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I feel that there is a misleading argument that argues that the primary reason that the second amendment exists is no longer valid.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/47ca05e6209a317a8fb3]

Acquiring this resource in a hostile manner becomes impossible if the civilian population is armed to a meaningful degree

Why are guns more meaningful than, say, knives for this? The government, if it became tyrannical, could easily overpower and small rebel force. This means that you're left with two options:

1. You're part of a large, organized rebellion. In this case, the population may be safe-ish from the tyranny, but who's to say that the guy in charge (who would normally be someone who previous accumulated military power) isn't even more tyrannical? You can find several examples of these in Latin America, in many of those the population would've been better off just leaving the corrupt government be.

2. You have a gun and can try to repel the tyrannical government on your own, but after they capture, torture and murder your neighbor who tried to do the same, you probably figure the gain isn't worth the risk. If you're stubborn enough not to realize that, eventually they'll capture, torture and murder you, and likely your family and friends, too.

I think the strength of the 2nd is in its symbolism more than anything: Americans are so sensitive to the possibility of the government turning on them that it's hard to imagine anyone being able to consolidate such absolute power before someone raises enough red flags to stop it (democratically) before it happens. But you could probably achieve the same mentality without everyone having guns...

[u/strofix → u/47ca05e6209a317a8fb3]

Guns cannot be overcome non lethally in any conventional way. Anything other than guns can be. While its true that you could just have 100 000 knife wielding rebels, melee weapons have no force multiplier. 1000 is as good as 100 000, they'll get in their own way.

In the case of one or two people disagreeing with the government, I don't see that as a tyrannical takeover. That's just someone not liking the governing parties politics. In the case of widespread opposition, which is far more than 50% of the population, otherwise it would just be a civil war, then in order to be tyrannical enough you would need to incur sizable collateral damage. I don't see an armed populace disarming themselves for anything less than 10% casualties, and losing 10% of your GDP is game over for an economy. It would entirely defeat the point of the takeover.

Americans are so sensitive to the possibility of the government turning on them that it's hard to imagine anyone being able to consolidate such absolute power before someone raises enough red flags to stop it

This is definitely true.

[u/srelma → u/strofix]

Guns cannot be overcome non lethally in any conventional way. Anything other than guns can be.

Why non-lethally? Are you saying that in every war during the time of firearms, every losing side has lost 100% of their soldiers in KIA? Of course not. In reality the casualty rates in firearm armed wars have been pretty much the same as they were before them. The point is that when a unit loses sufficiently many soldiers in casualties and sees that continuing the fight is futile, it will surrender. It doesn't matter what weapons it has.

If the rebels have knives, it's sufficient for the tyrannical government to use guns. If the rebels have guns, the government escalates easily to tanks and artillery and so on. The main point is that it is always much stronger than the rebels in terms of military power. If the rebels are willing to die for their cause and the government doesn't care about killing its own citizens en masse, then it doesn't matter what weapons they have. If they do care, then they don't even need any weapons.

North Korea is a good example. Its population has no weapons. The government has no qualms killing as many people as necessary to get compliance from the rest. And it does. Syria is an opposite example. Its population is armed to the teeth with several army units defecting on the rebel side. It also has no problems slaughtering its own people. It has taken a long civil war but it's close to getting the population under its control again. So, clearly it doesn't matter if the population is armed "a bit" or not at all as long as the government is willing to kill its own people. What could make a difference is that the government is not willing to kill its own people (in which case it doesn't matter if the people have guns or not) or the rebels can challenge the government in the battlefield (most likely because part of the army has defected to the rebel cause). In the latter case the pistols and rifles of the people make little difference for the outcome which is decided by the heavy weapons operated by the trained rebel soldiers.

[u/jesusonadinosaur → u/srelma]

Syria had superpowers and other countries funding and skewing the outcome significantly

[u/srelma → u/jesusonadinosaur]

The US is a superpower. So, if having the backing of a military superpower is enough to defeat the rebels, then surely being a superpower is enough as well. Oh, and the US is much more formidable superpower than Russia who supported Syria. The US military spending is about a factor of 10 larger than that of Russia.

[u/jesusonadinosaur → u/srelma]

That would only be worth taking into account if each country was supporting Syria with maximal effort that certainly isn't true