Are armed citizens overrated?

Never was meant as a steadfast against OUTSIDE forces, they were mostly interested on INTERNAL forces...
What you may be thinking of is a place like Switzerland, that wasn't the intent, solely a side effect.

Well, they did think about outside threats. The British at the time became an outside threat.
But a great cause was for the domestic threats and tyranny. Equal, or at least similar, arms are absolutely necessary to throw off oppressors, which the constitution was written with in mind.

I don't think armed citizens are or have been overrated. We are here as a nation because of armed citizens. Israel used it's citizens to win it's independence also. So yes they matter.

There is no FREE nation without armed citizens. I don't think freedom can be over rated.

the problem is, we thankfully have never had to test it.....Mainland America hasnt been invaded since 1812..

im willing to be should MadeUpakistan decide to invade now, we will be very thankfull for the millions of guns available for the common man thanks to the 2A.....

The First Amendment is sacred. It is what truly makes us free.

The Second Amendment is there to 100% guarantee the First remains intact, whether outside forces or internal forces try to take it away.

How do you remove the First and subjugate us all?
How do you break in a house? Disable the alarm. Thats what 'reasonably restricting' the Second does. It turns off our house alarm one digit at a time... and we're the ones doing it, because we think we live in a safe neighborhood.

With the right tactics, armed civilians can be a very effective counter to government forces. But the right tactics are even more important that the arms. Governments always have had access to vastly more firepower than any insurgents -- enough to crush insurgencies flat, if the insurgents ever come out into the open -- and yet insurgents have still managed to win. The best example of this, perhaps, is the successful Irish War or Independence of 1919-1921. It makes such a useful example because it followed closely on the heels of the failed Easter Rising of 1916. In 1916, the Irish rebels attempted to fight a conventional war against the British. It took Britain a mere six days to crush the Rising utterly. In 1919-1921, they changed tactics and fought a guerrilla campaign.

After the war, Richard Mulcahy, who had been Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (not, BTW, the same organization as the recent one active in Northern Ireland for the past few decades, that organization just took the name of this earlier one), and basically was 2nd in command of the IRA after Michael Collins, lamented that during the entire conflict, the IRA had never managed to drive the British out of anything larger than a good-sized police barracks. Yet they succeeded in making Ireland completely ungovernable by the British, and brought the British to the negotiating table, achieving their independence thereby. And it was basically a citizen militia with only small arms, against the professional army of what was then the greatest superpower on earth, the British Empire.

Insurgents can’t win, and never have been able to win, in open battle. So they don’t fight open battles. That’s why it’s called assymetric warfare. And it can prevail over even the strongest nations if the people remain committed, refuse to give in, and avoid open battle. They win by not losing, and rendering a territory ungovernable by the power that seeks to control it. They can’t win a decisive victory; they simply exhaust the government, and destroy its ability to administer or effectively govern a territory. It’s worked since ancient times, and it still works (under good leadership) despite all the advances in weaponry that have occurred since. Looking back at our own revolution, Washington didn’t beat the British with militias of armed citizens, he beat them by raising a professional army. And yet, despite the fact that even then militias couldn’t face regulars in open battle, he and the rest of the founding fathers promoted an armed citizenry as a deterrent to tyranny, because the still understood what an insurgency could do to a government’s ability to govern.

Insurgents can’t win, and never have been able to win, in open battle. So they don’t fight open battles. That’s why it’s called assymetric warfare. And it can prevail over even the strongest nations if the people remain committed, refuse to give in, and avoid open battle.

Click to expand...

ONLY if they get sympathetic press. In this country, with the MSM in bed with the government, it would not last long in the arena of popular public opinion

Well stated, Billy

Might want to consider how trends have impacted our "armed citizenry" over time.

1. We like to say that firearms are tools. For the individual armed citizen, has the day-today purpose of these tool changed? That is consider the frequency of use for recreational, self defense, provision, etc. -- what trends are evident over time?

2. What changes are evident in the skill/competency level of the armed citizenry?

3. Has the level of responsibility with regard to possession and use of firearms changed?

4. If the "percentage of citizens that are armed" were viewed over time, what would that data show?

THEORY: As we have industrialized, our use of firearms has declined and with each passing generation we are losing the heritage of an armed citizenry.

Perhaps there is data to confirm or refute the above theory. (Please share it if you have it.)

