"GHOST GUNNER"
I think that would probably be the coolist GamerTag ever!.....oh yeah and this very serious stuff....won't someone please think of the children, etc.
OMG! With nothing but machine tools, steel and parts you can make a GUN!!
Not so amazingly, it turns out that with nothing more than a lot of manufactured parts and some specialised machinery, you can make a working rifle. This "news" comes to us because a man famous for pretending to make working guns from 3D-printed plastic is selling such machinery - which does rather prove that his 3D printed …
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 20:53 GMT Brian Miller
Ah, you need to read up, Lewis
"and it will remain just a piece of metal which you can send via post, Fedex etc to anyone you like."
No, that's against the law. To transfer this to someone else, you must first obtain the right licenses, stamp the thing with a serial number, and then it can be transferred after the paperwork is done. This is the part with the serial number, and this is the part that legally constitutes the weapon.
You can, however, fill in all of the part that you can't mill, like everything else, and happily go legally shooting. That isn't against federal law.
Gun laws vary from state to state. Perhaps a state requires firearms registration, perhaps it doesn't. Perhaps it allows a person to manufacture a firearm for themselves, perhaps it doesn't. Where I live, this would be perfectly legal, but I'm not so sure about New Jersey. Also, state laws may restrict purchase to state residents, and other things like that. For instance, in the State of Washington, an individual may not own a full-auto weapon, but that weapon may be owned by a corporation. Go figure.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 21:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Ah, you need to read up, Lewis
the aforementioned "ghost gun" lower is legally an 80 percent receiver and is totally legal to mail as it is not "yet" a firearm.
It does not require CNC to complete. A $75 reusable jig, a trim router, a 3/8 chuck hand drill,some drill and cutting bits, and a decent bench with clamps and you're done. I finished one just for the hell of it three weeks ago and helped a buddy do his last weekend. Takes less than a workday. And still perfectly legal even in California, USA.
Biggest reason I built one and will do another? Because it costs less. The 80 percent lower is still cheaper than getting one shipped to CA and all the legal paperwork, waiting periods, two trips to the FFL/dealer (one to sign for receipt, another after 2 week waiting period), and legislative paperwork needed to remain in compliance. Even counting cleaning up a huge mess of aluminum shavings in the garage as time spent, I still come out on the positive side.
Plus I p*ssed off a legislative type who refuses to realize that the crooks aren't gonna go thru the hassle, and get better stuff cheaper and with no work along with the tons of drugs and humans the coyotes bring across.
P.S. This still does not make, nor even come close, to creating an "assault rifle". The internal parts for fire control (which for standard AR's are a bunch of springs and pins also mail-order capable) are not part of an 80 percent build and beyond the scope of anyone without a really good CNC system. The parts kits cannot be modified for select fire as their configuration shares almost nothing other than trigger and maybe the hammer. Disconnector, fire control selector, and a bunch else are completely different. It's like saying a Mini can be made into a 10 second quarter miler with just a few parts, one of those parts being an entire 500 cubic inch supercharged V8, and the others being a whole new fuel cell system and completely different frame.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 22:20 GMT Brian Miller
Re: Ah, you need to read up, Lewis
Hello, AC!
That's a great answer to someone else's post.
Right, you made one, and you helped a friend make one for himself. Anybody can do it legally, if they're not violating state law, which was my point. And those laws vary from state to state.
Personally, I'm all for everybody legally doing something like this. Laws have long been absurd, and people need to get involved in prodding their legislators into acting with something that resembles common sense. Unfortunately, yellow journalism and reactive politics have been with us for, well, forever.
Time to do something truly dangerous: write letters and vote.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 20:59 GMT Boris the Cockroach
Oh dear gawd
Why not spend some money buying a decent sized 2nd CNC maching center?
$5K should get you something decent if not $10K
You can get the gun blueprints and make every part quite easily* and the only time you have to check with the boring old regulations is when machining aforesaid lower reciever.
Of course after once making a little popgun, you'll get the taste for making proper guns such as semi-auto 50 cal rifles, or a copy of the famous MG-42 machine gun**
Boris***
Since footnotes are the way of things today
*easily means being able to program the mill and have enough skill/knowledge to set the thign up and machine the parts correctly... about 5-7 years is ideal
** ammunition costs usually make MG-42 ownership very expensive.. especially after the first 1000 rounds
*** 30 yrs experience of wrestling CNCs and robots to do his evil bidding to make everything from nuclear reactor gas seals to various aerospace stuff and a long history of making high quality rifle parts
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 21:17 GMT PleebSmash
Re: Oh dear gawd
"By miniaturizing the build envelope to just large enough to mill common firearm receivers, we were able to improve rigidity, reduce material cost and simultaneously relax some design limits, allowing us to sell an inexpensive machine with more than enough accuracy to manufacture firearms."
