[Simon_says]

The reason to have citizens own guns is so the population can't be bullied by a totalitarian state, whether foreign or domestic. Guns democratize the use of violence. Sure, militaries can nuke cities, but only if they want to rule over a sheet of glass. Tanks and air superiority can win battles, but they can't stop the occupied population from assembling. To subjugate a populace, to keep them under your boot without outright killing them, you need infantry or police on the ground, and rifles in everybody's hands is a nightmare for such an occupying force.

More people will die of murder and suicide in an armed society, but it's the price we pay to protect against an existential threat to our culture's way of life, which in aggregate is more important than the tens of thousands of lives lost every year to gun violence. It's not good enough to just say that a disarmed society is safer. You have to show how we can have equal protection against a government run amok without guns. So far as I know, there's nothing equal. Human history is quite long. I don't think it's a coincidence that the number of democracies in the world exploded so very close to the same time in our history that guns became widely available and cheap enough for average citizens to own. Be careful about tearing down a foundational pillar of what keeps governments in check. This isn't some abstract fear. It's tangible, and it's already happened repeatedly.

[_9rq6]

I agree with your thoughts on this. In feudal India, landlords oppressed the common peasants out of which local Naxalism was formed. Today, these guys are effective and in many ways protect local forests and tribals depended on it through guns from local communities with political and economic power.

I wouldn't say that's good but it is reality.

[Simon_says]

I'm honestly a little surprised this comment is so unpopular. My understanding is that this is the rationale behind the USA's second amendment, not personal safety, and not hunting.

[kelnos]

Oh, it absolutely is one of the rationales behind the USA's second amendment. The problem is that rationale just isn't relevant today, and believing in it is the height of naivete. Even if you got every civilian gun owner in the US to secretly band together to overthrow the US government[0], the US military would pound them flat[1] before you could say "reload".

[0] Good luck with even that much.

[1] Without even touching the US's nuclear arsenal, though they might opt to level a city in clear, full rebellion as a deterrent. They'd still do fine without nukes, though, as devastating to the US population and infrastructure as it would be.

[Simon_says]

Yea, acknowledged, though I still think it would be harder than you might think for the US military to take over the civilian world. Though I still posit that just because your opposition is extraordinarily well equipped isn't a reason to give up the only advantages you do have.

[kelnos]

> The reason to have citizens own guns is so the population can't be bullied by a totalitarian state, whether foreign or domestic.

The US military is far too well-trained and well-equipped for any local civilian militia to have even a remote chance of winning a fight with them. That probably wasn't the case in 1800, but that ship sailed long ago.

> To subjugate a populace, to keep them under your boot without outright killing them, you need infantry or police on the ground, and rifles in everybody's hands is a nightmare for such an occupying force.

So what? The public having guns won't stop that from happening. Having or not having guns makes it equally bad. Actually, civilian gun ownership might make it worse: you end up with a lot more deaths on both sides, but the US military still wins.

> I don't think it's a coincidence that the number of democracies in the world exploded so very close to the same time in our history that guns became widely available and cheap enough for average citizens to own.

That's a pretty extraordinary claim that requires some research and evidence.

> Be careful about tearing down a foundational pillar of what keeps governments in check.

Even if we blithely ignore reality and assume that civilian gun ownership keeps the US government in check, what's keeping all those other democratic governments in check where civilian gun ownership is either not the norm or is mostly or completely outlawed? They seem to be doing just fine, and as a bonus have levels of gun violence that are much, much lower than that in the US.

> It's tangible, and it's already happened repeatedly.

To whom? I don't see regular revolutions happening in the vast majority of present-day democracies. Even if it's the case that legal civilian gun ownership was necessary hundreds of years ago to get us to a point where those democracies were able to be formed (I don't really buy that, but let's just give you that for a second), clearly civilian gun ownership is not necessary to maintain those democracies today. We have clear empirical evidence that it's not necessary if you just look at (nearly?) every other (actual) democracy in the world.

But still, all of this presupposes that an organized, armed, civilian militia could realistically win against the US military and overthrow the US government. That's laughable.