Do Guns Stop Tyranny? Doesn't look like it.

1/15/2013

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2013/01/can-.html

With 34.2 guns per 100 people, Iraq is ranked eighth on the survey. More to the point, the countryalready had a well-established gun culture and a high rate of gun ownership before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. We can't know for sure if a well-armed population could have stopped Hitler's genocide, but it certainly didn't stop Saddam's.

Given the advanced deadly weaponry available to governments these days -- as opposed to the late 18th century -- most tyrants aren't all that threatened by citizens with conventional weapons. Like the Iraqis, Libyans were fairly well armed under Muammar al-Qaddafi -- 15.5 guns per 100 people as of 2007 -- but it still took an assist from NATO air power to finally bring him down.

read the original article here. http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/01/09/guns_dont_kill_dictatorships_people_do

Author

Christopher Gennari, Ph.D is a Full Professor of History at Camden County College.

He received his doctorate in History from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 2010.

His Dissertation is titled "Invasion, Insurgency and Intervention: Sweden's Wars in Poland, Prussia and Denmark 1654-1658." And was the first english language monograph on the topic of Charles X and Sweden's military actions from 1654-1660.

The dissertation analyses Sweden's wars during the Second Northern War in which it won the initial war, fought a religiously inspired insurgency against their occupation, and then had to cope with the intervention of other states.

He has published articles on the use of technology in archival research, the Construction of the Suffolk County Vietnam Veterans Memorial and several book reviews for academic journals.

He has presented papers at the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study Conferences on Swedish Counterinsurgency during the Second Northern War and on Swedish “Soft Power” during the reign of Charles X Gustav.

He has also presented papers on Soft Power in Game of Thrones at the MAPACA conference, and given a guest lecture on Sweden’s invasion of Poland in 1655 at NYMAS.

Recently he participated in a NEH Grant with the Community College of Philadelphia and the East-West Center – to bring more Asian Studies to Community Colleges.