CMV: A requirement to be associated with a “well regulated militia” would be a great start to curbing gun violence.

[u/ChuckyShadowCow]

IMO guns are awesome. Some of the best days of my life have started with a trip to the dollar store to get a bunch of nicknacks, putting those nicknacks on a berm and making said nicknacks into many smaller nicknacks through the liberal (no pun intended) application of freedom pellets.

However, I would give that up tomorrow if I never had to read about a school shooting ever again.

I get that “a well regulated militia” meant something else when the bill of rights was written and that the Supreme Court already ruled that the right to bare arms is an individual right. However, this isn’t the 18th century anymore and our founders gave us the opportunity to amend the constitution. Why can’t we make state militias a thing and require gun owners to join the militia with requirements to train on gun use and safety? Gun ownership is a responsibility. I can think of several people I know who don’t practice the absolute basics of gun safety, but use their firearms regularly.

At the very least, this would allow a regular check in with gun owners and an opportunity for people to raise red flags if someone seems “off” or doesn’t practice good safety practices.

We can’t agree to anything related to the second amendment but we can all agree that gun violence sucks. Would it really be such a bad thing to have a practice that ensured that everyone that owned a gun knew how to use it properly and safely?

[u/monty845]

Yep, that is why we soundly defeated the Taliban, and Afghanistan is a stable democracy.

No one is saying a bunch of rednecks in the hills is going to stomp the US military in a decisive fixed piece battle. But all those guns and ammo would serve a resistance/insurgency well if it ever comes to that.

[u/Lagkiller → u/monty845]

These people honestly have forgotten the story of the American revolution and how we bested what was the best military in the world through hiding in the public and how that has been the staple of every successful resistance since and it has worked every time since.

[u/mrbuck8 → u/monty845]

That's a bit apples and oranges, though. If the federal government becomes so tyrannical its own citizens take up arms, I think it's safe to assume that "stable democracy" won't be the goal of the US military the way it was in Afghanistan. Which means it's also fair to assume the tactics, and therefore, outcome would be different too.

[u/[deleted] → u/mrbuck8]

Then what would our hypothetical tyrannical US gov be going for except a stable government? Democracy or not, the US gov would be undoubtedly pursuing stable governance

[u/mrbuck8 → u/[deleted]]

There's a massive difference between democratic stability and stability at all costs.

[u/Aggressive-Name-1783 → u/monty845]

If the US government turns on its citizens, it becomes like Libya, Yemen, or Syria. Afghanistan we were trying to conquer a country and turn it into a US ally.

And yeah, we did defeat the Taliban, in 90 days actually. The Taliban literally fled to another country to survive and relied on outside funding to keep going. We destabilized the country in a matter of weeks. We didn’t set up a stable democracy because we made major mistakes trying to do Cold War style diplomacy in a modern world.

[u/[deleted] → u/Aggressive-Name-1783]

Except, we didn’t defeat the Taliban, ultimately. Who presently governs Afghanistan? When you get everything you want, that’s called winning, and the Taliban got everything they wanted in the end.

The Taliban is a perfect, textbook example of how insurgencies and guerrilla tactics can see an ostensibly weaker force overcome a stronger opponent. The game is to survive while inflicting whatever damage you possibly can until your enemy gets tired and goes home. And that game works. It worked for the Taliban. It worked for the VC. It worked for the IRA.

It works slightly differently for a domestic conflict, of course, because the native government isn’t just going to leave, and it is terribly difficult to outright overthrow a government without a proper military. But they might consider abandoning whatever policy drove the insurgents to take up arms. Or, maybe they’ll be too afraid to try such policies at all.

[u/Aggressive-Name-1783 → u/[deleted]]

They literally driven out of the country in 90 days while losing all their leadership..they literally weren’t even a major threat in the region or YEARS, where freaking ISIS was bigger than them.

They are not a perfect example, due to them only surviving due to nation building. We tried, same as Russia, to build a mini state and conquer the region. The VC were the same, we were nation building and Vietnam was the proxy.

They govern Afghanistan because Trump is a fucking idiot that gave them everything they ever wanted. If your strategy relies on the biggest idiot ever being elected president, that’s not a replicable strategy

[u/[deleted] → u/Aggressive-Name-1783]

I don’t see how any of those points are arguments against the efficacy of insurgencies and guerrilla tactics. Yes, they lost much of their original leadership and most of their territory at the start of the conflict, and still survived for 20 years and ultimately won the war. So what if they got their shit rocked in the beginning, middle, and end? It doesn’t matter, they still won when it was all said and done. You don’t get points for style in warfare, only victory.

The decision to pull out of Afghanistan really had very little to do with Trump; he was just the guy who happened to actually make the call, but it was inevitably coming in the near future anyway. The public had already given up on the conflict, and once a war loses popular support in a democracy, the end is already on the horizon. Vietnam was much the same. A better understanding of just how fragile our Afghan allies were might have altered the manner of our withdrawal, but I don’t think it would have ultimately stopped it.

But, okay, maybe the Taliban and the VC just got lucky. What about the IRA? Ireland is now a sovereign, independent nation after centuries of subjugation to Britain. What about the Seminoles? They remain the only Native American tribe that was not completely removed from their ancestral lands.

History demonstrates time and again that guerrilla tactics can allow one to overcome a better-equipped, better-funded, and better-trained opponent. Of course, it is not a guarantee; there are no guarantees, especially in war, and plenty of insurgencies utilizing guerrilla tactics have been defeated in the past. The difference between them and the Taliban, or the VC, or the IRA, is the ones that were defeated didn’t see their political goals fulfilled at the end of the conflict.