An Armed Populace is Still an Effective Guard Against Tyranny
(inspired from a comment I made to a recent post of bdunbar).
It is much easier to gain hold of heavy weapons when one already has light ones than to gain hold of light weapons when one has no weapons. Furthermore, a government who knows its populace is armed is less likely to attempt tyrannical measures that would involve sending its agents among the people to abuse them, because it knows that this is likely to lead to embarassing violence.
Remember that the tyranny is not likely to be monolithic, unless it be at a very advanced stage indeed so that the Leader has managed to dispose of all competition within the government. In a semi-democracy, such as (say) modern Venezuela, it may be politically damaging to learn that one's social welfare agents are getting shot at when they try to abuse children. One may have tanks and artillery, but will the Army cheerfully fire on demonstrators with whose complaint they half-sympathize? Many a revolution has succeeded when the regime had no choice but to call out real military formations, and all or most of those formations refused to fire on the people.
Thus, an armed populace is still an effective guard against tyranny. Not sufficient by itself (the people still need to have a good concept of liberty) but it makes the job of the tyrant that little bit harder, and freedom can often be won or lost on small margins.
It is much easier to gain hold of heavy weapons when one already has light ones than to gain hold of light weapons when one has no weapons. Furthermore, a government who knows its populace is armed is less likely to attempt tyrannical measures that would involve sending its agents among the people to abuse them, because it knows that this is likely to lead to embarassing violence.
Remember that the tyranny is not likely to be monolithic, unless it be at a very advanced stage indeed so that the Leader has managed to dispose of all competition within the government. In a semi-democracy, such as (say) modern Venezuela, it may be politically damaging to learn that one's social welfare agents are getting shot at when they try to abuse children. One may have tanks and artillery, but will the Army cheerfully fire on demonstrators with whose complaint they half-sympathize? Many a revolution has succeeded when the regime had no choice but to call out real military formations, and all or most of those formations refused to fire on the people.
Thus, an armed populace is still an effective guard against tyranny. Not sufficient by itself (the people still need to have a good concept of liberty) but it makes the job of the tyrant that little bit harder, and freedom can often be won or lost on small margins.