>> No Australian government agent is going to shoot fellow Australians, or be shot by fellow Australians, to enforce such an absurd prohibition on free and peaceful movement.
So then if Australians wanted to mass-disobey the stay-at-home order they could. As you say "No Australian government agent is going to shoot fellow Australians." So guns or no guns, if there was sufficient demand citizens who wanted to could simply have moved around. (Lacking planes and boats travel out of Australia would likely still be restricted.)
By your own point, it's not lack of guns that caused the population to follow the guidelines. It was rather a respect for authority, and the rule of law, that kept the masses at home. Sure a few would reject those guidelines, and be arrested, but that is literally the "few" - not the majority.
>> Such unilateral authoritarian nonsense can only occur when the majority of the population is disarmed first.
I'm not sure I agree. There is plenty of unilateral authority in places where people have guns.
>> You'll note that the same thing happened in New York City during the 2004 RNC, during Bush's term and Bush's invasion of Iraq. There were unlawful mass arrests by NYPD of thousands of peaceful protesters, who were kettled and housed with limited food and water for 24-48h in large high-density camps along the river. Most were released without charges several days later (when the RNC was over) which, years later, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money being paid out as settlement for the illegal actions of the police.
Indeed the police committed illegal actions, and have paid out well for it. Perhaps they will learn from that, perhaps not.
>> This never would have happened if the protest were not approximately 0% armed; the police would not have attempted to kettle a crowd where even a few dozen were able to defend themselves from police violence.
um. So you're saying they were reasonably sure that out of thousands of protesters there weren't "a few dozen" who were armed? I agree that sounds reasonable. but if there had been say 100 armed those 100 would have opened fire on the police, and everyone would just have gone home? Given the follow up from another incident (Jan 6) I suspect anyone who fired would have been speedily prosecuted. Anyone who even brandished a gun would have been prosecuted. A bunch of people (likely from both sides) would be dead - and that's somehow a _better_ outcome?
On the other hand it doesn't really matter if the protesters were armed or not - ultimately it was the _perception_ that they were not which allowed them to corral the protest?
>> This is why Hong Kong no longer has a free press, fair elections, or due process. They were forced to "fight" well-armed authoritarians with nothing more than umbrellas and laser pointers. Such a battle simply would not have happened in the first place were the population sufficiently armed. Police are not stupid; they will only engage with violence where they are nearly certain not to lose or be harmed (as we observed recently in Texas).
I think you perhaps are miss-conflating local police in a small Texas town, to the discipline and willingness of well trained armed forces of authoritarian regimes. I don't think hand-guns in Hong Kong would have made the slightest bit of difference to the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong.
>> A well-armed population keeps the state from overstepping its bounds without a single shot being fired.
That's certainly a point of view, and it's obviously a very popular view with a lot of US citizens. I respect that you have that point of view, and respect your right to have that point of view. Personally I don't see that your view is accurate to the reality in the US, much less anywhere else.
It's widely reported that at least 40% of Americans believe the election was rigged. Whether they are correct or not is irrelevant. If 40% of a population _believe_ that democracy has been usurped, and are armed to the teeth, and yet clearly there has not been an (armed) uprising then I'm wondering what has to happen for said armed population to actually take action? Even the Jan 6 incident is laughable for how small, unarmed, and ineffective it was. Apparently there were lots of conspirators, much planning behind the scenes, all sorts of machinations in play, and yet all we got was some folk wandering around a building, then going home. If the outcome of the 2nd amendment is Jan 6, well that seems like a wasted effort.