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Isn't that already a big part of what they're selling, only stated more broadly? The moral benefit of accessible firearms is that it prevents brutal authoritarian dictatorships, everywhere and always. This is most readily observable today in Myanmar, but I continue to believe that it holds true in places where the dynamic isn't as plainly visible. Shifting the focus to places like Myanmar feels like providing ammunition to the opposition - "OK, it's necessary in those places and our government can work with that, but no American civilians needs those weapons of war".
Big if true, but is it true? Does not seem to be universally true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Yemen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
Country or subnational area Estimate of civilian firearms per 100 persons
3 Yemen 52.8
Yemen is a failed state that has been an active war zone since 2014. Not only has saudi support included indiscriminant bombing of civilians, but the US has supported and enhanced the suffering with funding of their own. I would be very careful in drawing conclusions from Yemen because A) the situation is still playing out and B) famine and lack of civilian healthcare is far more important for civilians in Yemen than civil rights abuses.
It's incorrect to claim that civilian gun ownership always defeats authoritarianism, but Yemen really isn't the cleanest case to use for either argument. It's more cleanly a case study in how foreign involvement in local politics tends to devolve into chaos. Gun ownership in the middle east is moreso a product of international arming campaigns aimed at politically involved insurgeants as opposed to civilians defending liberties. Distilling this down to gun ownership rates tends to ignore cultural and historical realities for particular regions.
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Huh. I'm going to have to do some reading and get back to you. At a glance, I admit that I'm puzzled by the situation and it's a pretty clear refutation of my claim.
A Saudi carpet bombing campaign in the middle of a brutal sectarian civil war is not what anyone was talking about with "guns defeat totalitarianism"- for one thing, it's unclear that it's totalitarianism per se, as opposed to living in a war zone just generally sucking.
This is exactly what would happen when second amendment overthrows totalitarianism in US - devastated land split among warlords, fighting it out in proxy wars between great powers of the world. Many such cases in history.
No freedom of speech and press, no freedom of religion except current warlord's favorite sect of Islam, no justice system except current warlord's will, no human rights whatsoever. If it isn't totalitarianism, it really looks like one.
This Wiki article is not about people killed in bombing and shelling or dying of disease and famine, it is about people arrested and tortured.
Exactly the thing universal gun ownership was supposed to prevent according to theory.
The question is: why guns do not prevent it? Why Yemenis armed to the teeth allow themselves to be arrested and tortured at the whim of local warlord and his goons?
Two reasons:
1/ The same reason why Americans armed to the teeth surrender to spend rest of their life in American hell prisons rather than die with their boots on.
2/ Family ties, much stronger over here than in the western countries. If you fight back, the warlord will make example of your whole extended family, and even if they do not care about their life anymore, average Yemenis care about their kin much more than average Americans.
It’s also possible that the Yemenis with guns are the ones doing the oppressing of their less-well-armed peers, and that’s driving the numbers up.
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