No.

That's not naive. But it is missing the trees for the forest. Modern countries aren't huge homogeneous monoliths rules from the top by an omnipresent government. There is federalism and delegation of power. Most governing is handled by officials elected at the local level, and that's where most corruption is.

Lets say that a small town Sheriff is sufficiently corrupt to have his men falsely ticket innocent people and use the resulting fines to line his own pockets. Lets say that his antics are beginning to piss people off. Lets say that there is an election in which the majority votes against him but he wins by a landslide because his people are in charge of counting the votes.
That's the sort of situation that can plausibly happen even in a modern democratic republic. It's the sort of thing that has happened in the recent past. It is also the sort of thing that justifies the minimal necessary armed resistance.

There are also other issues, mostly relating to oppressed racial minorities. Generally, in states with "may issue" laws during and preceding the Civil Rights Movement, it was an unwritten policy to deny permits to blacks as a matter of course. After all, we won'dn't want the negroes to get uppity and forget their place.

It also wasn't uncommon for local law enforcement to participate in lynching, and even when they didn't they usually turned a blind eye to it. As a incredibly racist Sherieff once said upon finding the body of a black man who had been dumped into a river "ain't that just like a nigger, stealing more chains than he can swim with."

To bring this back to Shadowrun, Imagine that you're an ork. The Night of Rage was some time ago, but no one has forgotten, Humanis's extracurricular activities tend to be ignored, no one really makes any effort to arrest the Night Hunters, and a human cop has just pulled you over. You don't think you were speeding, but maybe you're odometer's broken. Maybe you ran a light when you weren't paying attention. Maybe you forgot to signal when you turned. Or maybe, just maybe, you're going to steal more chains than you can swim with. Imagine how terrifying that situation would be, even with a weapon. And imagine how much more terrifying it would be without one.

I go by the definitions of democracy and republic that have been in existance for the longest and were what was used before the 1900s and heck is what i learned in k-12.

democracy: citizens directly rule and run.

republic: citizens elect represenatives to rule.

I dont like this new change in the definition as it muddles what was ment in the constitution and the writings at the time.

I go by the original meaning of the word and call people who are nice to children "pedophiles"...not my fault if people get upset about it just because they stick to these new-fangled definitions...


No, that's a direct democracy, which is a subset of democracies.


That's a representative democracy, which also is a subset of democracies.


@hyzmarca: So you are saying that Ork should just go ahead and shoot first, just in case? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/question.gif)

I see you can read wikipedia then, thats good.

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.." article 4 section 4 of the US constitution.

Any way ya slice it, USA is a Republic because the law says it is.

And after 8 pages of no SR why bring it back?

I'm not sure about other countries, but yes USA is supposed to be a federal system with limited power up top and spread out among multiple branches. Here's the problem with thinking thats how it is today, the federal govt tells the states what to do by taxing everyone so much that there is little money left for states to take and once they have the money they hand it back but with strings attached. Whats that mean? All states have 21 drinking age, mandatory seat belt laws and a bunch of other laws that they could only get passed by threatening to take away money from states. Thats when they are being nice. If ya read the constitution and then the laws banning certain firearms and destructive devices such as machineguns and the laws banning drugs, you will find that the federal govt has passed illegal laws. The closest they can go on regulating that stuff legally is through commerce that goes from one state to another. So be careful in thinking oh but totalitarianism can't happen here, or it cant happen now.

No, I know basic set algebra.

Of course not. If it's as simple as his tailight being out there is no problem. But if it becomes obvious that he's going to kill the ork, then the ork would be better off with a weapon than without.

Sengir,

Hate to burst your bubble but the US is by definition (from its own founding documents), a Democratic Republic, not a representative democracy.

Check the Pledge of Allegiance. There's a part that reads 'to the Republic for which it stands'. Now why would they do that if the US is a Democracy?

@ daylen,

That kind of crap is why several states are passing Firearms Freedom Acts which specifically state that Congress & the Federal Government has NO authority over commerce which starts & stays within the confines of a given state. The BATFE has said that state laws do not matter as Federal Law overrides all of it. They've even taken Tennessee & Montana to court to push their viewpoint that States exist as an administrative arm of the Federal.

