The utility of 2A in an armed insurrection / resistance of the US Government.

Bear wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

What are you gonna do with that fancy AR when the gubmint man knocks over your power chair?

Based on what I saw this weekend, all the gubmint needs to do is reduce their medicaid reimbursements. It apprears that diabetes and coronary artery disease is a much bigger threat then gubmint tyranny.

ftfy

Bear wrote:
Reaper81 wrote:

What are you gonna do with that fancy AR when the gubmint man knocks over your power chair?

Based on what I saw this weekend, all the gubmint needs to do is cut off the insulin supply. It apprears that diabetes and coronary artery disease is a much bigger threat then gubmint tyranny.

I have a similar proposal for dealing with the sexist and racist sludge of 4chan and Reddit--we just halt the manufacture of Doritos and Cheetos for three months, and starve them away.

Reaper81 wrote:

The best case scenario for the modern prepper / anti-government / anarchist is one in which the military force is primarily a dismounted one engaging in a persistent campaign conducting various war crimes against a civilian populace which is in open revolt against that military's government.

Reaper81 wrote:

It is, of course, a complete fantasy.

Let's deal with this strawman first. There's two facets to it.

The first is that open revolt would be the best case scenario - why is that? Why not a low-grade insurgency conducted with the intent of destabilizing the regime? This is, in fact, how nearly every insurgency has developed over the last 100 years, precisely because the "open revolt" scenario was too risky until the conflict was almost over - it tends to get a lot of innocent people killed, and that is bad for the insurgency (and the government, which we'll cover in a minute).

Low-grade insurgencies, due to their nature, tend to resemble another societal problem - crime. The difference is that instead of being a tiny percentage of the population, low-grade insurgencies tend to be much larger. Criminals find guns very useful, and so would insurgents in such a scenario.

Second, virtually all counter-insurgency operations occur dismounted. Why? Because the goal is to find and suppress the insurgents without making things worse by targeting the wrong people, and the bottom line is that you can't do that from inside a vehicle. One need only look at Iraq and Afghanistan to understand that such conflicts occur almost entirely on foot.

1. It relies on a government which is willing to deploy the standing military in order to suppress a civilian population. Given the runaway success of drone warfare, there would be little incentive to mobilize a military aside from taking and holding key locations. Which, of course, it would have to do if the general population were in complete revolt.

However, once those locations are taken, the military has won. The effects of snipers and IED's are minimal at best.

Let's just assume the military already holds all key locations, and has deployed drones. Then what? You haven't won anything - the first rule of insurgencies is that controlling "key locations" is useless, because the battle isn't about territory. You haven't changed anyone's mind, and you have a very large population surrounding you, a significant portion of which are armed and hostile. You don't know who is who, and meanwhile life has to go on; people go to work, people shop for groceries, people do what people do. Are you going to keep your soldiers inside bases all the time except when they are on patrol, like in Iraq and Afghanistan? You going to keep their families there too? What about the normal government flunkies going about their business, like parking meter attendants or highway workers? You make the incredibly flawed assumption that the only way to strike at a government is to overtly strike the prominent military presence, ignoring the copious amounts of historical evidence indicating that precisely the opposite is true - and guns are really useful for that sort of thing.

To whit: modern body armor provides significant protection against small arms munitions. Ceramic plates can stop very large bullets.

Yes, they can, which is useful. However, can they stop your "buddy" from using a silenced .22 to shoot you in the neck while you're trusting him to cover your back on patrol? How safe is your recruitment process? You sure you filtered out that insurgent who will let his armed buddies into your base while he's on guard duty, where they steal your armor and shoot you when you're not wearing it? Do all of your police officers have the same armor? How about government officials, from state House reps to IRS agents? Did you armor up all the aforementioned parking attendants? I'm sure the guys repairing the roads and maintaining the power lines won't ditch their armor because it's hot and uncomfortable. Did you remember to give that armor to the guards around every weapons factory, munitions factory, and any other factory on which you rely for parts to maintain your advanced weapons? How about the guards around the farms that supply your troops with food, or the refineries that supply them with fuel - not to mention the trucks and trains that move everything around? The tip of the spear is hard, but what about the logistical tail that's required to support it?

