# Could modern day American civilian firearms counter WW2 era military firearms? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 7, 2017, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-modern-day-american-civilian-firearms-counter-ww2-era-military-firearms/795762 "2017-09-07T22:32:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Silver\_lining](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aca169/32.png) [@Silver\_lining](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_lining)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2017, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-modern-day-american-civilian-firearms-counter-ww2-era-military-firearms/795762/21 "2017-09-09T19:44:57Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > Basically, if you took two sides with roughly equal training and numbers, and gave one side civilian weapons and one side WW2 squad level weapons, would one side have an advantage over the other or would it be actually equal? > > By civilian firearms I’ll use the example of whatever weapons you could go into a American gunstore in most places and purchase today, so basically no automatic weapons, no grenades or grenade launchers (or explosives in general) and other minor things. By WW2 firearms I mean the standard loadout of a WW2 military in general but for this example I’ll use Nazi Germany (mainly KAR-98k bolt action rifles but with MG-42 machine guns supporting them and NCO’s armed with MP-40’s) and they also have hand grenades and rifle grenades for support. > > The Germans easily have the firepower advantage in the MG42 and their entire squad tactics revolve around the MG42 laying down suppression fire to let the rest either flank with rifles or flush them out with grenades) But the civilians have access to semi-auto AR-15 rifles with scopes, hunting rifles with very good optics, and very high capacity pistols and carbines. > > Could the civilians put up enough accurate firepower to counter the Germans, or would the power of the machine gun completely overwhelm them? Yes, but when you add in tanks and artillery, civilian firearms aren’t enough. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-modern-day-american-civilian-firearms-counter-ww2-era-military-firearms/795762.md?page=1)