What the Federal is failing to recognize (or willfully ignoring) is that power comes from the governed. The People grant the power to the elected officials to perform the jobs they were elected for. The People also gave those officials a set of rules & guidelines to follow. What we need now is for the People to fire all of those elected officials who are failing to properly execute the job they were hired for. That is starting to happen. The elected officials in the Federal Government are starting to get concerned over it. That is a goood thing.

So assuming it becomes obvious that the officer is a racist, because the ork suddenly has a gun pointed at his forehead. What good is the gun in his holster then?


@darthmord:

Well, then please tell me the difference between those two...

Firstly, the racist cop will be a bit slower to draw his gun if he knows the ork has a chance to draw his too. Those are 50/50 odds, not the sort of thing I'd bet my life on unless I had to.

Secondly, even with my racist gun drawn, the odds of my hitting him are about one out of six, according to FBI statistics (which I can dig up if you really need them), which means his odds of drawing his weapon, returning fire and hitting me are still a bit higher than I'd feel strictly comfortable with.

It also means if he has any buddies in the car with him, if he's in his house and I need to break in to get to him, if I think any of his friends will find out what I've done, etc., I'll think a little more carefully.

Doesn't this scenario also generate the corollary: the police officer is much more inclined to draw his gun and shoot first if he knows the occupants are likely to be armed?

No, because I think most cops are already pretty twitch and likely to draw and fire even if there isn't a firearm on or with the suspect. I cannot possibly fault this for them, but my point is that I think real cops already approach in maximum caution mode.

darthmord - I try to follow those states closely and wish that the states I call home would follow their example. They are leading the way back to freedom. Oh and I forget exactly what legislation it was recently but Texas has started similar stuff. Oh and today is the second time this month that there has been a shooting in a "gun free zone" within 10 miles of where I live. a highschool and a university; so those kinda laws saying no firearms in an area seem to work GREAT. with luck none of my classmates were involved today.

Good luck to your classmates. I heard about that earlier today, and -- like always -- it puts a cold, hard, ball in the pit of my stomach.

I hope someday, and soon, the powers that be realize a "no gun" sign only stops folks who wouldn't misuse the firearm in the first place.

Are we talking about a quickdraw contest, or about a cop who approaches somebody he just stopped with the intent of shooting him?

Here's the thing (and in response to pbangarth above).

If you are at the stage where cops are just pulling people over and shooting them, you are already in a state of war or genocide - and the people likely to get shot know this and aren't going to put themselves in a place where they can just get shot at by police. That, or you've got a crazy man shooting people, and in that case self-defense is basically your only option to begin with.

Almost always, if we're taking about police using unwarranted force against an individual, it's a process of escalation. Cop pulls over the guy, goes up to give him a hard time, give a beating, etc. His initial intent is harassment, not killing, but depending on the satisfaction the cop gets (as the one who is controlling the situation), he may escalate or not. The cop wants to stay at the level which is socially acceptable. Against an unarmed individual, his only real limit is what he feels he can get away with - what his chief would permit, or what he can do without anyone knowing. Needless to say, that can go pretty far (especially with a cop, who can always say 'he came at me with a knife', get a week of paid leave for the investigation, then get back on the beat). The only constraints on his actions are his own morality and fear of retribution by the system he personally represents and protects.

As soon as the individual is armed, the equation changes - the cop still has the previous barrier, but also has the limit of how far he can get before he puts himself at personal risk - i.e. the point where the individual feels he himself would lose less shooting at a cop and likely going to jail than obeying. This puts the bar much lower - the cop will consider shooting at the individual or beating him unreasonable, because it brings back a serious risk of bodily harm to himself. The constraint is now that the victim is able and theoretically willing to defend his own life, but only at high personal expense.

In this scenario, I can't imagine a rational cop would put his gun at the individual's forehead suspecting the individual is armed without some other circumstance (such as already believing the individual is likely to shoot the cop, no matter what the cop does). The risk of threatening an armed person with death carries too much risk for it to be a regularly acceptable behavior.

Only if it happens on a large scale. But I agree that most of the time each individual incident will be a slow escalation instead of a straight up execution.

