this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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No Stupid Questions

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So, lets say we get to August or some summer month, and 4,000,000 people are protesting right out front the white house.

Do they send in the tanks? Do they kill 1,000,000 people? Would republican civilians see empathy for the dead americans who were democrats? Or would it unite the nation like 9/11 did, except this time against the government?

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[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 258 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (42 children)

In 1970, the National Guard opened fire on a crowd of peaceful, unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine more. A Gallup poll conducted a week after the shooting found that 58% of Americans blamed the students for the massacre, with only 11% blaming the guardsmen. Many students who were present at the massacre were shunned by their own families, some were even disowned, and some were told that even more students should have been killed to teach them a lesson.

The students, for their part, couldn't even comprehend what was happening at first. Many of them thought the soldiers' weapons were loaded with blanks, that they were just trying to intimidate them. After the massacre, many of the students wanted to reassemble and continue peacefully demonstrating, in defiance of the guard. One of the professors convinced them to disperse, by shouting at them that all of them would be killed.

How was it possible for the public to see it that way? Because of how the media spun it. Even before the massacre, they were saying that the protests were full of "outside agitators" and claiming that they had been doing things like lacing the water supply with LSD. Of course, it eventually "came out" that these claims were complete bullshit based on nothing. So, once the moment had passed, they quietly printed retractions.

All that shit still happens today. It happens every single time a cop murders someone, whether it's Renee Good or George Floyd. The right wingers immediately start digging for any possible way to spin it and if they can't then they simply lie, and if the lie falls apart it doesn't matter, by that point people will have forgotten and moved on.

Yes they will kill you. They'll put people down like dogs and worry about how to justify it later. People want to believe the world is just, and that often means blaming the victim. They'll do it and they'll get away with it too.

Buy a gun.

[–] Einskjaldi@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

That was partially just a result of the NG having rifles but not the less than lethal tear gas and stuff now.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Lol buying a gun won't fix anything. You need to train with it and connect with other people who know how to use guns (and who can get other resources for you) or well, Luigi Mangione can tell you the other option.

Just consuming gun won't fix anything.

[–] BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My question is, why do authoritarians try so hard to disarm a populace then? It seems every person thinks we'll have a large formation of troops fighting it out and not turn this into any number of guerilla resistance movements against the USA and other countries throughout time.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

There's 1.5 guns per person in the USA, but we also have the largest prison population per capita in the world.

I can't name an authoritarian that started by disarming people. My guess would be there comes a point where disarming the populace happens in authoritarian process as part of "disarming the enemy". When the enemy is the public, you disarm all of them.

So succesful authoritarians eventually just reach the point where the public is the enemy. They either get there by killing people or imprisoning them or starving them.

In the US they're making housing unaffordable. You sell your gun to pay rent, problem solved for the wealthy. There's much higher death rates for homeless people. There have been a number of stats that say the US has similar death rates to societies in civil wars.

If guns were used as a solution I think we'd see more sherriffs and deputies being shot during evictions.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago (35 children)

How do you train with a gun if you don't have one?

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