On Guns and Guerillas
A former LAPD officer Christopher Dorner was fired for either filing false reports or attempting to expose police brutality/corruption (depending on which of Dorner or the LAPD are telling the truth). He wrote a manifesto and then started killing police officers and the family members of police officers. A massive manhunt for Dorner was launched.
I'm writing this not to praise or condemn Dorner. I find his actions to be contraindicated by the moral system I subscribe to. However, I find his tactics to be effective of certain ends which may be useful.
This story is a veritable goldmine to me because it has so many nuggets worth exploring. I especially like how it vindicates me on several topics I've been attempting to proselytize. These include:
I'm writing this not to praise or condemn Dorner. I find his actions to be contraindicated by the moral system I subscribe to. However, I find his tactics to be effective of certain ends which may be useful.
This story is a veritable goldmine to me because it has so many nuggets worth exploring. I especially like how it vindicates me on several topics I've been attempting to proselytize. These include:
- Guerilla warfare works
- Gun control empowers the state and weakens individuals
- Bureaucracies adopt a survival at all costs mentality over time
- The police are a gang and like other gangs become pussies when they are threatened
- People are hypocrites
- Trusting others with your protection can be a bad idea
Guerrilla Warfare Works
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Let's just jump straight to it. If your goal is to break your enemy or enter into a battle of attrition, guerrilla warfare works. If your goal is to get them to change fundamentally or replace them with something else, then guerrilla warfare may or may not work.
The latter goal is largely dependent on PR which, due to the mainstream media, is pretty much a lost cause. The people of America are becoming corrupt so I don't hold out much hope for something better appearing if the current system were overthrown. One guy... one frickin' guy has cost the LAPD (really LA residents) millions of dollars for a cost of about $5,000. Even if we assume the actual operational plus opportunity cost is only one million dollars, that's a 200 to 1 difference. The larger and more complex the society is, the less money it takes for some asshole to severely damage it. You'd think that anyone who ever played any game with a tech tree would know that. 
No supply depots = no starport
I predicted that Dorner would be caught in about a month after having killed 5 more people, presuming he spaced those kills out so as to keep the hornets' nest frenzied, LA could easily have lost another million or so. How long could they keep that up? Alas, I was wrong, the cops burned him alive.
Beyond the monetary costs are the costs to officer morale and the public's perception of police competence (and ultimately legitimacy). Every day Dorner remained free and every time he killed someone on his list the police appeared less effectual. Every officer killed might make some who are on the fence opt for a different career. Of course, for fighting a police state, Dorner's tactics can easily backfire if crisis thinking leads people to demand a better-funded or more draconian department. |
Dorner's Costs: $5,001
LAPD Costs: $Millions
LA Residents Costs: Hundreds of thousands?
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Gun Control
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The ineffective way
Using a gun to shoot this 
Leads to this
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Dorner supported gun control which is ironic because he's the best recent counterexample to the claims made by gun control advocates that the weapons civilians have access to are ineffective in fighting tyranny and thus the second amendment is pointless.
Without fail every writing I've encountered who uses that line suffers from a lack of imagination. I shouldn't really be surprised since statists also fail to imaging how certain functions the government currently undertakes could ever be handled privately and voluntarily. Anyways... The two canonical statements are: your gun can't fight a tank and your gun can't fight a drone. Unless they are living in a fantasy world where Skynet runs things, they fail to see that people are needed to operate and service and build tanks and drones. A giant bureaucracy is needed to fund the military and the alphabet soup agencies. A chain of command is needed to dispatch orders and logistics and reliable communications are necessary to coordinate efforts. Humans and support tech are highly susceptible to bullets. |
The effective way
Using a gun to shoot them 
Leads to this
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Of course, that might just get one demonized for targeting innocent government workers (while those decrying the actions conveniently sign off on guilt by association in other realms (i.e. all Al Queada are bad, all Nazis are bad)). Well, maybe it will, maybe it won't. Though irrelevant to my larger point about wearing down an enemy, let's investigate the PR angle a bit.
