Do tyrants prefer armed citizens or unarmed ones? Discuss.

Use your words. It is OK, we can read and parse complex thoughts.

I beg your pardon?

“Discuss” sounds like a command to me.

Not in the mood for that complicated discussion, but thanks, anyway, for including me.

Unarmed of course. That is why the Government or Governments would like to remove guns from the people.
One thing that is bad for a ruling authority is risk of a Revolution.

Thank goodness the british were not able to accomplish that.

that depends on the skill of their propaganda machinery. If it works well, they prefer armed citizens, as they can use them to combat the dissidents with deadly force.

So long as the people are fearful, it doesn’t matter whether they are armed or unarmed. Also, I’m sure you mean guns, but a population armed with pitchforks is still an armed population.

Bullets aren’t much good against bioweapons, modified weather or energy weapons anyway.

“If it works well, they prefer armed citizens”

Need an example of where that works?

Americans, and America was made secure by armed citizens. But the Government now feeling so secure in itself. Wants to remove that one right that got us here to begin with.

What got our country into power and provided us safety from tyranny. Is that power our government wants to remove so not to eventually have itself removed from power.

You might find this of interest.

They prefer unarmed citizens, but honestly today it hardly makes a difference today. It really only mattered back when the weapons we had were comparable to those the government had. And an armed retaliation against such a tyrant would serve as ready fuel for propaganda which would make the cause look illegitimate

I would think unarmed citizens, because then they would be easier to control by physical means (the police).

Rationality Lurve @ChazMaz

Your point coudnt have been made any better.

According to the folks I know who’ve researched this, governments like people to be conveniently located, say, in cities. They like people to be dependent upon convenient food and energy sources, say, grocery stores and on the power grid. They like people to be unarmed, and preferably not self-sufficient.

Tyrannical governments absolutely hate people who can survive in a rural environment, growing and killing (hunting and raising livestock) their own food, who can survive off the grid, and are well armed.

It’s easier to starve and machine gun down the populace in the cities, not so easy in the boonies. Under tyrannical rule, the city becomes a prison, and its inhabitants easily maintained. Trouble makers are simply killed or spirited away.

I could survive in the boonies, with my weapons, my hunting skills, my survivalist skills, and althought I wouldn’t have the internet in my cave, I would be safe from being gunned down in the street by soldiers loyal to the tyrant. At least until I ran out of ammo. no, I am not one of those survivalist nuts that you read about, but I do know a bit about how those people think.

John Varley wrote a great story about how the Internet could be used against the citizens of a country like the US. Its called Press Enter. If you get a chance to read it, check it out, it will make you see the Internet and computers in a whole new light. You might even stop Fluthering.

would be tyrants have a long history of disarming a people before breaking out the iron fist