Smasharoo wrote:
Millions of people wielding their own weapons in defense of a tyrannical government is why we have the second amendment. No amount of quantifying will ever change this.
Maybe, actually. The problem now is that the "weapons" being wielded against the "tyrannical government" may as well be room temperature ramen. They're about as effective. If the "tyrannical government" feels like killing you, and it can find you, you'll be dead regardless of how many rounds of 7.62 you stockpiled. In seconds.
Depends on the State. In the US, absolutely, but then we're back to a MORE GUNS or NO GUNS circus.
Forcing a government to start racking up a body count is probably more effective than the guns actually are in instituting change. If a government had to decide between killing a third of it's citizens or taking a more moderate course, it's a reasonable deterrent, if not necessarily a militarily effective one. It also lends a causus belli for other governments to get in on the game of dismantling that state for their own benefit (examples of this aren't particularly hard to find).This typically happens in non Hegemony states, but they still fall victim to it occasionally, and it's probably a more likely cause of dissolution than most of the other usual suspects.