Sclass wrote: ↑ Iraq.
I should have qualified my question with "and produced a good outcome".
I'm surprised nobody brought up the Bundy Ranch standoff. This is the extreme demonstration.
Ducknalddon, I know you are from the UK Commonwealth, somehow. So I assume you aren't familiar with how identity politics has worked in our system. When the red team has the White House, traditionally, the secretary of state will announce military action against some brown people in a small, far off place that most Americans couldn't find on a map, and nobody cares about. Grenada, Panama, Libya, Somolia, blah, blah, I'm sure Wikipedia has a list.
When a blue team president is in office, he chooses an attorney general who activates small armies of federal agents and sends them off to kill families of white people nobody ever heard of in places most Americans couldn't find on a map. Ruby ridge, Waco, (I'm sure it was unintended to send the same sniper who was ordered to kill all men with firearms, and interpreted it as authority to shoot a mom with a baby in her arms, as part of the Waco team.) Then, Bundy Ranch.
But I'm not talking about armed insurrection against the state. I'm talking about arms limiting the overreach of the state, thus preventing the armed insurrection issue.
I'm talking about the old lady getting the same treatment as a citizen as the respected father of three or the young lady. Because any of them could fight, could have a gun, could sue, could file a complaint, could vote. We have lots of ways to address improper behaviors. Guns are one of many, and I'm against losing any of them.
(And right here is where we should insert all the other, less direct methods of dealing with conflict 7w5 will bring up)
I don't want to live in an armed society to stop the government agents from being abusive. That license to the power to abuse is one of the reasons they became agents, and can make them more effective. But having an armed society puts limits on the abuse. But far more importantly, it puts limits on policies of abuse. When the agents read the new abusive policy, whether it be round up all the cattle, or round up all the Jews, it doesn't take the strong backbone to tell your boss, "and what about when they don't want to come along?" And the boss has to provide enough force to overcome resistance. Which puts a strong limit on how abusive a policy can be. Not because of superior morals, but because the more firepower is in the hands of citizens, the less thin the forces can be spread.
So, for everyone who remembers the dysfunction around the end of 2016, a certain amount of the misbehavior of the public was allowed from a "no need to make this worse" perspective. That the public owns as many guns as it does is part of the reason for authorities to allow some leeway. That my ownership of firearms allowed a bunch of leftist, unappreciative, spoiled kids go out and be heard in their angst and frustration is something I am proud of. As a mature member entrenched in this society, it is in my interests to want angry youth to have their say. I may not like what I hear, but I'd rather they had the chance to speak.
We tend to think of advanced economies as being similar, and in gun ownership argument, this comes up quite a bit. But only one side of the argument comes up, gun death. There is another. Freedom for minorities. Or worse, unpopular minorities. I haven't been off the continent, so I have to go off of what I have read. When it comes to the status of unpopular minorities, we can hold our heads up high. We aren't perfect, but we set the standards pretty high. This is a function of inheriting English law, and an armed populace. But let's look at those many exceptions.
Lynchings. They go back to the Reconstruction. And it was an armed white majority against unarmed blacks. The authorities didn't protect them, all they could do was protect themselves. Some did, some didn't. And it continued for a century.
But, slowly, things got a bit better in terms of material wealth. And we started sending black men into combat arms. And then, men trained to hold their heads high came back to the same places they were recruited from. It's no coincidence that the Civil Rights movement and black men in combat, and the Black Panther Party overlap as they did.
And now you think I'm just an old man rambling, but I'm coming to the point.
If you look at all the most restrictive gun laws, in Chicago, DC, NYC, California, Illinois, NY, they were all created as a reaction to black men in leather jackets walking around in public with longarms, policing the neighborhoods the cops wouldn't. I think the black Panther Party was wrong about alot of their beliefs, but their self policing policy was a reasonable reaction.
Banning firearms to keep blacks from being scary to soft city folk, not so reasonable.
Of course, they won't call it that, but their actions line up like dominos. Probably going to be contentious among the people that believe speeches, but the actions are clear.
NYC and many other cities had weapons laws early, but these tended toward just keeping the working class armed with knives. Shear cost of arms and munitions was enough to keep them out of the hands of the poor.
Serious gun control started with the national firearms act of 1934, mainly concerned with banning automatic weapons. Thompson submachine guns used to be sold through the mail. But, prohibition, and organized crime, made for a sharp uptick in extreme violence. The NFA of 1934 was the reaction. A rousing success. No more organized crime problem, right?
In the sixties, we got Black Panthers, and gun control. It's not like we didn't have crime before, or political minorities. Hell, Puerto Rican separatists shot up Congress, while in session, wounding 5 Congressmen back in the fifties. Not a blip. But armed black men walking around in the open? That couldn't fly. We talk about gun control today as being about middle aged white guys, and nutcases who shoot up schools and malls. But that's because gun grabbers have already succeeded in their primary goal of effectively disarming minorities. See what a rousing success that was?
Australia has confiscated the guns. Since, they haven't had any spree shootings. But they didn't have many before, and they missed the great recession, so we will see how that works out. But Australia was the example I was thinking about when I mentioned an advanced economy that doesn't seem to treat their minorities well. Just confining their murders to groups of 3 or less seems too low a bar for giving up the benefits of an armed society.