it's really quite a different thing to take policing action at a violent, arson-fueled riot than it would be to invade Denver with tanks
You're missing the point that even if your characterisation is accurate, the people engaged in violence and arson were still US citizens, some of whom were shot by the US military (National Guard).
I think it's a fairly safe bet that if the army were sent in to invade Denver with tanks, they'd be treated to something looking like a violent, arson-fueled riot too.
wait, who said that members of the military would actually be *willing* to fight a war against other Americans? I'd wager you'd see the shortest war in history as the front line troops would simply refuse to fire. Key leaders would resign before giving the orders to fight, and the infrastructure would then either A. fall into unmanageable chaos or B. constrict and lock down into a state of paralysis. Either way, it's not going to be an effective force, even if it gets far enough to (unconsitutionally) deploy troops.
I love your faith in the military, which is, when it comes down to it, a large group of people trained in killing.
If troops are deployed and refuse to fire, a court martial is the best they can hope for.
And look at how few whistleblowers there have been over human rights abuses in Iraq and elsewhere by soldiers. If you can do that to a foreigner, it is absurd to think there is some impossible bridge to cross before you'll do it to a fellow citizen. After all, their orders aren't going to be "here, go out and machine gun a few hundred innocent civilians for the lulz". The angry crowds will be characterised as foreign-financed criminals, looters, traitors and terrorists.
He's just trying to ratchet up the tension in the hopes that this will precipitate a Turner Diaries style mass uprising against Obama's communist government.
Thats not a mom with a stroller, that's a potential taliban and a bomb.
They already use that sort of excuse. He's 10 so he's old enough to be carrying a weapon. She's got four kids, but they live next to a terrorist, so they're supporting terrorism.
what is the point of this? Does the guy with the gun not know what will happen when he pulls the trigger, or not know how to aim? I'm sure they have target practice So why do this in public, without notifying everyone ahead of time? To scare some old timers into cardiac arrest? To force some return fire?
This is just so bizarre.
The best way to practise flying combat helicopters in an urban environment is to fly combat helicopters in an urban environment.
I imagine it would be quite expensive to construct a whole mock city in the same way that they make mock villages for ground troops to practise house to house fighting.
Quite which large North American-style cities they think they'll be fighting in is another matter, although I suppose Karachi is quite developed.
What kind of self respecting soldier went on this mission without protesting it?
What kind of self respecting pilot would have shot down a passenger airliner on 9/11 (or dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima)?
One obeying orders.
People on slashdot seem to have the idea that ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen in the military are moral philosophers and super-heroes. They're not. They're trained to do a job, and a lot of that training is to obey orders and kill when you're told. It's not a natural thing to do for most people, so you need a lot of reinforcing of the idea.
If you chucked a squad of marines into a US town and said "the President/Colonel X has authorised you to use any means necessary to clear this place of some gun-toting anti-government terrorists who have already killed a dozen of your fellow soldiers" what exactly do you think they'd do? Stop when they saw that the "terrorists" firing at them were good old boys with hunting rifles?
A Soviet invasion was also not that far out of the questions in the decades following WWII either.
Plus, you should watch this documentary about the Chinese Commies' almost successful plan to tunnel their way under the US and stage a surprise strike from within. The dirty, foreign bastards.
1st, they have to spot you. 2nd, they have to determine you are a threat (or just be in 'kill everyone' mode, which if they are you've other problems).
I imagine they'd know you were a threat because you'd shot at their fucking attack helicopter.
Yes, because a jacketed 80-grain.30 caliber hitting important targets from a few hundred meters away is so terribly useless. Don't sneer at hunting rifles. Many of the animals we use them on are much harder to kill than people. In fact the ammunition we use is also a lot more effective and dangerous than what the military is authorized to use.
So why wouldn't the military just use mortars, rockets, cruise missiles or fighter-bombers to destroy your sniping position?
I agree that if half the country are doing this, the military are fucked, but then how realistic is that? The impression I get is that there are numerous small groups who would be prepared to take on the military/government, but nothing like an organised revolutionary movement.
"y i.r.id10t" said it, but it deserves saying again.
In Afghanistan, a bunch of guys with rifles (the weaponry the gun-rights advocates are trying to protect) and improvised explosives have fought the U.S. military to a stalemate for more than 12 years. That's a country of 30M people and about 650K sq km. The contiguous 48 states in the USA are 12X the land area of Afghanistan with 10X the population. What makes you think the military would be any more successful fighting a guerrilla war here?