With Dorner, the LAPD knew who they were going after and could set up fairly effective roadblocks. In an "army of one" insurgency scenario without a clearly defined front most of the weapons that the U.S. government possesses become useless. If the U.S. conducts drone strikes on U.S. soil, the people they're going after better not be embedded with the regular population or there are going to be a lot of pissed off citizens. The U.S. is already making the next crop of terrorists overseas. Domestic terrorists or "enemies within the gates" are far more dangerous because the military and bureaucracy need them to remain supportive. A standard guerrilla tactic is to get the powers that be to overreact and target innocents which gets them on the side of the insurgent (or at least against the current power).
The mainstream media will demonize just about any non-state-sanctioned move, so winning PR by making a case directly via those channels is unlikely to work. Furthermore people are quick to signal in-groupness to others by deriding anyone's manifesto as crazy - the more vociferously the better. But practicality wins. If one can show in the concrete that the existing power structure is bad for the non-abstract things others want or show that there are better ways for others to get what they want, then the existing power structure may rapidly lose legitimacy. There's a reason power structures jealously guard against even meager competition: they don't want others to believe that there are viable alternatives.
The effectiveness of an all-out guerrilla war against government agencies in the case of, for instance, firearms confiscation would be a huge mess. If government employees weren't targeted at their offices, they'd be targeted at their homes. If they went into hiding, their family would be targeted. There wouldn't be a large enough security contingent to protect every DEA, FBI, U.S. Marshall, IRS, and ATF agent and those they cared about. Agents would either stop coming into work (insurgents win) or quit (insurgents win) or stop doing the thing the insurgents don't like (insurgents win) or overreact and look illegitimate (insurgents kind of win). Of course, to maintain legitimacy, it's likely martial law would be imposed. That would directly fly in the face of the rhetoric that the U.S. is a free country because it would impact one of the defining American freedoms - the freedom to hop in a car and drive.
Pot's illegal - well, whatever. TSA? A lot of people don't fly. Getting stopped at checkpoints and treated like shit in our own goddamn cars? HELL NO! With every civilian a potential terrorist/freedom fighter and people coming out of and fading back into the population the civilian/government line would become extremely stark and overreactions like this
With Dorner, the LAPD knew who they were going after and could set up fairly effective roadblocks. In an "army of one" insurgency scenario without a clearly defined front most of the weapons that the U.S. government possesses become useless. If the U.S. conducts drone strikes on U.S. soil, the people they're going after better not be embedded with the regular population or there are going to be a lot of pissed off citizens. The U.S. is already making the next crop of terrorists overseas. Domestic terrorists or "enemies within the gates" are far more dangerous because the military and bureaucracy need them to remain supportive. A standard guerrilla tactic is to get the powers that be to overreact and target innocents which gets them on the side of the insurgent (or at least against the current power).
The mainstream media will demonize just about any non-state-sanctioned move, so winning PR by making a case directly via those channels is unlikely to work. Furthermore people are quick to signal in-groupness to others by deriding anyone's manifesto as crazy - the more vociferously the better. But practicality wins. If one can show in the concrete that the existing power structure is bad for the non-abstract things others want or show that there are better ways for others to get what they want, then the existing power structure may rapidly lose legitimacy. There's a reason power structures jealously guard against even meager competition: they don't want others to believe that there are viable alternatives.
The effectiveness of an all-out guerrilla war against government agencies in the case of, for instance, firearms confiscation would be a huge mess. If government employees weren't targeted at their offices, they'd be targeted at their homes. If they went into hiding, their family would be targeted. There wouldn't be a large enough security contingent to protect every DEA, FBI, U.S. Marshall, IRS, and ATF agent and those they cared about. Agents would either stop coming into work (insurgents win) or quit (insurgents win) or stop doing the thing the insurgents don't like (insurgents win) or overreact and look illegitimate (insurgents kind of win). Of course, to maintain legitimacy, it's likely martial law would be imposed. That would directly fly in the face of the rhetoric that the U.S. is a free country because it would impact one of the defining American freedoms - the freedom to hop in a car and drive.
