It's as much a fantasy as any other "nuclear option", including the literal nuclear option.

Violent revolutions are a part of our history, and they still happen around the world today. Unless things go very, very poorly in the next few decades, we probably won't see another one in the USA in our lifetimes. We can all admit that that fact makes the 2nd amendment's usefulness feel fantastical.

But on deeper reflection I would hope that we can acknowledge that violent revolution is not an impossibility, it's merely an improbability. And anybody who tries to tell you that hundreds of millions of small arms are inconsequential in a fight is uninformed, to put it lightly.

The fact that the current level of rights abuses (which I would agree is much too high and climbing!) has not lead to a violent revolution is a feature, not a bug.

▲

autoexec 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's as much a fantasy as any other "nuclear option", including the literal nuclear option.

Mutually assured destruction is what makes the literal nuclear option a valid deterrent. That doesn't work with the second amendment though because one side has guns and the other side has guns and tanks and drones and nukes and the ability to control all public communication networks, etc.

Violent revolutions are a part of our history, but back at a time when having muskets was enough to get the job done. It's completely unrealistic to expect that to work out in today's environment and the government knows that. Hundreds of millions of small arms are inconsequential in a fight when you're fighting against planes and drones that can drop bombs while flying higher than bullets fired upwards can ever reach.

That said, while the success of outright revolution (at which point the constitution doesn't really matter) can be reasonably debated, what can't be argued is that the 2nd amendment has been effective at protecting our rights. Our rights are routinely violated. The 2nd amendment is total failure when it comes to protecting our rights and when it comes it preventing violations of those rights. The government does not fear the people and that becomes increasingly clear as the mask slips away and they stop even pretending to be anything but openly corrupt.

▲

AngryData an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Tanks and planes require logistics and people. You don't shoot at the tanks directly, you shoot at the people loading them, or the refinery towers that fuel them, or the people that have to eventually get out of them.

What are they going to do, level factories and skyscrapers when their logistics are threatened thus destroying their own logistics and economy that is supporting them? An insurgency is not like a nation state war, it is asymettrical warfare where even telling who the enemy is is incredibly difficult and many exist among your own personnel.

	▲	autoexec an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> What are they going to do, level factories and skyscrapers when their logistics are threatened thus destroying their own logistics They've already got planes and tanks. They can also be strategic about what they target, protecting what's important to them while targeting what's important to the population. The people flying the planes and drones won't have homes in the communities they bomb. Our government has already opened fire on Americans, already dropped bombs on American cities. Like I said though, how well they'd do in a revolt is theoretical. What isn't theoretical is the failure of the 2nd amendment to protect our freedoms.

▲

rcoveson an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> That doesn't work with the second amendment though because one side has guns and the other side has guns and tanks and drones and nukes and the ability to control all public communication networks, etc.

I don't want to be too blunt, but this is the "uninformed" I was talking about. The same asymmetry was present in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The ability to level cities is not actually that helpful when the goal is to control the population. Modern revolutions don't involve standing armies that you can kill will tanks.

> outright revolution (at which point the constitution doesn't really matter)

It doesn't matter beyond the point of revolution. It matters a lot that it was in effect before the revolution.

> what can't be argued is that the 2nd amendment has been effective at protecting our rights. Our rights are routinely violated.

I'm not sure if you just don't understand the concept of a last resort or if you actually think that we're at the point of last resort already, in which case my only question is: Do you own a gun yet?

	▲	autoexec 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> The same asymmetry was present in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Those also occurred overseas. The government didn't already have control over the population like they do here. They didn't have massive amounts of data on every last person there, and everyone those people knew. They hadn't been tracking all of their movements. If the founding fathers had tried to gain independence while still in Brittan the fight would have been much much harder. We can argue over how well a revolution might go in theory, but the second amendment's failure to protect our freedoms isn't theoretical. Our freedoms are being violated all the time. It failed. That means that having the "last resort" option doesn't prevent our government from violating our rights. The second does not protect the first. A last resort isn't effective at defending our freedoms under the government we have. It just maybe gives us a very very small chance to throw the old system away and replace it with something new that would restore our rights. Personally, I'd like to think that it's still possible to vote our freedoms back, but there's been a lot of efforts made to reduce or prevent our ability to accomplish that and recently voter suppression efforts appear to be escalating alongside talk of "third terms" and election canceling. It's certainty not encouraging. In my case, under an absolute worst case scenario, the most effective use of a gun would be suicide. At best it might save me from looters. I can't imagine it being any use against a drone strike.