Samizdata

Charles Dodgson at Through the Looking Glass takes us to task regarding our views on the interblog gunwars. Whilst some of his points just boil down to a matter of opinion, he also spectacularly misunderstands a few things. In this discussion we are dealing not so much with the rights or wrongs of guns but whether there is actually any point in owning arms as a hedge against tyranny.

Take, for example, Waco and Ruby Ridge. Both of them show American law enforcement at its absolute bloody worst, actually killing civilians; I would have liked to see some of the officers involved in these fiascoes go up on manslaughter charges at least. The victims in these cases had significant arsenals which proved, in the end, to do them no good at all. The reverse, if anything, at Waco at least; the Feds were at least nominally there to arrest the folks they wound up killing on weapons charges — if not for the guns, the Feds would never have showed up in the first place.

That is a strange way of looking at it, blaming the victims for, well, being the victims. It is rather like saying if people didn’t have valuable stuff worth stealing, they would not have to worry about being robbed. Certainly the US security apparatus is more than capable of picking off groups like the Branch Davidians or Randy Weaver if it is thus inclined, no argument there. Of course I would argue that looking at those incidents is rather incomplete unless you look at all the consequences, namely Oklahoma. One does not have to agree with or admire Tim McVeigh to see that the action he took in response to those events does seem to have raised awareness amongst the jackboot tendency in all governments that there can be costs to the application of tyranny beyond immediate calculation. If a few more Waco’s were to happen, I have no doubt more Oklahoma’s would have followed. Guns themselves are just part of the equation. It is just a matter of whether a critical mass of a society is involved or just a disliked fringe like the Branch Davidians.

Of course, I’m not arguing here that the answer to homicidal loons in the ATF is unilateral civilian disarmament.

Actually I suspect he is probably arguing for incremental civilian disarmament, but we’ll let that slide for now.

There are plenty of good reasons for responsible civilians to have access to firearms — self-defense, hunting for food, just plain sport. What I’m arguing against is the Samizdata crowd’s faith in gun ownership as a way for people to defend their other civil rights. When used for that purpose, the damn things just don’t seem to work.

It seems to have worked in Northern Ireland, regardless of whether or not you think Sinn Fein’s objectives are admirable or not. No superpower assistance required.

What makes the Samizdata claims here even harder to swallow is that they’re talking about loosely organized civilian irregulars repelling not just squads of rogue cops, but the combined United States military forces — the most fearsome military machine that has ever existed on the planet — on its own home ground. That may have made sense 200 years ago, when it’s how we kicked out the British. (Oh wait, it’s not. Never mind). But that was then; this is now.

Now here is where Charles really blows it. He seems to be describing a scenario in which a tyrannous US state is able to turn the US military, not just the thugs of BATF or the FBI, against a section of their own people without question. And just whose ‘home ground’ is Charles describing? The home ground of the families of those self same people in the US military. It is one thing killing Afghans from 20,000 feet up. It is rather different telling folks in the US military to fire on people in Kansas or Florida.

Forget the guns. Where are these guys getting the bullets? Sustained combat operations of any kind chew up ammo at a ferocious pace, and current American combat doctrine seems to begin with the interdiction of supply lines, disruption of communication channels, and destruction of stores. Camouflage can delay this a bit, but the activity around these sites is more than likely to give them away eventually. Any industrial-scale production is likely to glow like a beacon on IR. And it’s difficult to deny the United States Air Force air superiority over East Texas.

Here Charles has a very strange view of the nature of insurgency. The US had air superiority over South Vietnam too and it was that sort of thinking which lost that war. The US military has lots of lovely ammo and in such a scenario, that is where much of the insurgent’s supplies would come from… this is ‘Insurgency 101’ stuff to be honest.

And from there, the comparisons get even sillier. Take Algeria, where Islamic fundamentalists are trying to mount a rebellion against a secular government.

Actually I was referring to the Algerian war of independence against France, not the current fun and games. And interestingly many French make the same claims that ‘France won the war but just lost the will to fight’. Funny that.

Which leaves Northern Ireland. I’m not sure which collection of homicidal maniacs Perry has cast as the freedom fighters here, or what he thinks they’ve achieved, but I don’t think the upshot there was fully protective of anybody’s civil rights.

And here Charles entirely misses the point as well has having a rather poorly informed view of the realities on the ground. The political policies of the IRA are not the issue in this discussion, their methods are. The fact is, Northern Ireland is the best analogy of all. The British have been unable to force its rule on a significant armed section of society and if circumstances ever drove a significant section of US society to do the same, all the fancy toys in the hands of the US military would count for as much as they do for British Army in Northern Ireland. As for what armed violence has achieved, would you argue that the civil rights of Catholics in Northern Ireland are not better now than they were in 1968? Of course they are. And why do you think that is? Reasoned political discourse backed up by women singing kumbayah? I don’t think so. If enough people support it, even if it is only a minority within a minority, as is the case in Ulster, violent insurgency does indeed work.

I am not arguing that is what the US should be headed for, of course not, but the fact is that arms in civilian hands are far more effective against one’s own state than a foreign one and all manner of fancy tanks, ICVs, artillery, aircraft etc., do not make a damn bit of difference in those sort of situations. The RAF has air superiority over Ulster too.