Detection methods for small arms fire, including point of origin triangulation are very accurate, happen in real time, and are readily deployed. Which means the response (typically a bigger gun) are very lethal.

Yeah, that works great - until someone pops off a few rounds from the roof of a shopping mall, and you kill hundreds of innocent people with your lethal response. Well done, you've grown the insurgency by hundreds more, if not thousands. Oh wait, was that a gun fired via cell phone from a mile away? Whoops. Overwhelming reactions are almost always counter-productive in an insurgency. And, in the United States, who wouldn't have a few spare guns to lead the reaction teams on a wild-goose chase while the real action goes down elsewhere?

3. Modern military training is specifically designed around reacting to insurgency tactics, countering them, and neutralizing future threats.

Yep, and how's that going for us? Oh right - Vietnam was an outright loss; in Iraq we merely succeeded in replacing one brutal, corrupt, violent puppet government with another, empowering Iran in the process; and we've already lost in Afghanistan, we're just unwilling to admit it. Why? Because we continue to make the mistake of seeing these conflicts as military conflicts, which is precisely the mistake you're making here. As in Vietnam, in a counter-insurgency you can win every single battle, and still lose the war.

Robear wrote:

The point here is that without some of the US military switching sides, the civilian components won't make the difference. The disconnect is that the early proponents of this theory were writing at a time when the *only* US armed forces were based on militias that were trained to be a temporary but fully fledged and equipped military force. Under that scenario, yes, the civilians were also the soldiers.

The militias in the early United States were far from a "fully fledged and equipped" military force, and they were not soldiers. At best, they had some experience fighting Indians - which turned out to be useful, when permitted to fight that way. Most "militias" simply consisted of every adult male in the community, who would group together if defense was needed. They had no artillery, no cavalry, and their training was laughable compared to the British. Their complete inability to wage conventional warfare was demonstrated repeatedly in the early years of the war.

Historically, when an insurgency succeeds, it works the other way. Civilians start the fighting, and do well enough to convince portions of the military to switch sides or gain outside military support.

Kamakazi010654 wrote:

And even if the EU wanted to, there is the small issue of a few thousand miles of ocean and the world's largest Navy.

Yes, hmm. Perhaps they could establish a gigantic clandestine smuggling network through Mexico and Central America that could funnel weapons, explosives, people, and other black-market items into the United States. What do you MEAN, one exists already??!! People have no respect for authority.

Kamakazi010654 wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Who is going to be interesting in supporting and sustaining American Taliban from abroad? Canada? Mexico? Cuba, or some EU country, perhaps? :)

It doesn't matter if someone wanted to or not. They simply couldn't afford the cost of supporting an American insurgency.

And even if the EU wanted to, there is the small issue of a few thousand miles of ocean and the world's largest Navy.

No North American or European nation, either overtly or covertly, would risk supporting any domestic insurgency. Only the drug cartels and similar criminal smuggling organizations might attempt to get involved for some form of mutual benefit. Unfortunately, the repercussions of such cooperation would almost certainly bring Mexico's ultra violent drug war streaming across the border. A very ugly scenario for everyone involved. Just say no.

OG_slinger wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Who is going to be interesting in supporting and sustaining American Taliban from abroad? Canada? Mexico? Cuba, or some EU country, perhaps? :)

It doesn't matter if someone wanted to or not. They simply couldn't afford the cost of supporting an American insurgency.

It did bankrupt France that last time.

Edit. Never mind.

I hope you all are happy now that all GWJers are on the "Free Body Cavity Search" list next time we go on vacations. The Feds now think we are plotting to take over the world.

I appreciate Reaper81 creating this thread, and apologize for not being able to post earlier.

It is perhaps a bit at risk of becoming too angels-dancing-upon-pins, but maybe some of the original context would help. In the Gun Control thread, manta173 was apparently making the argument that a reason the Second Amendment was important now was as a check to a hypothetically-tyrannical US government.

manta173[/url]]I actually have one of those and do consider myself part of the militia. I think that the purpose of this part of the bill was to make sure we could literally defend ourselves from the US military on a man to man level which requires equivalent equipment. This means that we are woefully under equipped in general. I don't really have room for a tank though... so I don't plan to get one.

manta173[/url]]1) I am very well regulated thanks to a wide number of gun laws out there.

