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 military requires a massive functioning economy to feed it goods, fuel, food, etc. If enough of the US were rebelling against the govt, the military would fold.

And it's likely hard to get troops to shoot their own countrymen.

As direct evidence, over the past few decades the US has been unable to stop a vastly smaller, vastly less armed resistance in various regions of the world.

Maybe you underestimate the power of a few armed people against a military. And in any case, if it came to people vs military (which I do not think is anywhere close to happening), armed people do much better than unarmed.

Firearms are faster a killing; it's why we use them. However a military entering a hostile area doesn't just stroll through casually even if they could know for a fact no guns are in the area. They still have to contend with fertilizer bombs, molotov cocktails, suicide trucks, bows and arrows, those 3 watt laser pointers, plus any other improvised weapon. If lasers weren't being banned from war for cruelty would maybe even be more effective at taking combatants off the battlefield than an AR-15.