No, this is completely false, for the general population [1]:
> Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?
> 2024 Oct 1-12: Yes: 20% No: 79% No opinion: 1%
Your next sentence
> The majority of citizens support some degree of gun control reform and yet congress refuses to act.
is somewhat true, at 56%. But, this question involves things like more restrictions for those with mental illness, criminal backgrounds, etc. Any conclusion about this question must understand how broad it is, and have the 79% support of gun ownership, above, in mind. See the rest of the results for a more wholistic perspective.
> But this is true, at 56%, with caveats
Yeah, that's why I said some degree of control instead of "a majority supports completely banning handguns".
- uniform background checks including private purchase
- waiting periods
- red flag laws
- raising the age to 21
How about: "I don't want the Trump administration to be the only ones with tanks in this country."
Are you going to buy some tanks? How about F35s?
No army in the world including the US could stop a civilian uprising of even a million people who have just rifles and the will to fight. They don't need nukes, tanks, or airplanes. If a large enough percentage of people, say 2% of the population, decided to fight a civil war, the US army/gov would fall in a few months if the rebels knew what they were doing.
It would be a guerilla war. And all of the critical infrastructure in the US could be destroyed in a month. No gas. No electricity. Smaller uprisings would be easily squashed.
Now, would this ever happen? Unlikely. Americans can barely get their fat asses out of bed much less do military operations for weeks at a time. Things would have to get incredibly bad and a leader would have to organize it. But it is possible.
I imagine it more a weakened government (but still with a functioning military) supported by civilian militias backing the government, versus various large and small insurgencies possibly with foreign backing.
No?
They'll use it on the next one then?
No?
The US practially isn't going to use nukes on the US. Its practically not going to use nukes on pretty much anyone.
Some guys with AK-47s kept the world's most powerful military pretty busy for 20 years, so I wouldn't underestimate the value of a few rifles against authoritarianism.
Either of these situations are going to be stochastic and with difficult attribution.
And don’t forget - they want a degree of unhinged shooting back, it feeds the authoritarian tendencies and ‘justifies’ the increasingly unhinged violent responses.