Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered. Any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

The joke goes if you go far enough left you get your guns back. You need guns to have a proper revolution and all.

2. To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising. -- Karl Marx, 1850

As I too would wish to live in a world without the need of arms and conflict. But so as long there is wealth inequality and people seeking power, there will be opressors.

Americans (and by extension westerns) today have been pacifified by labor rights that allowed a middle class to expand, and fed propaganda their entire lifes that they just have to work hard and they too can be successful. All things weakening the cooperation power of the working class. Those rights we enjoy today were not given by charity. They were fought with blood and tears. And those rights are slowly being stripped away. The middle class is eroding away. Taking away people rights to arms only serves to strengthen the oppressors. And when all on the rights people before us fought for are gone, we will have nothing to fight back.

And right now, america has a nazi problem. The last thing we need be doing is forfeiting arms to them.

Yeah, I'm an American leftist and this is my take. I'm not anti-gun. I'd say I'm pro-responsible-gun-ownership. However, some people (leftists and conservatives) think they could beat the US military in a straight up fight. They can't. It doesn't matter how many guns you have.

If it comes to it it'll be won by gorilla warfare. It'll be hit-and-run tactics and explosives. If you get shot at, you're probably fucked. You'll be hiding in the woods or in caves, or potentially within the populace, and taking opportune moments, mostly just hiding and waiting —slowly wearing them down over years, maybe decades.

There is something to be said about military defectors though. If it gets to the point of civil war, some amount of military personnel will side against the government, and they'll bring equipment with them. Maybe they will sometimes fight head on, but it'll still be uncommon.

It'll be bloody and horrible, and very messy. The number of weapons you start with won't matter. Most will probably be taken from the military, and they won't be what wins the war anyway.

This argument never seemed true to me. A typical uprising isn't suppressed with tanks and fighter jets. It's suppressed with police. Your uprising doesn't have bases and fortifications to bomb. An uprising isn't attempting to control territory. The military and all it's power isn't really built to supress an uprising. The US lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan despite having the most powerful military in the world because asymmetric tactics work.

Afghanistan ain’t called the graveyard of empires for nothing. Both the Russian and American militaries, with all their overwhelming might and superiority, lost their wars against dirt farmers living in caves. Militaries are shit for fighting anything but other militaries.

Paradoxically, it’s liberals that like guns in my country (hunting has become a bourgeois activity).

Here in South Africa it's the same - probably because it's only the rich (and the top rung of their pet managerial classes) that gets to legally own them. That, and the libs wouldn't dream of hurting the privatised security goon industry (ours is the third-largest in the world, believe it or not).

but won't do much against tanks, jets, drones, etc.

Not necessarily, the "conflicts" in the middle east has proven that guerilla warfare can go pretty far, even when against the military of a superpower with all the toys they want

What gets called "conservatism" in the US is really just far-right, fundamentalist liberalism these days - no conservative from Lincoln's days would be caught dead being pro-corporate power.

"Can't tell leftists and liberals apart" should be in the same segment as "likes capitalism".

Only true if you want to form a monoculture, which is a seriously bad goal in a country as diverse and broad as the US.