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 22:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Oh dear gawd
"You can get the gun blueprints and make every part quite easily*"
Cheap? What if I told you I could make the entire rifle with pippins and a vice, would you believe me?
Anyways, people always forget about China. There is several fabricators in China that could make the vast bulk of these weapons, and the minimum purchase order is not nearly as high as you would think. The rest you could hand tool (it's time consuming, but it's very peaceful and good for blood pressure :-).
P.S. Which mill did you see for 10K? I've never seen a reliable 10K mill.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 20:34 GMT Boris the Cockroach
Re: Oh dear gawd
Nope , no moose heads.... just a list of (un)popular politicians....
Inauguration : a way of announcing to the world that another target has taken its place on the shooting gallery..
Just kidding.. jeeez I dont really live in my basement surrounded by copies of guns and ammo
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Friday 3rd October 2014 06:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Oh dear gawd
Indeed. Who cares about assault rifles in a country where you can legally buy or make a semiautomatic long range 50 cal like the PTRS-41.
As far as 50 cal guns go it is the "king of 50 cals" - used for taking out lightly armoured vehicles, planes, enemy snipers and "annoying" politicians worldwide all the way till the Vietnam war. In fact, in use in Ukraine even now (apparently).
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Friday 3rd October 2014 20:21 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: AC Re: Oh dear gawd
"Don't forget being used to vaporize prairie dogs in the midwest US..." Well, yes, but very few UK residents seem to know that foxes are regulalry shot even in the London suburbs. Most hunting activity in the UK is kept quiet because the hunters are tired of the know-nothing brigade that will turn out to shout nonsense at them should their activities become more widely known.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 13:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Oh dear gawd
Boris, you forgot to include the riggers fee's in your costs + bootnotes, these are techies here who won't realize the logistics of moving a few ton of machine until its too late.
Its el reg, not Practical Machinist, but on the plus side their version of weldon isnt as much of an idiot ;)
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Friday 3rd October 2014 17:08 GMT Tony Haines
Feds**** ~ Tourettes syndrome.
I was sh*t the author wa**er. F***ing. Relieved ****.
* aken to read this article, sure tha
**s swearing - so many footnotes, away on another page. Might as well have been written on a piece of pap
***inally I made it to the end
**** to find out that I was mistaken.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 21:10 GMT ecofeco
Homemade firearms are an old tradition
Considering that homemade firearms have been around since the average person could first afford rudimentary machine tools, (and a significant other who didn't mind the smell and noise) I have to agree I don't see what all the hype is about either, except well, "'cause it's digital!"
The same hype and reasoning that somehow negated Fair Us copyright laws, banking and trade regulations as well as a host of other business laws.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 21:22 GMT Donn Bly
Missing the point
The whole purpose of the 3D-printed "Liberator" or this latest folly isn't to produce a working firearm, it is produce a discussion over the US gun laws, and the utter stupidity of some of the arguments used ON BOTH SIDES of the issue.
Also, something to remember is that while the number of criminals that law abiding citizens euthanize through the legal use of their personal defense weapons is relatively small, statistics are not kept on the number of times the weapons are used to diffuse a situation but are not fired. Those situations are much more common.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 21:52 GMT PleebSmash
Re: Missing the point
To be fair to the author, whom I just bashed below, Wired reports that "Subversive ambitions aside, Wilson doesn’t hide the fact that the Ghost Gunner is also a money-making project. Unlike Defense Distributed’s 3D-printing projects in the past, Wilson says selling its own CNC mill offers his group a way to fund its activities."
The product isn't merely intended to advance a debate, and should be scrutinized.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 09:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Missing the point
"Diffuse a situation", I think you mean threaten other people don't you?
It's difficult to imagine how anyone can think it makes sense for the population to be armed. As someone who lives outside the US it just seems like madness. You an twist ans turn, quote statistics all you like but giving ordinary people deadly weapons is stupid beyond belief.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 09:57 GMT codejunky
Re: Missing the point
@AC
"You an twist ans turn, quote statistics all you like but giving ordinary people deadly weapons is stupid beyond belief."
