Excellent demonstration of how your AR-15 won't protect you from a tyrannical government for even one second.

Yeah if that tyrannical government lines up a few choppers to shoot at a cluster of dissidents standing in the open. Rather silly statement for a completely unrealistic scenario, like saying you need an AR15 to defend against a tyrannical government.

That's a close quarters engagement too. These things can shoot accurately from around 4km away. And guided missiles from nearly 8km.

I would suggest you read about what happened at waco or watch one of the many docos before using it as an example of resisting tyranny. They attempted to use the media, not guns to champion their cause. The FBI denied them that ability.

M197 max effective range is ~2000m, closer to 1500m in reality.

WTF?
I watched it happen in real time....and I've seen many documentaries about it since.
The Fed's were there because a delivery guy found a box of live grenades being shipped to them, not because they tried to get on tv.
They were armed to the teeth with illegal arms, they said in part to defend against intrusion by the government, and they used those arms for that purpose....and lost massively.

The Fed's aren't well known for allowing those in the middle of an armed standoff a time out to do tv interviews. What kind of nonsense are you talking about?!

I'm not totally sold on the AR-15 to save the country line of reasoning either, but it's not entirely without merit.

flowers are beat by knives are beat by guns are beat by tanks are beat by airpower

Sure a population armed with AR-15s isn't going to prevent a guy like Bashar Al Assad who's willing to use helicopters to drop chemical weapons on you. At the same time, try resisting or overthrowing a guy like that WITHOUT AR-15s...

That makes the argument entirely without merit once you admit they are useless against governments, who have armies, tanks, aircraft, armed drones, missiles, and far more.

Modern warfare is just not winnable by civilians....particularly here in America. The only possible way to win is convince the military to not fight you, and using guns against them makes that impossible.

Afghanistan has a pretty damn good track record of fighting off larger military invaders while being equipped with lower tech firepower.

It almost sounds like you are arguing for allowing civilians to have access to equivalent military weaponry so we can stand a chance if our government goes rogue.

Not really, what I was taught is that it has a history of being successfully invaded by empires that often bankrupt themselves in the effort. We've done a half decent job of following suit.

Not really again to your second point. I'm pointing out that the argument that an AR-15 somehow safeguards you from tyranny is nonsense, and you would need equivalent military weapons, training, and numbers to stand a chance against your own military....an absolute impossibility in America, and unlikely anywhere except third world countries with barely a military. I'm not, however, advocating allowing that level of weaponry into private hands.

As @jimnms alluded to re Afghanistan, civilians may not be able to 'win', but well armed civilians can certainly make it hard, bordering on meaningless for their opponent to win either.

No, automatic weapons don't guarantee liberty from tyranny. On the flip side, try opposing a tyrannical government without them.

On the chance your 'jokingly' isn't obvious, MLK, Ghandi and Mandela's causes ALL had support from those willing to use violence, aka better weapons would help.

Malcolm X would be the next most prominent figure beside MLK. Indian independence wasn't won with peaceful hunger strikes alone, and again lots of violence in South Africa.

Ghandi even bridged the gap to working alongside the effective army fighting for India's independence:
" I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier."

Speaking more to the point of America today, pretty much no civil war has been fought exclusively with civilians on one side, and the government, police, army and all other branches of the state united on the other. The reason being that if that kind of unity within the government against the civilian population exists, you ALREADY have tyranny.

In America, the example would be if a president or a particular political party decided to try for tyrannical over reach, would the American public be better equipped to resist that with or without guns? In civil war, guns give power to the majority of public opinion that would need to be there otherwise. In a nation with an unarmed public, whatever the majority of soldiers side with is likely gonna win. With an armed populace, the civilian opinion matters more.

I think it's an overall modest observation, and one that really doesn't in anyway make it obvious that the modest benefit is worth the costs. That is another matter, but you can't factually claim that there isn't a meaningful difference between an armed and unarmed population when facing civil war.

Lol. You're funny.
Ok, in your world, MLK, Ghandi, and Mandela were successful against tyrannical governments because their causes were backed by armed militants and their movements used threats of force not peaceful protests while clearly denouncing violence.
I don't live in that world. What color is the sky there? Do you celebrate MalcomX day there instead of MLK day?

Yeah...we're discussing America today.....but you must go back to when mechanical warfare didn't exist and the military used flintlocks to make an argument that your AK might make a difference against the military. *facepalm

You clearly aren't being rational. Good day.