2) I am better trained and more capable than almost any person that has been drafted in our country's history. (I know all volunteer army, but if the sh*t hits the fan and the military is marching on the citizens then they need a lot more people than they have.) If you know the history of the civil war and understand the make up of the US military I think that us poorly armed citizens will be able to do a lot of damage to morale and there will be a significant defection rate if the military is used against the people. Therefore I think I have a good chance at influencing any conflict with the government..

I would still be happy for manta173 (or anyone else) to elaborate on how they see a successful resistance movement for a domestic insurgency unfolding, with a particular focus on how more permissive gun laws are central to this success.

As I read it, the best-cases that have been put forward so far in this thread hinge on military units defecting (and/or military support from countries external to the US) - and that kind of underscores the notion that even heavily-armed civilians are not much use in the kind of scenario under discussion here.

Aetius wrote:

Let's deal with this strawman first. There's two facets to it.

The first is that open revolt would be the best case scenario - why is that? Why not a low-grade insurgency conducted with the intent of destabilizing the regime? This is, in fact, how nearly every insurgency has developed over the last 100 years, precisely because the "open revolt" scenario was too risky until the conflict was almost over - it tends to get a lot of innocent people killed, and that is bad for the insurgency (and the government, which we'll cover in a minute).

Low-grade insurgencies, due to their nature, tend to resemble another societal problem - crime. The difference is that instead of being a tiny percentage of the population, low-grade insurgencies tend to be much larger. Criminals find guns very useful, and so would insurgents in such a scenario.

This is America. We don't do low-grade and we don't do slow. Do you honestly think that idiots who think we live under a tyrannical government are going to patiently bide their time? There's freedom at stake, dangit, and freedom delayed is freedom denied.

Aetius wrote:

Let's just assume the military already holds all key locations, and has deployed drones. Then what? You haven't won anything - the first rule of insurgencies is that controlling "key locations" is useless, because the battle isn't about territory. You haven't changed anyone's mind, and you have a very large population surrounding you, a significant portion of which are armed and hostile. You don't know who is who, and meanwhile life has to go on; people go to work, people shop for groceries, people do what people do. Are you going to keep your soldiers inside bases all the time except when they are on patrol, like in Iraq and Afghanistan? You going to keep their families there too? What about the normal government flunkies going about their business, like parking meter attendants or highway workers? You make the incredibly flawed assumption that the only way to strike at a government is to overtly strike the prominent military presence, ignoring the copious amounts of historical evidence indicating that precisely the opposite is true - and guns are really useful for that sort of thing.

An insurgency in America--and the counter-insurgency effort--would be entirely unlike those efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and every other place for the simple reason that it would be on American soil. There wouldn't be any vast gulf of language, culture, religion, and political expectations between the troops and the local population. Nor would there be any concern that the troops would be pulled out if their body count got too high or things took too long.

How long do you think an insurgency could survive when there'd be millions of Americans who would gladly tell a cop or a passing military patrol about the strange goings on at the house down the road, the one owned by the guy who has an Confederate flag on his truck, the massive collection of guns in his house, and who always Female Doggoes about the government and how the tree of liberty has to be watered with blood whenever he has one too many beers?

And the insurgency wouldn't exactly be winning the hearts and minds of the rest of America if they're busy shooting up malls and assassinating highway workers. In fact, they'd be doing the exact opposite: severely ratcheting up the level of violence and bloodshed the public would tolerate to eliminate the threat. And god forbid if the insurgency ever kills a child, an attractive young woman, or a hero cop or firefighter.

But all this talk is kinda pointless because things would really have to be bad for there to be enough gaps in the fabric of our society for an insurgency to actually take root and grow. We're talking about the government completely failing to do its job at all levels. If a decade plus of the Great Depression wasn't enough to break people's faith in the government to take care of them then I seriously doubt we're going to reach that point anytime soon, if ever.

Aetius wrote:

Yeah, that works great - until someone pops off a few rounds from the roof of a shopping mall, and you kill hundreds of innocent people with your lethal response. Well done, you've grown the insurgency by hundreds more, if not thousands. Oh wait, was that a gun fired via cell phone from a mile away? Whoops. Overwhelming reactions are almost always counter-productive in an insurgency. And, in the United States, who wouldn't have a few spare guns to lead the reaction teams on a wild-goose chase while the real action goes down elsewhere?

