Reply #53: In a situation where militia groups of extremely right wing "patriots" ...

[spin]

launch a rebellion without the support of the majority of citizens, our military will quickly suppress the insurrection.

If at sometime in the far future, the citizens in this country find themselves under the heel of a dictator and a government that bows to his whims, an uprising may be very popular among the majority of the citizens. The military who is often composed of the most poor and oppressed classes in our nation may refuse to kill their fellow citizens. They may well join the movement to overthrow the tyrannical dictator and his henchmen in Congress.

The situation in our nation would have to deteriorate tremendously before a rebellion would ever gain the necessary popularity for success. In my personal opinion, it will never reach that point in my lifetime. It MIGHT during the lifetimes of my daughter or my grandchildren.

But at the rate that we are losing our rights to privacy and the speed at which the surveillance ability of agencies in our government is increasing, any insurrection might be squashed when it was in its infancy. Anyone who opposed the tyrannical government might simply be "disappeared" without trial and killed or tortured.

It might be wise for liberals to be aware that a government that would deserve to be overthrow might not be progressive in the least. It might be run by the rich and enormous multinational corporations who would treat all citizens except a very privileged few as slaves or serfs to be oppressed for profit.

We need to protect all of the rights we were granted by the founders and not foolishly throw them away because of programs such as the War on Drugs or the War on Terror. Those rights include the right to keep and bear arms.

I believe a successful revolution could occur without civilian firearm ownership. Libya had extremely strict gun control laws. It was obvious to me as I watched the news videos that many of those who were engaged in overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi had little experience with firearms. It is also true that without NATO the uprising would have had little chance of success. Still air power alone would have had little chance of success in getting rid of Gaddafi. Without arms in the hands of the rebels or the boots of foreign armies on the ground, the Libyan rebels would have simply slaughtered until they decided that their efforts were futile.