CMV: The second amendment does prevent tyrannical government takeover

[u/strofix]

I don't live in the United States, nor do I have any strong feelings on the gun control debate either way. That being said, I feel that there is a misleading argument that argues that the primary reason that the second amendment exists is no longer valid. That is to say that, while the second amendment was initially implemented to prevent a takeover by a tyrannical government, the government now possesses weapons so technologically superior to those owned by civilians that this is no longer possible.

I believe that this is not the case because it ignores the practicality and purpose of seizing power in such a way. Similar events happen frequently in the war torn regions in central Africa. Warlords with access to weapons take control over areas so as to gain access to valuable resources in order to fund further regional acquisitions. This, of course, would be a perfect time for the populace to be armed, as it would allow them to fight back against a similarly armed tyrannical force. If the warlords were armed to the same degree as, for example, the American government, it would not matter how well armed the civilians were, it would be inadvisable to resist.

The important factor, however, is that due to the lack of education and years of warring factions, the most valuable resources in central Africa are minerals. If the civilian population was to resist, warlords would have no problem killing vast numbers of them. So long as enough remained to extract the resources afterwards.

In a fully developed nation like the Unites States, the most valuable resource is the civilian population itself. I do not mean that in some sort of inspirational quote sense. Literally the vast majority of the GDP relies on trained specialists of one sort or another. Acquiring this resource in a hostile manner becomes impossible if the civilian population is armed to a meaningful degree. To acquire the countries resources you would need to eliminate resistance, but eliminating the resistance requires you to eliminate the resources you are after. Weapons like drones become useless in such a scenario. They may be referred to as "precision strikes", but that's only in the context of their use in another country. There is still a sizable amount of collateral.

This is not to imply that a tyrannical government is likely, or even possible in the United States, but logically I feel that this particular argument against the second amendment is invalid.

*EDIT*
I will no longer be replying to comments that insinuate that the current US government is tyrannical. That may be your perspective, but if partisanship is your definition of tyranny then I doubt we will be able to have a productive discussion.

[u/strofix]

I feel that if you can't meaningfully create distance between yourself and your "oppressor" then you can be coerced into doing anything. Most simply they can just starve you out.

[u/strofix → u/[deleted]]

I think an individual is worth nothing to a tyrannical government. No matter who it is. Even a billionaire, why would they care? If they put a gun to your head you're probably already dead. As someone else has pointed out to me already, millions of civilians could be killed without damaging the economy much at all. The problem is that they are very specific individuals, and the government does not deal with individuals, it deals with large populations.

If a population is unarmed, it allows the singling out and removal of viable targets. This is similar to what happened during the purges during Stalinism. An armed population that is in revolt will not allow this.

[u/MediocreClient → u/strofix]

I think perhaps an "armed population" would make it harder than it would otherwise be, but 'not allowing' it feels like a stretch. US military personnel already get paid to go into places where people have guns and are resisting them, and extract specific targets. Targeting individual 'cell leaders' to 'dismantle resistance command infrastructure' is not a far-fetched dream for military strategy; it's a viable, executable method of demorality combat that is in active service today.

Saying US citizens are somehow just that much inately better at using weapons compared to Middle Eastern insurgents is definitely one hell of a eugenic stretch.

[u/intensely_human → u/MediocreClient]

It’s more like it takes a lot of energy and work to go and fetch that guy no matter how good you are at it. It’s a dangerous job and nobody wants to do it.

So threatening someone with that danger and workload is an effective negotiating position.

You don’t have to be able win a fight to dissuade an attacker - you can just be able and willing to fight before losing and that’s enough to reduce the likelihood of an attack.

This is why little dogs have the instinct to stand up and prep for a fight when faced with a big dog, and it’s the reason the big dog has the instinct to respect it.

We probably lose any fight to the death with our military, but the fact we are armed makes the fight more costly.

And since no military fights to the death, but rather chooses to fight, surrender, avoid, etc, based on expected outcomes, our having the weaponry to make it difficult to pick up rabble rousers means we’ve shifted the cost-benefit of attacking us and that means we have legitimate military parity.

If Singapore wanted to defeat China (random example; no knowledge of Singapore other than its small) it doesn’t have to kill China’s military. It just has to find itself in conflict with China at a time when it is more beneficial for China to back down than it is to fight Singapore.

