Gun ownership is less about protecting individuals from other individuals, and more about protecting our society from governments that want to oppress it. You could make the argument that no such power exists today, but that's besides the point. Powerful, oppressive, nations have existed before and they could exist again. An armed population is our last line of defense.
That is actually an extremely weak argument. Iraq had higher gun ownership than the US, and yet they were all under an oppressive dictator. There are actually several oppressive countries with high gun ownership.
A bunch of armed citizens does not make an effective army. Untrained and uncoordinated citizens are no match against well trained soldiers.
Very few armed resistance fights have succeeded in bringing democracy or freedom anywhere. More often than not it has been non-violent resistance which has succeeded.
In most cases when violence gets involved it is the wrong kind of people who end up on the top of the pecking order and you end up with an equally bad or worse regime in the end. We've seen this in the french revolutions, south american revolutions, various revolutions and independent fights across Asia and Africa, and more lately the Arab spring.
Freedom of speech, privacy etc is more important for keeping a country free than gun laws. If you have no free press, society will have advanced too far in the wrong direction before you can make a difference with your gun.
Ironically the same right wing people supporting gun rights, seem to not care a lick about privacy, surveillance, excessive police mandates or draconian laws.
I've noticed that too. The trend of right wing gun activists to support increased survalence. It's an odd issue that seems to draw support from both political parties. President Obama has made his stance on privacy and survalence pretty clear. Ironicically it's the same stance that most of the republican candidates are taking.
I am a right wing gun nut and I am strongly pro-Snowden, for what its worth. I am a gun nut because I fear government, and the NSA revelations are proof that my fears are justified.
A lot of other gun nuts think like me. Don't assume the Republican party represents us.
An armed populace is a deterrent to the worst abuses. Even with the modern military. They can't drone strike everyone and can't carpet bomb every town. Guerrilla wars are bloody and hard to win, as Vietnam and Iraq showed.
Don't really see this happening in a modern western country to be honest.
Or do you have some concrete scenario in mind?
There are limits on how much the military will blindly follow orders.
So either it will only affect small groups of people (in which case having the house full of weapons and explosives will be of limited help to you [2]) or it will affect enough people, that even the people in the military might start wondering if they are doing the right thing here.
Also isn't Iraq an counter example to your point (as mentioned in a parent post [1])?
Since it did have a fairly high gun ownership rate and yet it had an oppressive government.
Or did it simply not yet reach the necessary worst abuses level yet?
Or was the gun ownership rate not high enough?
It's interesting you think you own something that is going to stop a SWAT team from entering your home and executing you because they determined you have a gun and might be a threat while serving a completely legal search warrant.
If they didn't see you with a gun they might not have acted with a dozen cops rushing the door but now you've escalated yourself into a threat in their eye, legit or not.
You are already being oppressed by the NSA sharing domestic data with the FBI, your gun will do zero to stop that.
