or at least was before I retired. It is probably required reading at the war colleges. It is an interesting book and a good read.

Hard question with so many unknowns. I do think every base would be under siege, cutting off any logistics going to the base. Fighters, gunships, etc would be grounded withing a week because of lack of fuel, replacement tires, spare parts etc. That is before you get to things like attacking POL storage, cyberattacks, IEDs. That was stupid about Red Dawn, besides the high school guerrillas, the USSR didn't have the logistical support to sustain such an invasion. They didn't have strategic airlift, so everything would have to go by ship then use smaller cargo planes or ground.

Of course, that is assuming that all of the military would follow orders, which defies history.

An armed population would be a powerful force against the kind of military oppression we're accustomed to seeing in some other countries. So, the powerful don't seek to use unreliable military force against an armed population -- instead, they prefer to use media and money. A rifle is great for killing an occupying officer, but it's not so great against a multi-national bank or institutionalized political apathy.

I do find it funny, though, when people try to shut down the entire idea of armed resistance by saying "You idiots think your hunting rifle is gonna beat nuclear bombs and drones and helicopters and and and the navy???" Let me know when North Vietnam surrenders, and we can see the inevitable triumph of superior technology.

couldn't 'defeat' (whatever that actually meant) them, and now we're in the what, 12th year?...with not much sign of 'success' (whatever that actually means)...

... fan of "X-Men" or Hugh Jackman

Me too!

If funding keeps going the way it is our ships won't be able to maintain combat effectiveness anyways, its quite evident in the lack of funding for training as you can just look up how many ships have been hitting things in the past few months....except for aircraft carriers and some subs all of them run on conventional fuels and break a lot if a aircraft carrier can't get fuel for planes and helos its literally a giant flat top cruise liner. The fleet virtually cannibalizes ships returning from deployment to make others capable of deploying, we don't have the money to maintain the ships we have or properly man them, my last ship we were suppose to be manned with 375 sailors, before I left we muster 265 sailors on board and they were still taking 30 people from our ship to feel gaps on other ships that were deploying...technology hasn't made things any better hard to say the worlds most powerful navy can't even get underway without the GPS system working and at-least one working navigation radar and god forbid you have a software issues....

raider: .. my last ship we were suppose to be manned with 375 sailors, before I left we muster 265 sailors on board and they were still taking 30 people from our ship to feel gaps on other ships that were deploying..

This doesn't sound so drastic, raider, maybe a fast frig? Lots of shipwork can be done by cross mingling ratings, as you surely know. And increasing watches to more time on watch. With a fuller complement like over 350 I bet you were standing 4 on 12 off or better, & with a half complement below decks standing 4 on 8 off, which is still good enough so long as not port & stbd.

4 on 12 or more off the navy becomes sorta like carnival cruise lines, a pleasure cruise. I was once on a transatlantic with 4 on maybe 20 off & that even went longer as time went by, I felt guilty getting paid for it.
Course it also depends on the type of ship, the bigger the more scrutiny & the more brass the more neurotic.
What I'm getting at, is unless it's a crucial cruise by a crucial ship of the line or near one, let the skeleton crews reign, it do save money.
BT2 jimmy the one ...

Oh, btw, a 'jimmy the one' is a british naval term, stands for the executive officer on every RMS ship of size. Like US 'old man' is cap'n, a 'jimmy' is on every ship, as 2nd in command. Not that I was comm'd, just non comm, but I'm also not an egotist as the user name might imply. Developed somehow from king 'james the first'. I just liked the link to past navy soiviss.

Say it was like that but since everything has become so dam specialized, if you don't have the people qualified specifically on that gear you can't let any else run it,plus you have to have a TS/SCI clearance to run my gear and access to those spaces, you also have to take into a account for corrective maintenance on systems, have to maintain equipment for inspections, meeting training requirements, drilling, and rotating armed duty outside of normal work typically I stood 12 hours of armed watch(not all at once) we usually break it down to 4 hours watches on top of a normal 12 hour work day twice a week in home port and in ports of call because we were undermanned. On my last deployment we stood 12 on 12 off then we got a couple more qualified personnel frsh from school and bumped down to 8 on 16 off for 8mths. I was onboard the Ticonderoga Class Cruiser USS San Jacinto CG-56, she just got done with a 175 million dollar cruiser modernization, which was suppose to make it last another 20 years, then they rear ended a sub during training in October just months before their next deployment and they are in dry dock again this time in Florida and the might have to chop the entire foc'sle off and replace it to fix the damage done, the initial report was the sub surfaced within 200 yards of the ship, it was the lack of training on the part of the crew of the sub that was implicated in the cause of the accident. All i can say is thank goodness I'm not on there and I'm a sand sailor now.

... since Facebook started?

