If the US government decided to attack its own citizens on American land, I'd expect they wouldn't be too worried about waging a humane war. So perhaps the more educational recent example here is Aleppo. The rebels haven't lost... But the cost is most definitely not heaviest on the Syrian government.

As for the Y2K/polio analogy... I'm not really following, to be honest. You make an extraordinary assertion ("guns prevent governments from waging war on their people") that's arguably provably false (Colombia should be example enough that an armed and organized force is hardly sufficient to prevent the government's continued attack---at best it ensures a split nation and years of warfare and strife). You present readings that show governments have waged war on an unarmed citizenry as proof that they won't wage war on an armed citizenry, but that's not proof---it's just not disproof. You can say that it's impossible to prove it (because it's a negative), but then all you can do is disprove it (which I'd say the world has already done).

I hear what you're saying, don't get me wrong. It sounds like you're in a better position to comment on the situation in Colombia if nothing else. But we're both playing some simplistic hands here. As soon as other players turn a local conflict into a proxy war -- as the Russians and US are in danger of doing in Syria and as the US drug warriors have done in Columbia -- life gets more complicated. Still, I'd argue that you're better off in such situations if you haven't delegated all of the responsibility for protecting yourself and your family and property to a government who may or may not have other interests in mind.

Even the American Revolution was basically a proxy war between England and the continental powers, for that matter. But when the dust settled, you didn't see the French moving in to claim their just rewards. As the apocryphal quote credited to Yamamoto goes, "There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." We were then, as we are now, more trouble to mess with than we're worth.

That's the kind of relationship that many American citizens like to maintain with their own government. I don't see that as a bad thing.

I find the asymmetrical warfare argument…weird. Afghanistan as a nation has been in a state of massive system failure for decades. Is that really the hope guns offer? “If the government goes ballistic, our guns will ensure we end up like Afghanistan”?

For 2500 years their way of life has survived Alexander the Great, the Sassanids, Genghis Khan and the mongol hordes, the USSR, and possibly the United States. In that same time many other peoples have ceased to exist entirely.

We may hold different values but we can learn from their longevity and resistance.

What wrong with Afghanistan? They are still free after number of massive invasions.

"Afghanistan is an impoverished least developed country, one of the world's poorest because of decades of war and lack of foreign investment. As of 2014, the nation's GDP stands at about $60.58 billion with an exchange rate of $20.31 billion, and the GDP per capita is $1,900. The country's exports totaled $2.7 billion in 2012. Its unemployment rate was reported in 2008 at about 35%. According to a 2009 report, about 42% of the population lives on less than $1 a day."

"A January 2010 report published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that bribery consumed an amount equal to 23% of the GDP of the nation."

What's wrong indeed.

I don't think that Afghanistan makes a good citation for any side of a general argument about gun control policy in the US. Like s_m_t said, their geopolitical milieu is just too different to be relevant. (I'm tempted to say the same of their culture, but I don't really believe that, having grown up in a Bible Belt state.)

However, the Afghan example does effectively rebut shadowfiend's specific point about guerilla warfare being ineffective against a superpower. They call Afghanistan the "Grave of Empires" for a reason, and it's not because they have a really awesome regular army.

Now, in defense of shadowfiend, it's easy to show that he or she is wrong historically, but I suspect that technological development is beginning to favor state power. Guns or no guns, to be an effective guerilla you have to be able to blend in. But you can't really hide anymore... not in the jungles, not in caves, not in the streets and alleys and suburbs and slums, and not in cyberspace. I guess that's sorta our fault.