[sexobon]

Originally Posted by DanaC

... It may - may - be some protection against a state power that turns against its own people. But even then: it is more likely that state has the more powerful weapons and the more organised force. What is more likely to save a population from internal conflict in that scenario is not the presence of weapons in the general population, but the lack of appetite amongst the state's forces for use of deadly force agains their kith and kin (as in the early stages of the Russian Revolution).

The state's forces don't typically turn on its entire population, it turns on one segment of the population at a time until enough of them fall that even family loyalties are corrupted when it comes to their survival.

“First they came …” is a famous statement and provocative poem attributed to pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

When this happens, as it has before and as it will again, the people become the insurgency. The presence of weapons in the general population enables them to do what ISIS is doing in Iraq and Syria, what the Taliban and Al Qaeda are doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It enables the people to take back their country from the state unless the state gets external support and even then they may just stalemate. That's a much more reliable recourse than depending on the lack of appetite amongst the state's forces for use of deadly force against their kith and kin. Too many such loyalties have fallen by the wayside under a state's gun to consider that alone a rational strategy. Guerrilla warfare has come a long way baby. You're livin' in the past as is the author of the article you posted.; but, even then there were people of vision - Foco theory:

Why does the guerrilla fighter fight?
We must come to the inevitable conclusion
that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer,
that he takes up arms responding to the angry
protest of the people against their oppressors,
and that he fights in order to change the social system
that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.

— Che Guevara