zlacker

As an European I'd say any USAnite can almost get a gun with breakfast cereal boxes. But weapons' culture in the US it's obsolete. Militias can't do shit against tyranical govs because once they send drones it's game over.

>>anthk+(OP)
> But weapons' culture in the US it's obsolete. Militias can't do shit against tyranical govs because once they send drones it's game over.

Pretty sure those 50 thousand or so civilians killed on the street in the recent Iranian protests/riots would have been a lot less, if all those Iranians had easy access to guns, and not just the government.

Drones are not enough, you still need boots on the ground for you to claim control over a territory, and boots on the ground think twice about signing up for service if that includes facing armed mobs with guns on a daily basis.

So no, mobs with guns are not obsolete.

>>joe_ma+t2
Mob with guns would be useless against the Iranian Guards which are pretty much elite commandos.

>>anthk+J2
What's the commando to civilian ratio in Iran?

>>joe_ma+43
Let's do some napkin math: Iran has about 94 million people. Iran's IRGC alone has a personnel count of 125.000 [1], of which about 2-5000 are estimated to be the elite of the elite ("Quds Force"). Together with the Basij (anywhere from 100-600k) that alone is a sufficient amount of force. And on top of that come maybe 400-500k of the regular Iranian Armed Forces [2], as well as about 260k active police+100k police reservists.

So, if one sees the whole of IRGC plus Basij as the "commandos", they alone form an active elite of about 0.5%, if one sees the entirety of the military+police we're looking at easily 2-3 million units, so up to 2%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Revolutionary_Guard_Co...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Republic_of_Iran_Armed...

>>anthk+(OP)
It’s not obsolete. In a country where your military is farm boys, the important thing is being able to start the war. Eventually chunks of the military will defect. We saw this happen during the Bangladesh independence movement. The revolutionaries got lucky and knocked over a weapons depot early in the conflict. They started fighting and a large number of the Pakistani army that was of Bangladeshi ancestry defected. I am confident the same thing would happen if the government in DC tried to oppress Iowa or Texas.

Drones cut both ways. You’re correct that it allows a small number of people loyal to the regime to asymmetrically oppress a large population. But drone technology is in theory accessible to the populace in an industrialized country.

>>anthk+J2
Goat herders with guns in Afghanistan kicked the U.S. army out of their country.

>>rayine+q9
But could they do the same to goat herders with bigger guns, drones, bombs, etc?

>>rayine+q9
Pretty sure Iranians with 3D printed guns would not be able to kick their own army out of Iran.

>>rayine+q9
This isn't really accurate. The Northern Alliance entered into an agreement with the US to secure the country. An insurgency sprang up and we fought it for 20 years before giving up. Since this is now after the fact, we can safely say the Taliban ran the insurgency the whole time.

The Taliban are a military and political group compromised of an ethnic minority in Afghanistan. It's not even that the US lost to "goat herders with guns". We failed to secure a small country against a well organized, armed minority.

>>rayine+q9
To be fair, those "goat herders" were previously trained and armed by the US to fight Russian forces, so it's not quite an apples-to-apples comparison

>>anthk+(OP)
Those drones lost some wars against guerilla militias

>>anthk+(OP)
1) That's a mischaracterization of the FFL purchase process if I've ever heard one.

2) The weapons culture of the US is so obsolete that there are government officials parroting lines about it not being legal to carry a concealed weapon during a protest in Minnesota when it is, actually, very much legal. That is to say, it's not obsolete at all. Given the prior public stances of the Trump administration on firearms, this is incredibly telling, and all the more reason why you can't trust people like them.

>>anthk+(OP)
Well, at birth every American is issued Baby's First Glock™

>>rayine+q9
Afghanistan is a landlocked country on the other side of the planet, the soldiers didn't grow up with knowledge of the terrain, they had no knowledge of the language, culture, customs or social networks, no one locally (with few exceptions) wanted them there, and crucially they only lost once they left, and when they left, there were no penalties for the people who started the war; no US politicians were in any danger whether the war was won or lost, no land was lost, and no truly important geopolitical goals failed.

On the flip side in any domestic insurrection, the soldiers know the terrain, language, customs and culture of the people, the supply lines are nothing (rather than having to airlift materiel and people thousands of miles, you drive them on regular roads), the infrastructure supports espionage, most people support the regime and will collaborate to return to stability (since they voted for it), the regime never leaves (you can leave Afghanistan, you can't leave your own country or it ceases to be a country), and if you lose, you lose territory and/or politicians run the risk of violence. The stakes are why these comparisons are never relevant.

>>rayine+j9
The 2A crowd has been really quiet this past year. Hell, Trump even said in response to the Pretti shooting that only criminals walk around carrying guns in public. I guess no one cares about government tyranny unless they're asked to respect someone's pronouns.

>>rayine+q9
First the russians tried. They were not goat herders. They failed.

Then the americans tried. They were not goat herders. They failed.

The pattern is clear.

>>Father+VS
Why would the 2A people say anything? Conservatives aren’t libertarians. They think government has legitimate functions and draw a distinction between government performing those functions (which isn’t tyranny) and the government exceeding its scope (which is tyranny). Removing foreigners here illegally is a core function of the government. Social engineering is not.

>>anthk+(OP)
Drones may be good against foreign adversaries, but you can't bomb your own population and cities into being productive economy. A war between two well funded and supported militaries is far different than an insurgency.

>>Edman2+pq
But at the same time a domestic insurrection means your enemies have direct access to all of your most important infrastructure and logistics and supporting economy. It might be expensive to fly or float materials and people over to the middle east, but you don't gotta worry about 1000+ miles of pissed off insurgents potentially around every bend and tree or mixed into your own military or logistic personnel.

>>Father+VS
> Hell, Trump even said in response to the Pretti shooting that only criminals walk around carrying guns in public.

If you were paying any attention at all, you'd see pretty much every 2A community, advocate and lobbying group was outraged by that statement and made statements against it.

Having said that, it is actually illegal to carry a firearm to go commit crimes like destroying government property, assaulting federal officers and obstructing them in carrying out their constitutional duties.

>>vdqtp3+YV2
> illegal to carry a firearm to go commit crimes

Of which Pretti did zero of.

>>rayine+t12
> Why would the 2A people say anything

Because Trump is very anti 2A.