The Taliban are fighting against a foreign occupier. Even those Afghanis who don't like the Taliban will still not be 100% on the side of the foreigners.
If the Taliban were that small in number and that unpopular, they would soon have run out of places to hide.
If I buy a gun legally, then use it to protect my drughouse and in the course of that action kill someone. Will your statistics capture me as a legal gun owner?
Since being a drug dealer in the first place makes owning a firearm illegal (yes, the background check for every sale by a gun dealer will catch that sort of thing, if you're a known criminal. and if you're not known, it's still illegal and can be used as an additional charge when they catch you - "lying on a Federal form" or some such), I'd say that that makes your case impossible, and the statistics won't make you a legal gun owner, they'll make you one of those guys who bought his gun illegally.
Note that while it is possible to avoid the background check by buying a gun in a private sale, the law still doesn't recognize you as a "legal gun owner" if you're a criminal, and if the guy who sold you the gun knows this, HE is now a criminal as well....
You're missing the point: not all drug dealers have been convicted of drug dealing, so they may well have acquired the gun legally and then subsequently used it in a crime.
If it comes to the point of a civil war, the people involved with the most guns are people precisely like you: people with both training and actual combat experience. There are more ex-military than there are military, so even without a single active military defection (probability zero), there will still be more of you than there are of them.
There is a vast difference between a civil war, and an uprising by a (relatively) small number of people, however well-armed and well-trained.
In civil wars, you do actually get brother fighting against brother. It's why they are so bloody, ruthless and horrible.
Now what infantry really doesn't like is trained experienced snipers operating defensive at time and place of their choosing on their own very well known turf aka gun nuts.
Gosh, it's a shame the US military don't have access to fighter jets, bombers, helicopter gunships, and cruise missiles. And, even if they did, clearly it would be ungentlemanly to use them against individual gunmen.
Look, just because you can't figure out that there might have been a real geopolitical reason to invade Iraq doesn't mean there wasn't one.
No one's saying that we invaded Iraq for no reason at all, merely that the reasons given were lies, because the real reasons would have been unacceptable to the vast majority of the population.
In a democratic country, you don't go to fucking war because of some hidden agenda.
Breaking my rule responding but how many in the military do you think will carry out orders to attack and kill American citizens?
I know the oath they and I took says to defend the constitution not trample all over it.
If it came down to that I think a lot would develop a backbone and "just say no" as it is their families and friends in the kill zones also.
Bullshit, it would depend on the senior military officials being prepared to stage a coup against the government by disobeying direct orders. Ordinary soldiers on the ground would obey their orders.
But if they're not squeamish about killing women and children abroad, why do you think they'll suddenly care about doing the same to Americans? Is everyone in the military country really that racist/xenophobic?
It's not their fault, soldiers are trained to obey orders. I know the Nuremberg defence doesn't theoretically count, but in reality if your Sergeant and your Sergeant's commanding officer are telling you to go and storm a building and kill anyone who might be a threat, that's what you're going to do. And working on the rationale of drone strikes on family homes because one member of the Taliban/al Qaida might be there, if you enter an apartment block and see a few kids and women in the way, well they're just aiding and abetting terrorists anyway...
The only reason their kill numbers are anywhere near ours are because unlike in Vietnam, we're unwilling to scorch the Earth to defeat them.
You do realise that, both in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the foreign forces were/are supposed to be there to support the democratically government, not destroy the whole fucking country?
Debugging isn't really interesting just because you do it in the air. A lot of people do that on longer flights and call that "Tuesday". On the other hand, the endless potentials for hacking this thing to display something obscene are going to be nearly irresistable to a certain kind of person. You know the type I'm talking about. (dramatic pause)
Slashdot Mirror
Karl Marx (father of communism)
Oh, that Karl Marx. Thanks for clearing up the confusion. Oh, incidentally you forgot:
Thomas Jefferson (slave owner).
it's really quite a different thing to take policing action at a violent, arson-fueled riot than it would be to invade Denver with tanks
You're missing the point that even if your characterisation is accurate, the people engaged in violence and arson were still US citizens, some of whom were shot by the US military (National Guard).
