While your cite does indicate that they do not need to put on uniforms, to Little Nemo’s greater point of the fact that they need to make themselves visible and not just hid out in the hills is reflected directly in it.
If it is not positioned to defeat the govt or occupying power, then it is not going to be successful. And your cite does say “not necessarily”, in that it is not a requirement for all insurgencies. Some govts are easy to topple, with little military or other enforcements to keep them stable. The US is not one of those tiny countries that you can knock over with a couple hundred half trained men with semi-automatic rifles. In order to successfully pursue a rebellion against the US, you are going to need an actual military.
You cite also has this to say:
It seems that you will need better organization, logistics, and weapons than your local gun club can muster if you are trying to throw off the yoke of tyranny.
Well, as said, that was a nice idea 200 years ago. Tell it to the digital surveillance, the drones and soon Google’s robot soldiers. Now it’s just straight up dumb.
Could you check on that? There is no paragraph 4-74 in that manual. (I also got a security alert when I clicked on your link. I googled and found another site where the manual was online.)
I read Chapter 4 and I don’t see what it is you consider support for your position. The chapter is about running a military counterinsurgency campaign. The only mention I saw about the insurgent strategy was early in the chapter where it said “Ultimately, the long-term objective for both sides in that struggle remains acceptance by the people of the state or region of the legitimacy of one side’s claim to political power.” which supports my position. You win an insurgency by replacing the government you oppose with your government. And part of any government is a uniformed military. So in order to win an insurgency, you need to replace the enemy military with your military. That’s a significant part of the legitimacy of your claim to political power.
I also read Chapter 1, which goes into greater detail about insurgencies. But I found nothing there that contradicts what I said. It does say “Joint doctrine defines an insurgency as an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict.” and “Political power is the central issue in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies; each side aims to get the people to accept its governance or authority as legitimate.”
Let me emphasize again the distinction I’m making between fighting and winning. Insurgents and guerrillas can fight for decades. But they don’t win until they establish their own government which replaces the old government. And part of becoming a government is turning your insurgents and guerrillas into a uniformed army. (Or you can get rid of your insurgents and guerrillas and build up a separate army.)
Depends on who ‘you’ are and who you’ve overthrown…and who was part of it. Let’s say that Trump decides that, due to the media and Democrats that the election results saying he lost the next election in a landslide are obviously false and he isn’t going to accept them. Then let’s say that some factions in the military, police and state and local governments back him up, while others are opposed. And, let’s say that a number of US citizens take exception to this and decide that they are going to fight against this move.
First, they won’t be fighting in a vacuum or all alone. Some factions of the military and just plain old soldiers are going to agree with them and fight as well. Same goes for the police. On the other side, some factions of citizens are going to go along, as will those other groups. So, civilian arms would be a factor on both sides. As to what the winning faction would do, I would HOPE that they would restore the government, hold elections and try and bring things back to the way they were before Trump’s theoretical coup and put those responsible on trial.
The thing is, a lot of you in this thread are only looking at all of this through a narrow lens that is shaped by your own prejudices. Of COURSE, a couple (million) civilians armed with only their own weapons can’t stand up to the US military, police and all of that. Except it won’t be like that. If the citizens were aroused enough to take to the streets with their own weapons then all of those other groups are going to be equally split. Also, the tyrannical government folks want to overthrow might need to actually be overthrown, not just because some loony right-wingers think all government is bad. I doubt Trump could get enough support with the military, state and local government, police etc to do it, but that doesn’t mean it could never happen, or that it would ONLY be right-winger types wanting to overthrow the liberals and Democrats or just government in general. I actually think that a right-wing government coup is more likely today than left-winger types trying to take us full socialist.
The point though is that an armed US population definitely complicates the problem and would be a factor in anything that isn’t full on fantasy (i.e. that it would be citizens against the military and police, full stop).
Yes, but that’s pretty much ignoring the central question of the thread.
“Can a population armed with only their personal weapons overthrow a tyrannical government?”
“Yes, as long as they have something more than their personal weapons.”
The version you found is the 2006 edition. I referenced the 2014 update. I probably still have a security exception; bad certificates from Army sites were pretty normal when accessed from civilian systems IME. That is the official Army publishing directorate website. If you don’t trust it make sure you reference the 2014 update.
or:
you can splinter the ruling faction from the pressure forcing it to fall part without directly defeating it in mobile operations; that establishes a govt without direcctly having to do more than threaten
you can make the conflict so costly that the government reforms in a way that addresses the insurgents issues
those reforms can include guaranteed representation from the insurgents in a transitional period or in some new constitutional structure
you can effectively lop off chunks of the country from government control which is a partial win
Some of them aren’t complete wins. Some of them may not meet the initial goals. They are still a positive outcome produced by an insurgency that isn’t simply continuing a stalemate forever or complete victory. Some outcomes can be pretty damn close to complete victory just without the guerrillas marching through DC.
“Complicate things” will not matter one whit to any would-be tyrant. He won’t be on the front line risking his neck and he will have zero problem throwing young soldiers into the fight.
