edit: the armed right wing of the US could easily decide that they didn't like the outcome of the election, and change it. The volunteer military and national police forces entirely constructed to prosecute the drug war are overwhelmingly right wing. Second amendment warriors tend to own more guns than they have fingers and toes. That the civil service and the majority of patrician-generals at the top support the result of the election would be no hindrance.
The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you. A right-wing revolution as described above would probably have fewer than a couple of thousand casualties. It's very easy to still feel like the good guy if the only casualties of your revolution were a few of your most deeply committed archenemies (i.e. a few lefty militia types.) It's a lot more difficult when you're hurling artillery into normal civilian neighborhoods.
There were plenty of Northern Irish neighborhoods into which UK military and the police simply couldn't operate without negotiating with a representative of that neighborhood.
To be fair the US has a tendency to side with tyrants, dictators, oppressors, not exactly with the peasants, at least in the past 80 years.
To name one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
But I see your point, my objections are to:
1 - you don't need to be armed, you nede to be able to, in case you;re going to need it (for example through external support)
2 - you prove my point, there is no armed revolt that succeeded only because people were armed, you need international support (at least from your neighbours)
> I'd like to see a citation of a single unarmed revolution that succeeded.
here's one for you, my friend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution
> The purpose of being armed is really to force the opposition to massacre you
exactly.
that's the point.
and that's why you don't point a gun to a policeman.
being armed has always been a disadvantage for regular people.
That's why the comment bringing up the 2nd amendment is completely off topic in this context, 10 centuries ago if you traveled armed you had to be ready to fight, because everyone armed like you was going to try to kill you: you represented a danger.
it's the same thing that happens today in US, a lot of people are armed, they have guns on them, the police patrolling is even more heavily armed that the gangsters, they take a look a round, see something fishy, they see a gun, they shoot.
No question asked.
So, to go back on topic, being unarmed for the peasants of the Carolingian era most of the time made the difference between being killed and being simply robbed.
there is no "the people" as a single entity and interests when there is a revolt.
if everybody is armed, the supporters of the tyrant are going to be armed as well.
But with better equipment.
It’s mathematically better, I think that armed populace has a higher chance of revolt vs armed loyalist populace + armed military than unarmed populace vs unarmed loyalist + armed military.
And I also think the reasoning is that the anti-tyrannical populace will be much larger than the pro-tyrannical populace since if the tyrant has the support of the people then are they really a tyrant.
US is the only country in the western World who only made one real revolution.
And it was to not pay taxes, not against a true tyrant.
> And I also think the reasoning is that the anti-tyrannical populace will be much larger
The only thing that will be larger is the anti everybody else populace (tribalism, to give it a name).
USA had one major civil war and they keep killing each other like nowhere else in the World (like ten times more than the west average).
It's mathematically provable.
There is no similar right in any other part of the World, in every other part of the World there have been revolts, sometimes much larger than US has ever witnessed.
Many countries have also revolted against USA, that more often than not has been the tryrant.