ICE and the Smartphone Panopticon

As a person from an authoritarian country, I should say that firearms mean much less than coordination. Organized group of 100 with no guns is stronger than 10000 armed but poorly coordinated people.

In other words, a "well regulated Militia" in the Second Amendment is more important than "bear arms".

But no one talks about creating a Militia (yet) for some reason.

> Organized group of 100 with no guns is stronger than 10000 armed but poorly coordinated people.

What examples are you drawing from when making this conclusion?

> In other words, a "well regulated Militia" in the Second Amendment is more important than "bear arms".

Originally standing armies were not allowed. Each state was expected to perform it's own defense. The governor could create and disband a militia to defend the state. It was expected they would appear with their own arms.

> But no one talks about creating a Militia (yet) for some reason.

Subservient to what power?

> But no one talks about creating a Militia (yet) for some reason.

The line between "private militia" and "terrorism" isn't very well defined. If the people are unsuccessful, they will be labeled as terrorists and potentially put to death. Most people don't want to be executed, and as far as I am aware there's only been one successful violent insurrection in the US [1], so the odds are very much not in your favor.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_massacre#Aftermath

> The governor could create and disband a militia to defend the state.

so you’re saying a governor could declare their state to be under attack and organize a militia maybe even using state funds?

As a person who was previously involved with the (somewhat more "casual") parts of the American militia movement - meaning all the right-wingers with guns - I should note that they do have some organization. Not much of it, to be fair, but generally speaking they at least know of other neighboring groups and have points of contact to coordinate "when it's time". There are also some people involved into all this that specifically go around lecturing those militias and helping them network. In my state (WA), ten years ago, these guys were affiliated with Matt Shea, and were organizing to bring supplies to firefighters during the fire season as a front of sorts. But they were pretty clear about the real nature of the org in the lecture that I've been in.

So the reality of the situation is that the vast majority of US gun owners, especially if you look at who owns "tactical" guns and gear (a 3-round hunting rifle is one thing, an AR with a full 7-mag loadout in a plate carrier is a very different one) are people who actively support the present government, or castigate them for not going far enough. So the relatively small groups of armed lefties - mostly hard left, anarchists, SRA, some Black groups like NAAGA etc; but very few liberals and mainstream progressives - are largely inconsequential.

You probably meant "insurrection" instead of "terrorism". Terrorism is trying to achieve some goals by means of terror.

E.g. separatism (like Texan or Californian) can be named insurrection.

No I meant terrorism. If you were doing a violent attack on the federal government in order to try and get them to stop policies you don't like, I do not see a fundamental difference between that and terrorism.

No, attack on _forces_ (army, national guard, police etc) will not be recognized terrorism, most likely. Those forces are assumed to not get afraid. Of course, I can imagine something like that that might be considered terrorism, but it's a long stretch, don't remember any cases. Terrorism is almost always directed towards civilians.

Also when a force commits terror acts against other force (e.g. Russian military maiming captured PoWs) -- that's a war crime, not a terrorism either.

And why we so quick to jump to "attack"? There is a huge area the Militia can do without "attack"s. Sabotage, road blocks, building blocks, detention. Detention is violence, but it's not attack.

PS: of course the other side may call it "terror", that's for sure.

> PS: of course the other side may call it "terror", that's for sure.

That's sort of what I'm getting at. I do think you could consider some of it terrorism in the classical definition of the word in that it would be ideologically motivated and it would be done by a comparatively small set of people. I don't think an attack on a big institution is a disqualifier either, considering that some people consider Guy Fawkes a terrorist [1], and he was trying to blow up British Parliament. If you have a small group of people using armed force in order to coerce politicians to act in a certain way, I don't think it's necessarily a stretch to call it terrorism.

Regardless, even if it doesn't fit into the classical definition of "terrorism" (though I really think we're splitting hairs on this and it's getting into "distinction without a difference" territory), there is no doubt that the Trump administration would classify all these people as terrorists and try and impose any and all "anti terrorism" legislation possible.

To be clear, I'm not assigning a value judgement to this, I don't think definitions like "good" or "bad" really work here.

[1] https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-education/depar...