5 ms·

No, they couldn't shoot more than a few people before thousands of armed citizens made them stop. To help clarify things: the city of LA has 10,000 police offi

by staunch 12y ago

No, they couldn't shoot more than a few people before thousands of armed citizens made them stop. To help clarify things: the city of LA has 10,000 police officers and 1,000,000+ armed citizens.

jfoutz 12y ago
Yeah, that worked really well in Ludlow. I can't think of any other cases in the US where armed civilians were up against automatic weapons. I'd be delighted to see some more examples.
- staunch 12y ago
  There are more than enough examples around the world if you are actually interested in learning that you're wrong.
  - bagels 12y ago
    How is it wrong?
    - staunch 12y ago
      How is it right?
amcnett 12y ago
Disorganized pseudo-infantry (i.e. pissed off individuals with guns) will always be inferior to organized paramilitary forces with armor.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- staunch 12y ago
  Not with popular support it's not. For proof that the opposite is actually true see Vietnam/Iraq/Syria/Gaza/Egypt, etc.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - enraged_camel 12y ago
    No, please stop spreading this ignorant nonsense. Most countries in the Middle East have mandatory military service. If they get invaded by a foreign force, they can raise local militias very quickly from people who not only already own guns, but also have received significant training in their usage and can get organized quickly due to the time they spent in military. In contrast, most Americans don't know how to hold a gun, much less fire one. And even those who are serious about guns have not actually been part of any military, or even a militia. Frankly, they would get mowed down by any sort of organized force in very quick order.
    - staunch 12y ago
      How ignorant can you be not to know that there are 21+ million U.S. military veterans? More (better trained) soldiers than there are males in Iraq. The claim that Americans don't know how to use guns is in the laughable category. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...
      - lotsofmangos 12y ago
        There are 11.6 million veterans below the age of 65, which is a fair amount of trained soldiers, though that doesn't say anything about sides. Also, merely counting guns per capita tells you very little as some people have lots of guns. You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64. This translates to ~ 80 million people of military age with access to firearms, and assuming that most veterans are in the households that have guns, up to an eighth of them trained to a high standard. Now this, if it rose up and could be commanded as a single force, would be the largest military in the world, in terms of forces. However the only circumstance that I could see that even partially happening would be in response to an external military invasion. What is far more likely a scenario if the US becomes unstable is a complicated civil war started by a state attempting to secede, the federal government reacting, then more states getting involved. In that case you never get one big force, just lots of smaller state forces with the military not wanting to get involved at all, but at most trying to act in a peacekeeping role and making sure that the big guns stay locked up. One thing to keep an eye out for, as I have said elsewhere, is that the military equipment given out is partly going to pro-secessionists in local and state police forces and it may be worth considering that the police in Missouri may not be merely incompetent in the way they are currently reacting to events.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
You already have the National Guard out in Missouri, and they have Blackhawk helicopters which have chain guns as their standard armament. The idea that in the US civil militias could really hold their own against the state is an absurd fiction. Unless significant portions of the armed forces defected to join an uprising and managed to take their equipment with them, then it would be very one sided. The militias will have hand guns and rifles, the state has everything up to and including nukes. There is a probably apocryphal quote attributed to Isoroku Yamamoto, that if you tried to invade the mainland US, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass. Isoroku Yamamoto was born in 1884. War has progressed since then. Satellites can look behind every blade of grass and let you know where the rifles are, then you can send in the drones while you sit back in your bunker and sip tea.
- bitexploder 12y ago
  I just have to say, for a long time, I have read sentiments like yours. Namely that, because the government has the big arms, they can win a fight against a civil militia. I would argue that we need to look no further than the middle east and how intense urban warfare really is to see that big weapons don't help. When you can't reliably root out the enemy force from the civilian force it is very hard to apply your big weapons. When the enemy eschews the Internet and uses traditional couriers (like the ISIS leader), they can be very hard targets. All that technology and weaponry, but you still need somewhere to aim it. Look how long it took to get OBL. It would be a brutal civil war. Brother against brother again, if it ever happened at scale in the US.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    Sometimes it goes down that way, if the military feels it needs to hold back and win the narrative, not just the ground. On home soil it may well do this, but equally it may go completely nuts if it feels subject to a genuine existential threat. Look to the end of the Tamil Tigers for an example of what a modern military is capable of against insurgents when it pulls out all the stops. - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/17/death-of-the-tiger http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/17/death-of-the-ti... And remember that the Tamil Tigers were one of the most experienced of the various guerrilla groups around the world.

