> owning a gun doesn't really protect one from a modern intrusive government
At an individual level it doesn't. At a population level there is an argument that it makes a guerrilla civil war potentially winnable by the rebels, which has a deterrent effect on extreme totalitarianism.
Theoretically it would if the American populous, heavily armed as we are, had any chance whatsoever against the military. We don't, so the point is moot.
> Theoretically it would if the American populous, heavily armed as we are, had any chance whatsoever against the military. We don't, so the point is moot.
You're imagining construction workers and commercial airline pilots and physics professors against professional soldiers. Imagine 500 professional soldiers with the backing of 5000 construction workers and commercial airline pilots and physics professors take over the military base where those 500 soldiers were already a quarter of the garrison, because the 5000 already had their own small arms and knew how to use them.
Then they have tanks and planes and nuclear weapons and popular support and the same dynamic plays out at ten other military bases.
Democracies are stable because if you have enough people behind you then you can vote the bums out before you have to fight them militarily. But authoritarian "democracy" where you have a central government imposing controversial laws with only 51% national support and significantly less than that in specific regions is more than a little unstable.
This is unknown. The entirety of the military would probably not be unified in an all-out Civil War II. Furthermore it is not relevant considering police state abuse is more rampant than ever, which is a good enough "logical" reason, which again is also not important considering it's a fundamental right at its base level.
By this logic, if there was one section of the gov't that had extremely advanced crypto cracking capabilities, then keeping crypto legal for normal citizens should also be a "moot point".
However, citizens would probably still want to keep their data private from all kinds of other eavesdroppers just like they want guns to protect themselves from threats less capable than the military.
At an individual level it doesn't. At a population level there is an argument that it makes a guerrilla civil war potentially winnable by the rebels, which has a deterrent effect on extreme totalitarianism.