Civil wars don't work like that. Yes, the first people the gun owners will be shooting at will be these "special police" but it won't stop there. When one section of the population declares a shooting war on another, the bullets tend to fly both directions. "Let's you and he fight" just isn't going to happen.
I expressed that opinion to a very liberal friend who accused me of threatening him. He didn't seem to grasp that he had been threatening me. They don't.
I expressed that opinion to a very liberal friend who accused me of threatening him. He didn't seem to grasp that he had been threatening me. They don't.
The prototype for what's coming here is not the US Civil War, but the Finnish Civil War of 1918. In about 4 months of fighting, the Finns killed off about 30,000 of their fellows, about one percent of their national population at the time; we managed about 2% from 1861-1865, but that was spread out over four years.
Only about 10,000 of the Finns who died from the fighting, the rest perishing in prison camps or during postwar executions.
A similar casualty rate of one percent of America's 300 million population would result in- well, you do the math. But it's not likely Americans would put an end to it after just four months, either.
Accordingly: CWII ping.
Very well put.
I’m unsurprised he didn’t get it.
Very insightful.
Neither side sees what they are doing as unreasonable, yet the other side sees it as a threat on their way of life, if not their very existence. Gun grabbers see weapons as the invariant tool of murder and must be eliminated at all costs; gun owners see weapons as their last defense against oppression and termination, and must be possessed at all costs. The math of this turns into a "divide by zero", with suitably unpredictable results. ...thing is, neither side sees anything wrong with their position, and feel utterly threatened by their opponents.
Today I was looking for an arts festival in the Atlanta area. The location wasn't well indicated, so I wandered a bit. Ended up at a park with a bunch of Code Pink types, doing their "impeach Bush / end the war" bizzareness. Anyway, I wasn't interested in taking them on, I just wanted to know which park it was. They had covered the park sign with their own, which I proceeded to remove so I could get the park's name and get my bearings accordingly. At least two descended on me, demanding to know why I was removing their sign and generally being offended at my actions. I told her I was just looking for the name of the park and their sign was covering it. She responded "well why didn't you just talk to us?" Uh-huh. I finished finding the name and left.
Upshot: it was yet another small, but accumulating, point where they (Code Pink) was behaving in a disruptive manner, yet when I (general public, not acting as opposition) tried to get past their disruption, they were all offended that I wasn't going by THEIR rules, expectations, and norms. They perceived my actions (moving blocking signage to find a name) as a threat, and utterly failed to realize that THEIR actions - both the protest and their hindering me - was a legal threat.