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".

If HK'ers had a similar right to carry guns, do you honestly believe that they would be any better off right now?

With or without the gun culture of the US?

Looking at still ongoing insurgencies where both sides are heavily armed you'd be hard pressed to find one where the dictator gave up even when the insurgents were backed by strong armies like the US.

So yeah, the assumption is great but too simplistic. It's the same when people say "if we have guns we can stop mass shooters". Very few (if any) shootings were ever really prevented by a citizen and their gun even when the shootings happened (repeatedly) inside military bases where the shooter was literally surrounded by trained and armed military personnel.

Typically military people at a US base are not armed. MP's are but not regular military.

The point I was making is that we aren't just talking about people with guns (the ones who had them) but people with guns and training.

But judging from the downvotes most people assume the only thing they need to effectively stop a mass shooter or fight a war is a gun.

No, the problem with your comment was that it is based upon a faulty assumption regarding the presence of armed and trained personnel being abundant on a military base. The comment in response to your point was correcting you on that incorrect assumption: an overwhelming majority of base personnel were not armed, because they weren't MPs.

You chose to ignore both the fact that the rest of the arguments are perfectly valid and that the clarification I made right below still stands. The aggressive tone you chose to use is both unnecessary and unwelcome.

>you'd be hard pressed to find one where the dictator gave up even when the insurgents were backed by strong armies like the US.

Here's a list of coups. Many were successful. I'm not sure why you are trying to argue that coups don't work. The Arab Spring is a recent example of this very thing, isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27état_and_cou...

>Very few (if any) shootings were ever really prevented by a citizen and their gun even when the shootings happened (repeatedly) inside military bases where the shooter was literally surrounded by trained and armed military personnel.

The first part of your second assertion that "very few shootings were ever prevented by a citizen," is also easily invalidated by a google search.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/in-missouri-a-good-gu...

https://www.conservapedia.com/Mass_shootings_prevented_by_ar...

Where did you get that information from?