I know I couldn't

You just have to be honest....They are gonna look at and track down everything you do or say regardless

...the government's commitment to render itself as the subject to the people rather than the reverse. Regardless of any view of the argument (i.e. - would banning all/most/many guns amount to a net savings of lives), the idea of the government enforcing that kind of control is more distasteful than would be the loss of (at most) a few hundred lives. (ETA: my apologies for the pragmatism.)

Secondarily, I have to point out that while the threat of certain armaments (for example, nuclear weapons) may useful in subduing another nation, they would be useless at the task of tyrannically dominating individual citizens. The limited use of small yield nuclear weapons has value when employed in tactical defense but that isn't a realistic scenario. To use an analogy, nuclear weapons won't win the game, they'll vaporize the board on which it is played.

Army veteran, and am still in contact with many people I served with, and some who are currently active duty, both enlisted and officers. The prevailing opinion among those I know at least, is that many if not most officers would disobey orders to fire upon American civilians, and the Federal Government would have to deal with large-scale mutiny. A soldier is bound by his oath to follow orders only so long as they are lawful, and any orders to enforce un-Constitutional laws or regulations would not be lawful orders.

The fantasy that, in the event of a wide spread insurrection against a dictatorship, the U.S. military would act as some monolithic block joyously strafing their own neighborhoods and families while shrieking, "Death to traitors!", is just that. There would likely at least be a schism based along regional and/or ideological lines, if not the military itself who kicks off the action. As you noted, service people swear first and foremost to protect and defend the Constitution, not a person.

It's better to die trying than be a willing victim.....be it a common criminal out to kill your family tonight, or some pol pot wannabe 6 years from now.

If you refuse to be disarmed you won't have to worry about dictators in America.

...of movie script:

West: Pike, surrender your sidearm for inspection.

(Pike begins removing his pistol from its holster.)
West: What the f*** are you doing?
West: Have you lost your f***ing mind?

Pike: You told me to relinquish--

West: Are you talking? Did you speak to me?
West: Who the f*** told you to speak?!

West: A Ranger never relinquishes his weapon!
West: lf George S. M*****f***ing Patton rises from his holy grave and asks you for your weapon, you will NOT surrender your weapon.

don't allow individual gun ownership are all dictatorships?

And that dictators are NEVER overthrown unless individuals have guns?

Oh, wait. Never mind.

"... isn't it obvious that countries that don't allow individual gun ownership are all dictatorships?" - Maybe not dictatorships but they have an element of tyranny.


"...dictators are NEVER overthrown unless individuals have guns?" - Maybe not but I'd check the Vegas odds before making any bets.


Just a thought.

Libya. Yeah, those dictators weren't overthrown because there was no individual gun ownership.

And of course, the famous and horrible dictatorships, I mean tyrannical governments of Australia, and England, and Switzerland are so awful to contemplate.

...I remember shots being fired.


"...tyrannical governments of Australia, and England, and Switzerland are so awful to contemplate." - I didn't say that did I?


Have a nice night.

It might help.

...unless of course that gun gets up in the night and shoots you.

...to lock them up at night. They can get like the dog with a loose lid on the garbage can.

They make a helluva lot of noise, but I can't feel the evil mind rays telling me to watch reruns of the Dukes of Hazzard.

...my wife either bakes it or puts it in the frige.

1,000,000 with rifles is a force to be reckoned with.

gaining power, we are nowhere near the point where any citizen should consider fighting our government.

If any "patriots" are reading this and feel now is the time to fight, let me remind you that in order to be successful you would need the support of at least 40% to 50% of your fellow citizens. Turn down the volume of your conservative talk program for a few minutes and relax.

In the upcoming debate on gun control lots of ideas will be purposed and conservatives will strongly oppose many. Some Democrats will suggest bans and confiscation of certain or all firearms. All this is simply rhetoric and hot air. I predict there will be some changes to our current federal gun laws but they will be relatively minor although you may disagree with them.

Perhaps 20 to 50 years from now there will be good reason to take up arms against a true dictatorship or tyranny. Store your firearms safely and keep them oiled. Go to the polls and vote.

I'm now 66 and during my lifetime I have seen a lot of change and turmoil in our nation. I personally feel that while we still have major problems, we live in a much better nation today than the one I grew up in during the 50s and 60s.

Right now the pendulum is swinging in a liberal direction but sometime in the near future it will swing back in a conservative direction. I'm seen this happen many times and have no reason to believe that the ship of state has run aground or tipped over. We are just traveling through some stormy seas.

...but not as helpful as a free press and clean elections.

Do we really have that? I would contend that is highly debatable.

Media concentration in the hands of right-wing ideologues and profit-mad jackals has made us less free as a nation.

The election industry's effective control of vote casting and tabulation systems, likewise.

Instead of worrying about the non-existent threat to RKBA, we would better serve our nation by focusing on the more serious threats that already threaten us.