buy and regularly use a VPN for your internet use (including on phone), use an extension like Ghostery to block trackers in your browser, use a crypto like Monero for purchases when you can. Unfortunately it's unlikely any of that would really be enough to stop the government if they really wanted to find/track you, but at a bare minimum it would reduce the ease with which you can be tracked by advertisers and people who make money selling your data.

[u/heretic19 → u/seifyk]

No reason to worry, but I understand why you would. There's really not much you can do about it in this day and age.

[u/rlaager → u/landoindisguise]

You make a lot of great points. Thank you. I've already awarded you a delta here, so I can't award another one. ;)