Drugs, not so much. Your analogy completely fails.

Well, that's in part because once you've disarmed the populace, you don't need guns to slaughter them wholesale. Well over a 100 million previously disarmed people in the 20th Century, a fate US civilians are quite determined to avoid.

I agree drugs are different, but if the will exists, guns and ammo are a lot more compact.

An equivalence drawn between the US and other governments would seem to suggest that civilian gun ownership doesn't deter the violence and corruption of the state, nor does its absence elsewhere appear to have led to the inevitable slaughter of those populations for whom gun control is much more strict than in the US.

Rather, it seems that when one enshrines into the culture the precept that the only free state is one cultivated by popular violence, it gives both the state and the people an excuse to justify violence as being an unavoidable cost of civilization. Political and social alternatives can't be seriously considered when, for many people, all other roads lead to slavery and death.

Instead, mass shootings in the US lead to a spike in gun sales, because they're effective advertising and recruitment tools for the NRA, even as the police and the government are becoming more militarized and surveillance more aggressive, in no small part because after 9/11 the American people wanted them to be. And if it's the case that the US is a more tyrannical state now, then I believe that's due to American democracy having worked as intended, rather than that tyranny having emerged from a vacuum, or some implicit tendency of states to creep towards totalitarianism.

... did you just blame the ukrainian genocide under stalin on a lack of guns?

For some inexplicable reason, dictators first seize the guns of targeted populations before trying such things.

Muzzle loaded smooth-bore (short range, relatively fast to load).

Muzzle loaded rifle (long range, slow to load)

Then the muzzle loaded rifled musket, which used the Minié ball to achieve both, and great carnage in the Crimean War and our Civil War.

Now the developments are rapid:

Breach loaded single shot rifles.

Repeaters with relatively slow loading, with a move to smokeless powder.

Clip fed repeaters, a critical Mauser innovation. With the 1898 model, the battle rifle is fully "modern". With of course effective semi-auto models to follow, plus the lower powered/lower range assault rifle (and I can't help but notice that the short ranged AK-47 is something a dictator would prefer to be issued, vs. something more able to reach out and touch him).

But ammo, going back to the rifled musket, we're using corrosive primers, and black power residue attracts moisture. That is, it takes a fair amount of diligent effort to keep a rifle from rusting out.

In 1911 the Swiss switched to non-corrosive primers, appropriate for their militia system. Our first weapon with 100% non-corrosive primers was the WWII M1 Carbine, a weapon for officers and rear echelon troops.

So the likelihood of a less organized having a lot of functioning weapons increases with their using non-corrosive primers. Or, in the case of the Soviets, using chromed barrels.

Now you have to factor in wealth. Poor people who can't afford much in the way of weapons aren't going to have a chance here. See e.g. Rwanda, where rifles didn't play a big part on either side.

So ... what examples might we have? The successful resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is suggestive. You might count Hitler deciding it wasn't worth breaking 80 divisions to take (most of) Switzerland.

More than a few liberals had an epiphany about gun control in the dark days of Watergate ... how many dictators/oligarchs/tyrannical whatever didn't try, or try very hard, because the cost would have been too great?

I'll start looking for examples; today, all I know is case after case, USSR, PRC, Cuba, Nazi Germany, those are just the most prominent off the top of my head, where gun confiscations preceded slaughter.

Also, gun confiscation was not at all the defining characteristic of these other places that experienced mass slaughter. There are many more things that accompany that type of political landscape, and are more common.

And without an example of where citizen gun ownership prevented a dictator from coming to power, the whole argument is extremely weak, though it definitely gets repeated quite a bit.

The auto fatality rate has been drastically reduced through better regulation and better technology. Safety features, insurance, inspections, traffic regulations, registration and transfer documentation, taxation have all increased public safety and reduced the burden auto use has on society.

Regulating guns like cars would be a great idea.

