And any reported survey number is almost certainly inaccurately low, probably by a large margin, too. You know there are plenty of people who will under-report.
Just think about the numbers. If the FBI did 135 million checks within a 5 year period, and you assume that most of those were passed, there's no way there's only 400 million civilian guns in circulation. I'm thinking it's probably closer to 1 billion.
EVERY BLADE OF GRASS,3 MOUNTAIN RANGES, a billion RIVERS, THREE Oceans! Millions of boats for china's secret trade routes! Now Multiply that by infinity with the US/India alliance.
The US military couldn't stand up to the armed citizenry.
People keep thinking about the big tools of war. The ships, the tanks, the aircraft. But those platforms, and the big payloads they carry, are useless in urban environments.
Furthermore, all of those things run on fuel. A large citizen force can neutralize fuel and supply to all those big platforms with relative ease. No gas, no tanks. No avgas, no aircraft. And those naval vessels, while potent, can't reach the interior that effectively. Even aircraft carriers couldn't project that far without support.
Finally, many military members would refuse to fight civilians in a clash between a tyrannical government and the people. The number of veterans in the citizenry also means that the relatively untrained civilian population would get a LOT of skills and training in short order to resist said tyrannical government.
Any tyrannical government would have to be willing to sacrifice the incredible wealth the infrastructure of the USA brings in order to use the strategic weapons needed to quash a citizen rebellion...in the short term. Long term, nuking your own population gets you nothing but a bullet in the back of the head from someone in your cabinet. It's simply not worth it to any but the most insane, and the insane WILL be dealt with by their own.
The US military does not need to enter the urban environment to win.
The US military would simply take control of the infrastructures. With no electricity, water, and supplies of food the 99% of people cannot survive.
They would simply put some tanks on the roads outside of cities / towns, nobody goes in or out. And just 1 tank would be sufficient because civilian weapons simply cannot take down a, for example, M1 tank.
Similarly, they can just put the tanks in front of power stations and switch off the electricity. Your fridge runs on electricity, by the way.
The US has strategic petroleum reserves; they've taken all the steps to ensure fuel supply against the attack of a foreign military. There's absolutely no way that a bunch of citizens can just walk in with their AR-15s and take control of the fuel.
Any attempt to organise the citizens, or even to make your own food, could be hit by one of the hundreds of Reaper drones.
Do you realize how powerful and effective a Reaper drone is? And the surgical precision?
There's no need to bomb cities. No need to destroy infrastructures. No need for (much) bloodshed at all really. The military would just be defending itself while keeping the strategic positions on roads or in front of utilities and factories.
The main killing (to prevent groups from organizing) would be very targeted and done by drones, so very few soldiers would even see blood or hear screaming. Few collateral damages too.
Which means, very few military members would defect, especially when defecting means that you have no food to eat.
The 99% of people will simply surrender to avoid starving to death, and the very few survivalists would either be assassinated by infiltrated military, or simply ignored as they make their new lives in the woods.
Meanwhile, rural people use guerilla warfare and pop the tanks. And take over fuel depots. And the planes stop flying. And the other military vehicles run out of gas. And personal generators still work. And the cities are destroyed because someone like you decided to trash the infrastructure of the nation in a futile and insane bid to hold back the tide.
There will be no drone strikes after the first few days (week at the outset) because anything flying will get wrecked by other flying vehicles (cheap drones flying into the paths of expensive drones). And the drones will HAVE to be close to the targets to attack, and will be targeted by ground forces when they land to refuel and rearm.
If the administration decides to starve people, then watch the mass defections from the military as the troops who's families are starving move to support them. The truckers will get the food to the people (truckers tend to be very independent and patriotic). The USA is far too large to guard every interstate and back road.
And, again, the military gets starved out while the people disrupt them. Even only 3% of the population (that's over 10 million people) fighting outnumbers the military more than 3 to 1. And that's hard target fighting, not soft support (which will likely be 5 to 10 times as many as are fighting, 50 to 100 million, providing aid).
NO military in the world can fight an insurgent population that large without using strategic weapons. Doing that will see the rest of the world aiding the insurgents (because they aren't nuking or gassing 100s of thousands of people).
No conflict exists in a vacuum, and raw firepower doesn't win the day. The US military vs. the US population leads to a popular victory. Do not misunderstand, the US armed forces are the finest fighting force on the planet, but (as the brutal Soviet dictator Stalin put it, and he was right) quantity has a quality all it's own.
