PeterS wrote:
So how are a people who are armed with semi-automatic weapons supposed to combat a police force and military that is armed with automatic weapons, bombs and explosives, drones, aircraft, a navy, etc, etc? What was the framers intent there?
The US government totals 4 million people, elected officials and employees, this includes the entire armed forces.
89,000 US government employees are deployed overseas (in 140 countries)
There are 120,000 federal law enforcement agents with arrest authority.
There are 1.3 million active duty military and 800,000 national guard and reservists.
An average of 400,000 military personnel are trained in combat. That includes pilots, naval weapons specialists and gunners, and ground combat troops. 80% of military personnel are administrative, support, intel, and non-combat specialists.
There are approximately 800,000 local, county and state law enforcement officers in about 13,000 departments in the US.
In the abstract, the total number of federal agents, police officers, and military personnel capable of carrying out gun confiscation is 1.3 million.
There are 80 million US citizens who own nearly 400 million firearms.
We can eliminate 450,000 military personnel who are deployed overseas.
We can eliminate all naval personnel aboard ships and 95% of those stationed at land bases.
We can eliminate all pilots. We can eliminate around 50% of military combat troops. We can eliminate a significant percentage of police officers, sheriff's deputies, military combat troops and national guardsmen simply because indications are they would refuse to participate or enforce a nation wide confiscation effort.
Realistically then, the ratio of confiscator to gun owner would be 1 for every 250 or 300 gun owners.
Apart from these facts, there are a number of critical points to be made.
first of all, our American government, like it or not, is still bound to some degree by the constitution upon which it was established. For the government to employ military and police forces to disarm all American citizens, it would have to undergo a truly radical change. A totalitarian dictatorship would have to be established, and nationwide martial law would have to be implemented. Even then, in a country as large, as diverse and as populated as the US, the tyrants would have some major problems.
Several years ago, three studies were conducted on the military capabilities of our armed forces, one study was done by the commanding officer of the Army War College, another by an Air Force colonel in intelligence, and one by a captain in the US Navy. These studies were condensed into an analysis called "The Paradox of Military Technology".
The military has become dependent on electronic technology that is system interdependent, it is vulnerable to glitches, software failures, hacking, and a host of other problems. The greatest amount of energy and resources go into R&D for firewalling and computer security.
With regard to the human factors involved in military operations, here then is a quote by Major General Robert Scales, the former commander of the Army War College,
“there is no appreciable technological advantage for an American infantryman when fighting the close battle against even the poorest, most primitive enemy. The Afghan Mujahideen proved that during the Soviet invasion.