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Re:Denmark confirms US sent rendition flight for Snowden by mikeash on Friday February 05, 2016 @10:38AM (#11042071)
I think the anti-dictatorship is not as common as it might look. Certainly some people believe that, but in my experience most gun advocates merely believe that you can't count on the government to protect you from criminals so you need to be able to do it yourself. I think these people welcome the government's efforts to protect them, they just don't think it does a very good job sometimes, or that it's simply not possible to provide perfect protection.

Lots of people don't see the NSA's activities as "illegal spying on its own people," but rather as strong anti-terror efforts that don't give up when terrorists enter the US.

The idea that we need strong gun rights as a way to stop the government from becoming tyrannical has at least two major obvious holes in it, but a lot of people's views are more subtle and nuanced than that. As usual.

Re:Denmark confirms US sent rendition flight for Snowden by AI_Overlord on Friday February 05, 2016 @11:07AM (#11042279)
Please explain the two major holes please and be ready to defend them if they are not solid.
Re:Denmark confirms US sent rendition flight for Snowden by mikeash on Friday February 05, 2016 @11:21AM (#11042406)
Please ask as if you were a human being, not a robot, and I'll consider it. "Be ready to defend them" is ridiculously rude.
Re:Denmark confirms US sent rendition flight for Snowden by logfromblammo on Friday February 05, 2016 @12:19PM (#11042874)
I thought of three obvious reasons.

1. The U.S. military is ridiculously well financed and supplied. Even if every American strong enough to lift them had a battle rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition, the federal government has mobile armor, fighters and bombers, and guided explosive munitions. The average American simply does not have the means to fight toe to toe with any professional army. As guerilla fighters, it is usually more useful to build explosives and make booby traps than it is to fire rifles. And if you're close enough to hit something with a rifle, you should probably already be running away.

2. We have strong gun rights now. They have not perceptibly slowed the government's slow ratcheting towards greater power and Constitutional overreach. Whether the government is already tyrannical is a matter of opinion, but be assured that some people think that it is.

3. Guns are not the only tools required to resist government. They are neither necessary nor sufficient. Defending gun rights in preference to any of the others, such as privacy, speech, assembly, redress, and due process, is to abandon our best means of resisting government power in favor of the one least likely to yield a predictably favorable outcome. All human rights work together to produce liberty, and none are more important than the others. To prioritize them is to see them picked off one by one, back to front, like Alvin York would.

Re:Denmark confirms US sent rendition flight for Snowden by mikeash on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:00PM (#11043263)
Your 1 and 2 are the ones I'm thinking of. Particularly with 2, it makes no sense that gun rights can prevent a slide into tyranny, but can also be taken away if you elect the wrong politicians. It requires gun rights to be simultaneously extremely powerful and extremely weak.

I think 3 is an excellent argument but is not really a hole in the idea that gun rights are necessary to prevent tyranny.