Do you also think that you can block a shotgun blast by putting your finger in the barrel, like Bugs Bunny?
You are watching cartoons.
A Reaper drone has an attack range of 1850 kilometres. The Reaper and the Apache helicopter can spot you, target you, and blow you up from kilometres away. You'll never see them coming.
"Flying cheap drones into their path" is something that a child could say, who doesn't understand the difference between his daddy's drone and a $16 million military drone.
But my favorite is the "rural people use guerilla warfare and pop the tanks".
An Abrams M1A2 is almost indestructible. Its armor is so resilient that it can't even be destroyed by other tanks. It virtually can't be destroyed by anything, especially when it's properly equipped with depleted uranium armor.
The idea that you could "pop" a tank with weapons available to civilians is absurd.
Ask tank crews how "indestructible" their Abrams is. Burning a tank consumes all the O2 in the vehicle, and cooks the crew. Gasoline isn't the only flammable liquid available to civilians, and nitrogen fertilizer is rather energetic.
For the drone, do you mean operational range? Because an attack range of over 1000 miles is science fiction. And they STILL require fuel to operate. You haven't addressed this point, at all. Curious.
All you can cite are costs and ranges, and not actual tactics. Stop pretending to know how conflict works.
It's not going to be a Call of Duty match between the infantry and the citizens.
What the military is going to do is take control of the infrastructures. Without electricity, and without provisions of food and water, people are going to starve to death. Or die of thirst.
You don't need to send the military on every house. You just need a few tanks to control the strategic points.
Very, very few people would be able to survive on their own in the woods.
The 99% of people will surrender, and many will switch sides.
I only have one. However she's shiny, shoots true, and has hella stopping power.
And I inherited it, from a great man - my Pops.
(Nickel plated Colt 1911)
I have a shift outgunned.
And any reported survey number is almost certainly inaccurately low, probably by a large margin, too. You know there are plenty of people who will under-report.
Just think about the numbers. If the FBI did 135 million checks within a 5 year period, and you assume that most of those were passed, there's no way there's only 400 million civilian guns in circulation. I'm thinking it's probably closer to 1 billion.
EVERY BLADE OF GRASS,3 MOUNTAIN RANGES, a billion RIVERS, THREE Oceans! Millions of boats for china's secret trade routes! Now Multiply that by infinity with the US/India alliance.
Thst is awesome.
The legally armed American citizenry is the largest standing army on the face of the planet.
This causes me to smile so much it makes my mouth hurt!
I did my part over the last three weeks by buying 3 new guns.
1 long gun and 2 pistols
I went to gun store today. People in line to buy from a very reduced inventory. Me? I was buying magazines cause I already have guns and ammo.
Wow!!!! This actually does give me hope that well never be a socialist country.
These are amazing facts, but gun owners would never be able to stand up to the US military.
The number of small arms is just one out of many factors in a confrontation.
The US military couldn't stand up to the armed citizenry.
People keep thinking about the big tools of war. The ships, the tanks, the aircraft. But those platforms, and the big payloads they carry, are useless in urban environments.
Furthermore, all of those things run on fuel. A large citizen force can neutralize fuel and supply to all those big platforms with relative ease. No gas, no tanks. No avgas, no aircraft. And those naval vessels, while potent, can't reach the interior that effectively. Even aircraft carriers couldn't project that far without support.
Finally, many military members would refuse to fight civilians in a clash between a tyrannical government and the people. The number of veterans in the citizenry also means that the relatively untrained civilian population would get a LOT of skills and training in short order to resist said tyrannical government.
Any tyrannical government would have to be willing to sacrifice the incredible wealth the infrastructure of the USA brings in order to use the strategic weapons needed to quash a citizen rebellion...in the short term. Long term, nuking your own population gets you nothing but a bullet in the back of the head from someone in your cabinet. It's simply not worth it to any but the most insane, and the insane WILL be dealt with by their own.
The US military does not need to enter the urban environment to win.
The US military would simply take control of the infrastructures. With no electricity, water, and supplies of food the 99% of people cannot survive.
They would simply put some tanks on the roads outside of cities / towns, nobody goes in or out. And just 1 tank would be sufficient because civilian weapons simply cannot take down a, for example, M1 tank.
Similarly, they can just put the tanks in front of power stations and switch off the electricity. Your fridge runs on electricity, by the way.
