Lots and lots of guns available to population is the best safeguard. It's hard to build authoritarian government let alone dictatorship when so much of population is armed.

And there is no way Trump will go against gun ownership rights.

And here I thought it was an educated population who cared and held their representatives accountable to some kind of moral/ethical standard, and concepts like "rule of law".

I supposed guns could be used to do that, but they really seem an inferior tool.

This is a common belief in the US, and it has one obvious weakness: what if most of the people with guns are happy about an authoritarian government, since they feel like they are the "in-group", and they hate the "out-group" anyway?

I mean, the erosion of civil rights in the US has gone on for some time, and the argument that guns would prevent it is constantly proved wrong. As long as there's lip service to free speech, and more importantly, the right to bear arms, it seems that all other rights can be trampled on with impunity.

Trump is someone who prioritizes political convenience over ideological consistency. If it served his goals, I wouldn’t be surprised if he found a way to disarm opponents while ensuring his loyalists remained armed. This kind of selective enforcement is not unprecedented in history—authoritarian leaders often secure control by disarming opposition groups while maintaining force among their supporters.

For example, in 1933, after coming to power, the Nazi regime implemented firearm restrictions that disproportionately impacted political opponents, such as communists and Jewish citizens, while allowing pro-Nazi paramilitary groups to remain well-armed. Similarly, in modern autocratic states like Venezuela, the government has imposed strict gun control while arming loyalist militias. The pattern is clear: when a leader seeks to consolidate power, they often weaken the opposition’s access to weapons rather than banning them outright.

Even if large numbers of civilians were armed, that alone wouldn't be enough to stop an authoritarian shift. The U.S. military possesses overwhelming firepower, intelligence capabilities, and infrastructure to suppress resistance. If the military backed Trump fully, any opposition would likely be crushed. But more importantly, authoritarianism doesn’t usually arrive through sudden, dramatic force—it seeps in gradually. A slow erosion of rights, institutions, and norms makes it difficult for people to recognize the turning point until it’s too late. By the time armed resistance seemed justified to most, it would be disorganized, reactionary, and likely ineffective.