Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
This Instapundit entry noted the record number of guns legally purchased in the United States since November 2008 and concludes, … there are some sections of the United States I would advise you not to invade — and that would be, basically, all of them.
Including here subsequent emendations, I remarked to Glenn as follows, first quoting his entry:
Anyway, to paraphrase Bogart, there are some sections of the United States I would advise you not to invade — and that would be, basically, all of them.
The assumption of this statement is insupportable. Number of guns means nothing. Organization and competence of a fighting force and its logistics tail, intel and leadership mean everything.
Sir B. H. Liddell-Hart put it this way: The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.
How many Iraqis own guns? I do not know, but I guess at least a quarter, say 6M but probably higher. But they are not organized as a fighting force so they cannot stand up to a modern fighting force (Saddam’s or ours).
Of course in the case of them and US Armed Forces they did not want to stand up to them, they wanted AQI and Sadr off their backs, but my point stands because their huge numbers of gun owners could not stand against a small but organized AQI force (mostly foreigners, Saudis, Chechens, North Africans, Syrians) or a larger but still not militarily formidable Sadr force. Nor could they stand against Saddam.
What took so long to whack AQI and Sadr was not opposing guns but the desire strictly to limit collateral damage. That was a command decision, not one dictated by the number of guns in Iraqi hands. Not all commanders would make that decision for their national forces.
Unless they are organized into a fighting force with all the necessary supports — skills, logistics, intel, industrial base, air and commo supremacy, etc. — three or even 10 or more millions of guns in the hands of American citizens is not an estimable factor.
No, the question is, will the US Army and Marines attack their fellow citizens if ordered? If they are and if they do, it will not matter how many guns are in the hands of American citizens. The citizens will be slaughtered. No unorganized band of citizens can stand up to a modern national fighting force, least of all ours.
State and local paramilitary formations are a story with unique variables. But they also follow orders and, because of their recent militarization, are formidable fighting forces that could be organized, at least by states, as territorial armies. Against these, citizens have no chance of standing, no matter how many guns they own — and even more importantly, no matter how much ammo they have stockpiled.
Ammunition is useful to a living shooter who can access it, load it and find a target for it, all salient contingencies.
The best unorganized self-defending citizens can hope for is to fire at someone shooting at them before they are cut to pieces. Under grid-driven artillery they would not have that chance.
That said, it is not the purpose of modern asymmetrical forces — which American citizens are if ranged against their Army and Marines — to defeat the organized force opposing them. It is their purpose, rather, to make the taxpayers supporting that organized force at home tire of the cost of maintaining it either in the field (USA and Russia) or at all (Germany, France, England).
In other words, modern asymmetrical forces aim for victory not on the battle field but on the political field.
However, even with that political objective, an asymmetrical force has to maintain basic organization of its fighting capacity or its power to influence politics in its enemy’s home evaporates.
This is why, for example, AQI left Iraq and reconstituted, again, in the Horn of Africa, its current center of gravity.
It is also one of the two reason the American Revolution could succeed: because the Colonies were the richest area of the Empire, which depended on the flow of their wealth, and poor Englishmen at home got tired of being poor and deprived and drove Parliament to bring home the formations. The other reason was the development of an organized, supplied-enough, intelligence-driven, well-led American fighting force.
Who hold the key to preventing an invasion of the United States by her own Army and Marines are the leadership of those forces. If they obey an order to do it, it is over for the citizens, no matter how many guns they have.
I am unaware of any effort to develop a citizen-based fighting force in this country and am certain if one existed it would be nipped in the bud.
The exception to this, of course, is the estimable number of minority race-and religion-based fighting forces that, in any case, think they are organizing in this country as fighting forces.
I have no read on their potential effectiveness. They are protected from disruption and perhaps even examination by their “minority” status, of course.
That protection would not be extended to any majority racial or religious effort to stand up a citizen fighting force. Local police forces, now well-militarized, are sufficiently trained and equipped and sufficiently motivated to take down any such effort and quickly would.
Only a state-sponsored citizen fighting force (a militia in the traditional sense of the phenomenon) would have a chance of standing up. And the national executive would likely order Army and Marines to break up any such effort, as happened once already. A Civil Defense Battalion, adjunct to a regular state, county or local paramilitary organization, however, would be a salutary development.
Citizens rushing to defend some perceived Second Amendment violation in their area would be ineffective and soon demoralized and routed.
