No, You Don't Need A Gun To Overthrow The Government

So this showed up in my news feed last month:

And I began to feel a chill wind on my neck that there are people in this country who look at the amazing results of the Firearms Act of 1996 and the gun buyback scheme that have made us the go-to example anytime the Americans raise the issue of gun control... and want to go back to the fucking bad old days.

I posted a reply, asking who this law was supposed to benefit, but nobody from the LDP answered. One of those on my friendslist did reply with something about "responsible gun owners," but I think we can dismiss that straight away, because I don't think I've ever met an irresponsible one. A majority of my immediate family are SSAA members who like their target shooting, and there have been multiple occasions where we've had to eat dinner in front of the TV because they've commandeered the dinner table reloading shells. They're enthusiasts who keep all their shit locked in a safe as per requirements, and they're not who the LDP are targetting. They made that clear when they posted a video revealing this is explicitly about self defence, so let the record show: nothing I am about to say applies to hunters and sportsmen.

Now, to be fair, all credit to the LDP for posting their policies like this so we can discuss them openly. Be nice if there was more of it. But for those who are less familiar with the mythology of the loony Right, let's be clear there's only one reason they want unregistered semi-automatics out there, and it's this scene from Red Dawn (1984).

No really, that's it. Because otherwise Patrick Swayze can't fight off the Russians Chinese North Koreans. Libertarians both here and in the States are perfectly happy to see mass shootings on a monthly basis so they can fight off an imagined invasion in the indeterminate future.

The fact that firearms won't actually help them do that doesn't seem to register.

In all seriousness, this isn't even a question anymore. In the hands of you, an untrained individual, a gun offers five-eights of fuck-all degrees of actual protection. No, it doesn't. No, it's not your opinion, you're just wrong. Whether through narcissism or human brain just sucking at statistics, everyone assumes they'll turn out to be the exception. Well, no you won't. Only 1 in 5 untrained people ever fire their weapons in combat, which means the odds are you – yes, you, personally – will not shoot back if someone comes at you with a gun. And that's damn sensible of you. As this fantastic video shows, having some cold steel on your hip won't make a damn bit of difference when the shit gets thick. Your best moves are ducking for cover or running for it.

Likewise, in an article on The Nation titled "Tactical Experts Destroy the NRA's Heroic Gunslinger Fantasy", some tactical experts destroy the NRA's heroic gunslinger fantasy (although it's more or a nut-and-bolt dismantling. Very satisfying). The FDchief has a way with words that gets the message across much more colourfully, though, because you'll notice he used to be in the fucking army.

Look, I may have been just a simple grunt medic, but I was smart enough to figure out that the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a fucking battery six with HE-quick in effect. Except you can't fucking do that in a shopping mall or a theatre.

And short of that, you're pretty much just tossing the dice.

Teaching a human being to take effective deadly action is a damn difficult thing. We spend weeks and months training Joe and Molly to do that and the statistics show that we only succeed in about 30-50% of the time. Most people – even most trained soldiers – react to danger by getting their heads down and trying to stay in defilade.

But let's assume that the training works and our hero heads towards the sound of shooting. What does he or she encounter?

Fucking chaos, that's what. The nutter is the center of it, shooting left and right... but everyone else is amplifying the chaos; screaming, running, dying... it's total mayhem.

It takes an assload of training to even begin to sort this stuff out, and without experience the likelihood of sorting it wrong is damned likely; that's why we try and make veterans into our combat NCOs. Because they've had to sort through this gibbering chaos and hopefully – seeing as they're still alive – have gotten it right.

But there's another, even more complicating and difficult factor here.

This isn't a straightforward military red-on-blue. There's at least four factions; the "bad guy" shooter(s), the prospective "good guy" shooter(s) – if more than one made more fraught by having no connection or experience working together, meaning just as likely to mistake each other for the "bad guy" – the people being shot at... and the police.

The coppers have NO idea who the "bad guy" is. To them anyone with a weapon out is just as likely to be the murderer, which has, in previous massacres, nearly led to blue-on-blue gunfire.

I'm sorry. That's fucking nutzoid land. Makes the Battle of Ia Drang look like a sorority pillow-fight.

Paul Bibeau over at Goblinbooks paints a similar picture in a short story sardonically titled, "Okay, Which One Of Us Is The BAD Guy With The Gun?" If you strap on a gun, your odds of getting into a gunfight just went up a thousandfold. And if you get into a gunfight, you're pretty likely to get shot – by the police, if no-one else.

So it's demonstrably better not to have armed citizens out there, but what about the "criminals don't follow laws" approach, articulated so well by Terry Pratchett in Night Watch?

Vimes wondered if [Constable Swing] sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he'd dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers – say, three per citizen.

Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw, though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing, and it was this: criminals don't obey the law. It's more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn't believe what was happening. It was like [Christmas] every day.

