Heh. You can really tell in this thread who has grown up with guns and who hasn't.
I remember my grandpa taking me under some bridge somewhere and letting me loose off a few .45 rounds. I was about 8.
It was supremely stupid. In fact, I have a vivid memory of it almost being a disaster. My grandpa lived in a bad part of Alton, IL. His house got broken into on a regular basis. So he kept a loaded pistol right next to his bed.
Somehow I found this thing at around the same age, and started fooling around with it.
But then something interesting happened. The thing my grandpa taught me: never to assume a gun wasn't loaded, and always check it. So I checked it, and sure enough, I did not squeeze the trigger that day.
My point is, it doesn't take much training to be safe around weapons. Military tactics are an entirely different matter, of course. It's not a great idea to have random people running around with guns.
But they're not random people. They're defending their home. If SF was under attack by Japan in an alternate universe, wouldn't you do the same?
Seeing Kiev unfold makes me feel a strange kinship with Washington, of all people. There too, people had very little combat training, and were pretty much arming the neighbors. But it turns out that armed neighbors can sometimes be effective.
I feel obligated to point out that a major reversal in Washington's fortunes came when Lafeyette (and a few other European officers such as Steuben) trained American colonists, and they became dramatically more effective. Who knows, maybe there are equivalents of Lafeyette and Steuben among the Ukrainian people today, but if so I wouldn't know about it (or expect to).
Ukraina has been living with the threat of war for a while now. They have had help training from both neighbour and not so neighbour countries since 2015 at least.
I've seen a few videos of citizens lining up for weapons, and IMO, the troubling thing is the lack of uniforms. If Russians can't tell the difference between civilians and combatants, everyone becomes a target.
‘Legally?’ Nope. But that is literally how every invasion ends up until the population is ‘pacified’. It’s why guerilla war works so well too.
The invaders/gov’t can’t tell who is actually an adversary until it is late, and attempts to guess always kill innocent civilians which just draws more anger and hate from
the local population and creates more rebels/guerillas.
This is why people say ‘war is hell - because it is.
It's not clear if it helps in the long run, it probably does but a lot of friendly fire should be expected. Just recent example where Ukrainian anti aircraft units were taken for Russians and killed in Kyiv (the one where strela 10 vehicle collided with a car under fire) shows the danger.
To be fair to myself and you, I grew up in rural america around with guns everywhere. Took hunter safety, whole shebang, never really got around to buying myself or using automatic weapons.
I see your point on the American revolution, but please, let's not forget times have changed. the US population were on home ground with rifled barrels, easier to aim and using geurilla tactics against an old british standing line firing system (also their rifles weren't always rifled ;) ).
The chance that a population of civilians with weapons goes to hide in a bunker with or without unarmed people is higher than it is with military troops, and what happens when Russian intel says there are enemy combatants hiding in a bunker vs a bunch of civilians hiding in a bunker...chances go up that they will receive a bunker buster knock and talk more than if there were unarmed people there.
The Ukrainians aren't some ragtag group. Literally thousands of antitank weapons have been supplied to them.
The Ukrainian military, and even their air force, are still coordinated and operational.
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This means that rifle militia aren't there to kill a tank. They are there to force the tank commander inside with small arms fire. Tanks are famously difficult to see out of.
Once in there, the tank is a sitting duck to a Javelin or Panzerfaust will kill the tank reliably.
This isn't 100 poorly trained militia vs tank.
The situation is closer to 100 poorly trained militia + 5 professional soldiers armed with NATO top of the line antitank missiles vs tank.
Having grown up around guns, you should know that modern semi and fully automatic rifles are 100x more n00b friendly than an 18th century muzzle loader.
If pseudonymous self-professed US veterans of Afghanistan/Iraq wars commenting online are to be trusted, balloons full of paint are among the most effective anti-tank weapons in urban fighting.
That works but a Molotov cocktail on the engine air intake is also pretty good and easy too. The goal is to get the crew out of the tank. Usually you have a LOT of infantry around tanks to provide security
Was it not Stalin who said "quantity has a quality all its own?"
There are hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, but tens of millions of Ukranians capable of using rifles semi-effectively. And they are literally everywhere in the country.
Some folks probably shouldn't have guns because of emotional control issues:
> A man was arrested early morning after shots were fired at another man during what the sheriff's department is calling a road rage dispute in Coachella.
I wonder if Dang is checking all those throwaways to see which are Russian propagandists.
Yes, of course some idiots can shoot themselves with guns, but most people don't. In fact, even most idiots don't. USA has more guns than people and those freak accidents are rare. Various third world countries have people who cannot read, but who can shoot a gun. And again, they dont hurt themselves.
If you wanted to make some dig about guns, then maybe give examples of real problems (school shootings, robberies, being killed by a stray bullet), but here you come with some absurd comments that "NOT shooting yourself into your foot" requires 200 IQ, which is a straight lie. Using a gun is probably on par of learning to ride a bike, and definitely much easier than driving a car.
Ukrainians cant get a guns to defend their homeland, because some propaganda throwaway (sponsored by GRU or KGB?) claims that they will shoot themselves in their feet.
Those people are defending their homes against an aggression, most probably were conscripts who were taught how to use a gun.
> Ukrainians cant get a guns to defend their homeland, because some propaganda throwaway (sponsored by GRU or KGB?) claims that they will shoot themselves in their feet.
Please quote back the part of my post where I say they can't. Please.
> And yet too many people do not get any kind of training:
In Ukraine every man over 40 years old received a training on basic infantry tactics and using assault rifle AK-74 and hand grenade RGD-5 during high school years.
The use of the word "accident" in the above story is also not accurate IMHO, for the same reason why "car accident" isn't:
> The two groups behind the recent campaign — Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets — argue that the term "accident" makes it seem like crashes are inevitable, rather than preventable. In a subtle way, it normalizes the crash and discourages us from looking more deeply into their causes — whether alcohol, reckless driving, or bad street design.
Certainly the training they got during service is good, but the GP's point about not much training being needed isn't as simple as he makes it out IMHO.
I remember my grandpa taking me under some bridge somewhere and letting me loose off a few .45 rounds. I was about 8.
It was supremely stupid. In fact, I have a vivid memory of it almost being a disaster. My grandpa lived in a bad part of Alton, IL. His house got broken into on a regular basis. So he kept a loaded pistol right next to his bed.
Somehow I found this thing at around the same age, and started fooling around with it.
But then something interesting happened. The thing my grandpa taught me: never to assume a gun wasn't loaded, and always check it. So I checked it, and sure enough, I did not squeeze the trigger that day.
My point is, it doesn't take much training to be safe around weapons. Military tactics are an entirely different matter, of course. It's not a great idea to have random people running around with guns.
But they're not random people. They're defending their home. If SF was under attack by Japan in an alternate universe, wouldn't you do the same?
Seeing Kiev unfold makes me feel a strange kinship with Washington, of all people. There too, people had very little combat training, and were pretty much arming the neighbors. But it turns out that armed neighbors can sometimes be effective.
Here's a fascinating piece of propaganda for you: https://twitter.com/peedutuisk/status/1497310882069581824
It's propaganda, but it's very good propaganda. For a brief moment, I was actually crazy enough to wish I was out there helping them.