I realize this all started from a joke/troll post (c'mon, the most fun of a troll post is to make it seem semi-thought out) but the interesting point of "if the military tried to take your guns, could they?" bears more consideration.

On the face of it, of course, yes. A fully equipped US military, striking from a position of surprise, could exterminate the non-military citizens. There would be insurrections, it would take quite a while, but eventually, they'd succeed in subjugating/butchering without foreign intervention (and I would expect there would be HEAVY foreign intervention). Could also nuke the country into atomic rubble and declare themselves kings and queens of a graveyard. Wee!

In practice could they? Of course, no. How likely do you think it is that the military (typically populated by pro-gun, pro-US persons) would back a government giving such orders instead of just... you know, killing or ignoring the gov't official ordering it? An American government attempting to subjugate its populace by removing its freedoms is going to also have to face down a military that has fought to maintain that freedom as well as an indeterminate but appreciable portion of the country. Even if the military threw a repressive coup of its own volition, there would be heavily splintered factions instead of a unified front. Lawlessness would reign supreme and as in most of those situations, everyone "in charge" would almost certainly end up dead. Not gonna be a simple military vs nonmilitary. Americans are largely a violent people, and there are already guns all over the place. It would end in absolute disaster. Wee!

So no, the military would not be able to bow the country under its thumb so simply, and yes guns do promise that a govt that says "we've outlawed voting" will get summarily executed. Might even help the country to have some shenanigans like that.

Even under less dramatic circumstances, if you're a police officer ordered to confiscate guns from a non-criminal, would you? And let's say you're ordered to take the guns from a bunch of retired military folks... and if you tried, who do you really think would walk away from that scenario? If you're the police captain, do you send your officers out? If you're a civilian in such a hellish tyranny, if you see the cop walking to your front door, how do you react?

It's a fun thought process, even if the original post was spaghettio diarrhea.

Oh, to hell with "The citizenry can't possibly fight against a better armed, better trained force!"

How did the North Vietnamese win against the better armed, better trained American force? How did the Americans hold out against the, again, better armed, better trained British force until the French joined? How does any small military hold out against a larger force?

Guerrilla Warfare. That's how.

Also, don't underestimate a trained knife user: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9igSoJHEdUo

Edited 11/19/2015 03:36:55

1.4 million is the number of soldiers the US currently fields.

That's a very hard number to get, what is your source?

318 million is the number of US citizens.
About the third of the American population owns a gun
151 million are male within the age to legally serve in armed forces.

Im not saying overthrowing a mad American government is guaranteed but there is some potential. The statistics I provided do not include able bodied women either. That would be another 100 million at the least. 250 million vs 1.5 million. Not guaranteed but possible.

Even assuming your military folk count is right, that's a 160 : 1 ratio, even with all the grownups in the country participating. There was a poll a while back in Belarus. And revolutions never have all the folk participating for, they usually have folk to counter-revolution, even. So, say 16% grownups fight against, and 4% fight for government (but they are not military folk). The ratio now is 7 : 2. Now think about how the minority has advanced weapons, not just loads and loads tanks (while just about noone has a tank as a civilian), but satellites, chemical weapons, and God knows what under the heat and cold. That's an easy 4 kills for each soldier, and 7 : 2 is a low estimate I'm using. The only way a revolution would be successful is if it has foreign support. Don't bring a gun to an artillery fight.

But, thing is, the military will be split, as well.

That's an assumption, and I doubt it would happen. America has no military mandate, so everyone in the military, in such a "patriotic" country, is fighting to "serve their country". And even if the military is split, that still does not make grounds for civilians having firearms.

So many people on this thread don't seem to understand the concept of Guerrilla Warfare. The United States military was facing rag-tag militias (Or if you're going to nitpick over my terminology: Groups equivalent in skill level to militias) in both Iraq and Afghanistan. As non-Americans on this site love pointing out: Those wars were a horrific failure. It took unbelievable amounts of destruction and bloodshed to gain even an inch of ground.

