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Keeping your government honest/keeping it from slipping towards tyranny doesn't require power parity with the standing army. At the end of the day, all politics

Keeping your government honest/keeping it from slipping towards tyranny doesn't require power parity with the standing army. At the end of the day, all politics and all government is local. You remove a government's legitimacy by rendering your territory un-governable. So who are the implements of state power at the local level? Police chiefs. Mayors. Governors. District attorneys. Tax collectors. Etc.... You don't need tanks and aircraft to render these people incapable of performing their functions. Small arms (and maybe some improvised explosives) are sufficient. That's the true leverage and power of an armed citizenry backed by a supportive population. Afghanistan has repeatedly (and continues) to prove this.

pjc50 7y ago
> Afghanistan has repeatedly (and continues) to prove this. "Guns are necessary in case we want to turn the US into an impoverished patchwork of warlords" is a hell of a take.
- wanderer2323 7y ago
  it's also not the argument being made here
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Isn’t New Hampshire’s state motto “Live free or die”? It wouldn’t work in the US anyway. The gloves would come off in a long running civil war as they always do and there would be collective punishment, population resettlement and other war crimes. The US is as likely to follow international law in a war it genuinely feels is an existential threat as anyone else, not at all.
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    People who claim the US wouldn't bomb itself to smitherenes in order to maintain order seem to forget General Sherman's march to the sea. Every argument the "Guns will protect us from the government" crowd claims was already proven false over 100 years ago, and that was when the average citizen was still on equal footing in terms of firepower. There's also the fact that in the past 120 years, there has not been a concerted effort to "Rise up" despite many actual atrocities. So, gun owners, what would it take for you to attempt to march on Washington with your arms readied? The only time it ever happened was because people were denied the "right" to own other human beings. What is finally the breaking point that gets people willing to die against the might of the war machine?

pjc50 7y ago

> Afghanistan has repeatedly (and continues) to prove this. "Guns are necessary in case we want to turn the US into an impoverished patchwork of warlords" is a hell of a take.

wanderer2323 7y ago
it's also not the argument being made here
barry-cotter 7y ago
Isn’t New Hampshire’s state motto “Live free or die”? It wouldn’t work in the US anyway. The gloves would come off in a long running civil war as they always do and there would be collective punishment, population resettlement and other war crimes. The US is as likely to follow international law in a war it genuinely feels is an existential threat as anyone else, not at all.
- mrguyorama 7y ago
  People who claim the US wouldn't bomb itself to smitherenes in order to maintain order seem to forget General Sherman's march to the sea. Every argument the "Guns will protect us from the government" crowd claims was already proven false over 100 years ago, and that was when the average citizen was still on equal footing in terms of firepower. There's also the fact that in the past 120 years, there has not been a concerted effort to "Rise up" despite many actual atrocities. So, gun owners, what would it take for you to attempt to march on Washington with your arms readied? The only time it ever happened was because people were denied the "right" to own other human beings. What is finally the breaking point that gets people willing to die against the might of the war machine?