Reply #47: Your Admission, Sir, An Armed Populace Does Not Prevent Tyranny, Strips You Of Any Point

[The Magistrate]

If an armed population cannot prevent the rise of a tyrant, what can be achieved once the power of the state apparatus is in the tyrant's hands? In the latter condition, he is far more powerful than in the former.

It is true enough that some tyrants banish or restrict private possession of firearms, as a minor safety measure, but it is hardly the sturdy prop of their maintaining power. It is more in the nature of locking a car door; it keeps the amateurs out, but does little to inconvenience a professional. The bone and sinew of revolution is organization, and police state apparatus focuses on preventing this; people who are both organized and determined will contrive procurement of means for violence if they resolve upon it.

But tyrants do not by any means always strip their population of arms. Iraq under Saddam Hussein boasted a very well armed populace, to give one example only. Another of the weaknesses of your analysis is the assumption that the tyrant is universally or even widely unpopular, after he has been established in power. This is far from the case, even in the Communist regimes.

It is also worth remarking on the disdain you display to the very energetic opposition that has been offered to the most noteable tyrannies of the last century. It is not a question of 'the population buying into the schtick being sold by the tyrant in waiting', and only later finding itself helpless. In most instances large elements of the population resisted strenuously, under arms, and were beaten in the fight