I find it illogical that civilians could defend themselves against a tyrannical government. Yes, I know this “flies in the face” of the folks who think that the second amendment was put into the Constitution for that very reason.
Perhaps the best example of United States civilians defying tyranny would be the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921.
The fighting erupted because the miners were attempting to unionize, to which the law and the mine owners replied with law enforcement officers and strikebreakers.
The fighting escalated on both sides until, by Presidential order, the US Army was sent in.
Basically, for any civilian disruption, I think the government can always reply with a force that is unquestionably stronger than any group of unruly citizens.
So, does anyone know of any greater struggle between citizens and the US government especially where the citizens prevailed?
We did it against the British to become the US so it is not unprecedented.
That said I doubt it is very likely today. If a population rises against a modern state they need the support of the military.
The skew between what armies had in the 1700’s and the population are FAR less than the skew we have today.
So if Texas wants to secede from the union they had better find a peaceful way to do so. Even if every last one of them was armed and opposed to the US they wouldn’t stand a chance against the US military.
“Stronger” isn’t good enough. For a tyrannical government to be successful, it has to be so much stronger that it can get what it wants without the consent of the governed. Wounding and killing the people you intend to exploit to keep a mine open is obviously counterproductive.
This is not a good comparison. The “civilians” in Iraq and Afghanistan posed a non-trivial threat, but the death toll was absolutely one-sided, to the point where, had the army and the USA in general had the actual interest in upholding the war permanently, they probably could have. But a US ground war against the US army? Assuming that the US Army didn’t defect en masse, there’s just no way in hell the civilians could win. Even in far-away Afghanistan, where the natives have every possible advantage, the US Army is, fundamentally, “kicking their asses” - just not in any way that would make the war justified for us.
I know, right? I mean, it’s a good thing that all of the branches of the military service are in lock step with the government, are a separate caste, born and bred to serve and willing to gun down their fellow citizens at the whims of any politician out there…
Well, there was that Russia place…and China…and…
The thing is, you are talking about all of this as if it would happen in a vacuum. The Government™ on the side of goodness and light, and the ‘unruly citizens’, wrongfully fighting for their right to have guns or whatever you are on about. But it won’t be that simple. Any widespread movement against the Government is going to divide more than a few ragged ‘unruly citizens’ and their guns from the military…after all, the military is comprised of those very same citizens. There will be military units that fight against the government, just like there will be some that fight for it. And the citizens themselves will be divided, some fighting for and some against, if we are talking about an actual civil war. So, yeah…citizens armed with guns will have an impact.
Not that this is likely to happen. It’s a ridiculous argument by those who make it and by those who try and write OPs like this to supposedly counter it without actually taking into account the country itself or who comprises the military. In the end, we don’t NEED to do this sort of thing because we have this system that can change and be changed, and this process to change it and allows it to change and grow as we, as a society change and grow.
But they didn’t. So what makes you think the US government would have more interest in waging a permanent war against the American people, on American streets?
As has been said already get the military on your side or kiss your ass goodbye. Civilians have no chance against a modern military. At best, if the citizens rise up, you will end up like Syria is today.
Funny how you think things can be changed.
You are 100% correct the system is in place but neglect the current reality.
The system is fundamentally broken. If Obama asked to pass a resolution that puppies are cute I would bet it wouldn’t pass in congress.
You might want to take a look at this article "A Historical Basis for Force Requirements in Counterinsurgency" (pdf document published in Parameters Winter 2009-10) The article “describes work done by the Center for Army Analysis (CAA) to better inform the discussion by examining historical data related to counterinsurgencies.”
One paragraph that’s a good summary:
[quote]
**That said, however, force levels do matter, and history can provide a guideline for force requirements in counterinsurgency. ** The analysis described in this article shows that there are three major drivers of military requirements. First, as previous studies have argued and current doctrine emphasizes, security forces have to be sized relative to the population. Second, the more intense the insurgency, the more forces are required to reverse increasing insurgent violence. Third, the larger the percentage of personnel that are drawn from the host nation, the fewer forces will be needed overall.
[quote]
That general rule of thumb for sufficient force is 20-25 troops per thousand population. In the US, with a population of 318.9 million achieving that ratio means 6.4 to 8.0 million security forces. Subtracting out 1.2 million police and we’re looking at adding 5.2-6.8 million military to deal with a broad based insurgency. Fully mobilizing reserves NATO has 7.3million troops. It’s not entirely impossible to defeat the insurgents.
Just to be clear meeting force ratios means every member state of NATO fully mobilized for the duration of the insurgency (almost no slack for troop rotations), cut back on typical institutional military assets that aren’t generally deployable, parked most of their navies and air forces (to free up security troops from platforms excess to air/naval requirements) and basically ignored every other security mission they have. They’d have to be willing to spend money hand over fist for years. Throw in the real possibility that an overtly tyrannical government likely keeps some members from participating and convinces some US troops to follow their oaths instead of unlawful orders, and it’s hard to even reach appropriate force ratios. That’s before we even start to think of the worldwide economic and security ripples caused when the US would throw itself into chaos with years of internal fighting.
All of NATO would have a hard time meeting the necessary, but not sufficient, conditions to defeat a broad based insurgency in the US. To argue against that is to argue against the professional military opinions of the same people we’d be expecting to defeat the insurgency.
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole]
As has been said already get the military on your side or kiss your ass goodbye. Civilians have no chance against a modern military. At best, if the citizens rise up, you will end up like Syria is today.
