To think that an armed population stands no chance against a heavily armed government is to misread both history and basic logistics.

The U.S., for instance, has over 393 million civilian-owned firearms distributed among a diverse and decentralized populace. While the government possesses advanced weaponry, it’s constrained by the very nature of governance—its infrastructure, its economy, and its interdependence on that same citizenry. An indiscriminate approach (e.g., deploying large-scale destructive weapons) would be self-defeating, unraveling both state and society.

Historical resistance movements show that power asymmetry doesn’t render the populace powerless. The decentralized, civilian model is resilient, not in a head-to-head militaristic sense, but by making domination unfeasibly costly and practically implausible for any centralized force. This balance is precisely why armed citizens deter tyrannical impulses, not by matching force but by dispersing it.