I assume by that you do not drive nor live near roads for motor vehicles (dangerous they are). Also you must be avoiding the much more available and easily accessible petroleum which is highly flammable and make a great cocktail (boom). And of course man has used the pointy end of things for a long time as well as the sharp edge and before that the blunt edge. Now there is also the issue of what the human body can process and what is considered a poison. Some being easy to smuggle into large groups.
In fact I would be careful with the cotton wool as well. Lets put a warning on it for you that says 'avoid covering your mouth and nose and only use in the presence of a responsible adult'.
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Saturday 4th October 2014 05:20 GMT Marshalltown
Re: Missing the point
"It's difficult to imagine how anyone can think it makes sense for the population to be armed."
Obviously you are not Swiss, are you, AC?
And, please, do expound upon why it is more stupid to allow gun ownership. The reasoning supporting the opinion would be interesting, if it is actually informed.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 21:31 GMT Henry Wertz 1
"So why all the hype? "
This is what the anti-gun lobby does -- comes up with problems where there really aren't any as an excuse to reduce gun rights. If you listen to these people, you'll get the impression you're in imminent danger of being shot into a fine mist by machine-gun-wielding misfits on each and every block. Ultimate goal would be to restrict *some* guns, then use that a starting point to restrict *more* guns, and so on.
The three major problems as I see it (disclaimer, I have no guns, I just am a libertarian so I don't believe in unnecessary restrictions):
1) As you're seeing now in Britain, if guns are made illegal then only criminals have guns. I read an article saying a "Saturday Night Special" in Britain is only about double the cost as in the US (something like 150 UKP) so if a crim wants a gun they can have it, and since all these guns are black market there's no realistic chance of tracking a gun down if it was used in a shooting. Despite what the article asserts, guns here usually are registered. With that said, quite a few shootings here are gangbangers shooting each other up, and a lot of those guns are illegal (not illegal mods like machine guns, but people carrying a weapon without gun permit, unregistered guns, etc.) so then you are at the same point of not being able to find the weapon.
2) Often times, these objections are not fact-based. A big problem in the US, with our relatively broken two-party system (two nearly-identical centrist parties but each party is sure they are TOTALLY polar opposite of the other), there tends to be these shows and channels and web sites that are like an echo chamber echoing more and more distorted information to meet their political agenda. A lot of people (both pro and anti-gun) are not just uninformed, they have very inaccurate information because of this.
3) Constitutionality. Gun rights are a constitutional guarantee, and anyone saying they just want to restrict them *some* indicates they are willing to ignore the constitution and the bill of rights. These are often the same people who want to start "balancing" people's rights (meaning removing rights) in other ways. There is a defined mechanism for passing a constitutional ammendment, if these people truly want to restrict a few defined types of guns and that's it, enumerate them and get an ammendment passed to do it.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 22:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Just hold UP PEOPLE !!
Where in the article is the mentioning or reference of the party that is combating gun laws? The article starts out by talking about dude, and then it just rolls straight into points of view from the editor.
This is the first time I've heard of this story, and I know there has to be some "anti-gun" movement lurking somewhere around this, but I just don't know where.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 08:30 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: Zack Mollusc
"......Surely there should be more than a 40:1 ratio?" Exactly. Or, to use an even better example of how the issue has nothing to do with the guns themselves, you can look at the example of Switzerland. For decades the Swiss required every adult of serving age to keep an assault rifle and ammo at home, a concentration or arms per head that far, far outnumbered that of the UK, yet their deaths by firearms was much lower than the UK's. The difference was one of attitude.
The truth is people kill people, and the problem is with the attitude of people shooting others in the States. And this is the bit the PC, anti-gun types really hate to face up to - the ethnic group busily killing each other the most are urban blacks, not white hunters (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/03/22/gun-deaths-shaped-by-race-in-america/ and http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/04/09/race-wars-part-1-the-shocking-data-on-black-on-black-crime/). Maybe the anti-gun crowd should spend more time lecturing black Americans than trying to take guns away from legal owners, it would seem a much more targeted approach to reducing gun crime in the U.S.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 23:40 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: moeity
".....United Kingdom 0.25 (2010)....." A bogus comparison. As Lewis pointed out in his article, the U.S. figure is two-thirds suicides that in the UK instead jump of bridges, slit their wrists, take an overdose of drugs or otherwise find a way to 'end it all'. Then, if your intent is to somehow show firearms violence the you should be comparing numbers of criminal shootings, which means you need to take the hunting accidents out of the U.S. figure (hunting is much, much less popular in the UK). And then, even after all that, you have to take the one fact you and the rest of the anti-gun propagandists like to ignore - banning handguns in the UK was supposed to stop ALL shootings but didn't.. In short, the policy is as big a failure as your 'comparison'.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 07:42 GMT A Dawson
Re: moeity
Homicides by firearms as a percentage 2012 .. US 59% (of 14,827), England and Wales 7%, Northern Ireland 22%, Scotland 0% (they prefer to stab each other apparently) all up for the UK about 700 homicides.