The U.S military couldn't beat soldiers hiding in the jungle.
The U.S military couldn't (fully) beat insurgents hiding in the mountains.
The U.S military wouldn't be able to defeat civilian resistance groups hiding in rural areas.

Anyone who's studied Vietnam,Iraq, and Afghanistan should see the "Civilian insurgents can't beat a modern military" argument as the nonsense it is.

Could also nuke the country into atomic rubble and declare themselves kings and queens of a graveyard.

Obviously, don't atom bomb places that are valuable; that's an unfair thing to say. Just drop some more atom bombs in the desert.

How likely do you think it is that the military (typically populated by pro-gun, pro-US persons) would back a government giving such orders instead of just... you know, killing or ignoring the gov't official ordering it?

I was more thinking that American folk would make a revolution themselves, but here, this problem you list is easy to solve.

Don't underestimate the power of psychologic warfare. Just keep the for-America feelings, and just happen to talk about the dangers and bad things with loose gun control loads, with full coincidence, as well as how ugly and disgusting it must be to betray your country, and what a sad and pathetic time you'll have if you do.

An American government attempting to subjugate its populace by removing its freedoms is going to also have to face down a military that has fought to maintain that freedom as well as an indeterminate but appreciable portion of the country.

The American military have never fought to hold gun freedom, and I don't think they have fought for freedom at all since the Barbary wars. Just teach the military different, they already like America.

Even if the military threw a repressive coup of its own volition, there would be heavily splintered factions instead of a unified front.

This is likely for both sides.

Lawlessness would reign supreme and as in most of those situations, everyone "in charge" would almost certainly end up dead.

That's bit of grounds why folk are so reluctant to fight in the first place: it's hard, you have a strong chance of dying, and you're probably not going to improve the situation. But just like any civil war, most places don't end up in anarchy, but under some control. See chronologic maps of West Province, the Levant region, and East Ukraine, just about none of it is in this anarchy. And, as typical in wars, authoritarianism grows, not wanes.

Not gonna be a simple military vs nonmilitary.

That's the point of the rain, nonmilitary ag military.

Americans are largely a violent people, and there are already guns all over the place. It would end in absolute disaster.

Give me the median amount of tanks that the average American owns. For the few that have antitank guns, filter again: can each antitanker kill 10 tanks?

Much of your same post relies on these things you have said, so skip.

Even under less dramatic circumstances, if you're a police officer ordered to confiscate guns from a non-criminal, would you? And let's say you're ordered to take the guns from a bunch of retired military folks... and if you tried, who do you really think would walk away from that scenario? If you're the police captain, do you send your officers out? If you're a civilian in such a hellish tyranny, if you see the cop walking to your front door, how do you react?

That's why this isn't just the police doing this (who have roughly the same warfare that civilians do). Shoot up the "suspect", if there are such folk.

How did the North Vietnamese win against the better armed, better trained American force? How did the Americans hold out against the, again, better armed, better trained British force until the French joined? How does any small military hold out against a larger force?

Guerrilla Warfare.

Guerrilla warfare does not always work. Vietnam has historically been a very great place for guerrilla warfare. What about the guerrilla warfare in the Second World War? There was loads, but Yugoslavia and Belarus weren't stopping anybody; Vietnam and Myanmar weren't either.

Anyone who's studied Vietnam,Iraq, and Afghanistan should see the "Civilian insurgents can't beat a modern military" argument as the nonsense it is.

I thought the argument that a civilian revolution without foreign intervention and majority military defection was as laughable as America is justified to bomb the Middle East to the stone age. Now you should study the Panama (1990s), Shaba II, and not involving America, many more such as the Nepalese Civil War. Jungle or mountains, guerrilla warfare can fail.

Nobody said guerrilla warfare always works, but it can and often has.

The incidents of success prove that a conventional army CAN be defeated by unconventional means, and thus debunks this argument that armed civilians would have no chance against the government.

You can argue how high said chance is, but there would be a chance none the less.

No military is invincible.

