More venting, sorry
Jun. 14th, 2016 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I posted to facebook saying I need to express my rage and grief but that I didn't want to pollute my friends' social media pages.
Where are these fucking "well-regulated militias" that are necessary for the security of our Free State?
How about we ban anyone who has been found guilty of a violent crime from owning a gun? How about the other states make the process as rigorous as Massachusetts (I had to get a letter STATING I WAS NOT INSANE and present it to my local police department to get my license).
I've got more but I'm at work and this isn't really helping
Where are these fucking "well-regulated militias" that are necessary for the security of our Free State?
How about we ban anyone who has been found guilty of a violent crime from owning a gun? How about the other states make the process as rigorous as Massachusetts (I had to get a letter STATING I WAS NOT INSANE and present it to my local police department to get my license).
I've got more but I'm at work and this isn't really helping
Re: I'll play
Date: 2016-06-17 02:06 pm (UTC)The US military has the most expensive, high-tech war gadgetry in the world, but they haven't actually won a war since bombing Japan over 70 years ago despite being at war pretty much constantly since then. Did Vietnam have superior weaponry? Does the Taliban? Does ISIS? Does Al-Qaeda? Big weapons (short of nukes) are ineffective against guerilla resistance. It's very hard to loot houses with a tank or do door-to-door searches with a helicopter. The US had supersonic aircraft and nukes in the 1960s, but they still had to send a guy with a pistol and a flashlight to crawl on his belly through the tunnels in Vietnam.
This raises the question of why the US keeps starting fights it can't win, when other countries sometimes refrain even from starting fights they can win. It's because the military-industrial complex has a lot of control over our government. The costs of these invasions are absorbed by the people, while the companies are able to profit from each conflict, whether we win or not.
If a force like that attacks us, and they have as large and complacent a population of taxpayers as we do, then yeah, we're probably fucked. But if we're talking about a group like the Zetas or Maras, and they're trying to decide how best to use their limited resources, they're probably a whole lot more likely to attack a rich, undefended place full of people who are afraid of getting PTSD from firing a gun (think Vikings raiding monasteries), than to attack a humble little town with a big wall around it, machine guns and guards at the gates, and infantry rifles in every home. It comes down to a simple risk/benefit analysis.
Re: I'll play
Date: 2016-06-17 02:55 pm (UTC)Everyone should be heavily armed in case of Red Dawn?
Re: I'll play
Date: 2016-06-18 03:41 am (UTC)So using the fact that we've (wrongly) delegated this public responsibility to a corps of full-time professionals as justification for stripping people of the means to fulfill their responsibility is like saying that if a tow truck is pulling your car, we should make it illegal for you to ever buy motor oil again. It's a recipe for a fatal dependency.
Re: I'll play
Date: 2016-06-18 04:54 pm (UTC)If you are correct about your description of the intention of militias (and I have no reason to think you aren't) then that amendment should be considered a complete failure, and be amended to make sense to modern people--or interpreted by the judiciary to fall in line with modern life.