I think it's a fairly safe bet that if the army were sent in to invade Denver with tanks, they'd be treated to something looking like a violent, arson-fueled riot too.
wait, who said that members of the military would actually be *willing* to fight a war against other Americans? I'd wager you'd see the shortest war in history as the front line troops would simply refuse to fire. Key leaders would resign before giving the orders to fight, and the infrastructure would then either A. fall into unmanageable chaos or B. constrict and lock down into a state of paralysis. Either way, it's not going to be an effective force, even if it gets far enough to (unconsitutionally) deploy troops.
I love your faith in the military, which is, when it comes down to it, a large group of people trained in killing.
If troops are deployed and refuse to fire, a court martial is the best they can hope for.
And look at how few whistleblowers there have been over human rights abuses in Iraq and elsewhere by soldiers. If you can do that to a foreigner, it is absurd to think there is some impossible bridge to cross before you'll do it to a fellow citizen. After all, their orders aren't going to be "here, go out and machine gun a few hundred innocent civilians for the lulz". The angry crowds will be characterised as foreign-financed criminals, looters, traitors and terrorists.
He's just trying to ratchet up the tension in the hopes that this will precipitate a Turner Diaries style mass uprising against Obama's communist government.
Thats not a mom with a stroller, that's a potential taliban and a bomb.
They already use that sort of excuse. He's 10 so he's old enough to be carrying a weapon. She's got four kids, but they live next to a terrorist, so they're supporting terrorism.
what is the point of this? Does the guy with the gun not know what will happen when he pulls the trigger, or not know how to aim? I'm sure they have target practice So why do this in public, without notifying everyone ahead of time? To scare some old timers into cardiac arrest? To force some return fire?
This is just so bizarre.
The best way to practise flying combat helicopters in an urban environment is to fly combat helicopters in an urban environment.
I imagine it would be quite expensive to construct a whole mock city in the same way that they make mock villages for ground troops to practise house to house fighting.
Quite which large North American-style cities they think they'll be fighting in is another matter, although I suppose Karachi is quite developed.
What kind of self respecting soldier went on this mission without protesting it?
What kind of self respecting pilot would have shot down a passenger airliner on 9/11 (or dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima)?
One obeying orders.
People on slashdot seem to have the idea that ordinary soldiers, sailors and airmen in the military are moral philosophers and super-heroes. They're not. They're trained to do a job, and a lot of that training is to obey orders and kill when you're told. It's not a natural thing to do for most people, so you need a lot of reinforcing of the idea.
If you chucked a squad of marines into a US town and said "the President/Colonel X has authorised you to use any means necessary to clear this place of some gun-toting anti-government terrorists who have already killed a dozen of your fellow soldiers" what exactly do you think they'd do? Stop when they saw that the "terrorists" firing at them were good old boys with hunting rifles?
A Soviet invasion was also not that far out of the questions in the decades following WWII either.
Plus, you should watch this documentary about the Chinese Commies' almost successful plan to tunnel their way under the US and stage a surprise strike from within. The dirty, foreign bastards.
I don't think even the LAPD use military attack helicopters.
Perhaps you should ask an American Indian.
If you can find one.
It was precisely the rule of money and the gun over the rule of law that lead to the extermination of Native Americans.
What happens when those citizens start shooting back?
It's not like Miami is an unarmed area.
I don't want to sound alarmist, but Teh Government does have nuclear weapons.
1st, they have to spot you. 2nd, they have to determine you are a threat (or just be in 'kill everyone' mode, which if they are you've other problems).
I imagine they'd know you were a threat because you'd shot at their fucking attack helicopter.
Yes, because a jacketed 80-grain .30 caliber hitting important targets from a few hundred meters away is so terribly useless. Don't sneer at hunting rifles. Many of the animals we use them on are much harder to kill than people. In fact the ammunition we use is also a lot more effective and dangerous than what the military is authorized to use.
So why wouldn't the military just use mortars, rockets, cruise missiles or fighter-bombers to destroy your sniping position?
I agree that if half the country are doing this, the military are fucked, but then how realistic is that? The impression I get is that there are numerous small groups who would be prepared to take on the military/government, but nothing like an organised revolutionary movement.
"y i.r.id10t" said it, but it deserves saying again.
