When we talk about using guns in defense against tyranny from our own government, anti-gunners love to sneer and ask how we’re going to use an AR-15 against tanks and drones.

Now, I’m a big fan of the AR-15 as a firearm and could see it serving well as the primary weapon for a guerilla force fighting a tyrannical American government, but no one thinks you’ll defeat a tank with such a gun.  Instead, you do what some folks down in Venezuela recently tried to do. You use it to get other weapons.

Assailants raided a military facility in southern Venezuela early on Sunday morning, stealing weapons and killing one soldier, authorities said.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said police and the military had recovered all the stolen weapons and detained some suspects. He blamed the attack on “extremist sectors of the opposition,” without naming any individuals.

Venezuela, whose economy has collapsed under socialist President Nicolas Maduro, is in the midst of a deep political crisis. In January, opposition-held National Assembly president Juan Guaido invoked the constitution to assume a rival presidency and encouraged the military to side with him.

Guaido argues that Maduro is illegitimate because his 2018 re-election was a farce. A spokesman for Guaido had no immediate comment on Sunday’s attack. Maduro dismisses Guaido as a U.S. puppet seeking to oust him in a coup, and has retained control of the territory and the military.

First, I’m not entirely sure I want to believe the Venezuelan government about them recovering all the weapons. I think they’d say that whether they did or didn’t.

Officials also claim they have six people in custody, a claim I’m also somewhat skeptical of.

However, the important point here is that these were people who seized weapons from a tyrannical regime, one that refuses to accept the outcome of an election. They’re on the cusp of a civil war and people are arming themselves.

Yet let’s also note what all they had to go through first. There were shortages on things like toilet paper and outright starvation. People were forced to work on farms because of the food shortage, regardless of what they actually do for a living. The entire economy collapses, as is normal for socialist regimes. All because they didn’t have the means to respond earlier and end this mess before it began.

Dictators don’t want an armed populace. They fear it. Maduro isn’t about to go back on guns now because he knows what will happen, but the people down there are bound and determined to rise up. They’ll get guns. If this effort didn’t work then something else will. They’ll get weapons, they’ll get equipment, and they’ll fight back.

Personally, I’d much rather skip a step or two should something like that ever become necessary here in this country. This is why we need to hold onto our AR-15s and similar weapons. It’s why we need to hold onto our 30-round magazines and other such accessories. I don’t want a war and I pray I don’t see one in my lifetime, but if it’s going to happen, we owe it to that future generation to make sure they have the tools to start off with from a better position than those in Venezuela.