

I mean obviously, but with popular will you’ll want everything to give your cause an edge—hence the guns. It’s possible to have popular will and still fail, so factors that give the rebellion (or just plain old resistance, see: Black Panthers) an edge are going to be necessary. In recent history, the Houthis definitely benefited from having guns when they rebelled against the then-government.

You can’t assume a correlation from one data point. If it’s the guns, then that’ll show up in data from other countries too. When’s the last time you heard of a mass shooting in Yemen?