That morons like these continue to get elected diminishes greatly my hope for a functioning democracy here, let alone Iran or Iraq.

I guess if you assume the government is made up of a bunch of disconnected monsters, who are only held in check because they fear an armed rebellion, then there is a certain logic to Rubio's comment. Rubio is not alone. Many strong second amendment supporters believe that all of the other rights continue to exist only because the government is afraid of an armed rebellion.

I know, that is a scary way to view the world, but one that is popular in some quarters.

I read somewhere in all of the stream of information coming out of Iran that some of the protesters have been arming themselves with guns volunteered by friends in the police. Anyway,

This also speaks volumes as to what particular Amendments animate Republicans, to which they turn when they do not get their way.

"Forget the right to assemble and the freedom of speech--we don't have time to sing kumbaya and talk--that's for sissies and liberals--let's get our way by shooting this place up!"

Republicans seem to say and do anything to prove they are butt stupid, among other things you wouldn't want your children to be. For example, if the Iranian protesters were armed, it would give the government there the perfect excuse to bring to bear the full force of the military against them. It would be a bloodbath. Brilliant!

Rubio's a tool. The strength of citizen uprisings that have led to the overthrow of unjust governments has been due precisely because the revolting populace was unarmed. It is the violent aggression of oppressive governments on unarmed civilians that gets the world into an uproar and causes loss of legitimacy for the oppressors.

Once both sides start shooting at each other, the forces in power then have a "legitimate" reason to put down the rebellion with extreme prejudice. The ruling authority in Iran has no such excuse for killing their own people now.

I'm sure the next act in this theater of the absurd will witness some Republican idiot tie Twitter and Iran with the need to kill health care reform.

Hmm. And this guy is from Florida? Guess the Democrats didn't have enough guns in 2000?

Yes, Rubio, it would be different.

The protesters would have been considered armed insurrectionists and would have been rolled by the Iranian military.

Life isn't Red Dawn. The people with the guns and organization aren't all democratic idealists. Sometimes they don't even have blond hair.

Oppresive regimes remain in power because they have more guns and use them more effectively. In countries where government is decided by guns, it is more violent, more disriminatory, and more unstable.

That's really the miracle of democracy, isn't it? That we change governments every four years WITHOUT democracy.

But there doesn't seem to be a single lesson of what it means to be a liberal democracy that Republicans actually understand.

Not using his brain to think, his gut feeling is what will cause more misery than positive outcome! Are all Conservatives who bother to think things through Liberals by default? -Kevo

YES!! An AK47 (or 2 or 3) in every home! That's what America Iran needs!

Oh, what?? They already have that?

Never mind.

[/Gilda Radner, SNL imitation]

[Darn, the strikethrough command didn't work for America. It looked good in the preview I did in another program, though. Anyone know what the HTML is to get strikethrough to show on these pages??]

Next thing you know Republicans will be saying: "The situation in Iran would have never happened if they had just outlawed gay marriage and made abortion illegal and taught Intelligent Design in the schools and read the Christian Bible and let EXXON drill in the wildlife preserves for oil."

They really seem content to bend the situation in Iran in any way they choose, largely because they know their low-information, hot-button base will eat it up. "Hell yeah, that's exactly what happens when the gummint takes your guns away! Prezdint O'bamma needs to send them folks some good huntin' rifles and hand guns. But he's too soft on them ol' Muslims on account of he is one."

Didn't you know? Obama wants to remake America so that the mullahs of Iran would like America more:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTY3OGNlNmFiNDgzM2ExZWU3MDBmZThlYTRhNDUwODk=

Yes, lots of guns for all. Weapons everywhere. Look how great that's working in Afghanistan. No violence there. No Taliban influenced government oppressing the People. Works great in many parts of Latin American too. Marco Rubio, you see-through puppet. Please, grow a brain or get off the stage.

Meanwhile, the gun-toting mobs in the Sudan, Somalia, Liberia, etc. seem to have brought about peaceful democratic revolution that has benefited their populations throughout the region.

Down here in Texas, I am amazed at how many people need guns to protect themselves from an invasion.

They seem pretty convinced that the Army is too small and that their guns will protect freedom from an invader who is more powerful than the US military.

So, I am sure it makes sense to them that the Iranians need guns too.

Imagine if both sides had Nuclear weapons!!

ANOTHER MISGUIDED COMPARISON.... Last week, we heard quite a few ridiculous Iran-related comparisons from high-profile Republicans, [...] -- Steve Benen

Yeah, now it is the Repubes and Iran and they're doing it in droves, which makes it more fun, but... I seem to remember one "indifferently apt" comparison -- something about Michigan and Zimbabwe, maybe? -- coming out of our camp during the presidential primaries. "Seize the day['s event] and mold it for your own use" [un]principle is not limited to any particular party.

First ask him to point out Iran on the map. If he knows where it is, then maybe I will argue with him.

If you stop to think about it, nearly every successful revolution in the last 100 or so years has involved a relatively unarmed population. Once a successful revolution starts, members of the security force often retire to their barracks or join the unarmed population. Printing presses, telegraph machines, fax machines, internet, cell phones and now twitter are all far more dangerous weapons in the hands of determined revolutionaries than hunting rifles and shotguns.

"Republicans seem to say and do anything to prove they are butt stupid," says gorp.

Yes, but they also are showing a rock solid consistency, unswayed by fact,logic,or debate.

WHATEVER Obama says,they take the diametrically opposite point of view. It's so easy, being a Republican. . .

Wow. Republican assholes never waver with their handjobs to the NRA. And the bloodshed is just icing on the cake.

"If you stop to think about it, nearly every successful revolution in the last 100 or so years has involved a relatively unarmed population."

