Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #291

Fezzik wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

We can't defeat the insurgents in Afghanistan... and that's just the size of Texas. The rocky mountains cover more area than AF; our borders are more porous (the Canadian border is the longest in the world); and our citizens have the most firearms in the world - total or per person (far more than AF or IQ). The US military cant stop insurgents from moving across the border with Pakistan, but they would be able to sto…

> We can't defeat the insurgents in Afghanistan

With supply lines halfway across the globe, and a military most of whose personnel don't speak the language, don't know the country, don't know the culture, etc. And, in most of time we've notionally been trying, only a fairly small deployment compared to our total military force.

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

#482

Post by nicwolff » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

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".

> This is why we have the second amendment.

It's not. The same "militia" that justifies the second amendment can be federalized by Congress per Article I to "suppress insurrections" (or since 1792 by the President).

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

#483

Post by markus_zhang » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #372

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…

Am worried about China imploding(relatively soon) due to their totalitarian system deleting feedback loops and accelerating negative ones.

I'd rather worry about EU as there is already a large gap there...

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

#484

Post by new2628 » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #453

new2628 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? maybe, but climate change is around number 20 in that list for me.

You're lucky you get to die soon enough for that to be appropriate.

Not sure what you are trying to say here.

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

#485

Post by danbolt » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

jhedwards wrote: post #459

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…

> Present-day China essentially has no ethics Source? I lived in China and didn't ever feel like I was in a place without ethics. Different ethics, sure, but it really looks to me like you simply don't know or understand China. The Great Leap Forward had nothing to do with routing out values, it was about hyper-fast industrialization, and it failed. There are real problems with modern China, and, separately, with the…

That’s interesting to hear. Not trying to troll, but I’d love to hear about what you have found to be better about it.

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

#486

Post by 4b11b4 » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

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".

The 2nd amendment was never created in order to "rebel" against the government. Think about this: it was the goal of the founders of the Constitution to create a new system which would be fair and just and work well. Checks and balances exist in the three forms of government. If you were creating a new system, would you include a clause that says: just in case I'm getting this wrong, let's make sure it's an unalienable right for people to have weapons in case they need to kill me?

The 2nd amendment was actually put in by pressure from slave owners, who needed weapons in order to police slaves. After slavery was abolished, people kept the order of slavery by using tools (guns).

The common "idea" that the 2nd amendment was created for "freedom" can be traced back to a guest post in NRA newspaper written by a teenager which was then promoted heavily by the NRA.

source: https://news.streetroots.org/2019/05/31/thom-hartmann-why-we...

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

#487

Post by magduf » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #246

empath75 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were armed this would have been over a long time ago. China would have gone in with tanks and the army, or even air strikes. Once you take up arms against the government that’s not a protest, that’s a civil war.

> China would have gone in with tanks and the army, or even air strikes Thereby ruining the very thing they want to control and profit from. That's the thing that the " They'll just send in the army, LOL " folks don't seem to get: bombed out cities and a population under armed guard aren't very economically productive and, on top of that, you need to station military units there to keep a lid on things which is also…

A single bombed out city is a small sacrifice to make an example for the rest of the nation.

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

#488

Post by magduf » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #229

empath75 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were armed this would have been over a long time ago. China would have gone in with tanks and the army, or even air strikes. Once you take up arms against the government that’s not a protest, that’s a civil war.

Air strikes in Hong Kong? So the government would destroy the very thing they are attempting to keep from rebellion?

Absolutely, yes. It would be an example to anyone else thinking of rebelling.

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

#489

Post by okmokmz » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

moate wrote: post #127

ericmay wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing that people in Afghanistan did? It's also not cool to characterize people who have assault rifles or support the 2nd amendment as rednecks. I'm certainly not one. It's actually kind of offensive to even use that term anyway if you ask me.

Hello. I grew up surrounded by guns and on food stamps. My parents like cheap beer, low brow humor, my father mostly worked manual labor jobs, and they generally vote "anti-government". Some people call it white trash, others call it rednecks. The term is offensive if you want to be offended. That's fine if you're offended, you have the right to be. As someone who grew up around that life, I call them "hillbillies, H…

>people who own semi-auto, clip fed tactical rifles and support the second amendment are all rednecks. Another, very reasonable read is that rednecks exist, and some of them support 2A and own murder guns

Wow, it sounds like all of your knowledge about firearms comes directly from main stream, far left news sources. It sounds like the guy on the news that said AR-15s are "fully semiautomatic" and can fire hundreds of rounds a second which is entirely false. Non-military don't have access to automatic rifles, and even if we did, military rifles still generally don't fire that fast.

Most modern firearms are semi-automatic, it's not some scary killer feature as you seem to believe.

Also, almost no guns are "clip-fed" anymore. Most modern guns use magazines, which again is a perfectly normal feature. People try to use "clip" derogatorily as if it's evil or something but they just come off as incredibly uneducated about the topic they're trying to discuss.

Finally, referring to any firearm as a "murder gun" just further shows your ignorance and bias towards the topic, putting off anyone that would actually be interested in having a reasonable discussion.

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

#490

Post by selimthegrim » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #452

coryfklein wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US military has an urban warfare document that states the number of troops required to secure N population Are you expecting the whole US to join this insurgency/rebellion/civil war? Most of the gun owners today already support Trump - a man who idolizes authoritarianism. Instead of a scenario where the entirety of the U.S. police force quells a rebellion made up of 100% of the gun owning populace, it would be…

The 'whole US'? No, of course not. If an entire city was against the dictator, then they could do what al-Assad did in Syria: gas the entire city. The problem with an insurgency is that most of the population is either for you or at least pretends to be... so it's impossible to find those working against you.. and that support could be active (by fighting themselves) or passive by refusing to report insurgent activit…

Just as a note India has 1:10 in Kashmir and still isn't making too much headway in the ideas battle.