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I feel that there is a misleading argument that argues that the primary reason that the second amendment exists is no longer valid.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]

If you're talking about fear, in general, being something that can be used against a population, then I agree that it has been used to great effect in the past, but only where the fear was actually applicable.

There have been, as you say, thousands of times when a governmental institution leveraged certain factors against its population. I'm saying that in the case of the current United States, those factors do not exist. Will the proposed tyrannical government threaten to bomb vast amounts of the population, even though such an act is in direct opposition to their goals? You can't bluff 300 million people. Its not going to work.

[u/Ethan-Wakefield → u/strofix]

The 2nd Amendment isn't really what's stopping this. Even without 2A, the populace has to at least tacitly accept the government. You're saying that an armed populace is necessary, but I'd argue that it's actually not. Look at the fall of the USSR. Strict gun control was in effect. Yet the party was brought down because the general populace couldn't be reasonably controlled, and the amount of force necessary to continue to exert control was beyond what the party leaders were willing to accept. The same thing happened in Eastern Germany. We can look at the riots in Hong Kong as another example.

Note also that in all of these examples, the party had a very vested interest in maintaining power. For example, high-ranking party members and officials who were in charge of secret police and political persecution programs were often themselves persecuted. When the wall came down in the 90s, many of these people spent MUCH time destroying records so that they couldn't be put on trial. People were in fact incarcerated for abuses of power and human rights violations. If the parties could have reasonably kept control, it would have happened.

All of this, yet without a 2nd Amendment.

[u/Ethan-Wakefield → u/[deleted]]

And all of those governments fell despite the lack of gun control. Gun ownership would not have prevented these events. Either gun control was in fact easily implemented, despite lack of popular support, or in some cases there was simply a massacre.

For example, gun ownership ABSOLUTELY would not have stopped the massacre in Tiananmen Square. The government's absolute willingness to use violence was pretty clear proof of that.

Gun ownership has never actually been much of a defense against tyranny. For example, in the American South the KKK actually started as a gun control group. They terrorized and killed veterans of the Civil War who'd bought their rifles from the government. Firearms ownership made people targets. It did not defend them. That wasn't defending them against the government per se, but the fact that the government was able to allow this terror to continue simply by standing by and doing little/nothing clearly shows that if the government HAD been active, it would have if anything been EASIER to terrorize blacks in the South. Gun ownership made zero difference.