The conditions necessary for an armed citizenry are largely caused by having an armed citizenry. I’ve heard the argument that if a given group of unarmed and massacred people had been armed, that the results would have been different. What is usually meant by that is that the massacred group would have been able to defend themselves and their families from their government or from their enemies. But given the same conditions an influx of weapons might have only meant that the massacres were multiplied. That is, “given the same conditions,” but would the conditions have remained the same? A culture of gun ownership, of supporting an armed citizenry, changes the conditions. In the way that actions “say” things or send messages, it’s impossible to have, within a population, a systematically oppressed sub-group that is also legally armed. Arms are an absolute endorsement by the government and by the rest of the citizens stating that members of the population su...
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