So in the UK not only are you about 5 times less likely to be murdered you are still around 40 times less likely to be slain by a firearm in England an Wales.
You are however right that the new handgun laws did not significantly change the trending of homicides by firearms but the rest of the conclusions seem uniformed.
source UNODC
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Monday 6th October 2014 20:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: moeity
Take out the suicides and there are about 11,000 murders committed in the USA each year. 5 to 6,000 of these are black men (6% of the population) in some ghetto shooting each other for recreation. About one third of all black men in the USA between the ages of 18 and 35 are either in prison or on parole, etc. The USA has a social problem. What is it?
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Friday 3rd October 2014 12:33 GMT Dan Paul
Moron moiety!
Take your slanted statistics elsewhere please. They mean NOTHING. There are roughly as many guns in this country as there are people. Divide any total gun related death statistic by 310 million and thats how statistically signifigany the numbers are. 0.000206 percent
61% of all US gun deaths are from SUICIDE! This is more an incrimination of the health system in the US than of gun ownership.
The VAST MAJORITY of the remainder of gun deaths are from criminals (who will always have guns) killing the unarmed.
Maybe your leftist anti ameriican media did not cover the recent murder and beheading of a co-worker by a radicalised islamic convert in Ohio. Alton Nolen was shot by the company ceo as he tried to attack another co-worker. That ceo had a concealed carry permit and had a legal handgun.
Now Alton Nolen is in jail, very much alive and awaiting trial.
Maybe that will give you the "general idea". Armed citizens prevent crime. Cops can't get there in time.
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Saturday 4th October 2014 02:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Moron moiety!
Bit harsh, don't you think? Calling someone a moron because they copied' n'pasted statistics you don't agree with?
Also, anyone who is wanting to deduct suicides from the US figures should also deduct suicides from the UK figures. (SPOILER: It's most of them). Go on, look it up.
At least you spelled 'moron' right, so kudos for that, I suppose.
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Monday 6th October 2014 15:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Moron moiety!
No, not harsh at all.... Try looking for US Sources of statistics when discussing US subjects. Try using "statistically significant numbers" instead of incorrect BS developed to foster the anti-gun side of the argument.
READ the whole statement where I specifically say that the use of guns to commit suicide is more a comment on the lack of mental health care in this country. No, you are deliberately stirring shit up with bogus stats. You're a moron.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 12:55 GMT Robert Helpmann??
Death Rate
Firearm-related death rate per 100,000 population per year...
Removing easy access to weapons and increasing police presence are two different aspects that affect the outcome of this. Also, focusing on the implement used in violence does not address underlying causes. Perhaps better comparisons might be homicide rate, number of law enforcement officials and average income.
Homicides/100,000 (2012)
US - 4.7 UK - 1.0 Afghanistan 6.5
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)
Law enforcement/100,00 (2012/2009)
US - 248 UK - 307 Afghanistan 401
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_police_officers)
Average Wage ($US 2012)
Gross US - 55,047 UK - 44,222 Afghanistan 70/426 (2004/2010)
Disposable US - 38,753 UK - 29,938
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_police_officers
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LA29Df04.html)
Still a bit simplistic, but a shot (pardon the pun) in the right direction. It's not a simple interaction between one or two factors.
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Saturday 4th October 2014 05:27 GMT Marshalltown
Apples and pears
Yes, indeed, firearm related deaths are higher in the US than in the UK. However, the rates are immensely closer when you look at "intentional homicide" instead. That includes all the other weapons around you, including bludgeons, frying pans, poisons - visit the Agatha Christy "poison garden" some time - cars, bare hands, boots, bats (cricket or baseball), and etc. You also fail to mention how many of the UK firearm deaths are instantiated with a legal weapon. The odds are very low that more than a very small fraction are from legal weapons of any kind.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 08:04 GMT hammarbtyp
Sigh....
