...until they use the first three boxes to take the fourth. So the moral problem will be resolved - no ammo, no chance and no need to do think of morality. However, it will be even easier. Media will simply call resistance to the government "racist" and 9 of 10 will spend most of time explaining that their are not racist and putting themselves away.
I am afraid that antifa just clearly demonstrated that they are the future. They act while the rest of us chew the rag. :-(
So, I agree. Not voting is the best strategy. The worse will be the next president, the better. May be the silent majority will wake up. If not... well, "the horrible end is better than the endless horror" (c)
10% under arms is easily enough to crush AntiFa and topple the government, even with the weight of its technologically superior firepower.
"Easily squashed" seems, on it's face, to be a totally reasonable argument, though for the sake of clarity, let's engage in a serious thought experiment on the subject, considering just a few of the factors at play in the possibility of the success of a civil revolt.
We'll start by looking at the cases of
Chris Dorner(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dorner), our experience fighting al Qaida/ISIS, the shootings in Paris, San Bernardino, and the Dallas PD shooting, then move on to the geographical and logistical implications of subduing the American continent.
Chris Dorner was one man. Former cop, former military, yes....but he was just one man. His personal revolt, in which he was openly hunting authorities, turned law enforcement on its head. Local, State, and federal authorities were beside themselves in panic as evidenced by shooting people/shooting at people who did not resemble the suspect or his vehicle on multiple occasions. Not very disciplined, and all their training did them almost no good when confronted with a situation in which they could exert no control, and were being hunted in settings where they were accustomed to being in charge.
The attackers in Paris, armed with a couple rifles and a few suicide vests hit multiple locations, and put an entire city in panic and escaped for days. Yes, the police eventually won out....but that was after over one hundred deaths and hundreds more injuries.
In San Bernardino, 2 jihadis armed with semi-automatic rifles, two pistols and fake pipe bombs shutdown an entire city and eluded the police for hours. How many more could have been killed had the attackers been persistent in their plans, or had their pipe bombs actually functioned? The police response, while admirable, still took hours to apprehend 2 suspects.
In Dallas, a single armed suspect armed with a semi-automatic surplus rifle engaged in a moving gunfight with the numerically superior and better, more heavily armed Dallas Police, killing 5 and wounding 7 more
by himself.
These few examples highlight how the authorities, accustomed to obedience and compliance, respond to deliberate, extremely violent action by just a a single individual or a few determined individuals.
Now.....the average of estimates suggests there are approxiamately
120-140 million gun owners(
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...ricans-own-guns-but-just-how-many-is-unclear/) in this country.
All the "3%" notions aside (much less 10%), let's assume that something happens that leads to civil war, 99% of those holding private arms in these United States surrender immediately, and
only 1% of those gun owners decide to fight.
That's around
1.2 to 1.4 million armed Citizens, motivated not by hatred or bloodlust, but the notion that they are fighting to preserve their Rights and Liberties from a government dedicated to taking those Rights and Liberties by killing them.
It would be the
4th largest army in the world(
http://www.globalfirepower.com/active-military-manpower.asp), assuming no current military personnel fought for the People and remained in the service of the government.
Given the
majority of active duty military personnel hold logistical and support roles(
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/mcgrath_op23.pdf) --{PDF WARNING} rather than direct warfighting roles, the battlefield strength equation would be even more skewed.
Even if you count the
reserve component(
http://www.globalfirepower.com/active-reserve-military-manpower.asp) of American military strength, (many of whom would likely be counted among the "rebel force" since they are literally Citizen Soldiers), they are hardly a battle-hardened army looking to kill their family, neighbors and friends.
You would have to resort to conscription and the draft - how many people do you know that would be willing to fight and die involuntarily for such a fool's errand as civil disarmament?
Further context is provided by looking at our experience in Iraq, where
roughly 290,000 boots on the ground(
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40682.pdf) took part in-country, though again,
the majority were support personnel.
The insurgency those forces faced have been estimated at
no more than 4,000 to 7,000(
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-07-08-insurgency-count_x.htm) fighters
at any one time in country. We've fought there for almost two decades....and though the majority of the fighting in Iraq has now ceased, to say we "won" and the insurgency "lost" is looking at the situation there through the rosiest-colored glasses.
Even if you argue we won every military engagement quite handily, that's no different than our experience in Vietnam.
General Frederick Weyland recalled speaking to his Vietnamese counterpart in Hanoi a week before the fall of Saigon, insisting "
You know, you never beat us on the battlefield."
The Vietnamese commander pondered that remark a moment and then replied, "
That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
The problem, which is inherent in all conventional armies fighting an insurgent war, is the notion that the insurgency can be defeated like a conventional opponent. That battlefield victories alone determine the victor, and that a sufficient throttling will convince insurgents to lay down their arms and go home in peace. Historically, both sides have this foolhardy notion that one major victory will bring a swift end to their opponent....to the victor goes the spoils, and all that. Yet civil wars are never quick, never clean, and leave no portion of a population unscathed.
The strategic aims of a successful insurgency are not the same as the strategic aims of a conventional war between conventional adversaries.
The insurgency
DOESN'T HAVE TO WIN THE WAR. The established order has to win the war.
The insurgency simply has
to not lose it.
These are dramatically different, and the failure to understand this dynamic is what causes the ability to win nearly every battle of a campaign and still lose the war.
This is something Washington came to understand after the disastrous New York Campaign, and something the British commanders failed to realize until it was too late.
What was the strategic center, the location that must be captured or annihilated by the Crown to end the war?
Was it Boston? Well they do that. Was it New York? They do that. Philadelphia? They do that. Savannah? They do that. Charleston? They do that. In the end it wasn't a place.
The strategic center of the American Revolution was the Continental Army itself, as well as the tens of thousands of militiamen hassling British patrols, denying them forage, and cutting supply lines. So long as the Army survived, the hopes of the fledgling nation survived.
You see this realization on Washington's part as his fighting style changes from the traditionally European form of honor-bound confrontation to a more Fabian strategy.....hitting where the British are weak and fading away, always preventing the annihilation of the Army and America along with it.
Had Lee understood the same strategic implications nearly a century later, North America could very well be a wholly different place in our own times.