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Comment by ranran876 | Hacker News Reader

While I'm not for or against the second amendment, do you honestly think it's a realistic scenario that the government gets oppressive to the point where people will pick up arms? Do you really honestly believe that? Do you think other developed nations like the UK, France, or Japan are at a higher risk of turning to tyranny b.c they do not have guns widely available?

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Every nation you listed including our own has at some point fought against it's own government.

The assumption isn't whether a government can get oppressive to the point where people fight. It's "Is our government so good that citizens will never have cause to oppose it, for the rest of human history?"

Just because something has happened before, doesn't mean it's bound to happen again. All those countries have also had slavery and monarchies, but we don't worry about that happening again b/c humanity moves forward and certain things simply become impossible - this includes things like the return of nazism, communism, evil tyrants, emperors, juntas and whatever other anachronism you can think of

"nearly all the autocracies in the world with a higher [than $6000 ] per capita income are petro-states" http://thediplomat.com/2012/10/is-chinas-communist-party-doo...

What was the UK's popular uprising against its own government?

The English civil war(s) from 1642 to 1651 which resulted in the regicide of Charles I and then Cromwell's Protectorate. Until everyone decided that maybe Kings were kindof OK, as long as parliament could tell them to fuck off if they got too demanding, plus Cromwell (and son) had generally pissed everyone off by then...

The English Civil War wasn't a popular uprising against the government. The king had delayed parliament to try and weaken its powers, and the civil war was about parliament versus monarchy, not people versus government.

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