What I was meaning is that guerrilla warfare is (un)successful to loads of factors, that, until identified, can not really be talked about as a certainty. (Possibly, these can be poor winds/motivation and terrain (other than some snow in a place which is isolated and noone lives in (and is not suitable for long-time guerrilla warfare) and some heat, where again, noone lives.) and objects (America won the Iraq War in a 9 month campaign in 2003, I don't know what it was doing there the rest of the time)). There will always be a chance, but in convention, 0.0001% rounds to 0%.

And furthermore, the examples you had, they were all guerrilla warfare with well-armed (not just with firearms), and organised, to extents.

As someone who did the Army thing(hooah), I feel it worth mentioning that one of the primary tenants constantly and universally celebrated is that you fight for the freedom of Americans. That you are willing to kill and die for even people who hate you, so that they have the right to spit on your grave, because that is their American right. Similarly, they pound into your head that you have obligation to refuse any order you find to be morally wrong. They teach these sort of things for a reason.

You cannot say "Oh, it'd be easy to convince the military to enslave and subjugate people in a manner directly at conflict with their training/conditioning/tenants/ideological purposes" any more than you can posit mind control. If you're going to go on the premise that anyone can be convinced of anything, then an argument is irrelevant. You cannot fight an omnipotent. Who exactly is supposed to convince the military to change their mind on supporting the Bill of Rights? Because many folks have tried and no one has had any success. From a cynical standpoint, there's also a HUGE amount of money in the firearm industry that would be working against those efforts.

The distinction that folks currently in the military are so different from those not is the part in err. Anything that causes a civilian uprising inherently sparks a military division as well. The point of the rant is that there cannot be a purely military v nonmilitary--you'd have military vehicles on all major sides and open war in as the country split apart while insurrectionist forces all screwed each other over. Eventually there would be some manner of peace in most remaining regions(always is), but realistically, both sides would lose unless one were willing and capable of mass genocide ie nuke large portions of the populated country. It'd fall, as usual, to foreign countries backing various fronts until America either reclaimed itself or died.

Also, to be technical, a fundamental American right promised in the Bill of Rights is the right to assemble arms for the purpose of a militia. So to that extent every time the military fights under the guise of ensuring American rights and freedoms... yeah, that is part of why they're fighting. Whether they're managing it rationally or effectively is of course debatable and yours to decide, but from the Army's perspective, that's something for which you kill or die. America is the idea established in the Constitution, not simply a set of borders

wct, this is misleading.

In Switzerland, the annual rate of firearm homicide per 100,000 population is

Woohoo, your reply is misleading. The commenter I quoted referred to 'gun deaths'. The stats you refer to were for 'gun homicides'. Not all deaths are homicides. If you're going to use stats, use them correctly.

Besides, I wasn't the one making the comment in the first place, I was just quoting someone. The main point was to refute the Swiss myths. I didn't check that particular claim. It could be inaccurate, but a) you haven't actually compared apples to apples, so you haven't shown it inaccurate, and b) it wouldn't matter to my argument one way or another where specifically Switzerland stands in gun deaths, because the point is that they are not easily comparable to America or other countries as gun nuts pretend they are. There are a lot of factors which are glossed over.

But, thing is, the military will be split, as well.

The only faction of the military that will matter is the one that gets the huge 'defense' budget. That will be the one controlled by the gov't; the very thing the gun nuts imagine they will be able to fight against.

A tank without ammo or fuel is just a hunk of metal.

You all say thousands, but the population of America is over 300 million,

We're talking about ratios here, like kill rates in Warlight. A single tank or helicopter gunship is equal to hundreds or perhaps thousands of heavily armed civilian militia. Out of that 300 million, over 1 million are active military. And most of the civilians would not be fighting the gov't. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the majority supported the dictatorship. And claimed it was all necessary to protect their 'freedoms', too.

You cannot say "Oh, it'd be easy to convince the military to enslave and subjugate people in a manner directly at conflict with their training/conditioning/tenants/ideological purposes"

Sixteen years ago, you might have persuaded me with that line of thinking. But after George W. Bush was not only elected, but *re-elected* by the US voting public, it no longer holds any water in my view. You guys seriously over-rate the general public's ability to distinguish between facts and propaganda. Look at anti-climate-science propaganda, look at the propaganda that caused the US public to support the Iraq War for 'weapons of mass destruction'. The US public is very gullible. Perhaps that may even be true of many/most other countries, it doesn't matter. The point is that the US public *is* gullible.

