I haven’t even gotten to ask what anti-drone measures they have.

The answer will be “none” because unless they’re ex-military, their entire contribution to any militia is usually “gun”.

Most of them wouldn’t pass fitness requirements nor take orders. Few of them have other skills such as first aid, communication tech or drone piloting.

Even when contributing their gun, you can’t assume they know how to safely and usefully handle a weapon, or that they’re mentally fit for combat, because none of that is a requirement for buying a gun.

It’s a hero fantasy they’ve literslly never thought critically about, but it’s supposed to make all the mass shootings worth it.

What if some subset of the US military were to split off and join a hypothetical rebellion?

Overall our system works

I was with you all the way till right here.

The system does not work when corruption is pretty standard especially in the higher levels.

National Guard isn’t going to fight

The states have armies. That is the national guard. Some states have defense forces as well.

Yeah there isn’t a National Guard unit out there that stands a chance against an Active Duty unit of the same size. They do important work but the get a train up when they’re federalized for a reason.

Do the states have aircraft carriers?

No offense to the fat patrol but the Ukrainian military is having trouble with the Russian military, and they both have heavy ordnance.

A grenade launcher and a couple of miniguns vs national guard would be more like another Waco than a civil war.

You know the size of the US military. Even in the extremely unlikely scenario that those militias manage to band together, right under the FBI’s nose, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

And even if they did, it would hardly be a nation split. Most people would just see it as “our military vs. some extremist crackpots (or terrorists)”

Just tells the infantry where to call in mortar fire. Nobody has anything to say when the 120 rounds start landing from a mile away.

Wars are won with logistics. What resupply infrastructure do these guys have in place?

The armaments held by private citizens are laughable in the face of the weapons in the Military.

Any “civil war” in the US would likely be in the form of constant terrorism, not all-out gunfights.

A bunch of uppity, rag-tag civilians with handguns, even the handful of clown shows that call themselves “civilian militias” don’t have the resources, logistics, or numbers to combat the National Guard, let alone the rest of whatever armed forces may be brought to bear against them.

Don’t be silly.

I don’t get why people think this is an issue. armed Americans are generally shown going against incompetent, untrained police officers. Not the Military who is also just armed better than Americans are legally allowed to be.

Most gun law defenders also tend to overlook this too in fact. If the government wants to make armed citizens stop, they will do it.

That’s just called rioting

Okay. Let’s assume that you and your buddies are a trained militia. Not “I play paintball once or twice a year” or “I spend every weekend at the range shooting”. I mean you actually have a command structure, know how to move as a unit, and are dedicated enough that you will lay down your life for the person next to you.

What are you going to do against an armored vehicle? Or a drone? Or even just indirect fire.

Because… any “reasonably” equipped military can kill millions of people with minimal effort. Just look at what is happening to Palestine.

Just because this topic interests me due to being the intersection of history, military history, “guns are cool even if I don’t think civilians should have them”, and “the thing that comes after social activism”:

Even in the 1700s, a farmer with a gun in the shed was pretty much useless. Battles were won by large groups of people and the only reasons the US managed to beat the Brits were a combination of more or less “stealing” the British military structure that had been set up to defend ourselves coupled with most combat boiling down to sheer number of people who could sort of hold up a gun and maybe fire it. A couple angry farmers might be able to kill even twice their number of soldiers. But they would be up against ten or twenty times that number and one person going down doesn’t stop the volley. And if you were actually an amazing shot with dozens of muskets and Heath Ledger to reload them for you so that you could constantly unload on anyone who approached your house on the hill? That is when they get the cannon or mortar.

It was largely the late 1800s to mid 1900s where the idea of a militia could actually fight against an army. Particularly the time around World War 2 when we saw a fundamental shift on the battlefield to where even an individual soldier, let alone a squad or company, had enough firepower to make a significant difference. Line of sight was still essential, even for indirect fire, and armored vehicles could still be consistently negated by bottles of gasoline. This is why we even famously saw things like the Wilmington insurrection of 1898 where a relatively limited number of people could cause widespread damage and be “not worth” the army intervening (racism helps a lot too)

But the tail end of the 20th century has largely negated that. Because yes, the individual soldier has more firepower than ever. But satelites and drones mean that you don’t even need line of sight to devastate with indirect fire. And those individual soldiers likely have MUCH better gear than civilians (by design and law). For example, there is a lot of talk about whether the US “still owns the night” now that consumer grade night vision is “good enough”. And that does make a significant difference in terms of raids. We likely will never be able to walk around double tapping helpless brown people (without prep work involving tying them up, cop style…) ever again. But it still means we can maneuver at night when most countries would need to take a break because their eyes hurt or they are nauseous from the FOV. Same with body armor and, probably, optics if the new rifle is any indication.

Which, funny enough, puts us back to the 1700s. A bunch of farmers/klansmen/activists/whatever can equip themselves and even train into a cohesive unit. Sure. And they’ll kill maybe even ten to one in terms of infantry. And then an artillery strike or a missile or even just someone with a joystick inside of an APC will slaughter them and there will be nothing they can do.

Which is why the successful insurgencies are more about unrest and trying to outlast an occupation than anything else. And… that doesn’t work when the country occupying your country is… your country.

It’s the exact war we spent 20 years fighting already. You don’t want your face on a network chart in a Battalion ops center. And the military wouldn’t split down the middle. It’s 50/50 blue/red but most of the conservatives in the military are wholly unimpressed with the far right. You shoot at an American and call it a war? They’re going to respond negatively.

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Sudan

My wife and I tried it this year, and we ended up with a lot of food from a spot ~110 m² in size. We also have a couple of chickens, they are mostly pets that eat ticks and clear the ground while giving us eggs.

I say we need more backyard farms.

You sometimes hear about the paintballers winning, but when you’re not actually at risk of death you take more chances.

I played a little paintball, and the most impressive game was when I had sprinted along the perimeter to get a sniper angle on a path, wait 20 seconds, and have a Marine Recon AD barrel roll from behind a tree 30 feet from me that I never heard and put a single round in my goggles before I knew what was happening. It bounced but I wasn’t about to call that anything but legit AF.

I saw the military haircut and asked him after the round.

I’m great against paper targets…but that’s not the same as combat and I am crystal clear about it.

Unlikely. The military has a weird culture. It’s far more likely to stake out a position in the center for as long as possible. Going after violent extremists on both sides. In the end though it will choose the Constitution over anything else. So if there’s one side still trying to use that, that’s whose going to get the military. For reference, the military was so supportive of Trump and his anti Constitution rhetoric that they voted blue in 2020. That’s not because it suddenly had more progressives or liberals. It’s because the conservatives in the military are Constitutionalists.

That was an episode of preppers. I can’t remember if it was Discovery or History that ran the show. But yeah they thought they were going to blind night vision with flashlights. It didn’t work.

I was also trying to generalize personal experience where someone would bring their “friends” to mandatory fun paintball. Well now that became a lot more fun real quick.

Uh, lots and lots of people are hungry, lack shelter and jobs. Almost 600,000 people in the US right now are unhoused, and one in eight homes are food insecure (roughly 44 million). The only area where the US is doing good right now is the unemployment rate, which is currently sitting at an ideal 3.7%.

As for causes of civil war, economic inequality plays a large role, as does political deprivation, both of which are rampant (you can thank late-stage capitalism for the first, and the far-right for the second). There are other factors at play, of course, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility for the US to go there.

The price of McDonald’s has virtually doubled over rhe last 4 years, for no reason but greed.

I know I’m not trying to participate in a war.

The same guy yes.

Kind of ruined my day