[Nokinside]

> least some part of the populace is well armed enough to overthrow t

What a naive fantasy.

Organization of people is much more important than guns. You don't even need guns when you organize. You can stop the state just by collective action. See color revolutions.

When it is guns, you need RGP's, detonators and TNT (and drones), a good underground insurgent logistic chains. You also need commit to life in poverty and eventual death.

United States, Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Serbia have plenty of independent weapons, yet there is no fear of effective armed resistance. Everybody is a rebel in the Internet. When things go tough it's "I have to go to work and eat. My family needs me."

[ben_w]

Magna Carta predates not just guns but even just gunpowder being known in Europe.

The barons it talks about would have been somewhat analogous to US state governors, though even then it's a very loose analogy as the logistics of England in the 1200s was so different to the modern world.

There's lots of things it could be analogised to, including a board of directors empowered to remove an unwanted CEO; or how the English civil war was a fight between Charles I and his parliament (some of the discourse at the time explicitly mentioned Magna Carta*).

Which is to say that while one does indeed need to be able to respond "this one" when asked "you and what army?", that requirement is not itself a show-stopper, people can (and have) been able to give the correct answer.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petition_of_Right

[LargoLasskhyfv]

> See color revolutions.

Bad example, since they are mostly just clandestine interventions of another state to destabilize the one they are happening in.