Comment by bloqs
1 day ago
I roll my eyes when I see this blissfully naive LARP/mallninja imagined scenario, but I do have to remind myself that the US was founded on the basis of forming a milita etc. and I would probably say the same thing if I had that upbringing. You forget that the vast majority of people are stupid and easily scared (this is not a solvable problem)
Help me out - how can policing possibly work if no one is legally required to be policed? You just end up with murderers, rapists etc. expressing their right to "resist" with arms like in spaghetti westerns. It is totally symbolic, and would crumble at the first instance of serious government interest of arresting 'troublemakers', which would of course start with a well crafted PR campaign to get the rest of the public on their side. I think it's naive.
This feels like a strawman because you’re only hypothesizing a situation in which it wouldn’t work well.
Imagine a dark future with a sudden military coup by a small faction of extreme radicals that 85% of the population opposes. could enough citizens rise up and stop them? Could the calculus of being that coup leader be changed by the likelihood that they will be assassinated in short order, by one of millions of potential assassins? Quite possibly. These are not everyday concerns, of course, but the concerns of dark and dangerous times. It’s a bit like buying life insurance: hopefully I never need it.