Nukes are, like, the worst example for counter insurgency (COIN). Any government that vaporizes a city of their own people will quickly have the rest of their population in open revolt as well.

And, as proven again and again, classical militaries are horrendously bad at fighting insurgencies that have popular support. There are no front lines, only fighters. Every attempt at suppressing a movement harms bystanders much more than militants, driving more people away from the government.

Nukes didn't help that CEO. Asymmetric warfare is a thing. I want to think there is a totally peaceful solution, and maybe there is. But even peaceful solutions only work with a silent threat of armed revolt in the background.

Who won the Vietnam War? It is not at all clear that the US military could defeat a committed domestic guerrilla force. Especially if the military was split on the nature of the conflict. A bloodless political revolution is possible and there's historical precedent for it wrt socialist movements, although expect a civil war of some kind. The fallacy that socialists just want to wage a bloody civil war in order to get free healthcare is so tired and fake and divorced from anything but liberal delusions.

Also the arms are needed to defend the political and social revolution, which will be directly attacked by armed thugs and reactionaries if it managed to gain traction toward actually upending the capitalist system. Look up The Deacons of Defense and the history of defending civil rights orgs and leaders, while kicking the Klan out of southern mainstream political life. Its not optional. However individuals armed is meaningless, there needs to be civil defense groups and left wing militias to be able to actually protect the people that need protected when they become targets of attack.

I hear this argument a lot and it rings hollow to me. State violence is mainly through police, not military campaigns. The Black Panthers were openly armed as a show of force against police. As a result, Ronald Reagan (while California governor, with support from the NRA) put some of the strictest gun control laws on the books to disarm them. If an openly armed group popped up today, you can't send in tanks and jets against them. They don't have command centers and bases to target. Even for our high level of state violence, it would be a huge escalation (and unconstitutional) to involve the military. Even with actual military campaigns, an armed population doesn't just get steamrolled. Look at the decade of insurgency fighting that took place in Iraq. Gun control means cops are the only ones with guns.

Another example: during the George Floyd protests, there were often armed counter protesters and police were brutalizing the protesters while leaving the counter protesters unharmed. A lot of ink was spilled about how this showed how the police were on the side of the counter protesters. That's almost certainly true. However, there was also a protest in Texas where they showed up openly armed and the police didn't touch them. They didn't need to have enough firepower to win a battle. They just had to make it not worth it.

Leftists maintain that Revolution is necessary, and the past century has shown countless guerilla victories over Imperialists with better technology using asymetrical warfare tactics. War is evolving.

If that's your opinion then why bother worrying at all? Just put the slave collar on yourself.