this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
182 points (96.9% liked)

News

23314 readers
3678 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The military has drones though, that can used against the population at any time. How do you defend against that with arms from the civilian market? Or just tanks.

[–] mrspaz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

It is a matter of scale and tactics.

For scale, the US Army has ~4700 tanks according to the internets. Assuming they have a matching number of crews and can put them all into service, that's 94 tanks per state. That sounds like quite a bit until you consider the coverage of a state. If we take NY as an example, that's 0.0017 tanks / square mile. The military will be pinning down only small areas at a time with armor.

For tactics, no reasonable person expects to take on a tank with a pistol. The deterrence of an armed populace is in the scale and ubiquity of resistance. There are ~3M personnel in the US military from cooks and secretaries to special forces. They are outnumbered by firearms-owning civilians 76 to 1. The odds are bad. The military has force multipliers (tanks, bombers, drones), but deploying them effectively against the civilian population is not easy. Who are the combatants? If no one is standing outside waving a rifle, where do you drop the bomb, or fire the cannon? You could level an entire neighborhood and hope to destroy some of them. Will the non-rebellious populace remain on your side if you do this? An effective resistance will wait until the tank or plane is stopped to refuel and resupply, and then destroys the operators.

There is also the question of logistics. When operating abroad, part of the formula for success of the US military is their unbreakable supply lines. They bring everything from fuel to food to tools and don't need to rely on local supplies. But all those things are sourced and shipped from the US.. When the fight is on home soil, these supplies cannot be guaranteed. Sabotage of roads, bridges, pipelines, and railroads could significantly hinder the operating capacity of the military.

When speaking as any one person remaining armed as opposition to government tyranny, it is not as "Rambo," but as a thorn on the vine. Collectively there are many thorns and any attempt by the government to crush the vine will result in a lot of pain. You make the option as unattractive as possible.