by staunch 12y ago

No, they couldn't shoot more than a few people before thousands of armed citizens made them stop. To help clarify things: the city of LA has 10,000 police officers and 1,000,000+ armed citizens.

jfoutz 12y ago

Yeah, that worked really well in Ludlow. I can't think of any other cases in the US where armed civilians were up against automatic weapons. I'd be delighted to see some more examples.

staunch 12y ago
There are more than enough examples around the world if you are actually interested in learning that you're wrong.
- bagels 12y ago
  How is it wrong?
  - staunch 12y ago
    How is it right?

amcnett 12y ago

Disorganized pseudo-infantry (i.e. pissed off individuals with guns) will always be inferior to organized paramilitary forces with armor.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
staunch 12y ago
Not with popular support it's not. For proof that the opposite is actually true see Vietnam/Iraq/Syria/Gaza/Egypt, etc.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  No, please stop spreading this ignorant nonsense. Most countries in the Middle East have mandatory military service. If they get invaded by a foreign force, they can raise local militias very quickly from people who not only already own guns, but also have received significant training in their usage and can get organized quickly due to the time they spent in military. In contrast, most Americans don't know how to hold a gun, much less fire one. And even those who are serious about guns have not actually been part of any military, or even a militia. Frankly, they would get mowed down by any sort of organized force in very quick order.
  - staunch 12y ago
    How ignorant can you be not to know that there are 21+ million U.S. military veterans? More (better trained) soldiers than there are males in Iraq. The claim that Americans don't know how to use guns is in the laughable category. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_co...
    - lotsofmangos 12y ago
      There are 11.6 million veterans below the age of 65, which is a fair amount of trained soldiers, though that doesn't say anything about sides. Also, merely counting guns per capita tells you very little as some people have lots of guns. You have ~ 40% of households with a gun and ~ 70% of people between the ages of 15 and 64. This translates to ~ 80 million people of military age with access to firearms, and assuming that most veterans are in the households that have guns, up to an eighth of them trained to a high standard. Now this, if it rose up and could be commanded as a single force, would be the largest military in the world, in terms of forces. However the only circumstance that I could see that even partially happening would be in response to an external military invasion. What is far more likely a scenario if the US becomes unstable is a complicated civil war started by a state attempting to secede, the federal government reacting, then more states getting involved. In that case you never get one big force, just lots of smaller state forces with the military not wanting to get involved at all, but at most trying to act in a peacekeeping role and making sure that the big guns stay locked up. One thing to keep an eye out for, as I have said elsewhere, is that the military equipment given out is partly going to pro-secessionists in local and state police forces and it may be worth considering that the police in Missouri may not be merely incompetent in the way they are currently reacting to events.

lotsofmangos 12y ago

You already have the National Guard out in Missouri, and they have Blackhawk helicopters which have chain guns as their standard armament. The idea that in the US civil militias could really hold their own against the state is an absurd fiction. Unless significant portions of the armed forces defected to join an uprising and managed to take their equipment with them, then it would be very one sided. The militias will have hand guns and rifles, the state has everything up to and including nukes. There is a probably apocryphal quote attributed to Isoroku Yamamoto, that if you tried to invade the mainland US, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass. Isoroku Yamamoto was born in 1884. War has progressed since then. Satellites can look behind every blade of grass and let you know where the rifles are, then you can send in the drones while you sit back in your bunker and sip tea.

bitexploder 12y ago
I just have to say, for a long time, I have read sentiments like yours. Namely that, because the government has the big arms, they can win a fight against a civil militia. I would argue that we need to look no further than the middle east and how intense urban warfare really is to see that big weapons don't help. When you can't reliably root out the enemy force from the civilian force it is very hard to apply your big weapons. When the enemy eschews the Internet and uses traditional couriers (like the ISIS leader), they can be very hard targets. All that technology and weaponry, but you still need somewhere to aim it. Look how long it took to get OBL. It would be a brutal civil war. Brother against brother again, if it ever happened at scale in the US.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Sometimes it goes down that way, if the military feels it needs to hold back and win the narrative, not just the ground. On home soil it may well do this, but equally it may go completely nuts if it feels subject to a genuine existential threat. Look to the end of the Tamil Tigers for an example of what a modern military is capable of against insurgents when it pulls out all the stops. - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/17/death-of-the-tiger http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/01/17/death-of-the-ti... And remember that the Tamil Tigers were one of the most experienced of the various guerrilla groups around the world.