It's the real and perceived threat of resistance. Do you think 'compliance officers' would be more willing/confident going door to door in a society that is armed or disarmed? A different approach might have been a used in East Germany if every house the Stasi went into looking for 'undesirables' had the potential for meeting a shotgun.
What's a compliance officer, and why are they going to people's homes?
> A different approach might have been a used in East Germany if every house the Stasi went into looking for 'undesirables' had the potential for meeting a shotgun.
Not everything has to be compared to Nazi Germany.
I'll note that the lower possession of guns does have a difference in how we interact with the police, ad how the police interact with everyone else.
For instance, Officer-involved shootings are practically non-existent. For that matter, shootings of any kind are practically non-existent.
No-knock / SWAT style raids and use of pyrotechnics/flash-bangs/etc are reserved for where there's a lot more evidence that someone has a large number of weapons.
Nobody is afraid they might get shot by a police officer because they reached into their glove box or into their pocket.
I'm not saying things are all rainbows and unicorns, but still...
I don't see how turning up to talk to your representatives with a whole bunch of weapons is going to make the conversation go any better.
A compliance officer is a theoretical example role (that was meant to be easy to draw parallels to) of a person tasked with checking compliance of some form. (Eg. that you're Isolating / no visitors, no contraband, your telescreen is on etc.)
Nazi Germany is used as hyperbole - because it's both that and historically true (demonstrating the hyperbole to be still tangible).
I agree there are some great things about living in a society largely free from gun crime and the risk of being unnecessarily shot by police. But in Australia we have basically no meaningful internal backstop should a tyrannical government sweep over us.
I'm also definitely not advocating using or displaying weapons when talking with your representatives. I think that's a dishonest and uncharitable interpretation of what I've written. I am saying however that any laws may find it difficult for broad enforcement in a society that is armed and displeased with whatever law is attempting to be enforced -- and that that is a deterrent to creating such laws in the first place.
Political power grows out the barrel of a gun, all power does. If you have 2 groups of people, one group armed and one unarmed, which one is in charge?
> Political power grows out the barrel of a gun, all power does.
I disagree. That sounds more like a military junta than a government.
> If you have 2 groups of people, one group armed and one unarmed, which one is in charge?
Insufficient information.
The members of government are, by and large, unarmed - and certainly unarmed when in Canberra. Our defence forces have a whole bunch of firearms, yet answers to and obeys the lawful orders of the government.
I agree. Although there's some truth to the gun argument in certain societies, it's definitely not universal truth. It's interesting that this argument is often made by Americans of all people, where guns - while very prevalent - do not equal political power at all. Also ironically all those who claim their guns protect them from tyranny do not seem to notice how their rights are taken away bit by bit and the gun makes no difference. When that heavily militarized SWAT team kicks in your door one day to arrest you for the illegal Twitter post, all good the gun does is that you can use it to evade arrest by killing yourself. Don't need a gun for that.
An armed populace does not prevent abuse by the government but the more level the playing field between the government and any given subset of the populace the harder it is to abuse that subset.
For example, the ability for Seargeant Jerk to feel justified in sending a SWAT team to your door at 4AM on the (plausibly deniable) suggestion of a government official who is highly peeved by your public criticism of his/her policy is directly proportional to how likely that 4AM raid is to go badly enough to attract media attention and the tough questions that follow. It's a hell of a lot harder to justify abuse when you have to put your people and your credibility as a professional in danger to do it.
Of course, things could still go badly if the populace is not armed but it's orders of magnitude more likely. And of course the government can still harass people without entering their homes but it's much less efficient.
Social media, viral content and dank memes make the people on a more level playing field with the government when it comes to disseminating information and coordinating (yes, this has downsides, so be it). Firearms (or any other tool of violence) perform similar functions but for violence. They serve as a force multiplier for the individual and decrease the size of the biggest group of people the government can marginalize. We don't usually think of information as being something the state has a monopoly over because few states do these days (i.e. basically just north Korea) but if you rewind the clock to back before the printing press all the parallels are there. The state/church held a tight grip on information but not violence. Today things are reversed with the state having near absolute power to enact violence. Holding a tight enough monopoly on either can enable near absolute control.
I still don't understand this mentality.
The ability to enact change in government is entirely unrelated to the ability to posses firearms.