Gun Control

[The Grand Nudger]

First, they live in a very mountainous country, which tends to negate some of the advantages a superpower brings to bear. [quote]
-as do we...but not only mountainous, much more besides that.  Any piece of equipment you have will find it's failure range here in the US.  Something doesn't work -everywhere- (when it's not busy fucking up after having been built by the lowest bidder in the first place).  Only thing you can trust, in the end, is that the guy trying to use the equipment will find a way, hooah...but how much do you trust that now....and how much less in a civil conflict?[/size]




[quote]Secondly, they have a homogeneous culture which gives them a natural base of support.

-like "Murica!"?

Thirdly, when they fought the Brits, air mobility hadn't been invented, and when they fought the Russians, they had the aid of a superpower.

-and here recently, air mobility had been invented and insurgents -didn't have the aid of a superpower....but the results were the same.  Why, do you imagine?[/size]

Those conditions don't obtain in any hypothetical gun-owner rebellion I've seen. Would gun owners take aid from China or Russia? I hardly think so.

-I agree..."gun owners" may not....but revolutionaries /w guns -would..yes.  

Fourthly, while there may be millions of gun owners versus a few hundred thousand combat troops, the troops are trained, and in most cases combat-experienced, and certainly much more disciplined. When it comes to fighting power, the willingness to fight is a big part of the equation.

-I've seen the willingness to fight...the only reason soldiers have it at all...is because they join up with it - we all have it...it;s a ubiquitous human attribute.

Such a revolt would certainly cause big problems, but unlike, say, the Revolutionary War, the citizen army would  not be facing an opponent resupplying from across the sea in the age of sail; they would have deep difficulties resupplying themselves as a government with tentacles in many IT systems froze their accounts, tracked their movements, and used satellite imagery to track the rebels down.

-Resupply would be -more difficult- now than it was then, if the scale of conflict were similar.  Are you familiar with how dependent the military is upon civilian contractors? The gov can't even shut down the local crack dealers accounts because they can;t find them. Fun fact, btw, the american colonies were as dependant upon the brits for food and supplies as the british soldiers were. We had no credible ag until very, very recently. Resupply wasn;t really any concern for the british in that conflict, they operated with impunity on that front.

And in a civil war such as is the subject of fantasy by some extremist gun groups, how much support could the rebels count on? To an American population accustomed to leisure and easy credit, a roving band of armed militia would not be very popular, I don't think, and fetching the support of the citizenry would require educating them.

-That's what the oppressors always say.  They're too weak and coddled...they'll never be a credible threat.  Then, all of sudden..baskets full of heads.

Good luck with that.

-They'd need a hell of alot more than luck, granted.  lol.  The odds are always this way though, in this scenario.  

I don't think that my objections, btw, are an argument -against- gun control.  At all.  I just can't stand the myth of american might.  Those missiles aren;t that smart, the drones cant see quite as far as we say, the guns aren't as effective..the vehicles nowhere near as "indestructable".  The government isn't a monolithic block of faceless men in black suits, and they're hardly competent enough to pull of some nationwide account freeze without chopping their own nuts off.  I see this day in and day out here, people opining upon the incomptenece of both government and government officials....but as soon as someone says "revolt" all of a sudden they're ass-kicking machines!  I disagree.

I have to say though, that suppose all of that were true. The cruel boot of the supremely compertent american goiv could crush any armed rebellion by it;s citizenry. So what? The right to bear arms as conceived of as defense against tyranny is not a right to -win- that conflict. It's simply acknowledging that we have the right to -try......and that to say that we have that right (or that we justify recourse by those means...which we must...it was foundational), while our government removes even marginally (in your estimation) credible means, or the items in question, would be meaningless proclamations.