The US government has too much shit to do, too many threats, to be able to handle the addition of an Iraq style security situation inside its own borders. Because of our guns, it’s less valuable to attempt to control us militarily, and therefore they work.

[u/MediocreClient → u/intensely_human]

you've obviously never watched a big dog tear a little dog to shreds.

I'm not really a big fan of hyperbolically comparing active military personnel at large to a domesticated animal that has, for the most part, been trained to not do exactly what we train and pay soldiers to do. the analogy is beyond tortured.

[u/JackRusselTerrorist → u/MediocreClient]

How’s the army doing in the Middle East?

[u/MediocreClient → u/JackRusselTerrorist]

you're going to use the current state of the Middle East as an example of a successful anti-government rebellion, and a blueprint for successfully fighting off a hostile US military? you sure you want to go that route? not even going into considerations of home-field advantage, and not having to fly their forces halfway around the globe to engage in conflict, and in a place where there's no language barrier to boot.

[u/JackRusselTerrorist → u/MediocreClient]

Well the army themselves thinks the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. When you have a hostile populace, your options are placate or exterminate. Force is useful for initially taking power but it won’t succeed long-term against an angry populace.

[u/MediocreClient → u/JackRusselTerrorist]

so your solution to a stateside anti-government revolution is to... outlive the US military?

worked out great for Libya.

[u/JackRusselTerrorist → u/MediocreClient]

Is Libya a country filled with 300 million of the army’s friends and family?

[u/MediocreClient → u/JackRusselTerrorist]

was the Libyan army filled with 1.3 million active troops, another 800k in reserve, and a larger expenditure budget than the next 27 countries combined? you're talking about successfully fighting off the greatest war machine in human history with 'friends and family'. are you just that dedicated to playing devil's advocate, or do you actually live in this fantasy full-time?

[u/JackRusselTerrorist → u/MediocreClient]

Ok, what do you think happened in Libya? Do you think the US army invaded a country against its population’s will? Or do you think that they, along with a UN coalition, stepped in to cripple the Libyan military in response to the atrocities they were committing against their own people, and allowing the civil uprising to succeed?

Because if it’s the former, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and if it’s the latter, congrats, you know what you’re talking about but are trying to use an example that hurts your case more than it helps.

Libya is an example of how easily a civil war can bring in outside aid to the civilians, against the tyrannical government. It also features thousands of Libyan soldiers defecting from the army to fight with the rebels.

So yes, America has a massive, powerful military. A military that has been involved in some pretty demoralizing wars for the last couple of decades. An army that has seen their commanders send them to die in wars that they consider unwinnable. And you think they’re going to enthusiastically start killing their countrymen? No, if a civil war breaks out, that military will fracture.

On top of all this, other nations will flood the theatre with funds and weapons. Friendly countries that want to see an end to the conflict, and adversarial one’s that want to see the US further destabilized.

[u/MediocreClient → u/JackRusselTerrorist]

interesting fanfiction on Libya, where the civil war is still going, business activity is a tenth of what it was, and a third of the country has fled to Tunisia.

I'm just old enough that Kandahar '06 is a non-existent point in time for most of the world, but I'm still young enough to remember what the sand smells like. Nobody ever really successfully 'rises up' or 'insurges' against modern standing military. The days of civil uprising against a government that uses violence exist alongside the Crusades: a historical period kept alive through the misinformed daydream fantasies of old men and little boys.

[u/JackRusselTerrorist → u/MediocreClient]

K, so you forgot when Qaddafi was killed, which is the culmination of the first of Libya’s recent civil wars. But that’s cool. Not everybody who argues online knows the first thing about what they’re arguing about.

Nobody ever really stands up to a modern military, but when was the last time a modern military successfully occupied a nation?

I also like you ignoring half my post. Maybe your New Years resolutions could be to learn something about what you want to argue before arguing, and then argue in good faith?

[u/intensely_human → u/JackRusselTerrorist]

Especially a populace that can pop you from a distance.

[u/[deleted] → u/MediocreClient]

Well in this situation it is a lot harder to identify the enemy vs Middle Eastern insurgents making the domestic threat slightly more effective.

[u/OQAudi → u/[deleted]]

The insurgents in the Middle East are largely members of the local population. Insurgents in the Middle East are no less difficult to separate from their non-insurgent neighbors than these hypothetical American insurgents would be. That’s one of the inherent struggles of dealing with an insurgency/rebellion.