It was over when they all turned in their guns after the Christchurch massacre.
Discussion
I never had a weapon that was made illegal (I"ve only ever had a .22LR) but I heard murmurings about people considering not turning in their weapons. I bet a lot of people never turned over their weapons. There was no registry of weapons, only of license holders, so the police have no idea who has what. Only recently (this month I think) did a bill pass that will require everybody to register their weapons.
That being said, as I've aged I've come to believe that it is a nutty idealistic idea that the people could ever rise up against an oppressive government anywhere with guns. Not only do governments have better weapons and better surveillance, but the people have no way of organizing and acting in unison. Technology does not help that - every organisation of people can and will be infiltrated. There are also near-last-resort non-violent (but destructive) techniques that could be used in a revolution which I won't expound upon here but you should think long and hard about before it becomes necessary. Guns are terribly deadly and horrible, and some thought now into how you can survive and save your country without using them is well worth it.
Also, unless you are carrying your gun with you, it is useless in deterring crime outside of your household (or perhaps your business - dairy owners might have a gun behind the counter - not sure on the law on that but that would be an effective deterrent).
I completely agree that people can’t really organize an uprising of any sort (armed or not) because the disinformation strategies are so effective. It’s their most powerful tool by far.
Interesting that there is no gun registry, that’s actually more “freedom” than the US has.
Btw I’ve never been able to own a gun anyways (wrong countries), but I would carry one around to stop crime if possible.
I read once that the reason the KKK collapsed into a much smaller organisation wasn't that people decided not to be racist anymore, but because it was emabarrasingly infiltrated. They kept changing the secret password every week or so, and the new one kept getting published in the newspapers (or something like that, it was a while back that I read this).
The US government has lost wars despite having overwhelming advantages in firepower, in Vietnam and in Afghanistan (after the French and the Soviets lost, respectively.) Just because an armed citizenry can’t beat the government in a set piece battle doesn’t mean they can’t win a war.
I hope it doesn't have to be tested.