You will not get me on board with banning the type of weapons that would be effective in resisting a tyrannical government, i.e. semi-automatic rifles.
Sigh. The types of weapons effective in resisting a tyrannical government have already been banned for private use. Nukes, rockets, land mines, bioweapons, tanks, bombers (and the munitions to load 'em up).
Just for the heck of it let's pretend that all you need against the most powerful modern military in the world are a few rifles, whatever. We'll ignore the fact that a true tyrant can wipe you out by isolating you, releasing some bio-weapons, letting you all die horribly, then doing some minor cleanup a year later . . .
The civil war in Syria and Libya both showed that a tyrant was not able to easily wipe out an armed resistance.
An armed resistance, yes. With small arms? Lol.
Libya:
T55 battle tanks
Type 63 107mm Multi-barrel rocket launchers
DShK 12.7mm heavy machine guns
ZPU-2/ZPU-4 Anti-aircraft guns
106mm M40A1
84mm Swedish Carl Gustav
. . . etc.
-
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-12692068Syria:
- Anti-air provided by Qatar and Russia
- Anti-tank provided by Russia and the US
- Field artillery provided by Russia
- Heavy machine guns provided by Russia, Saudi Arabia
- Rockets provided by Saudi Arabia
. . . etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_equipment_used_by_Syrian_opposition_forcesYou will be disturbed to find out that the very weapons used by the Libyan and Syrian rebels as part of their armed resistance have already been restricted in the US . . . and that both they Syrian and Libyan armies required the use of much more than small arms. Of course, both armies are also exponentially weaker than the US army that you're planning to stand against.
You'll be interested to know that during Qaddafi's reign there was gun control. The Libyan revolution wasn't won by some guys who could go to the local store and buy a semi-auto AR-15. That would have been suicide. It was won when real arms were supplied by other countries.
In Syria it also took foreign heavy duty military weapons (the kind currently prohibited from private ownership in the US) for them to get going. Because attempting to
Can you point to a single instance in the last hundred and fifty years where a tyrant has been overthrown by a band of hardy guerrillas and not immediately been replaced with another tyrant? I'll give you some time. No? Yeah, that's because the people who are most effective at leading effective guerrilla forces are assholes like Osama. They don't tend to want to give power back to the people once they've finally seized it.
Well if we go back 250 years you would have the American Revolution, the slave revolt in Haiti, and the Spanish guerillas in the peninsular campaign against Napoleon. However, my point was that the purpose of the 2nd amendment is to prevent a tyrannical government from coming to power because of the threat of having an armed populace that would outnumber the government's military forces. There are tens of millions of gun owners in the US in comparison to a total active and reserve military of about two million. Many of which (myself included) would be more likely to resist a tyrannical government than fire upon US citizens. My oath is to the Constitution of the United States, not the president.
A simple 'No' is fine. No, in the last 150 years (the entire history of modern warfare) every rebel group that has ever risen up and replaced a dictator has merely put their own brand of dictatorship into power. That is the nature of guerrilla revolution in the modern era. If you actually want to replace a dictator with a democracy, that tends to take decades of small changes. Changes fought for in political and legal cases rather than with six-shooters and a cowboy hat.
Yes, Pol Pot overthrew the existing government and was a dictator who killed many of his own people after seizing power.
Yep. Armed revolutionary doing what armed revolutionaries do in modern times - putting a dictator into power.
Rwanda was genocide committed by the majority ethnic group (which was in power) against a minority ethnic group, primarily with machetes. It ranks near dead last in the world for the rate of gun ownership. I'll be there's a lot of Tutsis who wished they had a gun when a mob of machete armed Hutu neighbors showed up and hacked them to death.
I'll bet that a lot of Tutsis were happy that the machete armed Hutu neighbours didn't have easy access to guns. Either way, it's yet another example of armed revolutionaries doing what they do in modern times. Putting a dictator into power.
Most of the deaths in China occurred after the communists seized power during the cultural revolution. That was when they rounded up and killed the professors, business owners, intellectuals, and generally what would be considered societal elites. Same with Russia. Lenin took over in 1917 but majority of killings by the communist government occurred in the 1930s and 1940s when, just like in China, dissidents and intellectuals were rounded up and either killed outright or indirectly in labor/reeducation camps.
Yep. That's what happens after an armed revolution. You institute a dictator. The pattern happens over and over again. The revolution is not a solution to the problem (tyrannical government) because it always leads to a new tyrannical government. That's why your whole argument is kinda silly.
First we have to totally suspend reality and assume that some small arms are really going to do shit against the most powerful and well coordinated military in the world, led by a tyrannical government. Then we have to pretend that all of modern military history doesn't exist, and that your guerrilla leader who emerges will voluntarily relinquish power to restore a peaceful democratic order. If you're willing to make those leaps, I've got a bridge to sell you.
As you can see there is a long history of government trying to disarm their citizens before killing them. It is not a causal relationship however. I don't expect the Australian government to erect concentration camps anytime soon. However, I prefer to live in a country where the right to resist a tyrannical government by force of arms exists, rather than just counting on the goodwill of the government to not use their monopoly on force to someday decide to target me.
Actually, on this I completely agree with you. A tyrant tends to want to consolidate his power and reduce possible losses, so yeah . . . disarmament is pretty normal. I also agree with you that the first world nations with gun control laws (Canada, Australia, Britain, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Japan, etc.) are not likely to start setting up concentration camps soon. Why is that?
It's related to the point you're missing here.
They are democracies. If you don't want a tyrannical government in a democracy, you don't need to stockpile small arms (which aren't useful in a revolution anyway without all the supporting military weapons, and even if your revolution works will ensure that a tyrant becomes your new leader). You just need to stop voting for Cthulhu.