Still, police officers are trained to handle armed suspects without putting their lives on the line more than necessary. If the officer approaches from behind, then has our unlucky ork step out, searches him, harasses him...there is little the victim could do without some serious hardwiring.

Ideally that would be true, but I've also seen video footage on TV of a cop pulling someone over, the guy pulls a gun on the cop, and the cop was surprised. It shouldn't have happened but I guess things don't always go as planned and people aren't always as cautious as they should be. Luckily the guy who pulled the gun didn't actually shoot the cop, but if he had wanted to the cop would have been toast.

I guess my point is that crap happens that shouldn't happen, and unpredictably so, when stuff like pulling someone over becomes routine.

The US government of 1800 did not exist during the 21st century. That is important. Now that we have global communications, and ways to quickly and reliably move goods and people around the world, the world is a much smaller place. Threats both internal and external are magnified a thousand fold. The economy moves a million times faster, and will crash into a brick wall before anyone realizes if nobody's watching the road.

I don't think you need a lot of words to prove that minimal government is a failure in the 21st century, though. Just ask: what are the countries with the least government? Yemen and Somalia to name two notables. And how is it in those countries? Nice and free? Not exactly. Not unless you count the freedom to have the guys with the most guns tell you what to do, and maybe take all your stuff if they feel like it.

why look at africa? they havent ever had a good track record for anything but genocide and violence. Also its not USA, things are differant around the world and saying something works in one place doesnt mean it will or wont work somewhere else.

Instead lets look at USA history.

depression of 1920: taxes and govt were greatly reduced, US troops coming back from WWI helped unions fail. what happened? it turned into the roaring 20's.

depression of 1929: govt tried to take control and it turned into the great depression

recession of 1980: reduced taxes. what happened? we had such a booming economy that everyone could afford cocaine. (or at least everyone in hollywood) Oh yea and we made the soviet empire go bankrupt .

Hmm... so maybe we have done our best when the govt gets out the way and stops trying to redistribute wealth.

*twitch*

Go read some African history. They've done some pretty amazing stuff, and they did almost all of it before the land-grabbing colonization by Europeans in our very recent history. It's true their modern history hasn't been all that great, but it's pretty fair to say they're a continent largely composed of third-world shitholes because we Europeans made them a continent of third-world shitholes. An awful lot of tribal violence and resentment can be traced back quite cleanly to the French, British, etc, stirring shit up to make a buck.

I agree with the rest of your statement -- particularly that different cultures and nations are, well, different -- that a plan that works in once place won't necessarily work somewhere else. So let's keep that in mind when judging Africa, hmm? The sudden introduction to European Capitalism didn't sit well with them, but that's because, as you just said, what works one place and on one people doesn't necessarily work elsewhere.

It's nice to just marshal history so that all the facts line up on your side. But I guarantee you that historians disagree vehemently on what caused the great depression and the recession of the 1980's. You don't get to say "history proves my point" when the experts are divided. You have to do better than that.

Furthermore, we went on a tax cutting, deregulating spree in the 2000's, and that led to the Great Recession of 2008. Sort of pokes a hole in your theory, doesn't it?

What I want is for someone to please show me a modern example of minimal government being successful. AFAIK, in all modern examples, the less government there is, the more people are bossed around by organized crime (or corporations who are half a step up from organized crime). The countries that are the most free and the most safe have very strong, stable central governments. The countries that are most dangerous and hellish have the weakest central governments.

Trouble is successful contries draw politicians like moths to the light.

Tax cutting didnt cause 2008.

Haphazard deregulation caused 2008. Big financial firms still had the requirements on who and how to lend money from clintons time. Then bush made it worse, realised it and even made a statement in 2005 predicting the collapse but I didnt see that till 2008 after the trouble started. And recently I have heard some govt types saying they want to put in regulations that would force banks to lend how they did up to the mid 90s. so the trouble isnt over yet.

When has govt regulation and wealth redistribution fixed a depression almost before it has happened?

Well, you just dodged the question. "The government that governs least governs best" is an unproven axiom in the 21st century. All of the governments that govern least these days seem to be in charge of hellholes. That can't be a coincidence.