Pot's illegal - well, whatever. TSA? A lot of people don't fly. Getting stopped at checkpoints and treated like shit in our own goddamn cars? HELL NO! With every civilian a potential terrorist/freedom fighter and people coming out of and fading back into the population the civilian/government line would become extremely stark and overreactions like this
could happen more readily. Enough of those and the guerrillas get more members.
At the end of the day, the economy would be severely impacted and the guerrillas might not come out of it better off than when they went in.
While the guerrillas may not be able to win, they could make it such that the U.S. loses. For all the rhetoric of "not negotiating with terrorists," people and governments will negotiate when the cost of not doing so is significantly higher. Examples: the IRA, fucking al-queda!
At the end of the day, the economy would be severely impacted and the guerrillas might not come out of it better off than when they went in.
While the guerrillas may not be able to win, they could make it such that the U.S. loses. For all the rhetoric of "not negotiating with terrorists," people and governments will negotiate when the cost of not doing so is significantly higher. Examples: the IRA, fucking al-queda!
Gun Control Part 2
If you're going to argue for gun control, be fucking consistent. A question that's never part of the "national conversation" is "why do the cops need AR-15s?" Before a gun control advocate pulls out the standard apologist bullshit of ...
... take a good look at the picture above. Two Asian women were wounded because they were driving a truck which wasn't the same make, model, or color as Dorner's (though to be fair, both were pickup trucks) and the cops pulled a spray-and-pray. I mean unless these two women shaved their heads and stood on one another's shoulders while wearing blackface, how the fuck did that mistake get made?
Well... adrenaline, etc. Fine. The gun grabbers would then say if professionals can't avoid making mistakes when the pressure is on, what chance do regular individuals have? Even if they admit to wanting some guns in society, they may be right to point out that regular people shouldn't have them. Except... wait! Why do regular people get punished more harshly for making mistakes than police do if the regular people have less training and their mistakes should be more forgivable. If a civvie shot up the truck in the picture above, (s)he wouldn't be punished for not having enough training before firing a gun - (s)he would be punished for firing bullets into a goddamn truck full of innocents! Pretty much every SWAT raid where some civvie gets shot holding a flashlight or candy bar is ruled justified. Pretty much every SWAT raid where a cop is shot at least results in a lengthy trial and often prison time. Rhetoric mismatch error.
I guarantee a civvie wouldn't get leniency at a trial for something like what happened in the picture above, nor would they get a taxpayer bailout (which is what almost happens in situations like this - rarely if ever do the actual individuals involved in the incident personally pay), and they sure as hell couldn't use the magic phrase which excuses all law enforcement errors in court: "I. Was. In. Fear. For. My. Life." Given that the gun grabbers aren't logically accepting all the consequences of their suggestion gives me cart blanche to ignore what they have to say.
Many cops only have to qualify once or twice a year and run about 50 rounds through their handguns. Many civvies do far more than that almost every day. Civvies, not being trained to pursue people but rather to diffuse the situation, and not having unions and public sentiment on their side, are less likely to escalate the situation and more reluctant to shoot even if they have a legal right to do so.
UPDATE: oops, they did it again.
They represent the people? I'm sure they'd invest all of this effort to track down a plain vanilla serial killer. How are they doing investigating non-cop murders, rapes, thefts, and assaults? Probably not so well that their resources are being directed toward one person. The police, like any other bureaucracy, represents itself and will protect itself at the expense of the purpose for which it was ostensibly founded to ensure its own survival if the two come into conflict. That's human nature.
