“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

A good counterexample was Bundy Ranch.

The feds being bullies and cowards were outgunned, and so decided not to engage because it would have been a shitshow if they did.

Thats how peace is maintained. When everyone comes to eachothers rescue so the feds guns are useless and they have to disengage or risk their lives just to enforce illegitimate laws.

No paid mercenary, no hired gun, no criminal, is gonna risk equally odds.

The state only ever engages with overwhelming numbers in ambush tactics against citizens.

And all of this is possible while remaining entirely peaceful.

Do not draw on police. Do not threaten them. Do not intimidate or throw your weight around. Hell, you don't even have to stop them or interfere with them.

Just open carry with a lot of other constitutionalists who believe in the same and exercise their right to do so.

That was the lesson of bundy ranch.