...the security of a free state...

What is an AR-15 going to do against a Stryker vehicle or laser guided munitions?

People seem to think the guns they can buy would be effective against a well trained professional and outfitted army.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
What is an AR-15 going to do against a Stryker vehicle or laser guided munitions?

People seem to think the guns they can buy would be effective against a well trained professional and outfitted army.

Why did these not completely defeat the Iraqis and Afghanis?

Hi guys,

The idea of living in a society, is in and of itself the source for the requirement of government to set rules....

Government doesn't have to be evil - it *can* be there to help societal co-existence and co-operation - in spite of exercising control over a populace.

People who work in government have different mindsets. Some work to create tyrannical situations - while others are interested in actually having a government that acts in the best interests of the majority of people.

Handing guns out to people to control government seems paradoxical.

Guns in the hands of citizens doesn't seem any wiser than an election ballot in the hands of citizens - neither seem to quell the effects of ineffective governance or deliberately incompetent governance or governmental control that is deliberately competent to create a divided rule - haves and have-nots. Certainly, the more complex the society, the more complex the issues surrounding governance - and the more troubled a populace will be to maintain a sense of freedom.

The reason guns are a good idea is because, when one is threatened, the appropriate response is anger - and that emotion fuels one to fight or flee.

If you choose to fight, it's good to have effective tools to do so. If it's a fist-fight, fleeing is an option. If you are faced with more serious circumstances, a gun is a handy tool to have at your disposal. If you're out-gunned (as our civil power is, in relation to the military power), you have to come up with something else. There was a time when the civil power and the military power were on more equal footing, but those days are long gone.

Here's a good quote from Solzhenitsyn...

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from The Gulag Archipelago

But again, times have changed quite a bit since Solzhenitsyn wrote that. I applaud and support standing up against tyranny, but technology has changed the landscape of war (and oppression), and the military power holds all the aces, if it ever comes down to a ground-fight. Let's hope it never comes down to that. Disarming the populace only enables tyranny to flourish.

Timothy McVeigh believed he was fighting against a tyrannical government when he bombed the Murrah Federal Building. Was he a hero or a villain?

originally posted by: Stuyvesant
Timothy McVeigh believed he was fighting against a tyrannical government when he bombed the Murrah Federal Building. Was he a hero or a villain?

Villain, without a doubt. A true patriot does not massacre civilians.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

How would you define a true patriot?

I define a patriot as someone who believes their country is worth supporting, defending, and fighting for.

Patriots have massacred civilians in every war known to man. Israeli patriots are incurring "collateral damage" at an alarming rate - as are Palestinian patriots.

US patriots massacred civilians in WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

I'm not condoning McVeigh's actions - but it can be argued that relatively few patriots *target* civilians - nevertheless civilians always die in these wars. McVeigh (I think) viewed the loss of life from his bombing as the [moral] equivalent of the "collateral damage" the US Government has caused in the above-mentioned wars/conflicts, and he defiantly believed in his cause, right to the end.

At some point (possibly undefinable), patriots across all national boundaries seem to agree that some level of civilian casualty is acceptable and permissable in the waging of war.

(Sorry if I have caused the thread to drift, that wasn't my intent.)

originally posted by: Stuyvesant
How would you define a true patriot?

I define a patriot as someone who believes their country is worth supporting, defending, and fighting for.

Same.

Patriots have massacred civilians in every war known to man. Israeli patriots are incurring "collateral damage" at an alarming rate - as are Palestinian patriots.

US patriots massacred civilians in WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

I was referring to the killing of ones own citizens. War, as a political tool, must be fought as effectively and quickly as possible.

a reply to: MichiganSwampBuck

i like it as well...makes it impossible to "interpret" it to mean something it doesn't.....

but it IS redundant...the founders were smart people, which is what led them to the determination of the line being redundant, to them, it was a no-brainer....no need to spell it out.... i suppose they didn't figure on future generations being so stupid..

a reply to: intrepid

Your premise is flawed, they assault will be in the form of paper cuts as they are attempting to do now. Cowards always use deceit as long as they can to cover for their lust for power. The reasoning for this is because of the 2A, they are to cowardly to come out right and say what they want to do because they would be hung for treason.

Grim

a reply to: MystikMushroom

Except the current events the ones who seem to want the power are treating the ones with the knowledge, skills and abilities like trash, wanting them to suffer and die. Why else would they label them as domestic extremist, steal their healthcare away, eviscerate the chain of command, cut funding for needed equipment, training and crush the moral of the best trained and equipped military in the world. They are they are the ones who would lead this more than others. That is why they have been targeted in this.

Grim