[drak0n1c]

The main reason for the second amendment is deterring authoritarianism. It works, regardless of force proportion. Occupying Afghanistan was a pain that was ultimately not worthwhile for anyone who tried it.

Regarding self-defense, there is also a benefit in deterrence - look at relative crime rates in the most heavily armed per-capita states.

[mschuster91]

> The main reason for the second amendment is deterring authoritarianism. It works, regardless of force proportion.

No. It's delusion. In doubt, feds will fuck you over and shoot your corpse when they're done. There is no such thing as stopping the police, short of welding yourself shut in a tank, but you're bound to run out of gas, air or food/water. Or being blown up with an RPG, if you do enough damage.

The only thing that works as a deterrence to authoritarianism is masses - but you really need MASSES, as in hundreds of thousands of people, not a couple hundred neckbeards with guns. Hell, G20 Hamburg was in the upper 5-digit range of protesters with a decent amount of experienced and willing rioters and it got royally screwed. I don't nearly see any protest coming near that range of numbers soon... except, maybe and hopefully, if Trump decides to be a totally ignorant idiot and fires Mueller.

[wanderer2323]

The case for deterring authoritarianism is not G20 protests, it's

(a) groups like Deacons for Defence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justic...) where the presence of weapons serves as a deterrence, or if you want to turn to more grim times, (b) events like Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising) where the concentration of weapons counts for forcing an oppressor to suffer casualties instead of just rolling over the unarmed opposition. That is what the quote you are responding to alludes to.

Finally, weapons also serve as deterrent for the out-of-control forces, e.g. (c) 1992 Los Angeles Riots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots) when the government is not acting directly or indirectly against a group but is simply not acting at all during critical time

All of these has happened before, and all of these will happen again, during our lifetime.

[soundwave106]

I don't see a correlation, actually, so far.

Comparing guns per capita on a small sampling, the top 5 most violent states per one survey are Louisiana (gun ownership: #11), Alaska (gun ownership: #1), Tennessee (gun ownership: #15), Delaware (gun ownership: #51), and Nevada (gun ownership: #16). All over the place, at least so far. Maybe a small bias towards "more guns=more violence per capita", but with such a huge outlier with Delaware, that makes me imagine that the overall data is pretty noisy.

My impression is that there is a much stronger indicator of guns-per-capita: population density. The top 5 guns per capita states are: Alaska (population density: #50), Arkansas (population density: #40), Idaho (population density: #44), West Virginia (population density: #29), Wyoming (population density: #49). Again, somewhat messy, but there seems like a strong bias towards more rural areas.

This makes sense to me. In America, a driving force for many people with guns is less pure self defense and more sport and recreation. Of which the opportunities are quite a bit more readily available in rural areas.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2016/07/29/ame... [2] https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/gun-ownership-rates-by-stat... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...