If refuted, great! Let's be sure that we are able to monitor the data going forward and keep doing what works!

If confirmed, what do we need to do differently or what change is needed and how do we accomplish that change?

If you haven't noticed, the illterate, low tech Afghans sent the Soviets home with tail dragging. There are enough Americans who aren't wimps to make life intolerable for any aggressor.

and for another viewpoint (or 2 opposing POV is not the whole story)

http://www.americanbar.org/content/...07_08_07_290_RespondentAmCu11GeneralsAHSA.pdf
The amicus curiae brief of Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg, Jr., et al., in the case of DC v Heller, argued that the individual right of the people to keep and bear arms supports and enhances the collective goal of supporting national defense, and that the dichotomy between individual right and militia right interpretations is false:

The Petitioners and Respondent are asking this Court to select among two mutually exclusive interpretations of the Second Amendment: one establishing an individual’s right to bear arms and, the other memorializing society’s right to organize a force for its collective defense. Amici suggest that this dichotomy, pitting individual rights against group rights, is not ordained by the language of the Second Amendment, which is a cogent blend of both individual rights and community rights, with each depending on the other. A well-regulated militia – whether ad hoc or as part of our organized military – depends on recruits who have familiarity and training with firearms – rifles, pistols and shotguns. Amici suggest that the Second Amendment ensures both the individual’s right to possess firearms, subject to reasonable regulation, and the constitutional goal of collective defense readiness. Based on decades of military experience, amici have concluded that the District of Columbia’s Gun Law (“D.C. Gun Law”), D.C. Code § 7-2502.01 et seq., directly interferes with various Acts of Congress aimed at enhancing the national defense by promoting martial training amongst the citizenry.

Click to expand...

In the 1960s during the VietNam War, Arthur D. Little Co. was asked by Congress to evaluate civilian marksmanship training. Military commanders reported that recruits (and conscripts) with pre-service civilian firearms training and experience trained quicker and better on military arms, were more likely to volunteer for combat, performed better, than those with little or no pre-service firearms experience.

Also consider the numbers.

To continue with the Afghanistan example, right now we have have about 100,000 ISAF personnel and 380,000 Afghani security personnel, so just shy of half a million nominally-friendly people in a country that's far quieter than it was a few years ago, but things still go boom occasionally and it can't be considered entirely pacified.

Afghanistan has a population of 30,000,000, give or take. That means one pair of friendly boots on the ground for every 62.5 citizens in order to mostly maintain order. (Note that significantly higher numbers were, and would be, necessary to restore order in the first place.) And that soldier responsible for those 62.5 locals is backed up by first-world artillery, aircraft, armor, and logistics. He's well-equipped and can get help if he needs it.

Now, consider the US. We have over ten times that amount of citizens. How many people do you need to land in order to take and hold it?

Let's think about Seattle for a moment. Two years ago, 620,000 people lived there. Now, let's assume that some foreign nation invaded, and some Americans had arms and chose to resist. Let's say that one in one thousand Seattlites decided to use those arms to resist. And let's say that those folks were smart enough (or scared enough) not to even consider open combat. That leaves 620 angry people taking potshots from windows, planting bombs, and generally raising hell. If even one or two of them had the proper training to conduct such operations and began teaching others, things would quickly become very ugly. And if things escalated and similar people began arriving from other cities, this could very well ruin an offensive. Also keep in mind that the 1 in 1000 number is probably pretty conservative in some areas.

I would not want to be wearing the wrong uniform in such a city. I would not want to even set foot in such a city, to be honest.

Multiply this by every city and town and as an aggressor, you've got some real issues. Those tanks and bombs and planes might not be enough. So no, I don't think that armed citizens are overrated. Just because we did relatively well in Afganistan does not mean that it was an easy job. At least two world powers failed the job before we attempted it, and we had a lot of help.

Note that such an approach to defense does not prevent harm to the populace or even a successful invasion - a successful invasion has to occur for this method of defense to even be applicable. But if the populace is sufficiently motivated, it can certainly work. More importantly, it can serve as a useful deterrent against future aggression.

If you haven't noticed, the illterate, low tech Afghans sent the Soviets home with tail dragging. There are enough Americans who aren't wimps to make life intolerable for any aggressor.

Click to expand...

I'm thinking that armed citizens and trained soldiers are not synonymous. Are you thinking of the former or the latter? If the former, then my hope is that we can be confident that your observation will remain true for generations of US citizens to come.

