NEWS: NRA Loses Switzerland As A Blah, Blah, Blah Point

You know, you might have missed it, but there is this place called Iraq where people using small arms and improvised weapons are slapping the nuts of the worlds mightiest army pretty effectively. And there aren't even that many of them, imagine, hypothetically, that they outnumbered the government forces fifty to one?

Jesus fucking christ, they wouldn't be an armed militia, they'd be 2 million ornery assholes with guns.

Since the right to free expression of religion is established by the U.S. Constitution under a very different context than the right to keep and bear arms, your analogy doesn't hold water.

Even if you somehow consider "liberty" and "property" to be equal as far as rights go.

When are you going to ask the government to prove their "respect"? The masses are doing just fine, it's criminals who are out of control.

We don't need reforms, there are more than enough laws on the books as is.

For the record, I spent the first 20 years of my life hunting. I went dear and bear hunting as recently as last year.

Are you serious? People aren't using guns to protect themselves from various "government armed forces," all over the world, right now? Are you out of your mind?

So when the United States decides to invade the United States we look forward to a back and forth stalemate ad infinitum?

Their are so many things so painfully incorrect and straw grasping with your statement I honestly have no clue where to begin.

I was referring specifically to the United States. However my issue is with the size and control the government has over armed forces, not citizens possessing firearms, so I really don't want to extend this debate any further. Innately I completely agree with the citizens possessing a means to overthrow a failed government, however I believe in the United States currently that point is rather moot.

Daily. I've yet to receive a response.

300 deaths a year * 50 years of peace = 15,000 needless deaths.
That's about the number of soldiers that die on one side of a single major battle in a modernish war. (Compare to the Battle of the Bulge)

Switzerland sat out World Wars I and II. It's pretty obvious that assaulting a mountain terrain full of secret tunnels, and this is a crucial point, where the tunnels are full of trained soldiers with guns, just isn't worth it.

Seems like Switzerland's armaments saved lives as a net deal. Now that the European Union has held together for a few years and looks bright for the future, that deal doesn't seem worth it anymore. I'd say the Swiss have been and continue to be rational about the trade-offs of having guns in homes.

Ummm, no, the possibility of that, coupled with the fact that an awful lot of the people in question are members of our armed forces who would have divided loyalties serves as a very effective check on tyranny of the government without a single shot being fired. Your contention was that an armed populace is not an effective check on government abuse in a technological age. That is patently absurd.

Oh, do try, I could use some mirth.

i'm from texas.
i've known a lot of gun owners, including most of my family.

i'm not really on board with the whole second amendment thing because it's decidedly unclear to anyone who's bothered to read constitutional history, that it even guarantees the right to bear arms for anyone outside of a militia.

At least during WW2, that has more to do with how the Swiss government cuddled up to the Third Reich, unless you really think the Wehrmacht couldn't have handled fighting trained soldiers with guns.

Air Strikes. Game/Set/Match

As a matter of fact, yes, I think it would have been quite difficult for them. The major advantage of the Wehrmacht was their use of combined arms, in particular their use of massed tanks and mechanized infantry to make rapid progress, alternating with air power when the tanks hit a form of resistance they were unsuitable for defeating. Harsh mountain terrain (with additional manmade ambush points) is not kind to tanks and armored personel carriers. For an example of how well the Wehrmacht was able to attack using air power without tank support, see the Battle of Britain. (Note: the Wehrmacht lost.)

Slapping nuts while they're getting their heads torn off. You can't be serious right?

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Imagine hypothetically, that the government decides to do whatever it has to, so it can maintain control.

Did you even read your source? Those are Iraqi civilian deaths. Collateral damage. Completely fucking irrelevant. Further, if you remember a little country called Vietnam, we killed over ten times the combatant deaths we suffered. We still lost.

