The assholes running Venezuela tried to play the same game as the assholes running India - sudden declaration (by fiat) that their major fiat currency notes would lose their value and thus had to be swapped out on short notice to the people. Of course, the corrupt bastards running the fake money game did it in the name of hurting corrupt citizens. They said that if you are honest then you would just happily put up with the abuse. So often we see that the real criminals in government call the honest man a criminal in our world which has been turned upside down by the acceptance of fake money.
But instead of just accepting this new decree, the disarmed Venezuelan people formed into mobs and had a few riots. This was enough to put fear into the government because they expected their sheeple to just accept it the way the people of India did. So now the government is backpedaling but at some point if it doesn't follow through and do this, the herd will smell the weakness and it will go very badly on the bureaucrats. A civil war could be just around the corner there. I'll bet the people will wish they had a few guns if that happens.
For a disarmed people it is very hard to push back on government until things get very, very bad. That's because conditions that are broadly bad are needed in order to get a lot of people working together, coordinating efforts, taking risks in order to go up against someone who has guns. That's because guns are a force multiplier and all governments which enforce the use of fake money rule by force. They have to otherwise they would all be killed because unfair money leads to unfair actions and those affected by said actions would not need to exist in large numbers in order to kill all the leaders.
How much of a force multiplier are modern guns, anyway? Well just think about it. Let's say we had two men standing 1000 yards from each other who were looking for a fight in the next 10 minutes (i.e. no siege tactics). They are free to arm themselves with rocks and sticks and the like. They run at each other and tussle and one of them ends up victorious but perhaps quite injured himself. OK, now let's repeat the contest but we give one of the guys an AR 15 with a scope and one 10 rd clip of ammo. If the man armed with sticks gets within 100 yards of the man with the AR15, contest is over with a loud bang and 9 bullets to spare.
OK so that was obvious. Now, let's go 5 on 1. If the man with the gun has instead a 30 rd magazine then again, there is no amount of strategy that those 5 men can put together that will win them the day (again assuming we rule out siege tactics). How about 10 on 1? I'm still wanting to be the guy with the gun here. The best strategy for the 10 would be to surround the gun guy in a 200 yard diameter circle and then on command and in unison charge the center as fast as they can. They can close the distance in about 13-15 seconds. That is an eternity for the experienced shooter whose task only gets easier as the targets approach. And that is only possible if all 10 opponents are willing to go on a suicide run. A good shooter could easily rotate 360 degrees on his heel in that amount of time, killing every person (up to 10) within 100 yards as his barrel sweeps past the target.
Let's take a more realistic scenario from history. It's July of 1863 and you are in the battle of Gettysburg. The troops have formed lines just beyond range of their muzzle-loading rifles. Instead of a caplock or a flintlock, you have an ar15 with the TrackingPoint option installed. Hitting a target from 200 yards away is simple. Even 500 yard shots are commonplace for you. While everyone else is sitting there simply because shooting their old rifles at that range would be a waste of time. You are busy picking off the enemy at the rate of 1 man every 5 seconds with 100% 1 shot per kill. The force multiplier could be a LOT higher than 1:10 in that scenario because if the enemy charged, all the others with old guns would begin shooting as well. So that leaves you with essentially uncontested kills; a force multiplier only limited by the amount of ammo available.
The bottom line is that this is the force ratio that government enjoys over unarmed people - nearly unlimited. That is why paid mercenaries called police do what they do. You will see that whenever the fight between police and "bad guy" is anywhere even in force, the cops get their asses kicked. That's because they are not fighting for their convictions, their freedoms or anything else other than a paycheck. Believe you me, if the people of Venezuela hit the streets armed with real guns and real bullets there would be no riot police on the street. They would be smart enough to run away.
I strongly believe that any people which is disarmed is on its way toward slavery. It could be a slow road but it is always a slippery slope. North Koreans are enslaved by their despotic government. So are the people of Venezuela and India. When the government just does whatever it wants to without fear of revolt, that is a good sign that the people have been enslaved.
But when the people have guns in large numbers it simply makes no sense to try to wage war on them. You can take advantage of them if you can trick them into agreeing with you but you will find it very difficult to make a heavily armed population do something it does not want to do. According to Wiki, the US military has 1.4 mn active service members and 800k reservists. That's 2.2 million total military people. Now, I was in the military so I know that only a small portion of these people would ever be called upon to pick up a weapon. Most are logistics and support. So let's say the actual gun toting military is 1 million people (and even that is very high, the actual number available to wage a ground war on American streets is probably far less).
Forgetting all other non-member gun owners, the NRA claims to have around 5 million dues-paying members which is only about 5-7% of all the gun owners in the country according to wapo. Now, WaPo claims that the remaining non NRA gun owners probably don't believe in the same things as NRA members. Maybe that is true, maybe WaPo is an a$$ rag. I don't care to argue it. But that still leaves 5 million people who pay money each month in order to belong to a group who believes that a big part of its charter is to maintain social justice via the use of deadly force. I mean, look at their commercials. They clearly see themselves as armed protectors of social justice. So the US military would be outgunned 5:1 if it ever tried to break down the constitution and just impose a dictatorship. And that doesn't even speak to the fact that many police and military are patriots who would probably side with the NRA in a civil war against the government. That is why I know that the people who think that America is going to be a dictatorship or that massive overt tyranny will occur are wrong. The criminality in the USA cannot be overt. It all has to be a con game. The con men have to trick the people into being controlled; it cannot be accomplished by force. This is truly the only thing that is exceptional in any way about the USA. But it is damned exceptional to the point of being just about the only thing that matters at the end of the tyrannical day. If the people are armed then nothing else matters; overt tyranny on a massive scale is not possible. Conversely, if the people are not armed then there is nothing that will ever save them from overt tyranny (such as currency destruction with 3 day time limits on swapping it out).
By the way, I'm not a member of the NRA. I see no need to make that affiliation. But if the people needed to rise up and take back the USA you can bet I would do my part. It is this credible threat and nothing else that practically assures that Americans will never have to make good on it. It would not be the first option and in fact it would be the last option. But with a heavily armed populace it would always be an option that disarmed nations do not have. Sorry Venezuela. Sorry India. Sorry N. Korea.
So who is really the crazy fool here, we "gun crazy" Americans or everyone else in the world who is completely incapable of stopping their governments from running roughshod over their freedoms should the need become apparent?
I honestly think that you over simplify America. There are many Americas in America, some less American than others. For instance, gun ownership is hindered in parts of America, above and beyond what the federales hinder. Look no further than the precedent set in Boston when the military put it under siege in 2013. Curiously, in a state that hinders gun ownership and carrying the most. So, expect the least American parts of America to fall first.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, you ignored the multiplication of force of other hardware that the military possesses. Before considering tanks and flying fortresses, there are also mortars and shoulder rocket launchers.
And the incentive for a venal military, always willing to obey orders to engage in wars unauthorized by Congress against peoples who've never threatened any American, is the same now as it's always been everywhere: they get to keep the loot.