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Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

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Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#431

Post by new2628 »

loquor wrote: post #349

This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. 2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and princ…

> biggest upcoming global problem after climate change?

maybe, but climate change is around number 20 in that list for me.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#433

Post by chrisco255 »

loquor wrote: post #349

This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. 2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and princ…

After climate change? I have always feared totalitarian governments more than climate change. The death tolls are a hundred million higher.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#434

Post by magduf »

josephdviviano wrote: post #238
bhupy wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US (with its support of the military) has been at war in the Middle East for nearly 2 decades now with insurgents. The argument is not that a rebellious citizenry will necessarily win a war, it's that it will draw out a bloody civil war so long and so expensive as to be a form of mutually assured destruction, the risk of which acts as a check in and of itself.

The fact is that the dictator would still win. The rebellious citizenry would live a life of absolute misery, just as those in the middle east do. The 2nd amendment made a lot of sense when weaponry consisted of horses and rifles, not computer-guided missiles. If there was ever a true US dictator, the 2nd amendment would mostly be used by the oppressed to rob, attack, and oppress one another.

The 2nd amendment made sense when the enemy was a group of people across the ocean (the British), and other groups of people from across the ocean that they hired as mercenaries (the Hessians). Keeping the common people armed to be used as foot-soldiers in case of foreign invasion is not a bad idea if invasion is a serious concern; Switzerland still does this to this day.

For protecting against your own government, it really doesn't make that much sense. Your own government has to have support of your own military, which gets its members from the population: the military is made of your own neighbors. If your military is committed to the government and doesn't mind shooting their own family and neighbors, then you have a problem that arming people with small arms isn't going to solve: the rebels just aren't going to be that numerous. More likely, the military isn't going to support this action at all, and will mutiny and either implode as different factions within the military fight each other, or the military will stage a coup and take over the government (this has happened before many times, in other nations). In short, if the military supports the dictator, the armed opposition really has no chance of winning. If the opposition has a chance of winning, they don't need weapons because the military isn't going to support the dictator.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#435

Post by ben509 »

Fezzik wrote: post #168
nvahalik wrote: post #18

> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".

I always find this sentiment a little silly - if the US President went in to full dictator mode and had the support of the military, do you really think a militia of armed citizens would be anything but gnats against the windshield of the United States Armed Forces? And if s/he did not have the support of the Armed Forces, it would not be a very effective dictatorship and you would not even need guns for a rebellion.…

> And if s/he did not have the support of the Armed Forces, it would not be a very effective dictatorship and you would not even need guns for a rebellion.

Unless they don't have the support because of the rebellion's guns.

If anyone wearing a uniform is being shot by their neighbors, military support for the dictatorship is going to dry up quickly.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#436

Post by djsumdog »

yonaguska wrote: post #391
djsumdog wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really can't protect yourself from a government in a stable State, because the State needs a monopoly on violence to exist. Even in America, the argument from 2nd amendment advocates, that guns help protect American citizens from their government is absolutely ludicrous. There is no realistic way for Americans to stand up to the entire US State with violence. Not without some very wide spread belief in the failur…

Read up on the civil rights movement, specifically Robert F. Williams. You have a situation where blacks stood up to their local governments that refused to convict whites for lynching blacks, local governments that refused to protect blacks from white violence, where police actually sought to disarm blacks in the face of white lynch mobs with little to no federal oversight, and all the peaceful protests in the south…

And what if violence had broken out? How do you think that would play out?

Some counter examples are the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) or possibly even the Kent State Shootings (although there it was the State causing violence).

No matter where the violence comes from, the message tends to get lost from the reaction to the violence. Sure, even Gandhi talked about needing the capacity for violence for non-violence to work, but the moment things break down; the message may still get across or it may be totally drown out.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#437

Post by diminoten »

daenz wrote: post #338
josephdviviano wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact is that the dictator would still win. The rebellious citizenry would live a life of absolute misery, just as those in the middle east do. The 2nd amendment made a lot of sense when weaponry consisted of horses and rifles, not computer-guided missiles. If there was ever a true US dictator, the 2nd amendment would mostly be used by the oppressed to rob, attack, and oppress one another.

