AndyC wrote:punkndisorderly wrote:The majority may say they'll ignore it, but I have a feeling a "sizable minority" would be closer to the truth.
If it passes, they win.
Some, or most, will fall in line. Victory for them.
Some will bury them, which takes them out of use. Victory for them.
Some will keep them, have them stolen, not report them stolen and they'll be used in crimes so they can push for more draconian measures. Victory for them.
Some will use them for defense and wind up in jail. Victory for them.
Some will make too much noise and be made an example of. "See that crazy man shot at our heroic ATF agents" Victory for them.
The remainder live looking over their shoulder the rest of their days. Victory for them.
Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer.
And how many agents could they stand to lose before they call it a day? Victory for us.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been
like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest,
had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his
family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when
they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in
their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at
every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose
and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people
with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would
very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and,
notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to
a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no
awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything
that happened afterward.” ---Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, political dissident and gulag prisoner in the Soviet Union