Me being armed is never an overrated thing, for any number of reasons. I don't see the need to single out any one.

I totally disagree that we don't face opposing forces from outside the US. We are currently dealing with paramilitary drug gangs right on our border in the southwest. Our citizens are already facing that force on their own because our government won't do it. When you see Mexican military vehicles inside the US on your property do you just let them pass knowing what destruction they are bringing or do you fight back? If they get too close to home you can bet you're going to want to fight back. It's happening right now. I've seen lots of reports of ranchers facing down armed forces from Mexico. The problem is those Americans are supported by the government and they aren't allowed to use more effective weapons like fully automatic rifles. Instead the government puts up signs telling people to avoid the area and tries to take what guns we have away from us. It's pretty tough to avoid the area if you live there.

Read this story from that ultra conservative news media outlet, NBC News:

http://dailynightly.nbcnews.com/_ne...a-ranchers-demand-security-at-the-border?lite

BTW we were invaded by Pancho Vila in 1916.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa#Attack_on_New_Mexico

Not only that but there was a threat of a Mexican uprising in the 1910's-1920's when a group of about a million Mexican refugees from their civil wars encouraged Hispanics to think the SW was stolen from them and that they should fight to take it back. They very nearly sparked a war. That was another time when owning a weapon to protect yourself was very important because that group of Mexicans killed dozens of Americans trying to spark a larger armed conflict.

Ask the Brits.

It seems to me that the right to keep and bear arms has already been watered down and abridged to the point of no longer presenting a credible minimum deterrence to any out of control, runaway government that chooses to use a declaration of martial law/state of emergency as a pretext to go the whole hog and remove arms from private hands.

What it really takes is a highly trained and motivated, disciplined and well-organized force adorned with armament that far surpasses your typical gun shop fare.

Are armed citizens overrated?

Click to expand...

Possibly... I know tons of guys (typically younger, but not always) who think they will save everyone, and are the only ones "trained enough" to have a firearm, but yet have never been there. I heard it during the hunt for the boston bomber about how a gun owner should find the guy. But in the case of the Boston bomber a guy going out for a smoke found the guy. Just talking in jest, but perhaps instead of firearms, we should hold up smoking instead since it worked out in catching the boston bomber suspect?

nydailynews.com said:

Henneberry put down his smoke and grabbed a ladder to peer inside the 22-foot boat after noticing a strap was cut, stepson Robert Duffy told the Daily News.

Click to expand...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nat...hon-bomber-suspect-underway-article-1.1321605

I'm aware of the Mussolini's, Hitlers, Stalins, Pol-Pot's, Idi Amins of the world. But I don't believe that Americans would ever let one of them come to power. Perhaps is partly because of the 2nd amendment that even bad laws are made subject to repeal by legislators we elect.

Click to expand...

Don't deceive yourself that it can never happen here. The thing to remember is that these things don't happen overnight. As James Madison said: "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Referring once again to history, take the example of the Roman republic. It lasted, as a republic, longer than ours has so far done, but it still went over to one-man rule, and eventually descended into absolute despotism, and grew to bear almost all the features that we would recognize as characteristic of a police state.

And just to give you an idea of how extreme the change was, remember that Julius Caesar, already a dictator, was assassinated by a group of senators for the mere suspicion that he wanted to make himself a king. But their descendants, after the time of Diocletian in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD would have to abase themselves by going down on their bellies in the dust – an act called the proskynesis – any time they had an audience with the emperor. And Roman life was so controlled that even professions were made hereditary, and a man had to get imperial permission to hold a job different than the one his father had.

Don't think it can't ever happen here.

I grow very weary of the rest of the world complaining about our guns. All of our enemies simply want us disarmed, our allies are free on the backs of OUR strength. If our military was the only thing keeping us free, and we were disarmed, we would have to keep a much larger percentage of our army at home to keep us secure. If our army was defeated and the US fell, who would protect the smarmy unarmed population of the UK? Australia? Canada? or any of our other allies. Lets face it, our armed population keeps a good chunk of the world free, they just enjoy the benefit and don't have to bear the responsibility for it.

Well said, Billy. The UNTHINKABLE is the unthinkable ... until it ACTUALLY HAPPENS ... at which point, it's no longer UNTHINKABLE!

"When reality conflicts with theory, believe reality."