So, 3M or 33M weapons in the hands of citizens, legally or not, is not an estimable factor for a modern fighting force. Not unless they are wielded by a modern fighting force. Therefore, it should not be an estimable factor for Second Amendment enthusiasts such as yourself.
A salient parallel reality is that the entire US Army today can field only about 30K rifles to the entire US fighting line, world-wide. Marines far fewer. The rest of the force supports those 30K plus Army and Marine shooters. So when 150K US Soldiers and Marines are in Iraq fighting bad actors, I would guess that less than 10K are shooters and probably far fewer than that.
A militarily effective force of US citizens would face formidable odds without air support of communications. It is not going to happen.
A psychologically effective force of US citizens is so far a no-show. And because to be effective it would require the maintenance of a basic organized fighting force, which would be immediately whacked, its chances of ever standing up are close to zero.
No, the electorate has dug itself in on this one farther than it realizes. They will have to let the storm blow over and see what is left after that. It will be a long time, probably past your lifetime, certainly mine.
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God
Update 1: The fascist ruling class is burning through the moral merit of the USA with gay abandon. They pissed away China (and here), they pissed away Korea, they pissed away Vietnam, they pissed away the USA industrial base, they pissed away the USA educational base, they pissed away the USA financial base, they pissed away the USA diplomatic base, they pissed away Americans of semi-African descent and Americans of Mexican and Central American descent, they pissed away American skilled labor and initiative, they pissed away USA fertility, they pissed away Eastern Europe, they pissed away their own children and grand-children, they pissed away Panama, they pissed away Iran, they pissed away Iraq, they pissed away Afghanistan, they pissed away Egypt, they pissed away Libya, they pissed away every nation in Africa, they pissed away New World national sovereignties and now they are pissing away the USA herself. Any thing they can stuff down their ravenous, insatiable maw the fascist ruling class pisses away. And what they cannot stuff down to piss away, they piss on. And you know who is leading it all? Violent, vicious, cowardly females.
Update 2: And Al Saud intends to keep it up.
Update 3: Consider the necessity of Civil Defense Battalions adjunct to local, county and state paramilitary forces.
Update 4: Probably a city hall-sponsored affirmative-housing action. Probably also residents are checking their property values with realtors. The Somalis believe their numbers and political cover entitle them to those properties and that neighborhood, no-go for everyone else.
Long known this is the MO. In small numbers, plead civil rights. In larger numbers, plead political rights. In large numbers, plead exclusive religious area property rights. In secure areas plead independent legal jurisdiction. Build out from there, area to territory to region to country to world. That’s the plan. Long known and observed. So, no surprises here.
Imams are the commanders, their lawyers run political and judicial cover. The thugs are cannon fodder. Again, no surprises. A surprise would be residents fighting to keep their neighborhood from succumbing. A bigger surprise would be that they win. With city hall and civilian state and federal already dhimmi, I’d be negotiating sale of my home.
Talk here of shotguns and rifles is stupid. You’ll go down in the first two minutes or less and they’ll have your weapons and ammo — and wife, daughters and sons. In any case, you’d be swatting flies rather than their breeders, who, absent check, can far out-breed your ability to swat. Tough men don’t talk tough. If you want to do something constructive — and potentially decisive — organize local and county civil defense battalions.
Update 5: Interesting, Paul, that you think it would require their anger to mobilize Americans in numbers sufficient to conduct a hot civil war. Have you ever seen or heard of a capable war-fighting organization held together and directed by anger? Do you think a congeries of angry citizens is a match, much less overmatch, for a trained, supplied military formation who operates in and controls a multi-dimensional battle space?
If you want to contemplate what civil war would look like, forget legal parsing and forget political calculations. Think diplomacy, finance, and war-fighting, the three assets of statecraft. And think blood and destruction, no more warm croissant and cool orange juice over restful net surfing. Both Lee and Sherman gave Southerners an accurate account of what would happen if the flag went up.
I too have seen this talk of civil war, the chest thumping, the chanting, the emotional sleigh rides, the ignorant incantations. All loose talk, fruitless ignorance. And among the first things anger *cannot* induce much less sustain is a successful war/military campaign, civil or otherwise.
War is conducted for the purpose of extracting from an attacker their will to aggress. War is conducted with the objective of controlling an attacker’s ground, their geography, literally, that dirt stuff they call home.
Update 6: The Top U.S. States In Gun Sales, 2018
Update 7: Gun Sanctuary Movement Erupts: 61 Percent of US Counties Now ‘Second Amendment Sanctuaries’
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
And now for a true female and great lady and a true warrior of freedom:
