Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
I understand that argument, and I think it's valid to a degree, but it's too simplistic to really hold water for very long. Why are there so many tyrannies in Sub-Saharan Africa? There are plenty of guns there.
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I think this question is looking at the wrong reasons. The reason there are so many tyrannies in Sub-Saharan Africa has more to do with the makeup of their societies and their living standards than it does with guns (because if it wasn't guns, it would be spears, machetes and clubs and if not them, then it would be knives and rocks).
Guns certainly make the killing easier but
they are not the cause of the violence, the violence is already inherent in their society. For example, when the Hutu majority decided to slaughter Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda, they were more than happy to use machetes even though they could have used their military firearms.
Why were they more than content to use a more physical, personal method of killing when they could have kept some personal distance by using the range of a firearm? --- hypothetical question.
I understand where you're coming from with the question but I believe the bigger question is about the society and not so much about their means of redress (i.e. resorting to firearms). And while I generally agree with your point about how well (or not) a citizenry armed with only the basic weapons could stand up to a modern federal military, I can think of four examples where they did enough hurt to a federal military: -
Hungarian militias vs. Hungarian State Protection Authority and Soviet troops (Hungarian Revolution of 1956)
Viet Minh vs. French colonial forces in Indochina,
Mujahideen vs. Soviet forces in Afghanistan,
The militia of Mohamed Farrah Aidid vs. US forces in Somalia.
Even though the first ended in a loss for the citizens (although that did require a full scale invasion by Soviet forces) and the next two examples did involve outside support of those armed citizens, those examples also illustrate the effectiveness of good leadership or a strong common cause to unite the citizens to stand against the government.
I'm not trying to go off on a tangent here, hopefully I'm showing that the makeup of a society and the mentality of its citizens has more influence on how those citizens will act and if/how they unite to seek redress, than their possession of guns does.