Some citizens took the not unreasonable view that something had gone askew if only naughty people were carrying arms...

It's called the Lawbreaker's Paradox, and as this page says:

Without exception, every law could be refuted by the lawbreaker's paradox. Laws against rape, murder, and theft, for example, are rarely followed by rapists, murderers, and thieves, but the fact that such people exist in society is the reason behind such regulations in the first place...

Not only is this conservative sound-bite irrelevant to gun reform discussion, it’s also socially untenable and dangerously naïve. If we were to accept that a law is justified only if it has a 100% compliance rate, then we could systematically dismantle every existing law until nothing remains but the state of nature.

This page also has graphs showing how gun violence went down in both Australia and Brazil after gun controls were introduced, which I haven't reproduced because go read the whole thing you lazy bum. That observed and recorded objective reality runs counter to the ammosexual's argument, but it's actually because they got something right – criminals don't obey the law. That means you know what else criminals don't do? Buy their guns legally.

The vast majority of guns in America are purchased and owned – that is, introduced into society – by white people. Each year about 500,000 guns are stolen, mostly from these same white people. And the vast majority of those guns end up in the inner city, sold cheaply or traded for legal or illegal goods and services. – Michael Moore, Stupid White Men

So those criminals you're so scared of? They got their guns from you. Gun control works because when you take guns out of the hands of the law-abiding, they stop trickling down to the criminals. In other words, it doesn't matter that criminals don't obey the law, gun control laws DO take guns away from criminals. No, it doesn't matter if you disagree. No, it's not your opinion, you're just wrong.

So let's review: having a gun on your hip won't help you defend yourself, greatly multiplies the risk to yourself and others through accidental discharge, is likely to get you shot by police who mistake you for the bad guy, is even more likely to get you shot by your fellow armed citizenry who mistake you for the bad guy, and WON'T ACTUALLY HELP YOU DEFEND YOURSELF.

"Guns for self defense/overthrowing tyranny" isn't just a very expensive solution with a lot of collateral damage, it's no solution at all. So what will protect you from a tyrannical government? What does that sacred Second Amendment the Americans are so fond of look like today? Funnily enough, we've been in touch with people who've been showing us how for the last 15 years, and they've been on the news regularly, but we don't seem to've absorbed the lesson.

Can you guess? They're urban guerrillas, the freedom fighters of the modern age. And what is the preferred instrument of the urban guerrilla? Heh, this is gonna put me on a watch list somewhere, but so be it: it's the improvised explosive device. The infamous IED.

Are you serious about your Second Amendment rights? Do you genuinely want to prepare to overthrow your government in case it turns tyrannical? Then forget three-rounds-rapid at your weekend survival camp and learn to make a pipebomb. Dismantle your automatic garage door and learn to wire it to a detonator. As the Iraqi militias found out pretty quickly, sending untrained amateurs against government troops in a stand-up fight is a good way to get them all killed, especially once the drones and attack choppers home in. Since a guerrilla's first job is to stay alive, they soon found it's much better to bury an artillery shell under a crossroads and wait for an enemy patrol.

On the very first mission I ever flew, we saw what's called "The Eye of Sauron" – a spot where a fiery tire was used to soften asphalt in order to plant an IED. The cool metal against the hot asphalt created an eye effect. A convoy was heading straight for it, but we couldn't communicate with them. They were jamming all radio frequencies in a (useless) attempt to stop any bombs from detonating. I don't think I've ever felt more helpless than I did in that moment.

Five American soldiers died when that convoy hit the IED. – Cracked, 6 Myths About Drone Warfare You Probably Believe

By 2010 the U.S. Army's own newspaper was admitting that 75% of their casualties in Afghanistan were from IEDs. See, guys? This is what works. This is how you fight tyranny, staying alive and polishing up your alibi while they blunder into your latest trap. To learn this kind of thing you have to turn to the master, Gary Breacher, who despite his occasional lapses on military history is second-to-none when it comes to urban guerrillas. Here's his walkthrough on how to get your liberation started:

The way somebody usually asks this is like, “Which would you rather have, an RPG-7 or a Carl Gustav?” or “Which is better at stopping tanks/anti-personnel/penetrating bunkers?” Reminds me a lot of standing at the bus stop watching cars go by, waiting with other kids and somebody’d say, “Which would you rather have, a BMW or a Jag?” There are a lot of answers to that one, but I’d always say, “Either one – where’s the keys?” And they’d stop talking to me because I ruined the whole game.

You see where I’m going: back to the bus stop, no BMW, no Jag. Where you, the “you” that’s actually here, actually are. Imagine you’re on that same bus stop you were on at age 13 and you suddenly need an antitank weapon. Who knows, maybe you’re having in-law problems or you want to blast a hole in a bank wall or you’ve decided to start your own guerrilla movement. Where would you get your Carl Gustav? Or your RPG-7, or anything else?

