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After some of my recent rethinking about violent crime, I have realized that while before, I leant towards a pro-2nd Amendment position, I am now leaning against the 2nd Amendment, at least theoretically (I will explain more about what I mean by this further below). I could be into a more narrow version of the 2nd Amendment that restricts gun ownership to only certain highly vetted groups. However, I think that too much of American public is simply too stupid, impulsive, and/or antisocial to be trusted with guns. For a similar reason as to why I would not give children in general guns even though a certain fraction of them are capable of using them properly, I do not trust the American public in general with guns.
The main reason why I have had a pro-2nd Amendment position in the past was because I believed that the 2nd Amendment is a bulwark against government overreach. However, while the US is to me unquestionably more free when it comes to civil rights than, for example, Europe, I am not sure how much this has to do with private gun ownership. I have also seen the class of people who share my attitudes about the 2nd Amendment being a bulwark against government overreach repeatedly fail to actually use their guns even when they believe that such overreach exists. When I hear that something like half of Trump supporters claim to literally believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, yet I also see that basically none of them used guns to do anything about it, it gives me some doubt about this whole "bulwark against government tyranny" train of thought. And almost needless to say, widespread public gun ownership did nothing to stop NSA domestic surveillance or, long before that, things like the WWI-era Espionage Act. Or, for that matter, slavery.
Now, I do believe in the argument that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns". Hence the part about "theoretically" in my first paragraph. Changing the 2nd Amendment now would likely be a bad idea for the simple reason that there are already so many guns in the US that there is no plausible way that simply getting rid of the 2nd Amendment would lead to any outcome other than a bunch of pro-social people handing in their guns while a huge fraction of anti-social people keep them. And that would be very bad. Hence I mean, I still support the 2nd Amendment in practice as a defense against anti-social people. But I am questioning whether it might not be better now if the US had gotten rid of the 2nd Amendment say, a hundred years ago or so.
I should make clear that I am not clearly against the 2nd Amendment even theoretically. Like I said, I am just beginning to lean against it. I am no longer convinced that its supposed upsides are worth the downsides.
It is clear to me that the modern Democratic Party is essentially an enabler of violent crime, and that is one of the main reasons why I cannot imagine myself voting for a Democrat. However, I also see how the Republicans' pro-2nd Amendment position has contributed to the problem, and I cannot let them off the hook.
Edit: I should note that I would vastly prefer a hardcore crackdown on violent crime that does not take away pro-social people's guns, as opposed to taking away most people's guns. I believe that only a very small minority of Americans commit violent crime. However, I am not sure how likely it would be for such a crackdown to work in America to reduce the level of violent crime to what I would like it to be (not zero, but something like Japan levels), given the sheer size of the country and the sheer number of guns that exist here.
A popular uprising against tyranny is possible today. See Venezuela, Hong Kong, Ireland, etc. Just because we haven't reached the boiling point doesn't mean that we would never rebel on the face of tyranny, and it also doesn't mean that arms haven't subtly discouraged tyranny.
Meanwhile the poor saps in HK and venezuela got no chance in heck of throwing off the yoke of communism.
I think this isn't applicable to a theoretical "disarmed" US. Just look at how other recent civil wars started out, where an autocratic Government pushed the populace to far. Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine.
They all tried to violently suppress street protests, and the moment the badly armed population needed to fight back because they were getting shot in the streets, they either sacked police stations and military armories; or entire guard/police/army battalions switched sides and brought their guns with them.
I see no reason to think the US would turn out different. It's unthinkable that large-scale violence would be used against citizens in the streets with police/national guard/fed. armed forces just watching their neighbors and brothers being killed. The US still has sufficient diversity in its armed forces, there is no large distinct outgroup they would collectively tolerate being violently suppressed.
Also, police armories have gotten ridiculous, and defending them seems like a daunting task once you start slaughtering people in the streets. We've seen burning police stations before, at much lower stakes. Looting them before setting the fires is kind of a given.
This all depends on state capacity. The state capacity in these shithole countries is low and the discipline and morale in their armed forces is even lower. This can't happen in HK at all.
History has shown that they will kill if ordered to. Kent state is the most obvious example but there are others.
True, HK is a totally different story. But it's also very different than the US. I'm also not at all convinced that a few hundred thousand AR-15s would change their situation all that much.
That's kind of my point. Kent State is the obvious worst case example. At 4 dead and 9 wounded. The number of guardsmen actually aiming at bodies was probably lower than those two numbers, and it happens exceedingly rarely.
Which brings us back to discipline and morale. Unless some out-group is identified and systematically "othered", I can't see a guard unit murdering students in larger numbers without both going out the window on day one.
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