[ur-whale]

> What does civilians owning firearms have to do with a well-trained military force taking over the seats of power?

Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response.

Given the amount of private gun ownership in the US, holding on to power after a coup would prove a rather difficult proposition.

[culturestate]

> Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response.

As well-armed as the citizenry may be, the military is infinitely more so - they have, you know, tanks and planes and smart bombs - and in this fantasy civil war-esque scenario I don’t think the junta would be shy about exploiting that advantage.

[salawat]

...All of which require extensive logistics to employ that have hitherto been predicated in the Armed Forces not being on the wrong side of the American public's ire. I.e. you can handle hostile logistics in Afghanistan because it isn't that hard to get the raw materials stateside, and move them through Allied supply chains.

Remove the part where it's easy to get things Stateside, and I assure you, a U.S. military coup/junta will be fighting a two sided war as well. Both internal from the populace, and external from former Allies who in no way, shape, or form are going to sit idly by and be threatened by a militaristic U.S. Armed Forces that's even remotely controversial enough to even be considered a coup by the populace.

People forget: The Army Sabotage Manual is public domain.

The military knows exactly the hell it will be entrenched in if it ever goes against the public's wishes. They literally wrote the book.

[Supermancho]

In America, it certainly isn't about who you can kill or how fast. Any individual can kill multiple individuals on a micro scale and multiply that every time a weapon kills a soldier or a soldier trades weaponry.

The US military problem would be that it has to subdue a population that has been socialized to resist (to the point that it already birthed paramilitary during the previous democracy) and constitutes the replacements for that military (and the industries necessary for supply) for coming generations. Hell, once it had a democracy the first time, it still went to civil war. Thinking about the short term doesn't get you much.

Predator drones, nukes, etc won't solve the problems that couldnt be solved in a foreign land. Domestically it would be harder and longer fought.

[whatshisface]

You're missing a giant factor here which is the possibility that the military might ally itself with an existing civilian faction in such a way that only half the country saw the coup as a power grab.

For example, let's say that the military made a deal with <insert the most extreme sub-faction of your least favorite party here>. Then they'd have people to install into the newly vacated positions of civilian economic administration, and in that, they'd have a way to motivate that faction to join them and support their legitimacy.

[acdha]

> The military knows exactly the hell it will be entrenched in if it ever goes against the public's wishes. They literally wrote the book.

The entire public’s wishes, yes. Now consider what would have happened if the military leadership hadn’t resisted the call to join the January 6th insurrection — it’s much easier to imagine something like 90s Serbia where a substantial fraction of the population hopped up on propaganda supports the military efforts and will keep their neighbors from forming an effective resistance.

[EL_Loco]

Yeah, that's a complete fantasy. Since in US society the riot police doesn't come around with tanks and machine guns mowing down protesters, people have created this delusionthat that if they grabbed a couple of hundred M4s they could take on a government with a full blown army, and that when the shit hit the fan that army would still choose to fight with just shields and batons. There is a clip from the January invasion where a woman is fleeing the scene crying, because of the a 'violent' response from the police. I even think she just got pepper-sprayed (can't remember exactly). When asked what was she doing there, she said she went there to start a revolution. There's a passage in a book (can't remember now either) about the Mexican revolution, where a man hopped on a donkey and left his tiny village to join the armed struggle. About 5 miles from a conflict site, he heard the boom of a cannon going off. He stopped, turned the donkey 180 degrees and went back to his village.

[jimbob45]

That's a weird argument. Yes, obviously the US government can win any engagement against anyone, including its own civilians, by nuking them at any time. Clearly there is additional nuance to this argument since the US didn't just nuke the Vietnamese, Iraqis, or Jan 6 protesters from the get-go.

[brimble]

I haven't seen any real-world evidence that high levels of individual firearm ownership correlate with the preservation of liberty and democracy. Most examples people like to bring out are resistance to a foreign occupation, typically with external assistance from a real military and/or shipments of military arms. And, perhaps tellingly, the result after the occupiers leave is rarely democracy.

Meanwhile improvised bombs seem to be far more important to and effective for a modern insurgency than firearms.

Add in that it sure seems to be more common to read about private militias aiding an authoritarian coup than successfully resisting it and I think the pro-widespread-individual-firearm-ownership faction has an uphill battle just to demonstrate that the practice is a wash, let alone beneficial to the preservation of liberty and democracy.

