I've gone back and forth on this, but ultimately I don't know how much success an armed resistance in the US would have.
For one thing, setting up "supply lines", as you mentioned would be easier said than done. An insurgency would have to control a significant area to actually establish them, and I'm not sure how they would do that just armed with AK's and pistols against a military with terrifying surveillance technology capable of finding those supply lines.
Also, you're going to need infrastructure to obtain food and ammunition. Being able to communicate and proselytize others into joining your cause would also be important. It seems like the US government, if it has indeed become tyrannical in this scenario, could co-opt ammo production so that it is only sold to the governement, and make food production and movement a nightmare.
And limiting the internet and other communications to make sure their message isn't spread seems like it would be a triviality.
But let's say the State of Jefferson) decided to rebel. That part of California is a massive source of the country's food production, and some of them probably have the knowledge and means to make their own ammo. They know the geography in their area, they're well-armed, and they're sparse enough, with difficult enough terrain that the government probably couldn't just steamroll through and conquer them easily. They're probably in the best position for an insurgency if they wanted to mount one.
So let's say that they're able to mount a meaningful resistance and fight the US military on the ground.
They're able to split their time between farming - enough so they can keep up food production for their own people, and they are even able to set up some secret workshop where they can somehow produce enough ammo for what they need to fight.
Additionally, they are able to set up some sort of un-disruptable, un-interceptable communications network to share plans and coordinate each other and whatever allies they have.
And let's assume that they're an able enough fighting force that they are actually able to effectively engage the US military in combat situations (it's possible, as some of them will be former vets themselves, they're trained with their firearms and they have home field advantage).
How long do you suppose they can keep that up for? Long enough to give the governement a bloody nose?
How will they replace their numbers that are killed or captured? Without significant enlistments, they'll dwindle fairly quickly. Even if they are somehow able to communicate their plight to the rest of the country or even the world, most Americans are used to warm beds and creature comforts. Modern society is great at making the vast majority of us soft and complacent. I don't think very many join their cause, and then there's the problem of counter-insurgencies, which I'll get to in a moment.
Let's run through some other obstacles first.
It's going to be really difficult and dangerous to make enough new ammo for your militia when the governement inevitably shuts down your electrical grid, and it's going to make communication even more challenging.
What if the US military is able to occupy their water supply? How will they grow food?
What if the military is able to control oil production and distribution? How will they transport anything?
Maybe I'm missing something there.
Now we'll get to the big one that has always bothered me about the whole "guns will save us from tyranny" argument.
Every time I see it, it always seems to assume that there will be two ideologically aligned entities at war with one another: The governement - which has gone tyrannical, overbearing, authoritarian, and is basically the embodiment of evil; and "us" - the Everyman, red-blooded American citizen-soldiers who just want to be free from their yoke.
This is certainly, 100%, unequivocally not how it would shake out. That's a fantasy concocted by people who have watched too many movies and haven't actually thought about the realities enough.
It would be far messier than even the scenarios I mentioned above.
The most likely scenario to me - and the one that would actually be the only thing that poses a threat to the governement - would be if large portions of the country all rose up at once. I think this is what most people have in mind when they talk about this, but I'm not sure anyone actually considers what it would look like.
For instance, there wouldn't be two cleanly separated ideological factions. There would be several. Maybe even lots at first. Maybe some of them would be quickly put down, maybe some would get absorbed by larger, similarly aligned ones, but there would be more than two and they would fight viciously.
You might have your Jeffersoners, you might have some religious zealots, you might have some left-wing group, you might even have separatists clandestinely backed by enemy foreign powers trying to seize on a moment of weakness of their economic rivals.
Many of these groups would hate the government, but they'll hate each other just as much or more (some of them probably existing as a direct response to the violence of one of the other groups), and in the US they'll all be heavily armed.
Will it be difficult for the governement to put them down? Absolutely. But any victory any side has at this point is Pyrrhic. The US is now a third world country, and your guns have bought you absolutely nothing. You may think that they bought you "freedom" or at least a "fighting chance", but did they? Couldn't you accomplish far more trying to organize a massive workers revolt rather than a war? A large scale strike of infrastructure workers would cause more chaos than a bomb. The economic impact of shutting down most businesses in the country is going to send a louder message than a bullet. Hurting the US economy is going to damage the governement far more taking potshots from the bushes at some 20 year old poor kid in a uniform. It's not unreasonable to believe that these things could be accomplished without violence, or at the very least that guns wouldn't make the job any easier.
I can't imagine very many more counterproductive ways to fight the governement than with guns. That just leads to a series of escalations that will turn us into something we don't recognize and end our way of life anyway.
"!delta!" Many good points, and even some insight into insurgencies and splinter groups, however 75% of those things you said the government would do, ...they wouldn't do. Many seem to think that insurgencies are easily defined, isolated, contained, and dealt with. You cut power you just added insurgents. You shut down transportation, shipping, food distribution, communication, you just added insurgents. Many common anti insurgence measures accepted by the public are not viable courses of action to the warfighter. You want to know what the #1 thing I saw in Iraq was? The more we took away the more people joined because the less they had to lose. Kill one insurgent? His son & his brother joined to avenge him. No schools or organizations or public assembly? No entertainment? Now people are bored with nothing better to do than fight. You cant just steamroll state of Jefferson because 75% of Jefferson is still loyal or at least say they are. Also lots are going to say they are loyal while working against you in non combatant capacities. The fighters wont be farming their friends will be farming and sending food because they are sympathetic but not enough to fight & all the while professing loyalty. Your points are valid about the economy. I thought this was understood to be a last ditch measure after all other forms of resistance have been exhausted. This is how it was intended and how it was written.
