No, you don't. You can do anything that a power tool can with an unpowered tool.

Weld. Solder. Mill. Turn. Thickness plane. 90° Join. I can’t see even fairly impractical ways to do all those without power, let alone any practical way.

Need is a terrible basis to judge rights on. Nobody strictly needs free expression either.

It is widely agreed as a fundamental pillar of ethics and international law that everyone needs free expression.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/en...

Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

I could continue pasting the remainder of the document, but I would argue that the ability to defend oneself (from the State, or other individuals) is the fundamental human right. Without it, all other rights are null and void. Gun ownership is the final fallback for securing our human rights.

Free expression doesn't kill people.

Right, when have words ever been used for anything bad by anyone?

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Especially not classic flamewar topics, as the site guidelines say.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I am trying to stick to guidelines here, understood.

The police have military weapons and the best equipment money can buy - especially SWAT. What good are “citizens” going to do against them?

That’s just like the militia running around in the woods training just in case they have to fight against the government. The same government that spends billions on weapons every year. If the government wants to impose martial law - like the nutcases including Chuck Norris thought they wanted to do a few years ago - the “militia” wasn’t going to be able to stop them.

Funny, it’s worked well in countries like Afghanistan. Don’t underestimate the power of a motivated and armed gorilla force that potentially exponentially outnumbers any “officially” sanctioned armed force.

> Funny, it’s worked well in countries like Afghanistan.

No, it didn't. The guerilla forces that were successful in Afghanistan has outside state sponsorship and supply and intervention by global or regional powers on their behalf (advisers, intelligence, special ops support, etc.) That's true of the Mujahideen fighting the USSR (backed by the USA, Pakistan, and others), and true of the Taliban/al-Qaeda associated groups which were fighting the internationally-recognized government (backed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.)

You think a civil war in the US wouldnt have factions getting resources from every other country on the planet ?

> You think a civil war in the US wouldnt have factions getting resources from every other country on the planet

No, I think the pre-breakdown distribution of light civilian arms isn't how you win that fight.

That wont ever happen. I know for a fact many many people have stashes of weapons. Typically they report it as a boating accident.

Keep in mind the 25 million ex military in the US know how to run that gear. Any conflict in this country will be a mess.

This always comes up in the context of using guns to fight tyranny.

Your SWAT example is great: how many guys are on the SWAT team kicking the door to get one guy? 4? 6? 10?

What about an actual military operation going door to door? Squad size is 10? 20?

Government violence, when directed against you is nearly impossible to resist. But that's not the same as government violence directed against an armed populace.

History is flush with examples of failures of superior military power to subdue a population that actively resists.

Have you considered that the answer to systematic failures in the governance of the United States might be better fixed at a systematic level, rather than just arming everyone?

Until those hypothetical fixes are in place, what do you do? Disarm everybody?

Yes.

Individual citizens trying to fight cops with firepower is never going to work. Cops have much better equipment than you're going to have, and have the backing of the entire government.

Unless you're literally planning on staging a coup, arming yourself to fight cops is not a viable strategy.

On the other hand, if we disarm everybody, then we don't need to have such over-militarized cops either, and maybe we can finally get to a place where cops no longer automatically reach for their gun (or even carry one) and therefore stop routinely murdering citizens.

This argument has worked for every democide in the 20th century

Govts should fear the citizens, not the other way around.

Tyranny is a thing you want to avoid