this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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This is so American. Just give up the damn guns!
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”
-Karl Marx
Gun people are suddely literate when someone agrees with them.
See, I can quote things too
You say people should just give up their weapons. I used to be strictly against private weapon ownership too. Over the years, especially the last few years i see more and more of a necessity for people to be able to fight back against an overreaching government, as we have seen more and more authoritarian developments all across the "Western" nations.
This is what Marx referred to.
There is a political case for private weapon ownership. The obvious counter-argument is that people like MAGA also have weapons then and can use them. As we have seen with previous and current dictatorships, when push comes to shove the regime will quickly supply its paramilitary wings with guns, so i don't see the benefit of preventing normal people from owning weapons in such a situation.
None of this is a judgement on the green-text, as we lack the whole picture, on whether taking the weapons from anon was justified or not. However the default assertion that people should just give up their weapons is not as obvious as you make it out to be.
Gun ownership isn't the problem. Gun culture is the problem.
I've been the victim of more than one violent crime but it's only been recently that I'm considering acquiring a firearm. For the exact reasons you're describing.
Gandhi was a piece of shit. I wouldn't quote him for the most part.
Hmm whom to believe, MLK or some random lemming?
It seems MLK was exhausted by how ineffective peaceful protest throughout his campaigning, and communicated his doubts of whether peaceful means would actually work in his letter from Birmingham Jail. He stuck with peaceful means till he was assassinated, which is commendable.
After King's death, the violent Holy Week Uprising occurred in response. At the end of that week, the Civil Rights Act had been passed. It sure seems like the Holy Week Uprising got some of what it wanted much faster than King's years of peaceful protest. What King absolutely brought about, though, was a strong alignment for members of the Civil rights movement, which made the Uprising possible in the first place.
The civil rights movement was full of varied factions both violent and nonviolent, all contributing to it's eventual partial success. We should not act as though MLK was the sole martyr of it all, though he played an important role. I'd argue that the US government props him up as a savior to try preventing anyone from thinking about violent means of resistance as a viable option. Same with Gandhi, same with Nelson Mandela.
Go ahead and tell me more about my country.
Okay.
Because we should totally trust the US government with our protection....
That is a very controversial take for Americans, and not just from a gun-toter's perspective. The US has a long history of gun violence, yes, but the US also has a long history of state corruption which only ended by guns driving that corruption back.
In 1946, Veterans in the town of Athens used their firearms to fight against a corrupt police department helping the standing state rig the elections.
In 1921 The Battle of Blair Mountain occurred, where West Virginia miners who'd been stuck in the exploitive company town employment model, battled along the ridges of Blair Mountain against Police. In the company towns you could be fired from your job and evicted from your home without trial - since the mining company owned the houses and only let employees use them - and being in a Union was a fireable offense. This was the largest labor uprising in US history, mine workers fighting deputy sheriffs and strike breakers, with the police actually using biplanes to drop bombs overtop the heads of the miners. This was apart of the Coal Wars of the US, and apart of the broader Labor Wars in the US, which eventually led to the pro-labor regulations we now have in place within the US (which are now being dismantled despite a massive rise in peaceful protests).
In 1968, the Holy Week Uprising occurred in response to Rev. Martin Luther King Junior's assassination, and fueled by the massive inequality that the black community still faced.
All of these were cases of a overhead government, whether state, town, or federal, failing to provide for it citizens, and those citizens helping change that governments' behaviour through violent armed uprising. It is a regular occurrence in American history for us to have corrupt officials who start setting inhumane policies, and it's also been a regular occurrence for that corruption to need violent intervention in order for changes for the better to occur.
Make me.
Oh wait. You can't🤣
Gets tomahawked
Replace guns with anything else and your comment will rightly sound very stupid.
Give up hate. Give up facism. Give up excessive consumerism
All sounds fine to me!
Pipe dream but noble
Gun ownership =/= fascism
Agreed. But Americans love both right now
No
Sigh.
