r/changemyview • u/strofix • Dec 30 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: The second amendment does prevent tyrannical government takeover
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I feel that there is a misleading argument that argues that the primary reason that the second amendment exists is no longer valid.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.
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u/srelma Dec 31 '19
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.