Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator

This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".

I always find this sentiment a little silly - if the US President went in to full dictator mode and had the support of the military, do you really think a militia of armed citizens would be anything but gnats against the windshield of the United States Armed Forces? And if s/he did not have the support of the Armed Forces, it would not be a very effective dictatorship and you would not even need guns for a rebellion. I truly do not get it.

The US (with its support of the military) has been at war in the Middle East for nearly 2 decades now with insurgents.

The argument is not that a rebellious citizenry will necessarily win a war, it's that it will draw out a bloody civil war so long and so expensive as to be a form of mutually assured destruction, the risk of which acts as a check in and of itself.

And then all you get is a whole bunch of mutually hostile regional militias sitting on piles of rubble shooting at each other. This is not a recipe for a stable state of any kind, and certainly not a democratic one. Guns and democracy simply don't mix. Democracy is about giving an equal voice to every citizen, while firearms are a force multiplier. They make the strong stronger and the weak comparatively weaker.

> This is not a recipe for a stable state of any kind

It is not meant to be used in a stable state. It’s a Hobbesian point of last resort, to be used when democracy has failed and autocracy/tyranny is in effect. It’s a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency, so to speak.