[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by DanaC

An armed populace is no defence against genocide.

You might as well claim there is no defense whatsoever against genocide -- that we all owe our lives to the suffrance of our governments. Sounds untenable to me.

It's actually the sole known defense against genocide. The state is no bulwark against it, not when the state's power is needed to carry it out. I can't name a private genocide. Armed populaces also don't suffer genocides -- they only work that way when the targets can't shoot back. Civil wars don't amount to genocides, everything taken into consideration.

Three things need to line up before you can get a genocide going: gun control -- bans, that is; hatred, however rationalized, be it class, race, religion, whatever -- hatred must drive the egregious action; and governmental power, either to do the genocide directly or cover the activities of those who perform it. Of these three, gun control by law is the most efficient tool and the most vulnerable one -- you can repeal a law. Once that leg is off the stool, genocide becomes impracticable. Remove another, and it ends up unthinkable.

It may, theoretically, be a defence against governmental oppression, inasmuch as it may make the cost of success rise too high to be paid.

That approach has worked rather well in keeping our Republic a republic and politically stable. Arms keeping also did not affect the sociopolitical stability of the UK, either.

If the government wanted to conduct a war against its own people, and had military or vigilante support for that war, all the underground survival shelters and serried rows of tinned beans won't save them, and nor would hunting rifles, however loosely that term is applied.

This sort of remark is a reliable indicator that the speaker has never studied how guerrilla warfare works, and is ignorant of the principle that a lesser weapon may be used and directed to obtain a greater. I've never seen any of such people exhibit any understanding of guerrilla or unconventional strategy, either.