- They're more highly trained
- They represent the people
- They are answerable to the people
... take a good look at the picture above. Two Asian women were wounded because they were driving a truck which wasn't the same make, model, or color as Dorner's (though to be fair, both were pickup trucks) and the cops pulled a spray-and-pray. I mean unless these two women shaved their heads and stood on one another's shoulders while wearing blackface, how the fuck did that mistake get made?
Well... adrenaline, etc. Fine. The gun grabbers would then say if professionals can't avoid making mistakes when the pressure is on, what chance do regular individuals have? Even if they admit to wanting some guns in society, they may be right to point out that regular people shouldn't have them. Except... wait! Why do regular people get punished more harshly for making mistakes than police do if the regular people have less training and their mistakes should be more forgivable. If a civvie shot up the truck in the picture above, (s)he wouldn't be punished for not having enough training before firing a gun - (s)he would be punished for firing bullets into a goddamn truck full of innocents! Pretty much every SWAT raid where some civvie gets shot holding a flashlight or candy bar is ruled justified. Pretty much every SWAT raid where a cop is shot at least results in a lengthy trial and often prison time. Rhetoric mismatch error.
I guarantee a civvie wouldn't get leniency at a trial for something like what happened in the picture above, nor would they get a taxpayer bailout (which is what almost happens in situations like this - rarely if ever do the actual individuals involved in the incident personally pay), and they sure as hell couldn't use the magic phrase which excuses all law enforcement errors in court: "I. Was. In. Fear. For. My. Life." Given that the gun grabbers aren't logically accepting all the consequences of their suggestion gives me cart blanche to ignore what they have to say.
Many cops only have to qualify once or twice a year and run about 50 rounds through their handguns. Many civvies do far more than that almost every day. Civvies, not being trained to pursue people but rather to diffuse the situation, and not having unions and public sentiment on their side, are less likely to escalate the situation and more reluctant to shoot even if they have a legal right to do so.
UPDATE: oops, they did it again.
They represent the people? I'm sure they'd invest all of this effort to track down a plain vanilla serial killer. How are they doing investigating non-cop murders, rapes, thefts, and assaults? Probably not so well that their resources are being directed toward one person. The police, like any other bureaucracy, represents itself and will protect itself at the expense of the purpose for which it was ostensibly founded to ensure its own survival if the two come into conflict. That's human nature.
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Answerable, eh? I've heard that the DA won't be seeking prosecution for the officers involved in this incident which shows how in bed the judicial and executive branches of law are. I'm sure the LAPD will totally pay up in court for the warrantless searches they're conducting too. Sarcasm.
There is no "national conversation" on disarming the police. Given that those three reasons are bullshit, why should police get to keep weapons while civilians are disarmed especially, as Dorner is showing, something as pedestrian as assassinations can cause a public institution to lose its shit? , Police have no legal obligation to protect you and they may actually kill you if you're driving a vehicle they don't like or for any number of other reasons. Ensuring they're the only ones with guns is a quick way to ensure bad results. |
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Bureaucracies adopt a survival at all costs mentality over time
The LAPD is corrupt because of their structure; the structure has a corrupting influence on its members. When one's paycheck depends on justifying the institution, and people have a tendency to be lazy, and there's either opacity or restrictions which prevent corrective efforts, the bureaucracy doesn't have to do anything but survive. Public institutions differ from private institutions primarily in the third regard.
Restrictions in choosing alternate service providers prevent low-cost corrective efforts. Considering that reformers are also likely to be lazy, it's easier to hope for change (particularly through the ritual of voting) than it is to do something which works. Police and soldiers in particular get the added benefit of being part of a revered collective whether they deserve it or not. This strongly dampens corrective forces or relegates such efforts to "weeding out a few bad apples." The structure, and the gravy train, are never meaningfully addressed until and unless they are forced to change.