Again, what fantasy world is this where American troops are going to panic and slaughter hundreds of innocent civilians in a mall...and that hundreds or thousands of people will be so upset that they'll become insurgents as well. It's much more likely that those hundreds or thousands of people will get mad at the insurgents and sign up for the military so they can kill those motherf*ckers for attacking the mall where their sister works and their grandmother walks in the morning.

Aetius wrote:

Yep, and how's that going for us? Oh right - Vietnam was an outright loss; in Iraq we merely succeeded in replacing one brutal, corrupt, violent puppet government with another, empowering Iran in the process; and we've already lost in Afghanistan, we're just unwilling to admit it. Why? Because we continue to make the mistake of seeing these conflicts as military conflicts, which is precisely the mistake you're making here. As in Vietnam, in a counter-insurgency you can win every single battle, and still lose the war.

Those really weren't counter-insurgencies because in real counter-insurgencies you have to treat your troops as disposable meat shields for the innocent public. There simply wasn't the political will to do so in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But there'd certainly be the will--both political and national--to put troops in danger on American soil. And there certainly wouldn't be an concern that the troops would eventually just pull out of an American city.

Hey, the insurgency could have drones too

IMAGE(http://www.protectamerica.com/home-security-blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/doomba4.png)

Reaper81 wrote:

Does the Second Amendment offer protection from a tyrannical US government? If so, how?

This question always confuses me with you folks down there in the US. The tyranny that James Madison created the 2nd amendment for was the creation of a federal standing army.

James Madison wrote:

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate.
Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body.
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.
The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.
Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.
Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

As Robear pointed out, when the 2nd amendment was written, if the federal government wanted an army, it needed to create it out of the state militias. Madison wanted the guns in the hands of the people, not the feds, and not the militia, so the people could decide when to fight and when NOT to fight.
Since the USA actually has a federal standing army now, the 2nd amendment has already failed. The tyranny it was supposed to prevent has already happened.

Now, I suppose it is still an interesting question as to whether the right to bear arms is of any help if the current government starts to step all over the population; but that isn't what the 2nd amendment was about. Am I misreading things here?

Paleocon wrote:
Bear wrote:

Based on this weekend's gun show here in Syracuse, it appears that a large number of the most vocal 2A advocates are physically incapable of sustaining any resistance much past people walking onto their front porch.

Apparently the authors of the 2a forgot to mention that it's difficult to defend your freedom when you're so fat you need an electric scooter to propel you around the gun show.

I call this the "Doomsday Prepper Workout". Every time I see someone who espouses the paranoid fantasies of societal collapse, they invariably look like folks who would fare the worst in such a scenario. They never look like they could actually run three blocks to evade a mass of zombies or lift a roll up door to get to a defensible area. It sort of goes into the very American mentality that one can simply purchase one's way to a safer, more prepared, healthier, or more attractive life.

Oh, and it isn't exclusive to 2A folks.

But when all the cattle runs out, I hope a few are around for brisket.

Nevin73 wrote:

Hey, the insurgency could have drones too

IMAGE(http://www.protectamerica.com/home-security-blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/doomba4.png)

I prefer the DJ Roomba version.

EDIT: Also, wouldn't the duct tape on the slide render the gun incapable for firing and staying affixed toe the Roomba at the same time?

Demosthenes wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:

Hey, the insurgency could have drones too

IMAGE(http://www.protectamerica.com/home-security-blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/doomba4.png)

I prefer the DJ Roomba version.

EDIT: Also, wouldn't the duct tape on the slide render the gun incapable for firing and staying affixed toe the Roomba at the same time?

Maybe they each only have one shot. Then you just send a swarm after the enemy. You can't kick in doors if you have a shattered tibia.

The 2A insurgency/prepper thing is a powerful drug. It allows people to feel superior to everyone else, without actually being good at anything!

Podunk wrote:

The 2A insurgency/prepper thing is a powerful drug. It allows people to feel superior to everyone else, without actually being good at anything!

See my brother in law. Lots of gear and weapons, still has mom make him dinner every night.

Podunk wrote:

The 2A insurgency/prepper thing is a powerful drug. It allows people to feel superior to everyone else, without actually being good at anything!

