Exactly. One aerial strike is all that takes to kill a handful of idiots that think they can take on the federal military.
Since you are only in high school I suggest you learn more about the differences between correlation and causation.
The OP has a very good point, but there is something else at play here. When the constitution was created the govt had guns and the people had guns to defend themselves from the govt if necessary. Now the govt has tanks, fighter planes, and nuclear bombs. If they want to round up the citizens and kill them all then they can do it whether the citizen has a gun or not, it won't matter.
Guns didn't protect those citizens at all when George Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Its a false sense of security for protecting against government. Now, if they are trying to have an argument that they want guns in their house to protect against potential robbers then sure I'd see their point. Guns to defend against govt. is just futile and stupid.
Are we violating the constitution by not allowing citizens to effectively resist a tyrannic government by not allowing nuclear bomb ownership? i disagree w RR. At one point it might have been viable w muskets and asymmetrical warfare but he's right about modern day tech. Sure there might be small resistance like in iraq and afgan, but an overthrow against a loyal US army is IMPOSSIBLE. I own guns because its a symbol of freedom. I can also use it for home protect and for fun.
Stupid? Yes. Futile? Not necessarily. Imagine a guerrilla war in a place like nyc. Unless you're willing to incur massive civilian casualties and near total infrastructure loss, it would be very difficult to root out all insurgents. Then figure in the rest of the large cities....LA, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, etc, all at the same time. Then factor in interference from other countries. It would turn into one long drawn out cluster**** for everyone and probably the disintegration of the country.
Insurgency is one thing, but overthrowing the US government by force is another. Not just any backwards, 70's tech Army, mind you. And there's a difference between an Army fighting to occupy a country and an Army fighting for it's existence.
The notion that citizens could use guns to defend against the government is so mind numbingly stupid that I fear for any individual that mentally out-of-touch. Haha also I love the argument that follows: "we could use guerilla warfare because the government won't want to kill civilians!" Translation: the guns will defend against mass killings because the government would never commit a mass killing! Stupidity
Yeah, there's many factors of scale between insurgency and total govt overthrow. The odds of a nationwide insurrection are miniscule. But you also have to consider that the US has a total volunteer army. If they were to start indiscriminately mowing down civilians, that will only lead to escalation and large scale defections. An army fighting for existence in the US would, in the end, fragment and end up fighting itself. IMHO.
Most likely any US government that was about to become so tyrannical as to lead to a widespread insurgency would long be voted out of office. For that matter given divided government with civilian control of the military would never be able to undertake such an action. The idea that the US will become an authoritarian regime requiring an insurgency of citizen militia to fight it like in Syria is fantasy. Those that think that things like the ACA or gun control show we are on the road to tyranny don't know what tyranny means.
In fact, with tongue only partly in cheek, we should note that it is the well-known step #1 for a would-be tyrant to round up all the paranoid, violence-prone weapon owners and give them jobs in a paramilitary wing. Even give them little uniforms and arm bands. But seriously, if we turn into a totalitarian regime, most of all the most angry and paranoid people will be assimilated early on.
I also find it hard to believe that you would not have mutiny from members of the military when they have to hunt down and kill civilians that are armed.
Probably would take a lot of back and forth over a period of years before it ever got real crazy. As it stands now, any two bit redneck militia that rose up would get squashed like a bug. But a series of ruby ridges/wacos would tend to make the natives rather restless; and when the natives got restless and got tired of getting their asses kicked, they would tend to band together in larger insurrections. The idea becomes not so fantastical when you are faced with voting the same power structure in over and over because there are no other choices. Repubs or demos...there's not that much difference when you look at who's pulling the strings. The money and power in this country has slowly become concentrated among a few. If that trend continues and I don't see any reason it won't, anything is possible. I don't see the civilian control of the military as an obstruction to tyranny so much. Money and power can bend the strongest wills.
Too late to defend yourselves if that happens. The OP is uber-exaggerated, but don't forget that once upon a time a guy named Adolf dragged a prosperous and highly educated nation into the depths of fascism by (among other things) instilling fear in the population and planting mythical enemies in their heads. We all have to always realize that it is difficult for us to detect our own fascism, and that it is never as far away as we think. Obviously, the same things will never happen again in the same way, and that unfortunately gives us comfort. However, fascism rarely comes back in exactly the same way and it usually manifests itself in different ways, grasping at different ideas and using different techniques to achieve the same end. When Mr End of Quote is making it all the way to the finals, I would be worried. Not that I think Mitt is that kind of guy. But mainly because an allegedly healthy democracy churned out the most right-ish democrat in history to run against a person who seems out of touch with most Americans. The system requires maintenance and IMO you would be foolish to ignore small gaps which may develop into black holes over time.
