Today in the United States you probably would not see violence in reaction to a peaceful protest, but it has happened quite regularly throughout history; including incidents in most western nations.

Well of course, and the US government supports these rights and freedoms and it is in the public interest to protect them if neccesary. The USA has nothing to fear but fear itself when it comes to government control.

If the USA was becoming a new North Korea then yes a violent uprising would be one of very few options where I would support the freedom of the public to possess weapons, and that is only if all non-violent democratic means have been supressed by the government (I'm talking to the extent of taking peoples right to vote or running a one party system by aboloshing opposition). But until the change occurs where a threat from the government looks likely I see no real justification for owning powerful guns such as assult rifles.

But that's the catch. We will never be North Korea, because we have the right to hold enough power (weapons) to make sure our government never tries to turn us into North Korea.

If you take our weapons away, there is nothing to stop the most powerful military in the world from doing anything they want.

Would you want Bush Jr. to have had that much power?

I got to go to work guys. See ya later.

I can't change the constitution, I'm British. But rest assured that if two measures were suggested to overthrow the government for a cause I and the mojority of the USA believes in, one being to gain support and begin a non-violent democratic upheaval and the second was to begin an armoured campaign based on violent upheavel, then I  know which one I would pick first. The first wont fail unless the government goes to great unconstitional lengths (abolishing parties, taking votes away) to supress a serious uprising. Then and only then would it be justifiable for a violent uprising.

The question becomes at what point is violence the best course of action ...

Long before your country becomes as bad as North Korea, your rights can be taken away to the extent that any protest can be surpressed and any information that it existed can be hidden. At this point violence may be the only option to prevent your country from becomming North Korea.

You live in a country where your political power as an individual far outweighs your firepower in all fairness. If the people don't support a move to become a new North Korea then it wont happen because it wont be supported. The only way it would happen if the people didn't support it would be if the government chose to ignore the majority in a demonstrably unconstituional manner to take away the political power of the individual.

The government itself does not have enough political power to outweigh the poltical power of the majority population. Where as it does have the firepower to outweigh the firepower of the population. If you want the populations firepower to outwiegh the militarys firepower then I suggest you start letting people keep ICBMs in the back garden and RPGs in their garage, but allowing that will quickly lead to uncontrolable violence.

It depends on which point the government itself becomes corrupt enough to supress peoples political powers. Once the political power of the people has become less of that than the government, stopping them from organising a democratic uprising in an unconstitional manner, then that would be the point to act violently. But that's not going to hapen in the near future imo.

When the right to protest is unconstitutionally supressed to the extent that no democratic uprising could occur would be one of the points I would see it justifiable to begin armouring the population just in case. By which point armouring the nation would be something that would occur whether guns are banned or not. It would likely be guerilla resistance and the chances are you produce guns unlawfully in illegal factories anyway.

But that event will not happen in the foreseeable future and armouring the nation at this point would only hinder the population through gun crime rather than empower it to any valuable extent.

The reality is that the government could become tyrannical, and the right to bare arms would not provide sufficient resistance. The reality is that the government of the United States has too many tools at its disposal. Part of the right to bare arms was the premise that the nation would never have a large standing army. In fact it is antithetical to the reasons and nature of the revolution.

Everyone assumes that the government would wage war through conventional means, or would engage the problem through a humanitarian point of view. The reality is that the soldiers that may serve the new regime would probably be brainwashed, and addicted to government produced narcotics. Then the government would disperse a biological agent to which only they hold the cure. They could even design it to be non transmittable via person. All they would do is say it was part of a public sanitation project.

Once that has happened all they will need to do is release the ultimatum. Come get your cure, and while you are here we will affix you with a slave collar packed with explosives and tracking technology with both visual and audio devices attached.

I know terrifying shit, but it could go from design phase to implementation in as little as a few months. We would be subjugated before we would even know what is going on, and once it had happened no matter how many guns we had we couldn't resist. They wouldn't even need to fire. Either they let the plague kill those who resist, or if they get the cure and put on the collar all they would need to do is trigger a remote detonation if any resistance were detected.

As always the freedom of the people is dependent on the values of a people. That nightmare scenario would not occur, because too many in government would object. Our cultural values are the reason the United States became a democracy and not a dictatorship.

Yes, the right to bare arms would be insufficient. Even if you had arms like Hulk Hogan, Sergio Oliva, or Mariusz Pudzianowski, baring your arms would be woefully inadequate. Even though I enjoy my right to bare arms, I am not so deluded that I think it would provide sufficient resistance.

On a more serious note, even though it seems laughable in the present that a right to bear arms would act as a deterrent against tyranny, it was seen as such by the Founders. As I previously noted, this belief was propagated most fervently by the Anti-Federalists of both the Constitutional-Convention and Federalist eras. Yes, as I also previously noted, the primary reason was national security; this was especially true for the Federalists. Nevertheless, a secondary reason was a deterrence against tyranny. 

Actually, the right to bear arms would provide sufficent resistance. Ever hear of a place called Iraq? Despite all the technology available, having an armed populace is the best way to deterr the government from becomnig too tyrannical.

I would argue that our culture of rejecting tyranny helps, but that's manifested in the right to bare arms. If the country did impose laws that destroyed freedoms, then the populace could at least resist in a way that would cripple the govenrment and prevent them from doing anything.

If a supervirus was ever released into the populace, do you think any other government would stand by and let that happen? Do you think that people wouldn't decide to grab a gun, build a bomb, and attack government sanctioned points that would offer the drug?

Trust me, you underestimate the resolve of a people to fight against a government they disagree with. It's being done in many countries across the globe with low-tech solutions. We live in a country of 300,000,000 and well-build infrastructure. I can assure you if just 1/10th of the people wanted to revolt against the country, they could bring the nation to it's knees in a matter of weeks without high-tech solutions.