[/QUOTE]
Who do you think is the military? Were you ever in the military? I was. The military IS the American people. It’s comprised OF the American people. There is no US Military Machine™ verse The Ragged And Deluded Masses(arr).
As for Syria, how’s that going for Assad et al? Crushed them like bugs, right? And there really is no comparison between the Syrian Army and the US military wrt this discussion.
I know things can be changed, even with as dysfunctional as it is today. I also know that our system works best when both sides are willing and able to compromise.
True. We’ve been building up to this for several presidencies, as both sides try to one up the other. Right now, the Republicans are in the wrong about…well, just about everything. They have tried to have zero compromise and they had the numbers, barely, to do it…after the Democrats, with their thin margin basically rammed Obama-care down their throats in Obama’s first term (the other side of that is the Republicans weren’t willing to either compromise or give a viable alternative plan). Let me ask you something…what do you suppose the Democrats will do when Clinton wins and if they manage to regain the majority in the House and Senate? Myself, I see it as a continuation of the cycle we’ve been seeing, back and forth for decades now, getting more and more extreme.
Eventually, my HOPE is that people realize that the extremes on both sides need to be shut the fuck up and that our system works best through compromise…and that we need a system that freaking works, at least nominally.
All that said, it seems like some people operate from the assumption that the US Government WOULD establish a tyrannical oppression over the US people(*) sooner than later, as in, the ruling cabal, whoever they are, are just chomping at the bit to crush the citizenry and start lining people up against the wall, if only the citizens weren’t armed.
Like **XT said, by the time it gets to be put to the test for real, we’re talking a condition of civil war or outright revolution, where the game is an entirely different one. When you just have a localized cell of subversives they may score some hits but are eventually doomed.
The Government did not simply massacre Cliven Bundy’s criminal cohorts in Nevada, when they threatened to use deadly violence to prevent BLM from rightfully enforcing the law – they bid their time until the criminals tripped themselves on the Malheur takeover and then grabbed their leaders, with only one fatal casualty. This, because we are not yet either a tyranny or a failed state, Rule of Law is in effect and we do not use Spectre gunships to dislodge vulgar squatters.
(*of course, for some people “tyrannical oppression” is to leave the entire system and society untouched and unchanged in its political and economic structure except for allowing some people to marry one another, or requiring a health insurance coverage, or setting aside some land as not available for all takers, or printing a brochure in any language other than English…)
2nd Amendment proponents simply cannot have it both ways on this view.
For contextualists the common practice of the day of ordinances for quartering soldiers in private homes was indeed an irrational concern of some Founding Fathers. In order to secure national defense the idea of an armed citizenry organized in government led militias seem the proper path to them at the time. Where are those now?
For literalists the 2nd says it’s a citizens right to own a firearm and nothing whatsoever about being necessary to keep the government in check by never regulating gun ownership. If they indeed felt this was the reason for the Amendment you’d think they’d dedicate a sentence to it. The went out of their way in The Constitution to lay out the means by with future generations could destroy the very government the FF just created.
So fine, have your guns, but the above justification is a quotation grab bag argument made by whatever historical politicians views at a certain moment in their life happen to coincide with a modern gun owners views.
Can we please stop pretending that the Second Amendment contains an unfettered right for everyone to buy a gun? It doesn’t, and it never has. The claims made by the small number of extremists, before and after the Orlando, Fla., massacre, are based on a deliberate lie.
The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution doesn’t just say Congress shall not infringe the right to “keep and bear arms.” It specifically says that right exists in order to maintain “a well-regulated militia.” Even the late conservative Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia admitted those words weren’t in there by accident. Oh, and the Constitution doesn’t just say a “militia.” It says a “well-regulated” militia.
What did the Founding Fathers mean by that? We don’t have to guess because they told us. In Federalist No. 29 of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton explained at great length precisely what a “well-regulated militia” was, why the Founding Fathers thought we needed one, and why they wanted to protect it from being disarmed by the federal government.
I’ve been to a few Tea Party meetings, let me tell you, The Federalists are not the darlings of the gun rights crowd. Tommy J’s words are gold as well as a few other lesser know Anti-Federalists whose quotes will show up on T shirts and coffee mugs often taken completely out of context. Not that it matters, it’s not possible nor is it at all relevant even if we could discern the opinions on current events by long dead wealthy slave owners by sifting through their correspondence.
Therein lies the rub, what some historical figure thinks only matters if it agrees with what you already want to do.
I don’t really put a lot of stock in the notion that the second amendment is our bulwark against tyranny but that’s mostly because I am fairly sure that the sort of tyranny that would provoke widespread armed revolt in a democracy.
With that said. If tyranny did come, I think we could do a hell of a lot of damage on a tyrannical government with small arms. Unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, the military could not indiscriminately kill people while the rebels could snipe at anyone in a uniform.
Toss in the fact that 95%+ of the people who think they are the “last bastion of freedom” can’t hit the broadside of a barn with their $1500 bang-stick, are as organized as a herd of ADHD cats, are much more likely to shoot each other or passers-by than a soldier “oppressing” them and would shit themselves if they were ever on the wrong end of an Abrams.
If it ever got so far as that, the gubmint would have no problems just going scorched earth on the rebels. Just ask Georgia and South Carolina what that’s like.
What never seems to occur to the ‘more guns equal more freedom’ crowd is it aids cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control…you know, tyranny.
And there really is no comparison between the Syrian Army and the US military wrt this discussion.