I haven't shot a rifle in 20 years and I guarantee I could out shoot 50% of the "preppers" I've seen on TV. My personal record is a 700 yard woodchuck kill with a Remington .243.

I did have a chance to shoot some skeet a Scout camp last year. Ironically they had Remington 1100's which was what I used for a number of years. Hit 9-10 in my first round! 10-10 in my second. This old dog can still shoot!

Awesome!

Bear wrote:
Podunk wrote:

The 2A insurgency/prepper thing is a powerful drug. It allows people to feel superior to everyone else, without actually being good at anything!

I haven't shot a rifle in 20 years and I guarantee I could out shoot 50% of the "preppers" I've seen on TV. My personal record is a 700 yard woodchuck kill with a Remington .243.

I did have a chance to shoot some skeet a Scout camp last year. Ironically they had Remington 1100's which was what I used for a number of years. Hit 9-10 in my first round! 10-10 in my second. This old dog can still shoot!

I have strong suspicion that doing a lot of video gaming makes people better at those fine motor tasks like holding a handgun or even a rifle steady. I'm not so sure it's muscles, or reflexes, but that it trains your brain for the kind of fast IDing and processing necessary for things like target shooting.

Story time: I'm a pretty decent shot without a lot of "gun time." When I was being tested for rifle proficiency in Basic training, my glasses fogged up over my right (dominant) eye to the point that I couldn't see through it. So I sighted down my left eye, and used my right eye to sort of approximate a sight picture. I still managed to pass pretty comfortably. Which, according to the sergeant in charge of the range, should have been impossible. I'm still waiting for Angelina Jolie to show up in a limo and tell me my father was a super-villain.

ringsnort wrote:
Kamakazi010654 wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

Who is going to be interesting in supporting and sustaining American Taliban from abroad? Canada? Mexico? Cuba, or some EU country, perhaps? :)

It doesn't matter if someone wanted to or not. They simply couldn't afford the cost of supporting an American insurgency.

And even if the EU wanted to, there is the small issue of a few thousand miles of ocean and the world's largest Navy.

No North American or European nation, either overtly or covertly, would risk supporting any domestic insurgency.

The IRA was supported to a large extent from the US. Its very first weapons source is disputed (the Irish government the most likely) but after that pretty much all the equipment and funding came from the US. The AR-15 was so iconic to the IRA that is actually became part of the their political slogans. "The Armalite and the Ballot Box" was the most famous. Of course later in the conflict arms came in from other regiemes such as Libya but funding remained the preserve of the US.

You really don't have to go far to find high profile supporters. Peter King (Rep NY) is still, currently, a stated supporter of the IRA and the "cause". There have been many in the past that had sympathies for the Irish that veered into very questionable policies such as extradition of suspects back to the UK for trail. The case of Joe Doherty is a good example.

Long story short, history proves that premise false. Its hard to see now how that would happen but thing can and do change.

Oh and on the debate itself, Ireland and Northern Ireland pretty much give you the answer. In the 1920s and our War on Independence, the original IRA, armed by Germany, gained control of towns and secured them. This eventually led to the current Ireland/Northern Ireland partition resulting in an independent state. The latter day Provisional IRA never secured so much as a garden shed. Modern militaries are simply to well equipped and were probably so by the 40s' nevermind now.

Interesting factoid, the term IED was coined by the British Army during the 70s to describe the IRA's explosive devices. After the Good Friday Agreement in 99, former IRA members were found training both ETA and FARC. I've never heard them popping up in the Middle East from around 2003 on but road side bombs were something of a favourite for them. Its wild speculation but would people in the US know that there are streets in Tehran named after prominent IRA members?

Anyway, the Provisional IRA was a private army, better armed, funded and trained than anything a civilian militia in the US could muster and their goal is a untied Ireland. Last time I checked, Ireland remains partitioned. And I may add that this notion that a bunch of random individuals with guns will somehow preserve democracy is interesting to a guy who had four of these freedom fighters at my front door issuing death threats to my father. Standard fare for anyone with money and happend to live close enough to the border.

