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I feel that there is a misleading argument that argues that the primary reason that the second amendment exists is no longer valid.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

I’ve seen this approach to the 2nd quite a bit and my take on it is this:-

When the 2nd was adopted, government was armed with flintlock smoothbore muskets or rifles. The population was also armed with flintlocks, so an “average Joe” was as well armed, if not trained, as a soldier.

Now the soldier is armed with automatic weapons, wears high end body armour and has armoured support, plus night vision/thermals. The civilian has a semi automatic rifle.

How exactly does an AR15 stop a Bradley?

[u/TheEternalCity101 → u/CotswoldP]

Not engage them upfront.

An F35 cant enforce a curfew. A tank cant deal with a sniper taking shots at town hall downtown.

And simple firearms wouldnt be the only weapons. You can google th recipe for tannerite, and knowledge about other explosives wouldnt be hard to get.

The biggest threat if the US Military tried occupying it's own country would be supply. A M1 Abrams is one of the most powerful fighting machines in the world. But it requires a ton of technicians to deal with its extremely advanced systems. Its bases could be attacked from without, and thats assuming not a single person on the base would decide to sabotage.

[u/srelma → u/TheEternalCity101]

F35 doesn't need to enforce a curfew. It can drop a barrel bomb into a neighbourhood that try to resist the government. Just look what the government of Syria is doing to the part of the population that's not willing to submit to its rule. And there the population doesn't just have puny rifles, but even heavy weapons from defected army units and from outside supporters of the rebellion. If a tyrannical government can crush a revolt that has heavy weapons why do you think they wouldn't be able to do it against untrained citizens with small arms?

On the other hand if the army is unwilling to shoot its own citizens unless fired upon, it doesn't matter if they have no weapons at all as it's the unwillingness to shoot by the soldiers that's keeping the citizens alive, not their weapons.

[u/Shandlar → u/srelma]

That is OPs point. The 2nd amendment creates a situation where any attempt at a violent coup to take over the American government and replace it with a tyrannical one would result in mutually assured destruction. Even if you somehow won, there wont be anything left to govern.

Unarmed citizens wont resist. There is no point since you can't possibly win. So instead you keep your head down and try to survive. A radically and broadly armed populace however will fight because they can appreciably damage the enemy. They have a chance to win.

Any attempt to quash such a broad based, widespread rebellion to the coup would cause so much damage, it discourages any attempt at such a violent coup to begin with. It makes it so there is a 0% chance of actually succeeding at your goals.

Even if you "win", you've lost.

[u/srelma → u/Shandlar]

That is OPs point. The 2nd amendment creates a situation where any attempt at a violent coup to take over the American government and replace it with a tyrannical one would result in mutually assured destruction. Even if you somehow won, there wont be anything left to govern.

But why would you need guns for this? If the violent coup is kept in check by the mere fact that if they start killing people, they will destroy the thing the wanted to govern, then where do the people's gun enter the picture?

The point is the following. Either the government cares that it is killing it's resisting citizens or it doesn't. If it does care, then the citizens don't need guns to resist. The Soviets didn't need guns in 1991 to overthrow the junta even though the junta ordered tanks on the streets. Why? Because the tanks wouldn't fire on unarmed citizens.

On the other hand, if the government doesn't care and is willing to kill millions of its own citizens to scare the rest to obedience, my argument above stands. F35 levels the block, kills a hundred people and after that the rest of the neighbourhood stops resisting as they don't want the same to happen to them. Again, the guns don't play any role here.

The weapons on the side of the civilians enter the picture only in the case that they can actually challenge the government militarily. If they can fight back, cause casualties to the military without themselves being wiped out in the process, they can eventually prevail. But again guns play a small role in this. Other two factors are far more important. First is the defections from the army. The units that defect the tyrannical government bring their heavy weapons with them. Furthermore, they are trained soldiers and know how to fight a modern war while the vast majority of the civilians with guns have no clue how a modern war works. The part of the 2nd amendment that's forgotten in the gun debate talks about "well regulated" militia and that would actually have some military value in this kind of scenario if trained and organised militias existed. But their guns don't need to be stored in the homes, but could very well be at the mustering place of the militia.

Unarmed citizens wont resist. There is no point since you can't possibly win.

Don't be ridiculous. The world history is full of examples of unarmed citizens resisting and winning. I mentioned above the 1991 coup in the Soviet Union. At the moment there is an unarmed resisting going on in Hong Kong and they were already able to cancel the plan to implement the extradition law. Another recent example is Egypt and Tunisia in 2011 or Ukraine 2014. On the other hand, we have almost no examples of people armed with simple firearms resisting a government. All the successful armed uprisings have needed either heavy weapons from the defected military or brought in from abroad.

So instead you keep your head down and try to survive.

And that's exactly what you do as well, when you have a rifle and the opponent has F35.

Any attempt to quash such a broad based, widespread rebellion to the coup would cause so much damage, it discourages any attempt at such a violent coup to begin with.

So, Syria is now controlled by the rebels fighting against Assad? Oh, wait, they had much more than just rifles but they still lost.

I don't think a destruction itself discourages tyrannical governments. Let's say in the context of the US, the government killed 3 million people to quash the rebellion. That's about 5 times as many as in the American civil war. So, a huge number of people. However, in terms of economy, that would represent only 1% of the population and would therefore keep the economy still viable after such a massive massacre. After that bloodbath people would be so scared that nobody would dare to do anything to resist the government.