Look at it this way: if you're going to lead an illegal insurrection to overthrow what you think is a tyranical government, why do you care what the gun laws are?

You need to have guns to begin with to start the insurrection. In 1971, Pakistan started to massacre Bangladeshis as a result of an election in what was then east Pakistan. Civilians started an insurrection, using among other things stolen guns. This is where an already-armed populace would have come in handy.

A necessary precondition for a tyrannical government is a power imbalance between the people and the government. Allowing citizens to own arms that are in the same league as what the government uses prevents this.

So, civilians owning tanks? Predator drones? Attack helicopters? Cruise missiles? Fighter jets? Biological or chemical weapons?

We don't live in a world where the people and the government can reasonably expect to have symmetrical physical warfare capabilities. This argument is irrelevant today.

The only area where the exists any form of symmetry would be cyber weapons, not physical.

Defending against other individuals is still a viable argument, and is the only reason I think we need to be careful about how far we go with regards to gun control, but that has some tight limits and I think we can find more effective solutions than guns if we put some effort into it and take it seriously.

> So, civilians owning tanks? Predator drones? Attack helicopters? Cruise missiles? Fighter jets? Biological or chemical weapons?

We don't need any of that stuff to keep the balance. Iraq, Afganistan, and Vietnam are proof of this. Insurgencies are extremely effective against our military. The only real requirement for them to exist is a sufficient quantity of small arms, and maybe some improvised explosives. The argument is still very much relevant. What's happening in Venezuela right now would not be possible without having first disarmed the populace.

Exactly, one can always rely on the general population to illegally stockpile guns and ammunition, just in case. That tyrant won't stand a chance!

>Exactly, one can always rely on the general population to illegally stockpile guns and ammunition, just in case.

I probably shouldn't reply to an obvious troll account but... yes.

That is exactly how revolutions happen throughout the world - with weapons procured through the black market or otherwise illegal means. It's only the US which insists that a right to revolution be legally defined and protected by the very government its people theoretically intends to revolt against... and yet even with the Second Amendment, domestic terrorism and revolt against the government is still illegal in the US.

Of course, I forgot that stricter gun control will create a thriving market for illegal firearms. I guess everything's fine then!

I mean, snark all you want modest_sarcasm, but facts are facts. The right of revolution doesn't depend on legal access to firearms, and the evidence of that is... literally every revolution since the advent of firearms.

And Americans have started enough such revolutions around the world that they should have figured this out by now.

As successfully reframed by the NRA in the 1970s. Prior to that your argument was not used. Thus it wasn't the intent of the amendment in the first place "within a well regulated militia".

This isn't objectively true, as evidenced by the decision in US v. Miller. I (and many others) believe that decision to be flawed, but here it is:

> In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.

In other words, they held that the weapon in question was not covered specifically because they did not believe it to be military equipment. It logically follows that "ordinary military equipment" is what is protected by the Second Amendment.

Yet pre-1970 the NRA itself was one of the staunchest advocates of licensing, gun control, and restriction of general ownership, whilst sticking to their original purpose - to improve marksmanship.

The NRA president testified to congress in 1939: “I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

It was only much later they started lobbying against any and all control.

As interpreted by the Supreme Court in 2008, and affirmed in 2010.

2nd amendment rights are in direct conflict with the right to be alive.

There's a reason why the second amendment comes right after freedom of speech. If the government doesn't uphold your rights as citizens, the citizens have the authority to hold their ground. Imagine Venezuela, but the citizens having guns. The government couldn't do what they're doing over there if the citizens had guns.

Citizens have guns in the US.

It's also the only "democratic" country where police officers shoot innocent citizens every day.

Go figure.

Citizens have guns in Canada and police officers there don't shoot innocent citizens every day.

Go figure.

Reductio ad absurdum: Place 1 gun per square meter of the planet. Are we safer now?

Less safe from the average kind of psychopath, but more safe from the magnificent supreme leader kind of psychopath.

In that dichotomy I guess the question is: which type of psychopath is a more frequent & significant threat to the people? Frequent/significant is probably a trade-off in this case.

My government has made complex weaponry to instantly kill half of the world's population with one push of a button. For me, that's a huge part of the equation.

Guns placed like fire alarms (Break glass for gun)? While it may sound absurd, it does follow the principle that there are more good people than bad. If one bad apple arises, finding the next gun to neutralize said apple would be pretty easy.

One problem with the argument that "the only thing stopping a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun" is that "good" and "bad" people exist on a different axis than "people who can be trusted with guns in a crisis."

How so? In our case, the police are the good people you describe. The question is, would there be more net good people with access to guns, when placed everywhere, or more bad people? It's a thought experiment.

To me, I think it depends on whether a good person untrained to handle a gun properly in what amounts to a combat situation is still "good" if they decide they want to be a hero.

So whether or not we're safer in this situation is basically a dice roll.

And cronies in government making insulin cost $750 a year, or the Red Cross stealing half a billion in charitable donations to victims, are even more directly in conflict with life. So where is the outrage? And I barely hear a peep from the media about this. Do you wonder why that is?