I've recently heard that some departments weed out applicants who score too highly on IQ tests. Why would one want someone who is less intelligent on their team? Could it be that they won't question orders or think about the principles behind their actions? Could it be that they won't enforce laws they know are stupid?
Restrictions in choosing alternate service providers prevent low-cost corrective efforts. Considering that reformers are also likely to be lazy, it's easier to hope for change (particularly through the ritual of voting) than it is to do something which works. Police and soldiers in particular get the added benefit of being part of a revered collective whether they deserve it or not. This strongly dampens corrective forces or relegates such efforts to "weeding out a few bad apples." The structure, and the gravy train, are never meaningfully addressed until and unless they are forced to change.
I've recently heard that some departments weed out applicants who score too highly on IQ tests. Why would one want someone who is less intelligent on their team? Could it be that they won't question orders or think about the principles behind their actions? Could it be that they won't enforce laws they know are stupid?
Trusting others with your protection can be a bad idea
People believe that they need a strong police presence because of violent crime despite violent crime trending downward since the 1990's. The actions of police show that they either don't care about the rhetoric or don't believe it themselves. There remain unaddressed property and violent crimes while police are tackling the low hanging fruit of speeding tickets and drug busts. There are far more effective ways of reducing violent crime which have to do with better opportunities and less wealth inequality. Those means don't necessarily involve what effectively amounts to a standing army.
Even if society continues to inefficiently tackle the problem far away from the root, having a population which believes in taking responsibility for their own safety does far more to eliminate repeat offenders and stop crime than the police can. An armed population can have weapons wherever they might be needed. Patrolling costs less since people have to conduct their business anyways. People generally have more of an interest in protecting their shit than police do.
Could it turn into the wild west? Possibly. But the wild west wasn't that wild. Lighting up two pickup trucks just because the person inside might be Dorner is wild. California is the west coast. What we're seeing now is the wild west.
Even if society continues to inefficiently tackle the problem far away from the root, having a population which believes in taking responsibility for their own safety does far more to eliminate repeat offenders and stop crime than the police can. An armed population can have weapons wherever they might be needed. Patrolling costs less since people have to conduct their business anyways. People generally have more of an interest in protecting their shit than police do.
Could it turn into the wild west? Possibly. But the wild west wasn't that wild. Lighting up two pickup trucks just because the person inside might be Dorner is wild. California is the west coast. What we're seeing now is the wild west.
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As an aside, the anarcho-capitalist "solution to crime" of private law enforcement is also fucking retarded for substantially the same reasons. But, but detroit has private protection agencies. Yeah, protection agencies. They protect your person or property and deter crime. If a crime happens they can either shoot the suspect, let him get away, or maybe detain him for the "real" police. Remove the "real" police, then what happens? They have to detain people themselves. They have to go get property back. They'll need to be armed or have superior numbers. Once they have that, why do they need to voluntarily trade to get money.
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Cowards with Guns
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The Korean store owner who fights off rioters is brave, not the police waiting at headquarters for the national guard to arrive. Bravery is not in the 10 person SWAT raids used to bring overwhelming force against hippie pot heads. Bravery doesn't require extra weapons, extra privileges (executive and judicial), or a blue wall of silence. Bravery doesn't involve flipping out when encountering a civilian armed with a pistol or a video phone.
Either police should be given no special privileges or they should be held to a far higher standard than civilians. Until Americans get the fuck over their hero worship and love of authority I don't hold out much hope. Calling this country the home of the brave is a disgusting joke. |
So brave. Actually.
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To the Statists
Suck it. I'm right. I really hope that America does not devolve into another civil war but, if it does, and the insurgents successfully use tactics like Dorner has employed, I hope you starve while holed up in whatever place you still consider safe while praying to your god the government that all of the technology at their disposal can save you from the chaos. You'll probably remain too proud or fearful to admit that society can't be planned and ordered if only certain tyrants are in charge. If enough others demand liberty even at the potential cost of some safety, your worldview will be relegated to the dustbin of history.
