I'm gonna make a few disclaimers about myself.

1. I own guns and like owning guns.

2. I think limitations on magazine sizes and gun bans are fruitless.

3. I'm pro gun legalization in the United States, and against it in countries where guns are already hard to get (UK).

4. With respect to my gun owning friends, the logic of a lot of, if not most other gun owners makes no sense to me. I feel that a lot of the arguments advanced are simply not logical, when it is possible to make logical arguments for gun policy:

-Things like this video being cited in /r/news as a valid argument in the gun control debate. The argument seems to be that magazine size doesn't affect one's ability to fire rounds quickly, and therefore we should not reduce magazine size and thereby limit civilian's ability to fire rounds quickly. Wait, but wasn't our premise that reducing magazine size doesn't affect one's ability to fire rounds quickly? And in reality, we know that limiting magazine size does make someone less combat effective, especially when they are unprepared, and attackers are more likely to be prepared than defenders, and criminals will not obey gun laws while legal owners will. Why don't we raise this far more logical argument?

-This kinda leads to the biggest flawed argument I see made, that doesn't need to be made. Which is that our civilian small arms enable us to rebel against the government in the event of something bad happening. People say this all the time, but I haven't seen them lay out the scenario. In another post, by Toxic-Avenger in /r/news:

The difference between citizens and serfs is the ownership of weapons. Overthrow these fascists.

My reply -- and here's my big question for everyone who believes in firearms securing independence through revolution -- how does the revolution play out? I do believe this concept is flawed and if it were not flawed, then people could articulate the details of such a revolution, or at least provide a general outline.

I just want to know, do you genuinely envision a spontaneous political revolution where U.S. citizens with AR-15s fight the US military and police in... I don't know, country-wide skirmishes, and win? The whole idea just seems a bit farfetched. Wouldn't there be a military coup or mass military defection if the government was that hated?

And if the military was willing to obey the government and engage the civilians, how do we take on attack helicopters, UAVs, tanks, etc. etc. with conventional small arms? It seems like the only militarily plausible victory would be a prolonged insurgency like in Iraq or Afghanistan that would leave our country an economically decimated wasteland broken into splinter factions and ruled by warlords.

And if we somehow can win, when we storm the White House and everything how do we decide on which form of government takes control? Is it a de facto despotism by whichever warlord best spearheaded the revolution?

And I don't mind people believing this. But I've never once seen anyone actually articulate how they expect this belief to play out. Just storyboard it for me. Seriously. Anyone. Please tell me how you'd envision this revolution starting, who the beligerents would be -- multiple factions, insurgencies with cells, does the military splinter or side with the civilians, etc. -- how militarily instrumental were small arms that were civilian owned at the start of the war, what is the outcome, how does it ensure your freedom and economic prosperity?

One last disclaimer, I think there are good reasons to let people have rifles that are vastly more powerful than handguns -- for starters, the statistical fact that they're almost always used legally or in self-defense.

The whole revolution argument just doesn't make sense to me when I think about it though. Can anyone outline this revolution that is enabled by semi-automatics for me? I can't envision it in a way that makes sense, much less is likely to have a desirable outcome.