The Battle Of Britain isn't an apt comparison, since no ground forces were involved. Depending on the time frame of the invasion (let's assume right after the invasion of France, as was originally planned), the Luftwaffe could have crushed the Swiss air force (unlike the RAF). That means that even if the Swiss army and militia slowed German ground forces down, the German army could just sit back and bombard Switzerland into submission. The example I can think of is how Franco's German-backed army and air force dealt with resistance in the mountainous areas of northern Spain.

While invading Switzerland would have been a challenge for the Wehrmacht, I don't think that Hitler changed his mind about Operation Tannenbaum due to Switzerland's gun ownership policy so much as a combination of geography and Switzerland's eager economic co-operation with the Reich.

And yes, I mentioned Hitler in a gun control thread. Please Godwin the fuck out of me.

1) Do you really think any USAF pilots will bomb the shit out of the civilian population?

2) Air strikes are only good at decimating infrastructure. And in stopping a revolt, the only infrastructure would be your infrastructure. The rest would pretty much be comprised of guerrilla ranks

One ornery asshole in a window can kill several people. What if you have 2 million ornery assholes in windows.

No army has ever occupied a city without the use of ground troops.

But this was just a scenario to prove the idea that arming citizens to prevent a government from going to far or a military from invading is not entirely invalid. Because I dunno about you guys, but if my city were occupied, I would raise a resistance.

Point is, you really think US citizens have the fortitude to suffer through that. Your hypothetical situation is ridiculous.This isn't Vietnam, this isn't Iraq, this is America not a war torn state that has a recent history of violence.

Thank God someone brought this up. It would be a shame if the die-hard, right-to-own-a-gun lobby was successful in making us think the second amendment was anything other than an awkwardly written and confusing passage that has been interpreted to mean all citizens have the right to own a gun. It's certainly not stated anywhere that we actually have that right.

The NRA's line of thinking can be undone by one supreme court decision - that's how vague it is. Don't believe me? Read it yourself and see how murky it is.

As soon as you got to see some kids being taken down by tank shells, I suspect you'd stop with that fantasy. The idea of having a gun is some kind of protection or deterrent from a government in your imagined scenario is ridiculous. More insane the scenario itself.
Having a gun does not equate to being trained to kill, which is what you'd have to do.

When arguing against a completely ridiculous scenario, all bets are off.

1) Do you really think the government would try to take over as described in some scenarios without considering using full military force to keep people in line?

2) Do you really think that would even matter if the situation was so ridiculous, that you had to use your gun to protect yourself from your government in this country?

So you're not upset, you're just hoping eagerly for massive increases in violent bloodshed since it might bolster your argument? That's much better.

No, we're a structured first world nation with a tradition of liberty, which means that none of the other causal states apply either.

As for fortitude, there are people still living who went without sugar, clothes, cars, and gasoline to say nothing of their fathers sons and husbands to secure other people's liberties. There are people still living who were willing to be attacked by police dogs, shot, beaten, imprisoned and blown down the streets with fire hoses to secure the right to vote and eat at Woolworths. Where I live tens of thousands were willing to live in tents and go without electricity and bathing water to help secure a devastated city and its citizens went without basics for far longer just to be in their own homes.

Believe me when I say, that if the US government elected to deploy troops on its own soil to perpetrate tyranny you would see the guerilla war to end all guerilla wars.

Sorry, but it is not at all murky to anyone with a rudimentary grasp of history and grammar. Further, it managed to stand for a century and a half with no one advancing any theory that it was unclear. It is only after the mobility of the automobile and the portable automatic weapon, coupled with a rise in socialism and populism resulting from the depression that that tortured and nonsensical argument was even advanced.

There are currently as many US service veterans as there are citizens of your country. They know how to kill. This is to say nothing of the tens of millions of others who can probably translate from shooting a deer or elk to shooting a person.

As for the rest, perhaps you'd wilt at the thought of children being killed, but believe it or not there are lots of others whose resolve would only strengthen.

Okay, then explain exactly what the phrase "a well-regulated militia" means in a Constitutional framework.

For bonus points, prove that there were no Supreme Court cases involving divergent interpretations of the 2nd Amendment before 1939.