Sigh...
1) As you're seeing now in Britain, if guns are made illegal then only criminals have guns.
There is very little you can do to restrict access to something if someone really wants it and it is widely available elsewhere. However...The big difference is that in the UK owning a gun is not seen as something common place or ordinary. If I saw a non-uniformed person carrying a fire arm I would call the police. This makes the use and access to guns far more difficult and attractive. Not only that crimes involving firearms (even carrying one) carry a much higher tariff, again making them largely unattractive to the criminal classes. More importantly because gun ownership is so low, the general population does not feel the need to engage in an arms race based on some FUD factor. Gun ownership itself is not an issue, but glorification of the need for ownership of a lethal device is.
3) Well true, although the original intention was so that the population could resist foreign aggression against the bigger adversaries of the time. I doubt the founding fathers foresaw the time when the USA would be the worlds military superpower. Nor does it specify what sort of weapons should be allowed. If we are a origionalist you could argue it should be restricted to a brown bess musket. On the other hand some on the right feel they will never be safe unless the are nuclear armed. This amendment has been stretched by various arms lobby groups to the point where it no longer provides the protections that it was originally designed to provide.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 11:24 GMT rh587
Re: Sigh....
"If I saw a non-uniformed person carrying a fire arm I would call the police."
I hope not. The list of scenarios where it's appropriate to call the Police because a non-uniformed individual is in possession of a firearm is actually quite short.
If you see someone carrying an uncovered firearm, then you're probably in the countryside and they're hunting. Hunters, whilst understanding of public ignorance and paranoia, get really fucked off when armed police come tramping over their permission and scare off the rabbits or foxes they were hunting because a dog walker couldn't figure out why someone in the countryside might be shooting in a field. Basically puts an end to the evening's work.
Similarly, a local clay pigeon site has a public footpath running through the car park. Presumably you wouldn't call the police about this hotbed of gun usage if you passed through on a ramble?
Driving along Queen's Road form Bisley in Surrey you'll pass by the back corner of Century Range at the national shooting centre. On a normal weekend you'll see hundreds of people shooting, none of them uniformed!
Granted, if you see someone ambling down the high street with a rifle over their shoulder then that's probably a cause for concern, but interestingly not illegal provided they have good reason to be carrying - such as transporting it to/from a gunsmith. Thanks to our wonderful mish mash of laws, it'd only be illegal to carry an airgun uncovered. Carrying a rifle or shotgun back to the car uncovered may attract attention but isn't actually illegal!
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Friday 3rd October 2014 12:53 GMT hammarbtyp
Re: Sigh....
@rh587
Triple Sigh. Now your just being silly.
I think most people can tell the difference between normal situations and a shooting range or a clay pigeon shoot. I think the number of occasions that the police have been called by people who find themselves on shooting ranges about the presence of firearms are very small.
In 99% of the rest of the country however.
I think I can also tell the difference between a shotgun and say a pistol, thank you very much. However if someone went up the high street with a shotgun on there shoulder i think there would be reason to call the police. I also seriously doubt that people walk from the car park to a clay pigeon shoot carrying loaded shotguns. The bar is so high on owning such weapon, that such people know how to carry them responsible.
The list of scenarios where it's appropriate to call the Police because a non-uniformed individual is in possession of a firearm is actually quite short.
Actually on your basis The list of scenarios where it is appropriate for a non-uniformed individual is in possession of a firearm is actually quite short. Apart from your definitions I cannot think of any other occasion where an armed individual is not considered a potential threat.
The point is the UK has a different mindset to firearms. They cause attention, which if you are a criminal is unwanted.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 15:57 GMT Tom 13
Re: Sigh....
...although the original intention was so that the population could resist foreign aggression against the bigger adversaries of the time.
This is where you keep getting it wrong. Although Lewis has belittled the idea the 2nd amendment was a multi-pronged defense of the people. Yes, one of its purposes was foreign aggressors. A second purpose was for personal defense. The last and most important reason was to ensure that if the government got too big for its britches, the people could overthrow it. Remember it was about 15 years since the people who passed the amendment had taken it upon themselves to do just that. Note the amendment doesn't say guns, flintlocks, or rifles. It says ARMS. Canons are arms, aren't flintlocks, and were around at the time the amendment was adopted. For legal purposes if the amendment is properly interpreted Howitzers are just a new type of canon. Same thing applies to ICMBs.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 04:56 GMT John Bailey
"So, um, an ER11 collet, a 10000 RPM spindle, ball screws and steppers that look about NEMA 17 (or 23 at best) - is it just me, or are these guys selling the de facto equivalent of a sub-$1000 Chinese CNC for $1500...?"
