I've always been curious what sorts of scenarios people envision where their guns can actually protect them from government.

In the vast majority of cases, the moment law enforcement becomes aware that you are armed, they will respond with overwhelming force. And if you do actually injure or kill one of them, congratulations, you are now in much deeper shit than you started with (and will indeed be lucky to get out of the situation alive to serve time in prison).

I have a question: Who would win, a citizen with an AR-15 or an Apache gunship? What about 30 citizens or an Apache gunship?

You can't win a gun battle with the United States government. What you can do is to be armed and force the government to kill you (and risk being killed). While Bundy shouldn't have been anyone's poster child for the 2nd amendment, when armed men rallied around him, the government backed down (and gave him his cattle back) rather ran risk a showdown. When the government faces a group of 30 citizens with AR-15's, the government has a choice to make: fight, and a lot of people die, or back down. That's the inherent value of the 2nd Amendment as a balance to government power.

Since you don't seem to understand much about guerilla warfare, let me pose to you a few hypothetical questions, which should also reveal to you why revolutions always end up being absurdly bloody affairs, and why I want no part in one.

Who would win, unarmed or lightly armed apache pilots at a bar, or a group of guerillas with AR-15s? Who would win, a supply convoy full of apache parts guarded by a few soldiers or a roadside bomb followed up by an ambush by guerillas with AR-15s? Who would win, the families of an apache pilot off-base for the day, or a guerilla with an AR-15?

It depends. It's a very simple view of armed conflict that would result in such a question.

It's an even simpler view of politics that ignores the dimension of the .gov having to explain to everybody else why it thought it was necessary to shoot 30 of its own citizens.

There's a very good discussion to be had about the role of government and monopoly of force and all of these things, and I respect both outcomes if argued properly; silly comparisons between gun size though are only distractions.

There aren't /that/ many Apache gunships / the Taliban are still hanging on despite their opponents having them.

The taliban were (effectively) a national government before 2003. Before that, they were part of a civil war to become the national government. They're hardly a couple of unorganized gun enthusiasts.

So? They don't have an air force, tanks, radar installations, anything really besides guns, rpgs, and improvised explosive devices.

It's at least as naive to believe that our government will always be benevolent as it is to believe that the armed civilians of the USA could rebel against the military. I would argue that the second is much more plausible.

Do you see becoming guerilla fighters barely eking out an existence to be a desirable outcome?

Revolutions don't work. America just romanticises one that gave them an illusion of freedom for a time.

How do you define 'work'? Iran, Cuba, Russia, France, etc...

I think a better question concerns all the gun owners vs. said military hardware. That is, if you could convince all of the gun owners to fight, which is another issue entirely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...

The situation would be a lot more complicated even if it came to that. What's your point? If we're going to suggest a hostile government takeover I would rather have the gun and I don't know who wouldn't.

This sort of response always make me laugh.

I'm going to go ahead and guess that you're not a member of a well-regulated militia? You know, that thing the 2nd amendment specifically mentions?

I'm totally okay with private gun ownership, but if you're going to justify it with "we're going to have to rise up against our evil government!", do you really think you're going to be able to mount a hollywood-style one-man stand against "the evil government"?

"we're going to have to rise up against our evil government!"

This stance, and your criticism of it, miss the mark. In my view, legitimizing private gun ownership should not be based on whose are bigger, or "who would win in a fight" arguments. Instead, private gun ownership is a simple question of property rights. I see private gun ownership having much more to do with the right for you to defend your private property. In this context, I'm in favor of private gun rights, even if taken as a symbolic gesture to the importance of private property.

So, the argument isn't "Hurr durr I'm gonna shoot me dem gubbament boys if'n dey come 'round the house ah tell you hwut"--as many others have pointed out they have tanks, and artillery, and drones, and what could charitably referred to as "enterprise solutions".

The argument is that if everybody is known to be disarmed, the government (or other actors) may consider courses of action that previously would've been obviously a bad idea, and do so with impunity. It also means that it is more easy to paint and propagandize the people who have guns or who do defend themselves, because they are now an "other" and the .gov then gets to use all of the criminal language to describe them (with the same ill effects as seen with, say, potheads).

I'm not advocating for armed rebellion--there are a long and lengthy list of issues with such a thing, and honestly I'm quite certain that the quality of life we enjoy today would disappear indefinitely--and anyone who is is trying to sell you something.

The fact that people cannot seem to connect the dots between "if we are disarmed the government will do terrible things to us if it seems like a good use of their resources" and "the government actively does shitty things to us even knowing we're armed" and "the government has the largest and most capable surveillance network and information control scheme in the history of mankind" is baffling. It's almost like they want to lose all of our nice things.

One, our government has robots that kill people from the sky.

Two, this sounds like some kind of libertarian fantasy that being armed makes you "freer". Government provides law enforcement which is the only reason you get to enjoy any semblance of civilization.