Guns considered useless

While I'm a huge fan of the US Bill of Rights, I've never understood the point of the Second Amendment. Or rather, if civilian firearms are such an unanswerable, final guarantor of civil liberties, how do you explain the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping, and all the rest? Put more bluntly, where the hell is the rebellion? Your country needs you now, guys. I'm starting to think that guns are actually a political opiate - or worse, they're like Mark Renton's electric heater, which he leaves turned off so he can kid himself that he could use it if things got really bad, even though he knows in his heart of hearts that it won't make a blind bit of difference.

Let's think about that a bit more. Suppose the US government went into full-on tyranny mode, and an armed resistance became apparent. I can think of three scenarios:

1. The Ruby Ridge scenario: You take up arms against your government. They respond with the full range of weapons at their disposal, up to and including air strikes and tanks. You die, having achieved nothing.
2. The Gettysburg scenario: You persuade a substantial proportion of the nation and its armed forces to secede and take up arms against your government. The regime still commands substantial support, however. The resulting war takes years, costs hundreds of thousands of lives, and lays waste to substantial portions of the country. You probably lose anyway.
3. The Baghdad scenario: Having observed the fate of your neighbour from Scenario 1, you take up arms against your government covertly. The resulting insurgency takes years, costs thousands of lives, and results in the civil liberties situation getting substantially worse for the duration - nothing like a terrorist threat for building a police state. In the event that you win, your movement is almost certainly co-opted by the inevitable power-hungry nutjobs, and the Revolutionary Government swiftly becomes even worse than its predecessor.

None of these scenarios holds much to attract the prospective civil libertarian. Which, I suspect, is a big part of the reason that all the really successful protest movements have been nonviolent.

There have in fact been several widespread armed uprisings against US Government Rule: the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, for instance. They're all notable for having failed. Yes, the American War of Independence could be advanced as a counterexample, but (as I understand things) you couldn't have done it without substantial military support from France and Spain.

In an odd way, this should actually be an advantage for British civil liberties activists over their American counterparts. Since we have no guns for dealing with the worst-case scenario, we have to make damn sure that things don't get that bad in the first place. I just hope we're not already too late...

Edit: a warm welcome to those over from bronxelf_ag001's LJ. Despite the provocative title (and the "flamebait" tag), I'm not really up for a shouting match; instead, I'd really appreciate it if you could help me to come to a greater understanding here. Specifically:

• Are there any other rationales for the Second Amendment that make more sense?
• Can the "backstop against tyranny" argument be resurrected?
• Is it widely believed among Second Amendment advocates?

Rest assured that I care very much about civil rights, I'm just sceptical that guns are of much help in ensuring them.