Can you make a case for insurance requirements? Seeing as how we shoot billions of rounds per year with few incidents, and only 600 accidental deaths per year. Guns are much easier to use safely than automobiles, and the 25% decrease in fatal accidents during a period in which the population and number of guns increased by roughly 50% indicates there's not a crying need here. We gun owners do, you know, teach gun safety and proficiency, that's what the NRA was about until the mid-'70s, when they couldn't ignore the political threat.

Most of the rest exists, e.g. taxation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittman%E2%80%93Robertson_Fede...), or is a non-starter in an environment where the people proposing these measures continuously demonstrate their bad will.

Registration? Sure, go ahead if you want a 2nd Civil War, we know our 20th Century history. Never again are not empty words to us.

Given what I have read about most guns used in crimes originating through straw buyers or stolen guns, I think substantial penalties for people who don't properly transfer guns if they wind up being used illegally would be the most effective way to reduce gun related violence. This, of course, would require a system of registration and proper transfer documentation, like we have for cars.

This, along with secure storage requirements, I think could do a lot. I agree accidents aren't that big an issue when compared to intentional violence, I assume secure storage would substantially help with this along with suicide. I'd also be in favor of severe penalties for not using secure storage.

In terms of new technology that could improve safety, fingerprint readers and id stamped ammo would help with both violence and safety.

Insurance could play an important role. If you pass a test, get your refresher training and have proper storage you'd pay a low rate. If you have an accident or have a gun stolen insurance could pay part of your penalty but your rate should go up enormously.

> ... non-starter in an environment where the people proposing these measures continuously demonstrate their bad will.

Continuously demonstrate bad will? 10s of thousands die yearly and even modest proposals are dismissed with hysteria like:

> Registration? Sure, go ahead if you want a 2nd Civil War, we know our 20th Century history. Never again are not empty words to us.

Seriously, this is into "UN black helicopter", "Obama is an Al-Qaeda member" territory.

> Sure, go ahead if you want a 2nd Civil War, we know our 20th Century history. Never again are not empty words to us.

That sort of sentiment and posturing is very core of what is wrong with the "gun-ownership" movement.

Do you really think if the government wanted to put down a rebellion (or whatever you are ominously alluding to) your paltry weapons would really make a difference? The "suicide by cop" statistic would increment and things would carry on.

There really needs to be a change on how easy it is to procure fire-arms in the US. That shouldn't be up for debate or sidelining through traditionalist arguments. We have a problem today where people are actually getting murdered. So, your rhetoric is pretty empty and over-used.

Our adventures in the sandbox suggest your faith in our government's ability to suppress armed rebellion is grossly excessive. It also had a secure rear area. You're also assuming all the military will agree to this, despite what it'll cost them.

I'm not alluding to anything, I'm frankly stating that, if you and yours succeed in this effort, me and mine will start killing you and yours (assuming you're in the US, of course). And if you think we're limited to out "paltry weapons". you suffer from an extreme lack of imagination.

We've been debating this since at least the 30s, and I'm (not very) sorry to say that your side has decisively lost the debate. Sucks to be you, but in balance I like the result.

If rebellion or change is what you really want to affect, then you would be better served to look into how Gandhi managed to win against overwhelming odds, rather than whatever hollywood(?) fantasy you envision living out.

Yeah, I have guns just like I have other tools and toys. But I don't have the same chip on my shoulder.

If there needs to be a rebellion, I will be reaching for my camera and my twitter account, not my walther.

No, not in the least. Leave me and mine alone, and you'll be perfectly safe from us. Sure, I'd like for my brethren in California, Hawaii and the northeast (well, if you count Maryland and D.C. as part of that) to be less oppressed, but they can vote with their feet. As I did when I left Massachusetts.

Gandhi won against an exhausted, civilized empire. Change the antagonist and he's a forgotten anonymous corpse.

Insurance might come into play in such a world, if people were made liable for (at least some) misuse of guns registered to them (the at least some means that I would hope such a thing would only really come into play if actual negligence were involved).