Let me try:
"Just give up the crossbows!". Nah, sounds fine.
"Just give up the anthrax!". Nope, totally ok with that.
"Just give up the punji stick pittraps". Still feeling ok.
I don't think it sounds stupid at all.
This is so American. Just give up the damn child pornography!
This is so American. Just give up the damn heroin!
This is so American. Just give up the damn National Socialism!
I'm tending to side with her, but they were legally purchased and probably expensive, it would be nice if he could at least get a tax write-off or something.
Sometimes you gotta pick your battles. What's gonna be easier long term, giving up your guns or fighting this in the courts?
Nah, let the gun nut reflect on their idiocy.
and leave the violent fascists in red states and the government to have a monopoly on violence? get fucked.
What kind of gun do you have for you to take on the government with it?
So you think your 9mm is going to defend you from a government tank when it actually comes down to violence? You're fucked, gun or no gun.
The concept of an armed populace facing the government doesn’t usually involve a direct head on opposition. Armed resistance to a corrupt government would take a more guerrilla warfare approach. A real world example could be the anti-junta rebellion happening in Myanmar.
You're forgetting that the US lost 3 wars to guerilla tactics, 2 of those in the last decade
Guerilla tactics in foreign countries on the other side of the planet, where they needed to overcome giant logistics problems.
Fighting on their own territory where they already have all their bases and equipment is not going to end the same way.
You're forgetting that it's also where most of the military's supplies come from. That means their sources are more vulnerable as well
It may not, but then the logistics becomes an even more insidious problem- how do you determine who is loyal to the government/military and who will disclose shipping routes or guard routines or other classified info. Further, because it is within the US, and the families of the loyalists are impacted, how do you guarantee their loyalty?
The US lost because of domestic pressure to end those wars. Militarily the US was never in danger of defeat. Do you think that the current US administration is going to give a singular shit about domestic pressure once the shooting starts? If the military sides with the government, the government wins. If the military sides against the government the government loses.
The war in Afghanistan went on for 20 years, with Iraq and Vietnam lasting not much less. And once the US military left all of those countries, all of the regimes that the US put into place fell apart relatively quickly.
In what universe are those conditions a win? In what universe are they even a tie?!?
I know you're just parroting an argument you've seen written by someone else before. Maybe it's because of patriotism. Maybe it's because of pride and not wanting to admit defeat. Maybe it's something else. Regardless, I ask that you take a step back and actually think about your comment logically.
Tanks need parts, tanks need fuel, tanks need ammo, tanks need constant maintenance. I'm not advocating for violence but the truth is an Abrams might have machine guns and ERA, but a factory doesn't. And look how drone warfare has changed the game, small groups of people can take on tanks, supply lines or factories without even being in line of sight
You don't need to be in line of sight, your family needs to be. Are you still going to risk it if you know that the government will throw your family into a concentration camp in response?
Assume that the fascists in this fight have zero respect for human rights or human lives. Because they've already proven that they don't.
Even more reason to not roll over and let them win.
The government will throw your family into a concentration camp either way. Will you acquiese and die like a dog, or will you stand and fight?
I'm not worried about the tank, I'm worried about Tim, the guy from two doors down who has seventeen firearms and an F350 and walks around yelling homophobic slurs.
Tim shouldn't be allowed guns either.
Tim ain't gonna give up his guns without violence. Good luck with your proposal now.
If we treated every criminal like that, the world would overflow with murderers and violent thugs even more than it already does.
You're not an American, you don't get a seat at this table. A. The state of New York is three times larger than your entire country by land mass. B. The state of New York is larger by population than your entire country. That's one state out of fifty, what works for you doesn't work for everyone. Go play with your home-use pocket knife, don't forget to lock it in the trunk while you drive to the campsite.
Then Tim is probably going to get himself killed in a standoff with the police.
The police in the U.S. are on Tim's side. Hell, Tim might be a police officer.