> [Firearms] may become extremely useful in times of civil unrest
Not really:
* There is always someone with a bigger gun
* There is always someone who wants to steal your gun/ammo
* There is always a bigger gang that wants to steal your gun
If your solution is to join up with others to make your gang the biggest/best armed and enforcing a monopoly on the use of violence, congratulations, you've either reinvented Warlordism, or in the best case, reinvented the idea of a police force, depending on whether or not the head of the gang answers to a civil authority whose legitimacy comes from something other than "might makes right".
All that said, I don't mean that firearms aren't at all useful, just that they aren't more useful than other important tools. You for a group to be able to defend itself you will find that basics like picks, shovels, sledgehammers, crowbars, hammer and nails, axes and hatchets, saws, ladders, wheelbarrows etc. are all at least as useful as a firearm.
Generally speaking, making the other guy waste his ammo can be a winning strategy.
Literally none of these arguments are valid in case of the actual civil unrest situations which happen, whether it's LA riots of 1992 or Somalia.
Clearly if you're planning to hold a big cache of firearms, then that becomes an incentive for other gangs to go after you, but most of the time, there are plenty of unarmed people out there which present an easier target.
The aim of firearm ownership at the time of civil unrest is to not be an easier target for bad elements. Somehow implying that by owning firearms you become a bigger target than an unarmed household is ridiculously dishonest statement.
> by owning firearms you become a bigger target than an unarmed household
That's overstating my argument.
Let me boil it down further (at the risk of some nuance being lost): Firearms are useful, but not extremely useful.
1) Firearms are not a panacea, and there are plenty of other tools that are at least as important, and a few that are more important. Lack of clean water is a lot more likely to kill you than lack of a firearm.
2) Rather than focusing on personal defense where everyone needs one or more firearms, a better approach is community defense, which at the Dunbar Limit (~ a small village) scale requires at most 1/3 of the firearms, so the resources that the other 2/3 would represent can be spent on other things.
Look I don't disagree with you, but we're talking about a Civil Unrest here (which must account for LA riots style situation), not necessarily a Jericho like situation.
In other words, if you assign a probability of 1 against a Kristallnacht scenario, then nearly all your self-defense effort should be spent on your own security and nothing on community.
On the other hand, if you assign a probability of 1 against a Jericho style scenario where either foreign invaders or neighboring town or an illegitimate federal govt attacks your town then maybe 1/3rd-2/3rd split might work.
The idea is, firearms are possibly the most effective protective measure you can use in all situations, things like clean water preparation might not help you if you're worried about Kristallnacht.
Agree to agree to disagree on the remaining point?
P.S. I would recommend you use a generic term such as "false flag" in the future, rather than any specific historical event. There are those for whom those events have personal significance.
