> How would Hong Kong look right now if the population were lightly armed?
Let’s be honest, if they were armed and gun ownership weren’t already against the law, the Chinese government would sweep in and pass a law that day and start going door to door, seizing weapons, take the people from their families and send then to reeducation camps. It wouldn’t forward their cause at all.
The word “civic” is odd here too (I recognize that your comment is about the intent of the parent comment’s argument), because the opposite pole to political violence is… civil discourse. There is an unavoidable incoherence to the idea that gun ownership is about civic responsibility.
How does private gun ownership check the government?
How would the government act differently if citizens owned fewer or different or no guns? Where does the fantasy that the everyone is out to get you and you had better be armed and ready come from? Cowboy movies? The whole idea of the cowboy is myth[0].
If you want to see real power hungry government in action, don’t think SWAT coming for you, look at the Missouri State Health director keeping a spreadsheet of women’s menstrual cycles, in order to make sure that if any became pregnant the state could intercede [1].
If you’re reading HN, you’re probably some kind of engineer. So tell me, how is a problem which is itself generated by the accumulation of brute power solved by a countervailing accumulation of brute power? Which then just becomes an arms race. Which is objectively insane. It is an infinite loop. How do you break it?
Premade monorepos are fine, I’m sure, but My experience is trying to fix a poor development situation that might benefit from synthesizing several repos, but modifying existing setups is extremely fragile, never straightforward, and therefore hard to justify the time expense to your team.
Let’s be honest, if they were armed and gun ownership weren’t already against the law, the Chinese government would sweep in and pass a law that day and start going door to door, seizing weapons, take the people from their families and send then to reeducation camps. It wouldn’t forward their cause at all.
The word “civic” is odd here too (I recognize that your comment is about the intent of the parent comment’s argument), because the opposite pole to political violence is… civil discourse. There is an unavoidable incoherence to the idea that gun ownership is about civic responsibility.