On gun politics and culture in US

In Russia, any talk about personal weapons/gun policy gets immediately reduced to the question of how actually effective are guns for personal self-defence on the street. On the other hand, in US general attractor seems to be discussion of the statement that personal weapons is your defence against tyranny, i.e., “armed man=free man” etc. etc.

Personally, I think that the statement is badly flawed (and, ironically, the very reason why people from US cannot immediately figure this out is that US is a free country). After Civil War of 1920s in USSR population had lots and lots of guns in their hands: legal and illegal, gratuity and stolen, etc. Did all those weapons make people free from tyranny of 1930s-…? Not really.

Geoff here have mentioned Solzhenitsyn – I think, it would be instructive to recall one interesting example. Solzhenitsyn once wrote that it would be great if all interested persons started laying ambushes against NKVD officers during Great Purge in Leningrad. That’s a creative thought, however, it is known that Solzhenitsyn himself was arrested on the front line. He was an active officer, he had an authorized gun(s) in his hand, his soldiers would follow his order, and finally he was well aware what would arrest mean for people like him. Yet…

Objective reality is that personal weapons cannot be really used against authorities What stays on the first place is Organization, large and powerful, cemented by discipline. Single revolted shooters are easily overridden. Why? Well, because Organization’s is always longer than yours! That is, you have a gun – they have machine guns, you have a machine gun – they have rocket launchers, you have a sniper rifle, they have tanks.

This is the very basis of contemporary America. Gangs have lots and lots of arms, but police and feds have much more.

Note that the opposite situation is not impossible -take for example Columbia

Via Boris Ivanov.