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In the case of an outright revolution you're mostly correct, although i would argue that having guns legal and prevalent before the revolution makes it much muc

In the case of an outright revolution you're mostly correct, although i would argue that having guns legal and prevalent before the revolution makes it much much easier for them to be bought out of a van in an alley. If guns were illegal beforehand then the van method requires either making them, which is usually subpar, or smuggling them in from another country, which is risky. Having a large number of them locally available and just around means they can be easily repurposed or acquired. Also, i'm unsure what you mean by "Nobody is going to fight the government using legally bought guns". One of the points of US gun ownership is that there is no easily accessible database of who owns guns. So once you own a gun legally you can then use it in the revolution. However, there is an advantage to having guns even in the case of non-revolutions! Ruby Ridge is a perfect example of the use of guns to prevent future government overreach. The outcomes there have instilled a years long fear in government agents of going out to seize weapons from citizens.

tivert 3y ago
> In the case of an outright revolution you're mostly correct, although i would argue that having guns legal and prevalent before the revolution makes it much much easier for them to be bought out of a van in an alley. If guns were illegal beforehand then the van method requires either making them, which is usually subpar, or smuggling them in from another country, which is risky. Having a large number of them locally available and just around means they can be easily repurposed or acquired. Myanmar is a case in point. There's currently an armed rebellion against the the military dictatorship there, but (at least a few years ago) is was hobbled by Myanmar's strict gun control laws. IIRC, when the military started shooting protesters, they sometimes tried to resist with single-shot hunting rifles, but were predictably beaten. An NPR story I heard a few years ago described how they were trying to smuggle stuff like AR-15s from Thailand, but the quantities were so inadequate the protesters-turned-rebels had to train with wooden mockups. This looks like a more recent article on it, and it sounds like things are getting better: https://asiatimes.com/2023/05/myanmar-pdfs-getting-the-guns-to-turn-the-war/ https://asiatimes.com/2023/05/myanmar-pdfs-getting-the-guns-.... However, I bet the rebellion would be farther along if Myanmar had a healthier supply of privately-owned, capable guns to draw from. Here's a quote: > Over the dry season months, [Myanmar Air Force] jets and helicopter gunships ratcheted up the tempo of daily strikes which in addition to supporting the regime’s embattled ground troops also deliberately targeted villages, clinics, churches and even camps where hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) have sought precarious refuge. > But for all the publicity and outrage they have drawn, the [military government's] Russian-built Yak-130 jets and Mi-35 gunships were not in fact the most important killers shaping the course of the conflict in recent months. That lethal accolade should rather go to the humble assault rifles and grenade launchers now turbocharging resistance across the flatlands of central Myanmar. > Over the past five months of this year’s dry season, an accelerating proliferation of automatic rifles and other small arms seldom seen in 2021 and 2022 has wrought a striking if virtually unreported transformation of the war.

tivert 3y ago

> In the case of an outright revolution you're mostly correct, although i would argue that having guns legal and prevalent before the revolution makes it much much easier for them to be bought out of a van in an alley. If guns were illegal beforehand then the van method requires either making them, which is usually subpar, or smuggling them in from another country, which is risky. Having a large number of them locally available and just around means they can be easily repurposed or acquired. Myanmar is a case in point. There's currently an armed rebellion against the the military dictatorship there, but (at least a few years ago) is was hobbled by Myanmar's strict gun control laws. IIRC, when the military started shooting protesters, they sometimes tried to resist with single-shot hunting rifles, but were predictably beaten. An NPR story I heard a few years ago described how they were trying to smuggle stuff like AR-15s from Thailand, but the quantities were so inadequate the protesters-turned-rebels had to train with wooden mockups. This looks like a more recent article on it, and it sounds like things are getting better: https://asiatimes.com/2023/05/myanmar-pdfs-getting-the-guns-to-turn-the-war/ https://asiatimes.com/2023/05/myanmar-pdfs-getting-the-guns-.... However, I bet the rebellion would be farther along if Myanmar had a healthier supply of privately-owned, capable guns to draw from. Here's a quote: > Over the dry season months, [Myanmar Air Force] jets and helicopter gunships ratcheted up the tempo of daily strikes which in addition to supporting the regime’s embattled ground troops also deliberately targeted villages, clinics, churches and even camps where hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) have sought precarious refuge. > But for all the publicity and outrage they have drawn, the [military government's] Russian-built Yak-130 jets and Mi-35 gunships were not in fact the most important killers shaping the course of the conflict in recent months. That lethal accolade should rather go to the humble assault rifles and grenade launchers now turbocharging resistance across the flatlands of central Myanmar. > Over the past five months of this year’s dry season, an accelerating proliferation of automatic rifles and other small arms seldom seen in 2021 and 2022 has wrought a striking if virtually unreported transformation of the war.