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Comment by bnj | Hacker News Reader

I don’t feel well educated in modern military actions- are you saying that civilian gun owners in America would contribute meaningfully to the national defense (maybe because of things like civil resistance in other modern conflicts?), or am I misunderstanding? Do you have any suggestions for how I could start to broach the topic? It’s so broad and fast-moving that it’s hard to know where to start.

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Yes absolutely they would and insurgencies are not the same thing as two nations fighting each other. America has twice as many gun owners as there are people in Afghanistan, a large chunk of them have combat experience.

And nearly every soldier playing government side would very likely have relatives on the other side. Most likely great demotivator

Civil wars happen all of the time. Not only is propaganda effective, but militaries have ways to mitigate this, like moving soldiers far away from home to fight in places they don't have familial/cultural/economic/etc ties, which also makes it more likely that the propaganda will work.

The thing that makes the large quantity of American gun owners potentially useful in that sort of scenario is not that they possess guns. That matters a little, but usually most of the equipment a resistance uses is captured and/or supplied by allies. The thing that would be useful is these individuals' skills with firearms. It's theoretically kind of an alternate route to a similar (but lower) background proficiency level that some countries achieve with mandatory military service.

Note however that America is not only not unique in having that background proficiency -- but unlike mandatory military service, this approach has not really been tested. It's far from a certain proposition either way.

The hardware still matters because it lets you execute suspected collaborators and force the occupiers to incur cost hardening their logistics train (i.e. insurgency 101 type stuff) without waiting for the bureaucrats in whatever foreign country wants to fund your insurgency to prepare your arms shipments.

Ummhmm... and how you going to stop either a tank, artillery, drones or air strikes?

If you're in a situation where the thing you're doing can be meaningfully called an "execution", a firearm is a convenience, not a necessity. There are also plenty of effective attacks on logistics trains that don't involve firearms, though I will grant that they are at least sometimes a force multiplier there. Hence "that matters a little".

Exactly the type of gunnut I'm talking about. You lot couldn't handle being asked to wear a COVID mask, you wouldn't be able to handle actual war against a state armed with ya assault rifle and tinned food

I think you misunderstand me. I have never owned a gun, fired one exactly once more than 20 years ago (Boy Scouts), and advocate for more gun control (not less). I would be totally useless in any realistic fight. The argument has some merit though, in that it is as yet unclear how much it would matter.

I don't think that unclear merit outweighs the very clear and data-driven drawbacks. I just prefer to engage subjects like this in a charitable manner.

What makes you think the us army would unite against them? Sure a few nut militials would be suppressed, but if gun owners in mass are raising up that means a large controversy that the military will be aware of. The us military is not full of 'yes men' who will follow orders that blindly on home turf, a lot of them will follow.

i doubt we will see this in my lifetime

> What makes you think the us army would unite against them?

I'd turn that around and ask, "What makes you think the people would accept the gun nuts rebellion?"

Many would be celebrating in the streets if the military showed up with tanks and started blasting. Furthermore, there's enough people in the military from far, far outside whatever state is being threatened to care that much about the locals.

"Fuckin' Texas gun nuts" <starts shooting>

Again, you are assuming a small rebellion - of course those will be put down. Texas has enough gun owners to put down a small rebellion without the military (they would let the military/police do it). However if things got so far that the majority of gun owners were willing to go to war that implies the US is at least very divided and the military is going to at least partially be on the side of the rebellion.

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