The US has strategic petroleum reserves; they've taken all the steps to ensure fuel supply against the attack of a foreign military. There's absolutely no way that a bunch of citizens can just walk in with their AR-15s and take control of the fuel.
Any attempt to organise the citizens, or even to make your own food, could be hit by one of the hundreds of Reaper drones. Do you realize how powerful and effective a Reaper drone is? And the surgical precision?
There's no need to bomb cities. No need to destroy infrastructures. No need for (much) bloodshed at all really. The military would just be defending itself while keeping the strategic positions on roads or in front of utilities and factories.
The main killing (to prevent groups from organizing) would be very targeted and done by drones, so very few soldiers would even see blood or hear screaming. Few collateral damages too. Which means, very few military members would defect, especially when defecting means that you have no food to eat.
The 99% of people will simply surrender to avoid starving to death, and the very few survivalists would either be assassinated by infiltrated military, or simply ignored as they make their new lives in the woods.
So no, I'm afraid US military wins.
Meanwhile, rural people use guerilla warfare and pop the tanks. And take over fuel depots. And the planes stop flying. And the other military vehicles run out of gas. And personal generators still work. And the cities are destroyed because someone like you decided to trash the infrastructure of the nation in a futile and insane bid to hold back the tide.
There will be no drone strikes after the first few days (week at the outset) because anything flying will get wrecked by other flying vehicles (cheap drones flying into the paths of expensive drones). And the drones will HAVE to be close to the targets to attack, and will be targeted by ground forces when they land to refuel and rearm.
If the administration decides to starve people, then watch the mass defections from the military as the troops who's families are starving move to support them. The truckers will get the food to the people (truckers tend to be very independent and patriotic). The USA is far too large to guard every interstate and back road.
And, again, the military gets starved out while the people disrupt them. Even only 3% of the population (that's over 10 million people) fighting outnumbers the military more than 3 to 1. And that's hard target fighting, not soft support (which will likely be 5 to 10 times as many as are fighting, 50 to 100 million, providing aid).
NO military in the world can fight an insurgent population that large without using strategic weapons. Doing that will see the rest of the world aiding the insurgents (because they aren't nuking or gassing 100s of thousands of people).
No conflict exists in a vacuum, and raw firepower doesn't win the day. The US military vs. the US population leads to a popular victory. Do not misunderstand, the US armed forces are the finest fighting force on the planet, but (as the brutal Soviet dictator Stalin put it, and he was right) quantity has a quality all it's own.
Do you also think that you can block a shotgun blast by putting your finger in the barrel, like Bugs Bunny?
You are watching cartoons.
A Reaper drone has an attack range of 1850 kilometres. The Reaper and the Apache helicopter can spot you, target you, and blow you up from kilometres away. You'll never see them coming. "Flying cheap drones into their path" is something that a child could say, who doesn't understand the difference between his daddy's drone and a $16 million military drone.
But my favorite is the "rural people use guerilla warfare and pop the tanks".
An Abrams M1A2 is almost indestructible. Its armor is so resilient that it can't even be destroyed by other tanks. It virtually can't be destroyed by anything, especially when it's properly equipped with depleted uranium armor.
The idea that you could "pop" a tank with weapons available to civilians is absurd.
You have no arguments, so you switch to insults.
Ask tank crews how "indestructible" their Abrams is. Burning a tank consumes all the O2 in the vehicle, and cooks the crew. Gasoline isn't the only flammable liquid available to civilians, and nitrogen fertilizer is rather energetic.
For the drone, do you mean operational range? Because an attack range of over 1000 miles is science fiction. And they STILL require fuel to operate. You haven't addressed this point, at all. Curious.
All you can cite are costs and ranges, and not actual tactics. Stop pretending to know how conflict works.
There's one Abrams M1A2 tank blocking a country road.
Please explain exactly how any number of civilians would take it down.
It only takes one.
It's not going to be a Call of Duty match between the infantry and the citizens.
What the military is going to do is take control of the infrastructures. Without electricity, and without provisions of food and water, people are going to starve to death. Or die of thirst.
You don't need to send the military on every house. You just need a few tanks to control the strategic points. Very, very few people would be able to survive on their own in the woods.
The 99% of people will surrender, and many will switch sides.
It's too bad all those were just lost in millions of simultaneous boating accidents this weekend... No guns here... Oh, and fuck the NFA.