Yeah, I like that, it’s a better way to think about this stuff: You’re standing at that same bus stop and you need an antitank weapon. Whucha gonna do?

First thing I’d do is lower my expectations, away from antitank weapons, because they’re hard to get in this country, and anybody who says he’s got one is probably getting a check from Uncle Sam and has a nice little family in the Witness Protection Program. Good way to end your guerrilla movement in one step, asking around for stuff like that.

You have to start with what’s easy to get. And in this country, that’s firearms and cars. You’d have to ask yourself, why’d I need this antitank shit? What can I do with cars and guns and careful planning instead?

America’s got its own rules about weapons, just like any other place. We think it’s weird they sell RPGs at the open market in Kandahar, but they probably think it’s weird how we can buy machine guns but not AT weapons. So you start with cheap, easy to find automatic weapons like Loughner’s 31-round Glock (and excuse me before you tell me it’s not technically automatic – 31 rounds in a few seconds is auto, and the fact that you have to pull the trigger 31 times doesn’t change that fact – in fact it’s a pleasure on its own, like a stick shift).

Lots of ways to get some of those. Gun shows in wacko states like Nevada. Show up and talk some Second-Amendment shit and you’ll walk out with serious mayhem in your shopping bag and no written record at all. If that’s too conspicuous for you, try burglary. Hit a rich neighborhood in someplace like Arizona and you’d probably get a good weapon every second house.

Or just buy the damn things. Take advantage of the local availability. If the local rules say you can buy a 31-round Glock and tell the man it’s for home defense, then do it, take advantage of the customs. Just make sure you get standard-caliber weapons. You don’t want some CSI Fed digging odd slugs out of your first kills.

Now you’ve got small arms – but they don’t look so small when someone’s pointing one at you, telling you to open a door. And that’s what small arms are good for: getting people to open doors. If you really, really gotta have your antitank weapon, you can use your small arms and some trickery to get it. There are a million ways, all involving having somebody in your group become a cop, date a cop, join the service, and so on. People, not hardware, that’s what it’s about. Think of all the ways you can work some metal fatigue on the bank, or armory, you want to get into: there’s sex – sex makes people do dumb shit, so you got any sexy volunteers in your groups willing to hang out in cop- or GI bars? Money works; use those small arms to take it and a whole lot of people will suddenly open doors for you. And if all that fails, small arms work as well as a Hellfire when you’re pointing one at somebody’s forehead.

But I’d say, why do you need that little rocket tube? They’re not going to come for you in tanks, and if they do you’re through anyway. You need to stay light and hard to find.

I was arguing this online with somebody and they said something like, “I just wanted to talk antitank weapons, I wasn’t serious about starting a war.” Well, that’s the whole problem, off in dreamland. – Gary Brecher, RPG vs BMW

Bear in mind "opening doors" can be done equally well with a knife, or  – since knives are restricted in Australia as well – a hammer or a screwdriver, with the added bonus that knives, hammers and screwdrivers have much lower rates of accidental discharge. Whatever, the point is, why aren't the ammosexuals talking like this? Because this is serious terrorist shit, obviously. Which is my real point – anyone actually thinking about overthrowing the government is going to be considered a terrorist, but the people who talk longest and loudest about the Second Amendment are the first ones to squeal like little bitch at the suggestion of terrism in their neighbourhood. They're not defending their constitution, they're off in dreamland, living their revolting little fantasy of walking around with a permanent hard-on and ejaculating it into anyone who looks at them funny. Blackwater thugs, basically.

This fantasy is where the NRA and firearms industry makes its money, which brings us full circle, back to the Liberal Democratic Party. Because in the end, this is what libertarianism boils down to. Doug Muder at The Weekly Sift has a pretty devastating character assassination of the typical libertarian footsoldier:

It’s also the perfect belief system for a young male (and maybe, by now, young females too). You don’t need knowledge or experience of any specific situations, you just need to understand the One Big Idea That Solves Everything: Other than a small and appropriately humbled military and judicial establishment, government is bad. Protect life, protect property, enforce contracts – and leave everything else to the market.

Yeah, you know who else wants to leave everything to the market? The people who've already beaten it. The 1%. These people play on our fear and ignorance to keep the government out of their business, because make no mistake, libertarianism is for the rich.

The only people who could possibly benefit from relaxing the ban on semi-automatic long arms in Australia are the owners of the Lithgow Small Arms Factory, and they don't mind in the slightest that the rest of us would pay for it in blood. I wouldn't try to ban the LDP from existing, but whatever policies they end up putting out are going to benefit Gina Rinehart, not the dupes who actually voted for them. Because as G.K. Chesterton warned us:

You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man doesn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.