In Afghanistan, a bunch of guys with rifles (the weaponry the gun-rights advocates are trying to protect) and improvised explosives have fought the U.S. military to a stalemate for more than 12 years. That's a country of 30M people and about 650K sq km. The contiguous 48 states in the USA are 12X the land area of Afghanistan with 10X the population. What makes you think the military would be any more successful fighting a guerrilla war here?
The Taliban are fighting against a foreign occupier. Even those Afghanis who don't like the Taliban will still not be 100% on the side of the foreigners.
If the Taliban were that small in number and that unpopular, they would soon have run out of places to hide.
So, because old people fuck up in traffic too, we should look at preventing people from driving?
Well, yes.
If you kill someone while driving through incompetence, you should go to jail for manslaughter, same with guns.
Since being a drug dealer in the first place makes owning a firearm illegal (yes, the background check for every sale by a gun dealer will catch that sort of thing, if you're a known criminal. and if you're not known, it's still illegal and can be used as an additional charge when they catch you - "lying on a Federal form" or some such), I'd say that that makes your case impossible, and the statistics won't make you a legal gun owner, they'll make you one of those guys who bought his gun illegally.
Note that while it is possible to avoid the background check by buying a gun in a private sale, the law still doesn't recognize you as a "legal gun owner" if you're a criminal, and if the guy who sold you the gun knows this, HE is now a criminal as well....
You're missing the point: not all drug dealers have been convicted of drug dealing, so they may well have acquired the gun legally and then subsequently used it in a crime.
If it comes to the point of a civil war, the people involved with the most guns are people precisely like you: people with both training and actual combat experience. There are more ex-military than there are military, so even without a single active military defection (probability zero), there will still be more of you than there are of them.
There is a vast difference between a civil war, and an uprising by a (relatively) small number of people, however well-armed and well-trained.
In civil wars, you do actually get brother fighting against brother. It's why they are so bloody, ruthless and horrible.
Now what infantry really doesn't like is trained experienced snipers operating defensive at time and place of their choosing on their own very well known turf aka gun nuts.
Gosh, it's a shame the US military don't have access to fighter jets, bombers, helicopter gunships, and cruise missiles. And, even if they did, clearly it would be ungentlemanly to use them against individual gunmen.
Look, just because you can't figure out that there might have been a real geopolitical reason to invade Iraq doesn't mean there wasn't one.
No one's saying that we invaded Iraq for no reason at all, merely that the reasons given were lies, because the real reasons would have been unacceptable to the vast majority of the population.
In a democratic country, you don't go to fucking war because of some hidden agenda.
Breaking my rule responding but how many in the military do you think will carry out orders to attack and kill American citizens? I know the oath they and I took says to defend the constitution not trample all over it. If it came down to that I think a lot would develop a backbone and "just say no" as it is their families and friends in the kill zones also.
Bullshit, it would depend on the senior military officials being prepared to stage a coup against the government by disobeying direct orders. Ordinary soldiers on the ground would obey their orders. But if they're not squeamish about killing women and children abroad, why do you think they'll suddenly care about doing the same to Americans? Is everyone in the military country really that racist/xenophobic?
It's not their fault, soldiers are trained to obey orders. I know the Nuremberg defence doesn't theoretically count, but in reality if your Sergeant and your Sergeant's commanding officer are telling you to go and storm a building and kill anyone who might be a threat, that's what you're going to do. And working on the rationale of drone strikes on family homes because one member of the Taliban/al Qaida might be there, if you enter an apartment block and see a few kids and women in the way, well they're just aiding and abetting terrorists anyway...
The only reason their kill numbers are anywhere near ours are because unlike in Vietnam, we're unwilling to scorch the Earth to defeat them.
You do realise that, both in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the foreign forces were/are supposed to be there to support the democratically government, not destroy the whole fucking country?
If that's great art, the Christmas lights at my local pub were a fucking timeless masterpiece.
A waste of money is a waste of money whether it's your taxes, a bunch of gullible fools or an individual weird billionaire paying for it.
I imagine they're thinking that a bridge is bigger than the roof of someone's house.
Debugging isn't really interesting just because you do it in the air. A lot of people do that on longer flights and call that "Tuesday". On the other hand, the endless potentials for hacking this thing to display something obscene are going to be nearly irresistable to a certain kind of person. You know the type I'm talking about. (dramatic pause)
Yes, you.
One word: goatse.