I mean what about the Viet Cong?

I think the main idea is that a well armed population creates a different relationship with the government. It is much harder to round up people and send them to camps if they can actually put up a fight. The idea is to avoid that conflict in the first place by having that threat of civilian retaliation. Yes the government could still do it, but it would be costly.

The Americans are so lucky that they only have to fear their own government.

I don't fear my government. I fear the Russian government. It's very unlikely that my government is going to send me to a camp. But the Russians totally could - they are already doing that in Ukraine.

A few points:

* How effective one may be in defending himself does not change the right in anyway.

* This is why the right extends to all arms of modern warfare. E.g., machine-guns, mortars, grenades, tanks, night vision, etc.

* The Founder were very much against a standing army...we should probably abolish it.

* When combatants are mixed with non-combatants, one cannot just drop a bomb. Because of this, well armed individuals can absolutely resist the military.

You can’t own guns banned by your state. Afaik you can’t own a rocket launcher, missiles, AAs, AT mines, nukes etc.

Re 4: a willing army can very much do whatever it wants. There are no laws of physics that prevent whatever happened in Bakhmut from happening.

Aside from machine-guns made after 1986 and possibly nukes, you can own any weapon in most states. The things you mentioned are considered Destructive Devices and require payment of a $200 tax stamp.

Sure. If the government just preemptively nukes all American cities and towns then so be it. But to say that civilian firearm possession cannot slow, stop, or impede a tyrannical government is wrong.

> I don’t know how any sane person thinks a bunch of larpers - even if they themselves don’t see them as such - can defend themselves against a willing US military…

I know, that's why Afghanistan is a shining star of liberalism in the Central Asia. The Taliban never was able to defend itself from the willing US military and was defeated years ago.

It might have been, if it hadn't been for the fact that the US leadership at the time didn’t want to fight them at all, it wanted to fight Iraq, and when it turned out that it couldn’t use 9/11 direcrly as an excuse to do so it went to work directly on making that excuse so it could, producing a lingering disaster in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere instead of getting the job done in Afghanistan.

Do you, in all honesty, think the US showed its full might against the taliban in an all out war?

The war served its purpose and when it was no longer profitable enough they moved.

> Do you, in all honesty, think the US showed its full might against the taliban in an all out war?

No, the one thing the US government held back were nukes.

Of course, I could see how those were off the table against a foreign country, but those concerns wouldn't apply to domestic use. The LARPers would stand no chance against H-bombs, which shows the truth of your original point. Small arms can't defend against a willing US military, because a willing US military will just nuke them.

The US would infiltrate and dismantle any uprising before it could pose a threat to the local state.

The sheer number of things that must go wrong for the US army to reach out to nukes is enormous.

> The US would infiltrate and dismantle any uprising before it could pose a threat to the local state.

Yeah, I know. That's why the US basically has no organized crime at all, and that's why no uprising has ever been successful ever. Governments are scarily competent, the US government especially. They never lose, never make a mistake, are totally unified, and are always ten steps ahead of everyone. It's basically an army of real Jack Bauers and Jason Bournes.