Aetius, you seem stuck in some weird agglomeration of the various phases of an insurgency. You talk about a "low intensity" insurgency, but that is not one that wins or aims to defeat an enemy in any great degree. It's a harrassment phase, something done *after* an organization has been built, trained and supplied. So already, you've converted your civilian volunteers into terrorists, soldiers and political cadres and started messing with the government using a set of tactics to implement a strategy to weaken your opponent.

This means you've *already* got a controlling political leadership and infrastructure; a military with intel and logistics structures in place, and trained soldiers to put it into play; and a population under your control to keep your supply going, especially when you're acting. You may even hold some areas of the country and have some regular troops to do that in a traditional way.

In other words, you've already succeeded in converting your civilians into professionals. This has taken years, but then, so has putting together the political apparatus that supports it. Pretty much by definition, you're no longer working with amateurs. You're essentially saying "You start out with civilians with hunting rifles" and then you jump magically to "...and so the 33rd People's Battalion is dedicated to disrupting communications in the Greater Cleveland area." But this doesn't happen magically. It requires people who know what they are doing, and population willing to be led. It takes organization on a regional scale at first (even just starting in cities, it has to grow before it can start fighting). This is not something that regular civilians come across. It's something that you prepare for with a pre-existing national movement that actually sends people off in their hundreds or thousands to train to do this. It takes serious time. The Vietnamese had had about a *century* of irregular and regular warfare to learn how to do this. The US has *zero* history of this. China and the other Communist insurgencies had Moscow to help them prepare and train (the Soviets co-opted military units to kick-start their own Revolution, in a time of national difficulties, and it still took them years to get anywhere.)

Who is going to do this for American revolutionaries? Civilians can't do this. They have to be trained, equipped, motivated and led. At that point, they are not civilians anymore. The point is, they don't just get together and start shooting. The term for that is "corpses". Revolutions and insurgencies are not something done by amateurs; either they get professional leadership and support and equipment, or they die. And where in the US do these 2A folks have anything like what's needed to hold more than a small town? That's the disconnect; there's a lot of people who think that because they have a vet in their block they will be able to fight off the G-Men if it really came down to it. And that's just wishful thinking.

Aetius wrote:

The militias in the early United States were far from a "fully fledged and equipped" military force, and they were not soldiers. At best, they had some experience fighting Indians - which turned out to be useful, when permitted to fight that way. Most "militias" simply consisted of every adult male in the community, who would group together if defense was needed. They had no artillery, no cavalry, and their training was laughable compared to the British. Their complete inability to wage conventional warfare was demonstrated repeatedly in the early years of the war.

I honestly don't know where you get this stuff from. The American Colonies had had an active militia system for over a century by the time the war started. It was very well developed in Massachusetts and other colonies (Virgina, the Carolinas, some others.) Months before General Gage had even had real cause to worry about rebellion, the colonists had activated and organized over 17,000 militia men in Massachusetts alone (which nonetheless they considered insufficient, even though Gage had 3000 men, since they expected reinforcements once the war started); set up an efficient signaling system that could pass a message 25 miles in an hour or so in all directions (one they had used for decades); established a military and political leadership and strategic goals; and set up military stores depots in Worcester and the surrounding towns, which included cannon, powder, muskets, shot and ball, and the necessary supplies the militias would draw upon taking the field. (Concord alone had at least 3 24-lber siege guns, which the British troops found. These were so big they'd only have been used to bombard Boston from across the river in, say, Cambridge or Somerville.)

Gage's men under Lt. Col Scott were actually looking for those cannon when they marched out to search Concord and try to show the flag in the countryside. The response of the colonists was to raise the militia, and it functioned as companies, with actual leadership (once the leaders arrived - in Lexington, the troops were scattered before they could really organize, but then, they were outnumbered. Still, they formed and maneuvered in the face of the enemy, which is not bad at all.)

The state militias varied wildly in quality, that is true. But if they were that bad, why did they not lose the war when pressed by the British in the first few years? The fact is that there were many units that held together and prevented the incompetents from destroying them utterly. Yes, they took losses. But even in the first encounter, they were organized as a military, led by trained officers, equipped to a standard essentially the same as the troops they faced, and were able to make use of formations, scouts and tactical movements under fire. They were in no way untrained civilians running around with fowling weapons. This pattern also existed in the other colonies. The militia system was put to good use and provided troops with minimal and often better training and equipment to be summoned, brought to military training centers and prepared for the fighting just as we do today with, say, National Guard units. The struggle in the first few years was that once a unit was trained and blooded and got the bugs out, they wanted to go home to the harvest, having served their time. The army leadership had to extend their service in order to maintain the troop quality that had been established; when they were able to do this and retain more and more troops, the tide began to turn.