There are a few cases of private arms being used in anti-corruption "wars" or stand-offs in the US, but at least as many in which they're used for essentially the opposite purpose (supporting anti-liberty, and especially racist, policies and actions). In any case, the national guard stepping in tends to end these in a hurry.

The notion that the 2nd amendment is vital to the preservation of liberty and democracy in 2022 seems to be dubious at best. I'm not in favor of a blanket gun ban but I think that particular argument in favor of gun rights—which seems to be what anti-gun-regulation folks fall back on very quickly, when challenged, which makes sense as it's the reason given in founders' writings and, arguably, in the constitution—is, at best, pretty weak.

[notch656a]

>I haven't seen any real-world evidence that high levels of individual firearm ownership correlate with the preservation of liberty and democracy.

Kurds in Northern Syria.

[pphysch]

US military is occupying Northern Syria, it isn't just Kurds fighting the government on their own

[notch656a]

And that totally discounts the self defense the Kurdish people engaged in? You're grasping at straws here.

>US military is occupying

US military has presence and has engaged in (importantly) air support, but to call it "occupying" all the Kurdish territory is an intentional I think misrepresentation. It's hilarious that anyone would call it "occupying" when the boots on the ground were minimal to almost non-existent. I really don't need to go off these ignorant statements when I bore witness to what was happening with my own eyes, but I'm sure you know more from whatever you read on the internet.

[pphysch]

You implied that Syrian Kurds exemplify how effective armed civilians can be, I pointed out how that is nonsense because they are being backed operationally by the most powerful military on the planet.

[notch656a]

>You implied that Syrian Kurds exemplify how effective armed civilians can be

Yes, [ although I suppose technically they are maybe not civilians once they pick up arms in a war. ]

> I pointed out how that is nonsense because they are being backed operationally by the most powerful military on the planet.

You have no fucking idea what you're talking about, and I have the memory burned in of many now dead faces in my mind of those who died with almost no "backed operationally" presence by the US. Imagine literally being told by some dude on the internet that my personal experience defending Kurds from ISIS is wrong because he thinks based on what he read on the internet that we were 'occupied' by the US. You can say whatever you like, I'm sure it will stroke your own ego to believe that.

I can recall sitting in a border town with literal children one building over sleeping with guns, hoping they would survive. A month later I found out several of them were dead. I personally viewed this town and there was not a single US soldier there, barely enough provisions to survive, and those defending themselves had essentially no US weapons.

The effort of the Kurds fighting Syrian government and ISIS is critical to their defense; the US contribution standing on its own is completely incapable of maintaining Kurdish Syria. The boots on the ground is by far Kurds (not part of Syrian gov) themselves, with arms largely either coming from those privately stashed or brought in via militia. In a number of attacks on Kurdish territory such as in Kobani, essentially anyone with arms engaged in defense with whatever they had.

[gscott]

Mexico

[krapp]

>Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response.

Unless enough citizens were on the side of the coup. I don't know why no one ever seems to acknowledge that as a possibility, especially after Jan. 6. Gun owners are just as driven by politics and ideology as anyone else.

Plus just because you have a gun in a safe and maybe sometimes shoot watermelons in the backyard with it doesn't mean you'll be effective in guerilla warfare against an actual military. I know Americans like to bring up Afghanistan and Vietnam as examples of guerilla warfare succeeding against the US, but fighters in both cases still went through training that would break the average American gun owner.

[goodluckchuck]

> Unless enough citizens were on the side of the coup.

That was kinda the whole point of the revolutionary war. #DemocracySpeaksManyLanguages

[zozbot234]

The flip side is that many people in the military would absolutely sabotage the coup. Keep in mind that everyone in the military is bound by an oath to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic.

[AutumnCurtain]

Purely anecdotal, but from discussion with my military friends there is widespread belief more than half of enlisted soldiers would've supported the Jan 6th coup attempt militarily. That percentage is far smaller along officers. With two exceptions though the people telling me this are officers and that will slant their view.

[selectodude]

It would be interesting to see how these "3 percenters" would do living in the mountains and eating bush meat for five years.

[edgyquant]

You’d be surprised what pure spite can lead a man to deal with

[klyrs]

How do guerilla forces defend themselves against Predator drones?