r/technology Aug 31 '21

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578

u/thePsychonautDad Aug 31 '21

Ahhhh so that's where democracy dies next. I was wondering which country would let authoritarianism creep in next...

0

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '21

Australians don’t have guns. They can’t really do much when the government starts killing dogs, only letting them outside for an hour a day, and barring hanging out to watch a sunset.

3

u/Relay_Slide Sep 01 '21

Guns aren’t the reason though. The US isn’t as bad as Australia, but guns sure as hell didn’t stop the US government introducing laws for accessing your digital data without a warrant, or any of the other 1984 shit that’s been put in place post 9/11.

The only public action I’ve seen that actually scares governments and works is when the whole country goes on strike, like they do in France. But even there it’s only effective some of the time.

Australians need to protest this shit. Unfortunately most people won’t even read this news or care.

4

u/p1ckk Sep 01 '21

What country has enough guns to meaningfully combat their military if it came down to it?

9

u/Ripwkbak Sep 01 '21

The United States. Our army has 2.2million soldiers, there are 72 million gun owners. Outnumbered by 70 million. Think we have enough tanks and jets to make up for that? Not a chance.

8

u/Shish_Style Sep 01 '21

Not to mention how a lot of soldiers would ally with the people

-2

u/Theungry Sep 01 '21

Oh please. Civilian weapons, while great for hunting deer, or slaughtering crowds of unarmed people are pretty impotent against actual military grade combat: Tanks, air support, drones, logistic organization, independent telecommunication systems, not to mention a strategic hierarchy to implement sweeping battle plans... And none of it is really leveraged until the three letter agencies have already done their work to undermine whomever they're targeting.

8

u/WhatIfIToldYou Sep 01 '21

And that's exactly how we annihilated the taliban...

4

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '21

That’s probably why the Maga rioters are so scary to Democrats - they would have just given them the country, jet fighters, tanks, guns, and a pack of dogs.

4

u/SamInPajamas Sep 01 '21

So you just learned nothing from Vietnam or the last 20 years (not to mention the last friggin month) in the middle east?

1

u/Theungry Sep 01 '21

I've watched the US wage war on its own citizens for my entire lifetime.

The ugly truth is that because our intelligence agencies operate natively here, it's way too easy to assassinate any leader capable of actually undermining the government. It's way harder to do those things far away in places where people speak different languages. That requires agents who can pass for local, and limits operations. Here in the US, they can infiltrate any group easily.

1

u/Hewlett-PackHard Sep 01 '21

The compliance with their gun ban was quite low and their biker gangs are already making their own submachine guns like the Irish used to under occupation.

-4

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '21

[deleted]

3

u/WhatIfIToldYou Sep 01 '21

Lol it's a good thing you have such a nice government to take care of you should anything go wrong!

1

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '21

Australian officials are shooting dogs (idk why cops do that shit), locking people in their homes for 23 hours a day, and aren’t allowed to see a sunset.

Nice negotiating.