1. The U.S. military is ridiculously well financed and supplied. Even if every American strong enough to lift them had a battle rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition, the federal government has mobile armor, fighters and bombers, and guided explosive munitions. The average American simply does not have the means to fight toe to toe with any professional army. As guerilla fighters, it is usually more useful to build explosives and make booby traps than it is to fire rifles. And if you're close enough to hit something with a rifle, you should probably already be running away.
2. We have strong gun rights now. They have not perceptibly slowed the government's slow ratcheting towards greater power and Constitutional overreach. Whether the government is already tyrannical is a matter of opinion, but be assured that some people think that it is.
3. Guns are not the only tools required to resist government. They are neither necessary nor sufficient. Defending gun rights in preference to any of the others, such as privacy, speech, assembly, redress, and due process, is to abandon our best means of resisting government power in favor of the one least likely to yield a predictably favorable outcome. All human rights work together to produce liberty, and none are more important than the others. To prioritize them is to see them picked off one by one, back to front, like Alvin York would.
Your 1 and 2 are the ones I'm thinking of. Particularly with 2, it makes no sense that gun rights can prevent a slide into tyranny, but can also be taken away if you elect the wrong politicians. It requires gun rights to be simultaneously extremely powerful and extremely weak.
I think 3 is an excellent argument but is not really a hole in the idea that gun rights are necessary to prevent tyranny.
1. The U.S. military is ridiculously well financed and supplied. Even if every American strong enough to lift them had a battle rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition, the federal government has mobile armor, fighters and bombers, and guided explosive munitions. The average American simply does not have the means to fight toe to toe with any professional army. As guerilla fighters, it is usually more useful to build explosives and make booby traps than it is to fire rifles. And if you're close enough to hit something with a rifle, you should probably already be running away.
2. We have strong gun rights now. They have not perceptibly slowed the government's slow ratcheting towards greater power and Constitutional overreach. Whether the government is already tyrannical is a matter of opinion, but be assured that some people think that it is.
3. Guns are not the only tools required to resist government. They are neither necessary nor sufficient. Defending gun rights in preference to any of the others, such as privacy, speech, assembly, redress, and due process, is to abandon our best means of resisting government power in favor of the one least likely to yield a predictably favorable outcome. All human rights work together to produce liberty, and none are more important than the others. To prioritize them is to see them picked off one by one, back to front, like Alvin York would.