In the wake of Florida school shooting and the renewed debate on gun control, this 4chan post from 2017 went viral:
Even though I support the 2nd amendment, I’m skeptical that guns are a bulwark against tyranny. Gun ownership is an indispensable part of American history, but despite the U.S. government becoming more and more overbearing and leftist in its ways, why haven’t guns been able to reverse this trend? One answer is, resistance requires people cooperate rather than defect, referring to the prisoner’s dilemma. At the individual level, it is easier to just comply than risk a much more severe consequence for noncompliance.
Second, the way the left enforces compliance is not by literally breaking down one’s door (although in some instances it does come down to that), but indirectly through decentralized, coercive, and insidious means–such as through institutions, companies, and legislation/regulation. Your gun is of no use if a company forces you to attend diversity training or use certain gender pronouns. Your only option is to quit (or in the case or Jordan Peterson, protest). So that is an example of a form of tyranny in which guns don’t work, and the left knows this.
The only way guns could possibly stave off leftism is if gun owners banded together, but this seems unlikely. The left’s ‘boiled frog’ strategy of more regulation and diversity, is equally, if not more, effective than having to physically take people’s guns or break into people’s homes.
Now the argument you hear is, things would be much worse without guns…the left would have more power. They would, but consider a Patriot in 1776 being visited by a future time traveler who informs the Patriot that despite Americans winning the war and keeping their guns, what America has become. He would have probably joined the British.
But guns are an especially contentious and divisive issue, possibly even more so than abortion. A possible reason is, gun ownership is an integral part of white Christian identity/culture that the left is powerless to do anything about. That probably also explains why the left is so adamant about gun control when whites commit gun violence yet are silent about gun violence committed by blacks. The evidence suggests higher rates of gun violence among blacks than whites. According to the CDC, black Americans are eight times more likely to be killed by firearms than those who are white. Adjusted for population representation, non-whites commit mass shootings at the same rate as whites, but the push for gun control is much stronger when the gunman is white. The left has no problem with non-whites having guns. As much as the left has infiltrated institutions and governments, they cannot take the guns away.