zlacker

Hardly. Just because the public doesn't have nuclear weapons doesn't mean that they are incapable of resisting an oppressive regime. Ordinary firearms are for more than sufficient for that purpose. A populace doesn't need to be able to defeat conventional armies on an open battlefield in order to resist oppression. What would be the likely result of, say, an American insurgency against an oppressive government? You wouldn't see militias fighting against tanks, that's just stupid. You would see widespread assassination. You'd see guerrilla attacks on police forces and so forth. You'd see guerrilla forces with ordinary firearms making targeted attacks to gain access to more powerful weaponry. You'd see the public at large making life more difficult for the forces of the regime while giving support to the forces of the insurgency.

A mass of civilians aren't going to be able to stand up to a column of tanks easily, but just a hundred civilians armed with AR-15s are going to be able to stand up even to massed police forces. And if an insurgency is supported by the public at large then life is not going to be easy for the police and the military. This is the way that all guerrilla wars go, and there are many examples of successful insurgencies when they have widespread popular support, even against very well armed government forces.

>>Inclin+(OP)
This is precisely true. You need not look further than America's troubled middle east wars to see how devastating a small guerrilla force can be. Some of the insurgents are using Mosin-Nagant rifles, a Russian bolt-action rifle that dates back to 1891!

>>jevins+41
It's also worth pointing out that in Iraq, for example, the insurgents did not have very much popular support and yet still made things tough for the most powerful conventional army in history. In fact, it was the erosion of that small amount of popular support that turned things around, as much as it was the increased troop levels in the surge before the US finally completely pulled out.

>>jevins+41
This argument is silly. The only reason why the US has trouble against small guerrilla forces is because the world is watching. The US has the military power to literally take over the world if it could get away with it (barring nukes). War is hard in modern times because of moral outrage, not because of some intrinsic power of a firearm against an oppressive government

>>hackin+ee
Why did the Soviets have so much trouble with Afghanistan then? Were they concerned with what the world thought of them?

>>jlgrec+Og
They did not have the technology that we do now. Guerrilla warfare hasn't changed much, but the most advanced military technology has changed drastically. And yes, they probably were concerned to a lesser extent. Each side in a conflict has to attempt to maintain a moral high ground or they'll lose their power. Long gone are the times when entire cultures reveled in massacres for its own sake. Even Hitler had to dress up his wanton evil in the language of the oppressed fighting back.

>>hackin+fj
Right, even Hitler was worried about public opinion... but presumably the DoD fighting Americans would not? And this is before we even get into the issue of telling American soldiers to shoot at Americans who look, speak, act, and pray the same as they do.

I'm just not buying it. Even with their massively over-inflated budget and their guilt-elimination drones there is no way the DoD could maintain an armed occupation of America. They are having a hell of a time doing it in a country less than one-tenth the size with less than one-tenth the people, filled with people who have been thoroughly dehumanized by popular media, people with far fewer connections to the outside world, and people for whom the soldiers have no tribal connections.

Thinking they would do better occupying America than Afghanistan is a really strange form of patriotic hubris.

(Lest you get the wrong impression, I support gun control and think that worrying about the possibility of Americans having to fight the American army is incredibly silly.)

>>jlgrec+dl
I'm not sure we disagree on anything here

>>jevins+41
And yet they were not able to use these weapons effectively against homegrown tyrants.