Remember that it was April 1775 when Gage marched his men out to disarm the immediate threat in Massachusetts. Spain, France and and the Dutch started providing aid and advisors in January of 1776, even before the new country was declared. By April 1776, the rebels controlled every colony and all the major cities. The British actually had to invade, starting with New York, and seize the colonies back. But they could not raise enough Loyalist militias to meet their needs, and when the invasion from Canada was thwarted in 1777, the French entered the war overtly, which neatly gave the advantage to the Americans, as the British had to worry about other theaters where the French were also active.

But the rebels were not starting from zero, as we would have to today. They had mostly fit men who'd done their militia training (even though some were considered unfit, not being able to march long distances on hardtack at first). They had professional leaders. They had foreign advisors, a system of camps and safe havens for training, military grade weapons, artillery, cavalry (even at Lexington, there were cavalry scouts deployed) and a small navy. But most of all, different from today, the militias provided a functional military already in place to build upon. We have nothing like this today; even the Guard consists of regulars who have trained and partially retired.

This, and the few rebellions that followed, were the last successes of the militia system, but we still have to give it it's due. It was active in even the smallest rural towns, because it combined self-defense with crime fighting. It was regarded as so important to the survival of the country in the 1780's and 1790's that it was written into the Constitution and even it's detractors could not conceive that the US would ever have a standing military instead of a militia system, to be raised in times of trouble but trained in peacetime, and equipped with military weapons. It was the only game in town, and the Second is written entirely with that as a background. We've foolishly chosen to interpret it otherwise, with very little precedent, and created an individual right where none was written into the document. But that's another thread.

The point is that the American revolution was not a bunch of farmers bootstrapping themselves into an army by reading von Steuben. The rebels would have never been able to get up to speed had they not had that trained base to build upon. (Indeed, fear of this kind of development was present in the English debates about whether the militia system should be stood down, as in England they had a standing army to supplement it and eventually replace it with the Regimental system instead. I believe it was held that the colonies should maintain it because of the danger of Indian and French attacks, and the expense of keeping regulars around to deal with incursions and uprisings.) The American Revolution was won by trained soldiers with military equipment, professional leadership, a sympathetic population, knowledge of the ground, regular military support from foreigners (along with supplies, training and other assistance), a fully developed political infrastructure, and control of the country early in the conflict. They passed through Mao's three phases in what, about 6 years? Pretty good timing, and not something that could be done in that period with untrained, under-equipped, poorly led, go-it-alone amateurs.

Nice lesson, Robear (seriously).

Admittedly I do not know much about the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, but wasn't one of the major lessons we learned from 1812 that militias wouldn't cut it as a national defense force?

Anyway, the Provisional IRA was a private army, better armed, funded and trained than anything a civilian militia in the US could muster and their goal is a untied Ireland. Last time I checked, Ireland remains partitioned. And I may add that this notion that a bunch of random individuals with guns will somehow preserve democracy is interesting to a guy who had four of these freedom fighters at my front door issuing death threats to my father. Standard fare for anyone with money and happend to live close enough to the border.

The Provos were descended from the Irish National Volunteers, which competed with the Ulster Volunteer Army. While both wanted the British to train them, Lord Kitchener balked even though there was a perceived need for an Irish defense force. Without training, the majority of the Volunteers fell away, and WWI's losses in the Irish Divisions further demoralized them.

However, a hard core of less than 10% constituted themselves as the Irish Volunteers, and they trained regularly. They became the cadre that rebelled and was put down in 1915 in the Easter Rebellion. But that in turn swelled their membership, and led to the establishment of a political party, Sinn Fein. After another 100,000 men demobbed in 1918, they declared a free government and rebelled - again, with a trained and equipped army which forced the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921.

The amateurs had given up, and the impatient ones died in 1915. It's the professionals who carried on and succeeded, to a degree. The IRA later never succeeded in fielding an actual army; they were more about Mao's second phase, trying to raise the cost of occupation so high that the British would give them the rest of the island (or just leave, so they could take it politically; same end in mind.)