Also, consider the scale you’d need to successfully overthrow a tyrannical US government. That government would, of course, have the bulk of the military behind them by definition (if not the tyrant would never keep power).
We saw this once before. The US Civil War. In that case you had approximately a million armed soldiers opposing the US government. They were armed every bit as well as the US military and they had proper generals and everything. Didn’t go well for them.
The US population was roughly a tenth what it is today so the equivalent today would be getting ten million people to form an army (for comparison that is close to the 12 million in the military at the end of WWII). And they will not be armed anywhere near as well as the US military.
In short gun owners rising up to oppose a tyrannical US government is pure fantasy. If they tried they’d be squashed.
I don’t think it is ignoring the central question to point out reality. Can they overthrow the central government by themselves with only their own personal weapons? No, they can’t…and what’s more, they never could. For that matter, we couldn’t even overthrow the British that way. They were and remain a factor, however…a factor that is heavily discounted in threads like this because people are thinking up unrealistic scenarios that don’t take reality into account.
Sorry, but I disagree…they would matter a hell of a lot. Millions of armed civilians are going to be a huge factor for a would-be tyrant, especially coupled with former police and military.
Only in a movie would this be the case. As if you could just order the military and police to go against the population by fiat and they would just do it and as if the armed civilian population would just line up for the military and police to mow down, all the while the Doctor Evil type dictator is secure back in his volcano lair surrounded by liquid hot MAGMA!
Reality isn’t a movie and millions of armed civilians are going to be a factor no matter how evil a tyrant you are.
Why would the government necessarily have the bulk of the military behind them? That’s your first mistake. The US military IS the civilian population. We don’t have some sort of elite caste of warriors beholden to the government. If there were sufficient anger in the civilian population to actually have citizens rebelling against said government to the point they were taking out their personal weapons to fight then pretty much an equal number of soldiers and police are going to be feeling the same way…and large numbers are not going to go along with using their weapons on their friends, neighbors or family. Any scenario you can spin for a plausible civilian uprising you are going to see large numbers of military, police and local and state government taking sides as well. It’s only fantasy (either on the civilians heroically taking down the government by themselves or the government fighting in lockstep against crazy citizens sides) where you have such black and white sides and the citizens are opposed by the full might of the US government.
We have a lot of history to look at to see tyrants rise to power. They always have sufficient physical force to hold and keep that power. If they don’t then they do not succeed in their bid for power and so no reason for the population to rise up.
And the population often simply does not rally as you might like it to. Again, look at history and the rise of tyrants. Usually the populace does nothing in the run up to power and then it is too late once the power is seized.
There are divisions between the civilians though, and depending on who it is that is taking over, the other half can easily be called upon to oppress them.
If the bundys get together with a few hundred, or even thousand of their buddies to “overthrow” the gov’t, I’m not going to shed a tear if they all get blowed up.
If San francisco teams up to resist the govt, the bundys et al aren’t going to shed a tear if the govt goes and raises it to the ground.
Any casualties on either side would be heroes, martyrs for a just cause.
I’m not disputing that a civilian militia (call them insurgents or guerrillas or minute men or freedom fighters) could be helpful in an attempt to overthrow the government. I’m just saying that they could never succeed on their own. So in terms of successfully resisting a tyrannical government, the Second Amendment by itself is not going to do the job anymore than the First Amendment would.
Honestly, I can’t think of historical examples of tyrants rising to power who had absolute or even strong power before they managed to consolidate said power down the road. You seem to be taking all of the early stages out and only accepting those examples from the ones who succeeded. I think in the US it’s not going to be that easy if a large enough number of the population don’t just go along.
If we aren’t talking about the population, or a large percentage of it rising up but instead going along, then I’m unsure how this fits into the OPs question. If we are talking about that, then realistically you aren’t talking about a black and white government verse the armed populace scenario, because that isn’t realistic in the US where ‘the government’, especially the military and police but also everyone else IS the population.
Well then, why are we discussing this question then? Pretty obviously if the population doesn’t rise up and just accepts the tyrant or whatever then their guns aren’t a factor, regardless. So I’m a bit puzzled how this all fits in.
As for too late, well, this would posit such a change in everything that I’m unsure how to answer it. I mean, is this new tyrant going to replace all of the police and military with their hand-picked people? :dubious: How would they consolidate power in our system to that extent while everyone sat around and watched, and how would they even be able to make such a change? Our military is millions of men and women, the police the same. Then you have state and local police, and things like the Nation Guard and Reserves. How would you even go about replacing all of those people with loyalists that would be good with this and dedicated and loyal enough that when the shit hit the fan they were willing to fight in lockstep against an armed civilian population? You might as well posit that anyone with that much power would probably take, as their first step measures to disarm the population. I mean, if you could literally change out the police and military at all levels, why not take away all the arms as well?
I can’t imagine a scenario where ALL gun owners are united, and willing to fight and die, against a united US military (basically, what XT said seems right to me: anything that gets millions of people to take up arms to overthrow / restore the government would almost certainly fracture the police and military too), but if this hypothetical were to come to pass (ignoring messy side issues like to which side we should assign people who are both gun owners and soldiers), I’d bet heavily on the side with 80 million people.