You know, the fact that Sarah Palin was even a potential candidate for vice president just says so much about the state of mind of the American public. The fact that she wasn't laughed off the podium at the first sign of her utter incompetence and ineptitude is an enduring smirch on the credibility of these arguments that "good ol' average GI Joe would be able to tell who the real good guys were and just do the right thing".

Apparently you guys just haven't learned much about psychology, like the Milgram experiments or the Stanford prison experiments. Apparently you haven't learned the lesson of Nazism. The dictatorship will not 'seize power suddenly'. They will most probably be voted in by the US voting public. (If such a thing would ever happen, which I actually highly doubt. Again, I'm the skeptic in these scenarios. I'm just pointing out the absurdities that gun nuts believe are realistic scenarios.)

Edited 11/19/2015 08:37:30

"the negro"...

#Karltrollbergsback

Reported again

goy?

I completely agree with all of wct's points.

Back in ye olde times, revolutions could happen anywhere because weaponry was so primitive.

Nowadays? It's simple:

America's military has plenty of tanks.
America's general populace does not have tanks.
America's military has plenty of attack helicopters.
America's general populace does not have helicopters.

Again, it wouldn't be just civilians against the US government.

I don't quite understand why people are making the assumption that the military would necessarily side with the people over the government. It seems more likely (in this already unlikely scenario) that the military would just side with itself, overthrow the government and establish a military dictatorship.

Also, it's a little disingenuous to say that "successful" guerrilla campaigns like those in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam mean that an armed American people could win a guerrilla fight with the US military. There are two major problems with that:

1: "The people" were not successful in any of those scenarios. All infrastructure and civil order was destroyed, and millions of people died. That's not a victory in my book. You could argue that since the Vietnamese did ultimately expel the Americans, that that was a win, but it's more accurate to say that it was a win for Ho Chi Minh's forces, and of course it took the country decades to recover. Iraq and Afghanistan are measurably less successful examples of a victory for the "people".

2: There is a fundamental difference between expelling an occupying force and defeating a force in their own country. The US military didn't leave Iraq and Vietnam because the guerrillas forced them to, but rather because it didn't seem worth the cost in blood and treasure to stay there. It was the same in the American Revolution. If the US military was occupying its own country, what could prompt them to leave?

@Epicular

Yeah but an Insurgency wouldn't aim to fight the army head on look at other insurgancy's in the past

if any kind of revolution/civil war happened in the US, it wouldn't happen in a bubble. it's hard telling what the arms industry would do in such a scenario, but they are capitalists, so i would assume they would try to sell to both sides. and foreign intervention would be a certainty, if not overtly then secretly. and black market arms dealers would want in on the action too. any group trying to fight the US military would be able to get arms if they wanted them.

i used to be for getting rid of the 2nd amendment entirely, but i now think it is a good thing as long as we are being responsible. i don't get the argument for less gun regulation. if you are a responsible law abiding citizen with a passion for guns you should have no problem registering to own a gun or taking gun safety courses. and if the government uses a gun registry to find you and take away your guns, or arbitrarily using gun ownership requirements to deny you a permit, then we are already too far down the rabbit hole anyway and armed insurrection is probably the only way to restore our rights. in such a scenario you will most likely have ample opportunity to join a rebellion and get arms.

people do have a right to ensure their own safety, but they also have a responsibility to not compromise the safety of others (example: being untrained and engaging with a shooter in a public place). the NRA's agenda seems to be to not give an inch on the rights aspect and to completely ignore the responsibility aspect. and it makes complete sense if you look at who funds the NRA. arms manufacturers have one goal in mind, sell as many guns as possible. this is better achieved by removing any restrictions on who can own a gun, and what kinds of guns they can own. they can't possibly care about the nature of our rights and responsibilities, because doing so would mean less guns sold. and anyone in any business arguing for less profits is going to be shown the door.