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A US government worth overthrowing by armed insurrection and that couldn't be overthrown some other way would practically by definition be willing and able to e

by ashark 12y ago

A US government worth overthrowing by armed insurrection and that couldn't be overthrown some other way would practically by definition be willing and able to engage in some really nasty practices to put down a domestic rebellion. Like, filling-mass-graves nasty. Shooting at them wouldn't help. Sympathy from the armed forces and various forms of political pressure, foreign and domestic, would be far more helpful than a few deer rifles, and if you've got that your private arms aren't really necessary. A domestic rebellion wouldn't win by shooting enough people, it'd win when the tactics necessary to stop it were beyond what the government and/or military were willing to do. Guns are much more useful when: 1) the enemy is foreign (killing enough people actually might make them go away), and/or 2) your position doesn't actually have popular support so other means are unavailable to you, and/or 3) foreign powers have the will and capacity to bomb the shit out of your country if the government goes too far in its attempts to suppress your uprising (this, or loss of military support for the government, are basically the only reasons authoritarian states fail to stop revolutions in the modern world)

jnbiche 12y ago
>Sympathy from the armed forces and various forms of political pressure, foreign and domestic, would be far more helpful than a few deer rifles, and if you've got that your private arms aren't really necessary. Actually, having closely studied the dissolution of a modern European country (the former Yugoslavia) and seen the fallout from up close, it's not that simple (at least not always). What happened in that case was that although the Yugoslav government [1] retained control of most of the heavy weaponry (artillery, tanks), and although the succeeding republics (Croatia and Bosnia) were initially limited to small arms belonging to local militia and hunters, the republics did have an abundance of active and retired officers with loyalty to their ethnic homelands who were quick to raise and lead battalions of troops into the field [2]. Those troops then went on to capture some heavy arms from the Yugoslav army, and scored lots of small arms, and eventually heavy arms and aircraft, from overseas allies. Eventually, after lots of brutal warfare, ethnic cleansing, and in Bosnia, genocide, the republics did gain their independence from Yugoslavia (with significant help from the U.S. and other countries). What was key in this case were the experienced military leaders who quickly assumed charge in the succeeding republics. I suspect a worst-case, nightmare U.S. scenario would look much the same, with experienced military leaders taking control of ad hoc forces in their respective states and/or regions, and then fighting with small arms until they were able to capture heavy arms, receive outside help, or were defeated/captured. 1. Essentially, Serbia and Montenegro, plus ethnic Serbs elsewhere 2. Slovenia's succession was a different story than that of Bosnia and Croatia, for a variety of geographical, cultural, and historical reasons.
philwelch 12y ago
Nonetheless, it isn't going to reach the point of the government dropping atom bombs on their own country. The US has forests, cities, and mountains; good partisan country. Heavy weapons aren't effective in these terrains. Even the actual Nazis were held at bay for weeks and months by armed urban uprisings. The more realistic scenarios don't actually involve the military itself turning against the people. It's far more likely that police will overstep their bounds a little and try to go house to house, and one reason they don't do that, outside of exceptional circumstances that the public will back them up on, is the fact that doing so is actively dangerous.

by ashark 12y ago

jnbiche 12y ago

>Sympathy from the armed forces and various forms of political pressure, foreign and domestic, would be far more helpful than a few deer rifles, and if you've got that your private arms aren't really necessary. Actually, having closely studied the dissolution of a modern European country (the former Yugoslavia) and seen the fallout from up close, it's not that simple (at least not always). What happened in that case was that although the Yugoslav government [1] retained control of most of the heavy weaponry (artillery, tanks), and although the succeeding republics (Croatia and Bosnia) were initially limited to small arms belonging to local militia and hunters, the republics did have an abundance of active and retired officers with loyalty to their ethnic homelands who were quick to raise and lead battalions of troops into the field [2]. Those troops then went on to capture some heavy arms from the Yugoslav army, and scored lots of small arms, and eventually heavy arms and aircraft, from overseas allies. Eventually, after lots of brutal warfare, ethnic cleansing, and in Bosnia, genocide, the republics did gain their independence from Yugoslavia (with significant help from the U.S. and other countries). What was key in this case were the experienced military leaders who quickly assumed charge in the succeeding republics. I suspect a worst-case, nightmare U.S. scenario would look much the same, with experienced military leaders taking control of ad hoc forces in their respective states and/or regions, and then fighting with small arms until they were able to capture heavy arms, receive outside help, or were defeated/captured. 1. Essentially, Serbia and Montenegro, plus ethnic Serbs elsewhere 2. Slovenia's succession was a different story than that of Bosnia and Croatia, for a variety of geographical, cultural, and historical reasons.

philwelch 12y ago

Nonetheless, it isn't going to reach the point of the government dropping atom bombs on their own country. The US has forests, cities, and mountains; good partisan country. Heavy weapons aren't effective in these terrains. Even the actual Nazis were held at bay for weeks and months by armed urban uprisings. The more realistic scenarios don't actually involve the military itself turning against the people. It's far more likely that police will overstep their bounds a little and try to go house to house, and one reason they don't do that, outside of exceptional circumstances that the public will back them up on, is the fact that doing so is actively dangerous.