Yep.. Pretty much.
But it's got a cool name and it's all boxy..
And black..
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 21:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
"can't oppose the gubmint cuz they got tanks and drones.."
except unless you're a middle eastern "insurgent". They seem to do pretty good against a lot more badass and better equipped than some sheriff's SWAT team.
so the typical "don't even bother to think of a gun to oppose the government" argument fails time and time again as a handful with small arms have repeatedly opposed the entire US Army and sent them packing home as the politico's wills failed.
You also have to get past the idea that it's just one person. There's a huge difference between one guy or even a half dozen vs a thousand or more. That's the difference between a single nutball, a group of wackos and an outright revolution.
A relative small number of determined individuals with home field advantage beat professional soldiers operating on orders from afar. As the Soviets, Americans, Mexicans, British and others have learned(repeatedly in some cases) in the last 75-100 years.
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Thursday 2nd October 2014 23:40 GMT Matt Bryant
Re: AC Re: "can't oppose the gubmint cuz they got tanks and drones.."
".....They seem to do pretty good against a lot more badass and better equipped than some sheriff's SWAT team...." Correction - the terrorist element in the Middle East is crap in straight out shoot outs with proper soldiers, as shown at Fallujah (US), Amarah (UK) and every time the Israelis get busy. Where the terrorists such as IS do well is against poorly-led conscript armies, such as the Iraqis. By the end of the 'occupation', the U.S. and UK forces (with other allies), having befriended the Sunni population in the Anbar Awakening, had completely stamped out AL Quaeda in Iraq. It was the subsequent request by the Iraqi government that led to the allies leaving Iraq, nothing to do with the beaten insurgents. Same goes for Afghanistan - allies mopped up and left the insurgents of AQ and the Taliban living in caves in Waziristan, trouble since due to the Afghans requesting the scale down before their own forces were sufficiently capable.
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Saturday 4th October 2014 05:54 GMT Marshalltown
"Tell that to the native Americans ..."
This remark reflects a profound historical ignorance and an idealization of "noble savage" status disguised as PC. Let's see, starting with Cortes, myth says he an a handful of conquistadores brought down the Aztecs. Reality was, the Aztecs were detested _cannibals_ (really, no joke, those human sacrifices were governed by a "waste-not, want-not" ethic). Their neighbors hated the ground they walked upon - AND MANY STILL DO. Reality was that Cortez was joined thousands of local indians who allied themselves to the Spaniards. Estimate range from ca. 40K to over 100K took the side of the Spanish.
Or, consider Pizarro. He took on the Incas. Again, history seems to favor this myth that the Spanish did it by themselves, but they arrived during a pause in the expansion of the Inca Empire. The Inca tended to assault a region, and having won, forcibly remove large portions of the population to other areas, similar to the Jewish diaspora but on a larger scale. The conflict between the Spanish and the Inca saw the Spanish joined by numerous "tribes" - the survivors of full-blown civilizations destroyed by the Incas - who happily waged war on the Inca again. There are no good estimates of how many joined in the war, but the Inca Empire was larger than the Aztec's, and their foes were far more sophisticated than many of the societies the Aztecs destroyed.
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Friday 3rd October 2014 07:21 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: "can't oppose the gubmint cuz they got tanks and drones.."
Yes and no.
1. Every time a proper army has dealt with middle eastern insurgents it squashed them flat within a forthnight.
2. It is not winning, it is holding which is the problem. If a proper army (or openly armed paramilitary police) tries to hold an area by force the tens of people who were easily squashed in the first place become tens of thousands of pissed off cittizens and that is when the army loses.
3. The same is valid for the "home field advantage". There home field advantage and a group of "determined individuals" can beat a regular army only if it is being assisted by the general population. Example - the relative success of the WW2 insurgency against Nazi Germany in Serbia, Southern and Eastern Ukraine, France and Belorussia compared to the complete failure of any attempts to foster unrest in the Baltic states, Western Ukraine, Croatia, Hungary, etc. Determined people tried there too. They just... did not last very long... As one of my Serbian friends used to say: "Of course, the Croatian pensioner next door did help the Serbian partisans in WW2. He provided shelter and hid them. He hid them so well that nobody could find the bodies".
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
