In the midst of the gun debate one of the themes that keeps being brought up is that “Civilians need AR-15 platform weapons and high capacity magazines to fight the government if it becomes tyrannical.” To which is often retorted with “The military has F-16’s and nukes, they would crush you in a second.”

That retort is an extreme oversimplification. It’s fails to take into account several significant factors.

1. Sheer numbers

Gun owners in the United States outnumber the entire US Military 30 to 1. They also outnumber the all NATO military personnel by 21 to 1. Keep in mind that this is just owners, I myself own 9 long guns and could arm 8 other non-gun owners in an instant, which would increase the ratios in favor of the people. In fact if US gun owners were an army it would be the largest standing army the world has ever seen by a factor of 1 to 9.

2 . Combatant and non-combatant positioning:

Most of the combatant civilian forces would be living and operating in the very same places that un-involved civilians would be. In order for the military to be able to use their Hellfire missiles, drone strikes, and carpet bombs, they would also be killing non-participating civilians. This is why we killed so many civilians in the Middle East. If we did that here than anyone who had no sympathy for the resistance before will suddenly have a new perspective when their little sister gets killed in a bombing.

1. Military personnel non-compliance:

Getting young men to kill people in Iraq is a whole lot easier than getting them to agree to fire on their own people. Many US military personnel are already sympathetic to anti-government causes and would not only refuse to follow orders but some would even go as far as to create both violent and non-violent disruptions within the military. Non-violent disruptions would include disobedience, intentional communication disruptions, intentionally feeding false intelligence withholding valuable intelligence, communicating intelligence to the enemy, and disabling equipment. Violent disruptions would mostly be killing of complicit superiors who they see as an enemy of the people.

For example, in 2019, the Virginia National Guard had internal communications talking about how they would disobey Governor orders to confiscate guns.

When you take these factors into account you can see that it would not be a quick and easy victory for the US government. Would they win in the end? Maybe, but it wouldn’t be decisive or easy in the slightest. The Pentagon knows this and would advise against certain escalating actions during periods of turmoil. Which in effect, acts as a deterrent.