The reality is that guns will protect you because 1) the sheer count of citizens is substantially and necessarily higher than military, and 2) citizens themselves are a critical part of the spoils of war. Poll Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria for more information. Disarming is an essential predicate for coercion.
Chenoweth et al did a study of over 600 movements since 1900, and found those that used violence/force succeeded about 25% of the time, and those that did not succeeded in their goals about 50% of the time. The list is in Appendix A of:
Americans learn the wrong lessons: the War of Independence wasn't won on the battle fields, but in the years leading up to it in the change of thinking (Madison wrote a letter to Jefferson on this; Chenoweth discusses in the above book).
Can this be a case of Simpson’s paradox? A movement will not resort to violence if there are non-violent ways for it to meet their goals. Violence is used in desperation so it would make sense that movements on track to not succeed would resort to it.
> Can this be a case of Simpson’s paradox? A movement will not resort to violence if there are non-violent ways for it to meet their goals.
According to the research cited in the book, the more violence the movement does, the more its chances drop.
If there is a movement where the 'core' is non-violent, but there are some 'adjacent' groups that use it (even against the wishes of the core), the the odds of success drop.
The reasoning seems to be that most movements start small, and the main way to success is to get more and more people on your side (or at least not against you). The moment any kind of violence starts occurring you start turning people off.
The primary thing that keeps dictators in power is small number of allies, who help them control information (mostly the message "rebellion will be supressed"). Guns are only a tool, without the operators, they are useless.
In contrast, democracy is protected by transparency, not guns. Guns are required only to the point where there are people who suppress transparency with threat of violence, which is usually only organized crime or foreign state actors.