>The 2nd amendment made a lot of sense when weaponry consisted of horses and rifles, not computer-guided missiles. Let me make sure I understand your basic premise: the ability to defend yourself against a tyrannical dictatorship made sense until the government developed better technology, now it's pointless so just give up your guns? Aside from being completely contrary to the American spirit of defending yourself f…

I don't think you've thought this through; you won't be fighting soldiers in your little quest for rebellion, you'll be fighting your neighbor, because your neighbor thinks you're a fucking dumbass who he'd rather kill than reason with, because of how little you've respected honest discourse and conversation over a long period of time. To create an American insurgency would be to threaten everyone around you, and no one would tolerate you or it for even a moment.

There is absolutely no such thing as the "American spirit of defending yourself from tyranny", whoever told you that sold you a lie. The Revolutionary War was not a precedent, it was a single violent act by a unified people. What you're talking about is literally the opposite of unification.

The second amendment has nothing to do with individuals overthrowing anyone, it was never meant to be interpreted that way, and the current belief that it is is much more dangerous than any threat of an oppressive American regime. What you're actually suggesting is that state National Guards fight the US Army. Good fucking luck.

Your complete lack of understanding about history makes this whole conversation pointless. There is no best version of your argument (so it's hard to follow HN rules), there is just racist, nationalistic anger that you will be forced to get over with eventually.

Edit: It's an actual attack on me, personally, to claim I specifically am thinking about hurting anyone, when I'm responding to a comment suggesting an American insurgency; keep in mind that it was easier for 'daenz to go there than it was to actually refute anything I wrote. This is despicable behavior, a real low point for HN.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#438

Post by streb-lo »

bhupy wrote: post #290
simonh wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then all you get is a whole bunch of mutually hostile regional militias sitting on piles of rubble shooting at each other. This is not a recipe for a stable state of any kind, and certainly not a democratic one. Guns and democracy simply don't mix. Democracy is about giving an equal voice to every citizen, while firearms are a force multiplier. They make the strong stronger and the weak comparatively weaker.

> This is not a recipe for a stable state of any kind It is not meant to be used in a stable state. It’s a Hobbesian point of last resort, to be used when democracy has failed and autocracy/tyranny is in effect. It’s a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency, so to speak.

And it would simply beget more tyranny.

2a is for people who want to larp soldiers -- pretending its a useful addition to a republic is asinine.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#439

Post by jki275 »

yonaguska wrote: post #391
djsumdog wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really can't protect yourself from a government in a stable State, because the State needs a monopoly on violence to exist. Even in America, the argument from 2nd amendment advocates, that guns help protect American citizens from their government is absolutely ludicrous. There is no realistic way for Americans to stand up to the entire US State with violence. Not without some very wide spread belief in the failur…

Read up on the civil rights movement, specifically Robert F. Williams. You have a situation where blacks stood up to their local governments that refused to convict whites for lynching blacks, local governments that refused to protect blacks from white violence, where police actually sought to disarm blacks in the face of white lynch mobs with little to no federal oversight, and all the peaceful protests in the south…

You raise a very good point. And something else -- during this time, the US started to pass gun control laws. They were understood primarily to apply only to black men at the time.

This is the heritage of gun control in America -- racism and hate written down and codified in law.

Re: Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

#440

Post by paul_milovanov »

api wrote: post #363
loquor wrote: post #349

This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. 2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and princ…

China is the world's #1 carbon emitter, the top emitter per GDP, and has over 200gw of new coal still planned. (For scale, California consumes about 50gw on a hot day.) So they are not even unrelated problems. China is also the top source of plastic in the ocean. Tangent but: the way China turned out has IMHO been the major factor in the collapse of the post cold war neoliberal narrative in the West. The idea was tha…

That carbon emitted is largely from the manufacturing of cheap products that you consumed. Western countries have offshored both manufacturing and the associated pollution to a country more concerned about pulling its people out of poverty than about its environment. The ocean plastic is partly from these industrial processes and partly because western countries have exported most of their plastic waste to China for more than a decade.

Also, according to this, China's per capita emissions are half that of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

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