1 Man, Ace's comment sections are a major trainwreck, you know that?

2 Thought about contributing there, decided not to bother.

There's one more layer to the analysis that you didn't touch on, and that's this - the tyranny in question need not be police breaking down your door. In fact, in a lot of ways that's an outdated mode, since it's hard to deny that the heavy hand of the state is behind that sort of thing.

No, these days the fashion is for non-state organizations to do the heavy lifting when it comes to oppressing what was once a free society. Paramilitaries, "government supporters", really under the command of the ruling party but not formally a part of the government, and thus not obliged to play by the same rules as that government. Peaceful protests "spontaneously" erupt into violence, opposition members harassed, voting obstructed, but the government's hands are clean... at least, that's what they claim to the various UN and international observers. Police are mysteriously nowhere to be seen, though if any other party tries to so much as assemble for a street protest, the cops are out in riot gear.

But that's problematic when the populace is armed. Breaking into a shop for a little opportunistic looting, or going out with some of your buddies to beat the hell out of the scapegoat of the week, these things are fine if you aren't worried about someone giving you an extra orifice. But who wants to be the first guy in when you hear that shotgun shell being racked? Who wants to be the one to throw the first punch when that guy could be packing who knows what under that coat?

And, of course, all this is why gun ownership is important, because one of the powers that a tyranny has is not exercised in direct oppression, but in refusing to prosecute its sock-puppets for the crimes they might commit against the government's enemies. But while you can make a thug immune to the law of man, you can't make him immune to the laws of physics, and the thug knows it.

But gun ownership isn't sufficient to prevent this by itself - after all, if you shoot a brownshirt and the police can collar you for murder, that's yet another route to oppression. We don't just need guns but also proper laws, ones which recognize the individual's right to self-defense, the right to use their guns on those who would attempt to harm them or steal from them. And that doesn't work without courts that are independent from the government, including the right to a jury trial.

So long as we have arms, and the laws to let us bear them, there will be no "taking it to the streets", no Night of Broken Glass. And that's something that protects all of us, not just those of us who prefer elephant plushies to donkey plushies. But the desire to bring such things to pass, it's fair to say, is something that's not equally distributed among the political spectrum...

3 #1- No kidding.  I could barely get a dozen comments in before giving up.  I can appreciate enthusiasm, but. . .  Also, seriously, what does birth control have to do with anything in the post?

As for the actual topic, ahem, I think the most insidious part is not that the lack of arms and self defense will be used to forcibly oppress the people, directly or indirectly.  Rather, I think the nastiest aspect is that, whether the power of self-defense is legally allowed or not, people might forget the ethic of self-defense.  In place of it would be a assumed dependence on others. . . and oppression would become unnecessary.  People would simply do what they are told, because they've forgotten how to be free.