[TheForge] coffee and guns

[Washington, Aubrey O.]

Let the flame wars begin!

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From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net [theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of ries [ries at riesniemi.com]
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 4:17 PM
To: Sponsored by ABANA
Subject: Re: [TheForge] coffee and guns

On Dec 17, 2007, at 1:21 PM, Andrew Vida wrote:




And finally, Jim is spot on.  The ONLY thing keeping government from
running wholly roughshod over us is the fact that we are pretty well
armed.  Were it otherwise, the few rights we retain would probably
have flown away decades ago.

        -Andy



Andy, you are a great guy, but you are completely FOS on this one.
No war in history has been won by small arms alone, and the ONLY
thing keeping government from running roughshod over us is the
constitution and our rule of law- GUNS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

Any serious government, equipped with helicopters, tanks, jets,
napalm, AC-130's, Bradley's and Strikers and Predator drones, along
with the money to buy a few billion rounds of ammo a month, laughs at
the small arms owned by individuals in the USA.
Without a foreign nation supporting us against our, or any other
government, we would be toast in two weeks.

The successful guerilla wars of the last 5 decades or so were all
only successful because a large industrialised nation, be it China,
the USA, or the Soviet Union, supported the guerillas with a steady
flow of new weapons ( in real combat, guns wear out very fast-
machine gun barrels may last one day sometimes, and even a very well
maintained assault rifle has a short lifespan) ammo, and, most
essentially, crew served weapons.
Without medium to heavy machine guns, mortars, rpg's, surface to air
missles, and hundreds of tons of explosives, all of which are in very
short supply in private hands in the USA, you have about a snowball's
chance in hell of surviving a few days against the average big city
police department, much less a real army.

With all that stuff, and bucketloads of US dollars, the likes of
Osama and his Mujadeen in Afghanistan were a public relations
annoyance to the soviets- but they didnt win any war- they just
convinced politicians at home to pull out.

Koresh had 50 caliber rifles, full auto weapons, and a reasonable
supply of ammo for a private individual in the USA. He and his
managed to kill a few feds by surprising them, but in a war
situation, his seige would have lasted 2 hours, not 51 days.
A couple of runs by F-15's with 500lb bombs, and it would have been
over by lunch.

So if the government actually decided to flex the incredible force it
has as the largest military power on earth, no amount of deer rifles
and glocks and shotguns would make much difference.

This has nothing to do with our second amendment rights- its just
pointing out that the private ownership of weapons in the USA has no
impact whatsoever on our internal freedoms- the Yemenis own more
weapons per capita than we do, and they live in a feudal, religious
state of opression, where you can pretty much shoot anybody you want,
but a woman cant walk down the street unescorted.

Guns are good for a lot of things- but their mere presence does not
mean freedom, democracy, or a hands off government.

ries
Ries Niemi
Industrial Artist
http://www.riesniemi.com/





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