Very true. But there have been some successful armed revolutions. Afghanistan comes to mind. But the mujahideen were losing badly when they were fighting with bolt action rifles. They didn't start winning until they had Stinger missiles supplied by a foreign power (us). You just can't shoot down a Hind helicopter gunship with an Enfield rifle. If an armed revolution is to succeed, it needs to have similar technology to the government it is fighting. Until everyone in America owns state of the art surface to air missiles, our government has little to fear from our population. They only thing they have to fear is elections.

"If you stop to think about it, nearly every successful revolution in the last 100 or so years has involved a relatively unarmed population"

What is going on in Iran is not a revolution, it is an insurrection at worst and a rather nasty dialog between competing power bases at best. We don't really know. In addition, that statement is probably not correct. Soviet Union, Viet Nam, China, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Algiers, several South American countries, Cuba (just to name a few off the top of my head) were successful armed revolutions and insurrections. I don't know of very many unarmed revolutions (the overthrow of a government, often a foreign government) - Jamaica/ most of the West Indies, India (lots of bloodshed there, however), Soviet Union and I draw a blank, give me a day and I will come up with more.

The real issue here is that arms are probably not what will make a difference in Iran (the army is neutral, by the way, it is the armed militia/revolutionary guard/secret police that are shooting people) rather it is the political pressure that large crowds place on the mullahs who are already split on the issue. The more people that show up daily, the less gravitas the mullahs have and the more they have to concede. In this case there is no need for armed insurrection as they are more likely to succeed with the tactics being used. After all, that is what happened to Iran in the last change of government.

People like Rubio who think the second amendment is key to our liberties like to point to the success of american militias in defeating british regulars during the revolutionary war. the problem, of course, is that militiaman courage generally melted away in the face of well-disciplined regulars. anyone who thinks an armed mob is going pose a threat to a government with a well equipped regular army and the will to use it is a silly fool.

Except for: the chinese revolution, the russian revolution, 1973 in Chile, South Vietnam, 1962-1975. the sandinista revolution,
someone else mentioned Afghanistan.
What else have I missed.

There have been both armed and unarmed successes.

Frankly, I think this is a reason the Iranian people need nuclear weapons.

fostert - sure, Or Viet Nam, where the Soviets and other communist states supplied armaments that prevented the U.S. & South Vietnam from winning. But of course, Ho Chi Minh had innovative generals and he spearheaded a political will that let the North lose an astonishing number of people -- more than 1 million dead. Not applicable to Iran, although they have the will.

Back to the original post, I'm astonished by the sheer reflexive stupidity of republican thought. It's like they were issued short pamphlets with the correct answers to every question imaginable. Half the questions are answered with "More Guns!"

"...how much has changed that a conservative now thinks Iran could use more readily available weaponry." To be fair, it's a different context. In one case, US folks are worried about "Iran", through its government, having weapons of great destruction (and a lot of conventional that could e.g. threaten Straits of H. etc.) The other case is Iranian citizens with their own private, individual weapons - making it easier for them to resist or even overthrow their authoritarian government. In general, avoid glib comparisons/apparent inconsistencies by asking, "Is it really the same (or different)?"

tyrannogenius

"the success of american militias in defeating british regulars during the revolutionary war"

But they miss another obvious point: our militias had similar weapons. We had cannons, forts, ships, and rifles that were as good as what the British had. We weren't facing down cannons by throwing rocks at them. What's different now is that the people have semi-auto rifles, and the government has fighter jets and helicopter gunships. The lessons of the Revolution simply don't apply when one side has such a clear technological superiority.

" The lessons of the Revolution simply don't apply when one side has such a clear technological superiority."

Come on people, think before you open up your keyboard. That last remark does not compute, especially if you remember Viet Nam or even Ireland (another successful armed revolution that took 600 years.)

Besides the remarks made about the Second Amendment and Iran make no sense on their own without making stuff up.

"That last remark does not compute, especially if you remember Viet Nam or even Ireland"

Umm, I do remember Vietnam, and have visited there and spoken with soldiers from all sides. The North Vietnamese Army had modern equipment supplied by the Soviets and the Chinese. I've seen that equipment, and I can assure you, it's real. The AK-47 is every bit as a good a rifle as the M-16. Their MIG fighters were comparable to our fighters. Their artillery was as good as ours and their surface to air missiles were certainly good enough to shoot down our planes. John McCain obviously learned that lesson, even if you didn't. Obviously, the VC weren't as well supplied, but they had the NVA backing them up. The whole second amendment argument makes no sense unless you argue that private citizens should own fighter jets and surface to air missiles. Because that's what it takes to defeat the US military these days. It doesn't happen with rifles, as the mujahideen and the Vietnamese proved so obviously. They won with basically equivalent weaponry. There is a myth that the Vietnamese were fighting with 18th Century technology, but it is just a myth. Reality is quite a bit different.

Ah, so when the Reagan administration traded arms to Iran for hostages, they weren't being criminal - they were being visionaries!

He probably saw the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" and thinks somehow history is repeating itself. It's not.

fostert,

By the time we arrived in Viet Nam, the insurrection had been going on for over 20 years and probably a lot longer against the French (who lost) and the Japanese (who also lost.) The Viet Cong (as they were known in the 1960s, the Viet Minh started in 1941) did what all successful armed rebellions did, enlisted outside forces to help and developed sanctuaries outside of the country in North Viet Nam and Cambodia. In this case the Chinese and Russians plus the NVA who had their own country and modern army by then.

When we fought them in the 1960s the rebellion had matured and we were facing modern Russian and Chinese weapons, but the initial rebellion did not start out that way. The war was eventually won when the enemy (The US - who had no business being there in the first place - and the South Vietnamese government) lost the political will to continue. The same thing happened in Ireland in the twenties when the British decided that it was not worth the trouble to hang on to most of Ireland.

Bzs8jd