Indeed, Ro, and it reinforces the point further. You could add to the above that our War of Independence was fought on both sides to a greater or lesser degree by WWI veterans and quite a bit of the Irish Volunteers/IRA were actually former British Empire troops. Its pretty clear that the tactic of the Flying Column was introduced from the Boer War, a conflict that no doubt had a huge influence on our War.

Mao considered guerrilla troops, after training, to be only an adjunct to the regular army, which was necessary for victory. They were useful, but they were not going to win the war itself. He also distinguished between untrained civilians, who were of extremely limited use except as mobs in extremis, and guerrillas, who were trained and lived the life.

The Irish War of Independence showed this clearly, that training, equipment and leadership really matters. The American Revolution had the advantage of a large force of men already trained to reasonable military standards and equipped with military arms, as well as a political and military leadership already in place and planning well before the war, with foreign support almost from the start. And indeed, their initial gains were great, but then they had to grind it out. If the British had not been distracted by several wars elsewhere, the colonies would likely have been pacified in spite of all the advantages the rebellion had. But as it was, the Americans had a head start and showed themselves to be capable early on, and managed to hold on in spite of the challenges until diplomacy, time and additional obligations for the British turned things in their favor.

Robear wrote:

Mao considered guerrilla troops, after training, to be only an adjunct to the regular army, which was necessary for victory. They were useful, but they were not going to win the war itself. He also distinguished between untrained civilians, who were of extremely limited use except as mobs in extremis, and guerrillas, who were trained and lived the life.

The Irish War of Independence showed this clearly, that training, equipment and leadership really matters. The American Revolution had the advantage of a large force of men already trained to reasonable military standards and equipped with military arms, as well as a political and military leadership already in place and planning well before the war, with foreign support almost from the start. And indeed, their initial gains were great, but then they had to grind it out. If the British had not been distracted by several wars elsewhere, the colonies would likely have been pacified in spite of all the advantages the rebellion had. But as it was, the Americans had a head start and showed themselves to be capable early on, and managed to hold on in spite of the challenges until diplomacy, time and additional obligations for the British turned things in their favor.

...which has always made me wonder, why do so many Americans dislike the French? We owe at least some of our independence to their assistance.

Demosthenes wrote:

...which has always made me wonder, why do so many Americans dislike the French? We owe at least some of our independence to their assistance. :P

I always chalked it up to America being more in line with the United Kingdom in terms of culture, plus the French being very anti-Anglo, or at least pro-Franco, when it comes to language and culture.

Though I'm sure the massive sense of superiority many Americans came away with, deserved or not, in World War 2 didn't help. I personally think the French got us back pretty well by giving us their issues in Indochina.

bnpederson wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

...which has always made me wonder, why do so many Americans dislike the French? We owe at least some of our independence to their assistance. :P

I always chalked it up to America being more in line with the United Kingdom in terms of culture, plus the French being very anti-Anglo, or at least pro-Franco, when it comes to language and culture.

Though I'm sure the massive sense of superiority many Americans came away with, deserved or not, in World War 2 didn't help. I personally think the French got us back pretty well by giving us their issues in Indochina.

I always just assumed the Americans who hate the French are just assholes who don't know their history.

I'm pretty sure the English hating the French thing is a terrible outdated stereotype from at least a century and a half ago. I've never met another English person who hates the French. I'm sure they exist but I haven't. Americans on the other hand... I thought everybody hates them!

Stengah wrote:
bnpederson wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

...which has always made me wonder, why do so many Americans dislike the French? We owe at least some of our independence to their assistance. :P

I always chalked it up to America being more in line with the United Kingdom in terms of culture, plus the French being very anti-Anglo, or at least pro-Franco, when it comes to language and culture.

Though I'm sure the massive sense of superiority many Americans came away with, deserved or not, in World War 2 didn't help. I personally think the French got us back pretty well by giving us their issues in Indochina.

I always just assumed the Americans who hate the French are just assholes who don't know their history.

I always assumed that the whole "hate on France" business was a Fox manufactured phenomenon that came about largely because they had the temerity to tell us we were morons for going to war in Iraq.