Fun Science Fact #27: The Tenth Mountain Division is not concerned about your pistol.
Here is a list of things that personal firearms are good for:
- Shooting varmints
- Frightening teenagers who are trying to steal beer from your garage
- Providing foreshadowing in Act 1
Here is a list of things that personal firearms are not good for:
- Resisting tyranny
This last point may seem counter-intuitive. It was firearms that freed us from King George, right? Gun-rights activists have long maintained that the real purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that if the government ever again tries to tax our tea excessively, we the people will have the power to resist. Gun control, as Ben Carson so eloquently said, is the first item on the agenda of those dictatorial people. What are a few dozen massacres in the face of a threat like that?
Question, though: does an armed citizenry actually have anything at all to do with a society’s freedom? This point generally goes unquestioned, but in truth, there is little evidence to support the idea that it does. If guns were necessary to secure liberty, we would expect to see a correlation between firearm ownership and free societies. Do we?
Well, here in the United States we’re swimming in guns, and I think we can agree that we still enjoy a fair number of civil liberties. In North Korea, on the other hand, private gun ownership is not tolerated, and we see how that’s worked out for them. Case closed?
Not exactly. We are, after all, not the only free nation on the planet, or even by most objective measures the most free. Most of the nations of western Europe have tight restrictions on gun ownership, as do Japan, Australia, Great Britain, and nearly every other fully developed nation on Earth. Moreover, there are a number of nations in the Middle East and elsewhere where there are more (and more powerful) guns in private hands than there are in America. It is very hard to argue that their weapons have done much to keep these societies free.
The unfortunate fact is that in the eighteenth century, when the Second Amendment was written, the weapons that a private citizen might own did not differ in any meaningful way from those that a soldier would use. In fact, when soldiers were mustered into the Continental Army, they often brought their own guns. An armed citizenry could at least hope to stand up against the forces of a tyrannical government.
For better or worse, however, this is simply no longer the case. As conflicts from Bosnia to Syria have demonstrated over the past twenty years, light infantry weapons—much less the shotguns and pistols that most citizens own—are of very limited use against a modern military. A gun may protect you against a bear, or even a mugger if things break exactly your way. Against a helicopter gunship, or an armored vehicle, or a hellfire missile, on the other hand, it won’t do you any more good than a paper umbrella and a wish.
Red Dawn notwithstanding, the idea that plucky citizens with hunting rifles are a bulwark of our nation’s defense is a misguided fantasy. Does this mean that we have to be gun-free? No. This is a question that we need to address both as individuals and as a society. It does mean, though, that if we are going to continue to insist on arming ourselves to the teeth, we should at least be a bit more honest about what our reasons are.
Guns can’t be used to resist tyranny. Which is why the US did not provide guns to Afghans, why the USSR did not provide guns to communist rebels so they could kick out colonists and put communism in place, why Libya didn’t send guns to the IRA. Because guns clearly don’t work.
Look at the Afghan and Iraqi insurgents! They resisted the might of the US Armed Forces for a decade and they were all unarmed. Guns would not work at all!
There wasn’t even a plan of air dropping millions of Liberator pistols across Europe during WWII. They never thought of it, because providing cheap throwaway guns to resistance movements so they could assassinate occupiers and steal their military equipment would only make things worse!
It’s interesting that OP mentions the 10th Mountain. OP, remind me what happened to the better armed yet heavily outnumbered Rangers and Delta Force in Mogadishu in 1993?
Mogadishu? US forces killed between 3,000 and 10,000 Somalis, at the cost of 18 US casualties. This is actually a really good example of what happens when lightly armed irregulars try to take on an actual military force. America pulled out shortly thereafter because Americans realized that they could not possibly give less of a shit what was happening in Somalia, not because they’d been defeated.
You just raised a very important point and it went right over your head. The U.S. pulled out because the cost outweighed the reward. A civilian populace resisting tyranny doesn’t have to kill every single state enforcer to achieve victory.
Literally proved your point for you. Thanks!!
In the face of armed resistance, this government can’t even enforce the law against an asshole who won’t keep his cows on his own property.
How the hell are they gonna crush jack and/or shit?
I said light arms are not useful for resisting tyranny. I never said they aren’t useful for helping you to become an antisocial dickhole. On the contrary - they’re awesome for that.
