| We're talking about the average citizen with a rifle and no training against a dictator/tyrant. In Ukraines case, that civilian group was not initially effective at stopping the attack, but your example of the defence force is an example of a supported reserve force digging in backed by logistics and support from a military/country. Those are 2 different things. My contention is that unrestricted access to arms doesn't in any way turn an untrained populace into a reserve force. You're attempt to frame it as "dictator + small loyalist military" as well as focusing solely on urban settings are a fun hypotheticals, but that's all they are. The reality is that actions like that in a developed nation result in an almost certain war if external or fracturing of countries internally in any real scenario with civilians supporting militaries/militias on the various sides. There is no reasonable assumption that unrestricted access to arms will stop a tyrant from destroying the country and tossing it into some form of civil war. The accompanying fact those people aren't trained, organized, or supported by logistics is the fundamental reason why they will fail to be effective. (I could also digress into the well organized militia and if we want to get all originalist about the interpretation but this has been unproductive enough) What we are really discussing is whether gun regulations make sense. Extreme edge cases like your hypotheticals fail to make a convincing argument they are a negative for society, especially when contrasted against the harms lack of regulations has been shown to cause society. |
my observation is that they were not reserve. They were patriotic citizens who voluntarily enlisted at the day of invasion. Gun ownership and hence training was much lower in Ukraine compared to US. And wiki says about the same: they were some semi-organized units before invasion, and during invasion 100k people volunteered and joined them, and they were absorbed by army.