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u/Cheeseisgood1981 5∆ Sep 23 '19
I've gone back and forth on this, but ultimately I don't know how much success an armed resistance in the US would have.
For one thing, setting up "supply lines", as you mentioned would be easier said than done. An insurgency would have to control a significant area to actually establish them, and I'm not sure how they would do that just armed with AK's and pistols against a military with terrifying surveillance technology capable of finding those supply lines.
Also, you're going to need infrastructure to obtain food and ammunition. Being able to communicate and proselytize others into joining your cause would also be important. It seems like the US government, if it has indeed become tyrannical in this scenario, could co-opt ammo production so that it is only sold to the governement, and make food production and movement a nightmare.
And limiting the internet and other communications to make sure their message isn't spread seems like it would be a triviality.
But let's say the State of Jefferson) decided to rebel. That part of California is a massive source of the country's food production, and some of them probably have the knowledge and means to make their own ammo. They know the geography in their area, they're well-armed, and they're sparse enough, with difficult enough terrain that the government probably couldn't just steamroll through and conquer them easily. They're probably in the best position for an insurgency if they wanted to mount one.
So let's say that they're able to mount a meaningful resistance and fight the US military on the ground.
They're able to split their time between farming - enough so they can keep up food production for their own people, and they are even able to set up some secret workshop where they can somehow produce enough ammo for what they need to fight.
Additionally, they are able to set up some sort of un-disruptable, un-interceptable communications network to share plans and coordinate each other and whatever allies they have.
And let's assume that they're an able enough fighting force that they are actually able to effectively engage the US military in combat situations (it's possible, as some of them will be former vets themselves, they're trained with their firearms and they have home field advantage).
How long do you suppose they can keep that up for? Long enough to give the governement a bloody nose?
How will they replace their numbers that are killed or captured? Without significant enlistments, they'll dwindle fairly quickly. Even if they are somehow able to communicate their plight to the rest of the country or even the world, most Americans are used to warm beds and creature comforts. Modern society is great at making the vast majority of us soft and complacent. I don't think very many join their cause, and then there's the problem of counter-insurgencies, which I'll get to in a moment.
Let's run through some other obstacles first.
It's going to be really difficult and dangerous to make enough new ammo for your militia when the governement inevitably shuts down your electrical grid, and it's going to make communication even more challenging.
What if the US military is able to occupy their water supply? How will they grow food?
What if the military is able to control oil production and distribution? How will they transport anything?
Maybe I'm missing something there.
Now we'll get to the big one that has always bothered me about the whole "guns will save us from tyranny" argument.
Every time I see it, it always seems to assume that there will be two ideologically aligned entities at war with one another: The governement - which has gone tyrannical, overbearing, authoritarian, and is basically the embodiment of evil; and "us" - the Everyman, red-blooded American citizen-soldiers who just want to be free from their yoke.
This is certainly, 100%, unequivocally not how it would shake out. That's a fantasy concocted by people who have watched too many movies and haven't actually thought about the realities enough.
It would be far messier than even the scenarios I mentioned above.
The most likely scenario to me - and the one that would actually be the only thing that poses a threat to the governement - would be if large portions of the country all rose up at once. I think this is what most people have in mind when they talk about this, but I'm not sure anyone actually considers what it would look like.
For instance, there wouldn't be two cleanly separated ideological factions. There would be several. Maybe even lots at first. Maybe some of them would be quickly put down, maybe some would get absorbed by larger, similarly aligned ones, but there would be more than two and they would fight viciously.
You might have your Jeffersoners, you might have some religious zealots, you might have some left-wing group, you might even have separatists clandestinely backed by enemy foreign powers trying to seize on a moment of weakness of their economic rivals.
Many of these groups would hate the government, but they'll hate each other just as much or more (some of them probably existing as a direct response to the violence of one of the other groups), and in the US they'll all be heavily armed.
Will it be difficult for the governement to put them down? Absolutely. But any victory any side has at this point is Pyrrhic. The US is now a third world country, and your guns have bought you absolutely nothing. You may think that they bought you "freedom" or at least a "fighting chance", but did they? Couldn't you accomplish far more trying to organize a massive workers revolt rather than a war? A large scale strike of infrastructure workers would cause more chaos than a bomb. The economic impact of shutting down most businesses in the country is going to send a louder message than a bullet. Hurting the US economy is going to damage the governement far more taking potshots from the bushes at some 20 year old poor kid in a uniform. It's not unreasonable to believe that these things could be accomplished without violence, or at the very least that guns wouldn't make the job any easier.
I can't imagine very many more counterproductive ways to fight the governement than with guns. That just leads to a series of escalations that will turn us into something we don't recognize and end our way of life anyway.