America's Guerilla Army

July 4^th is coming up soon, and remarkably I have a revolutionary topic to discuss.  How convenient…

This is yet another salvo of mine in the gun control war, currently being waged on Facebook as well as in the country at large, and those sitting down in Congress types who know what’s best for everyone else.  Regrettably, the “hand control” advocates on the Interweb or Book of Faces can’t resist starting off with benign patronizing, followed by outright insults when you don’t agree with their wisdom (?) and logic, such as it is.  So much of this will be preaching to the choir.  So be it.  If any of my readers are actually undecided on this issue, by all means listen up. 

AR15.  The sad joke about this is that as military weapons go, the AR15 would be almost at the bottom – just above bolt-action rifles and muzzle loaders.  It can’t even fire full auto, or even 3 round bursts.  The Army uses the select-fire M16A2 (semi-auto/3 round burst) which replaced the M16 and M16A1, which could fire full auto.  It has full auto .308 machine guns and the beloved M2 .50 caliber machine gun.  Add to this: grenades, grenade launchers, mortars, light artillery, heavy artillery, APVs, tanks, and also ground attack by helicopters and the US Air Force, both F16s and the big B52s.  Plus strategic nuclear weapons – so far only employed against Japanese civilians.

Oh, by the way:  this business of “The Founding Fathers never imagined the AR15.”  Are you assuming that the Founding Fathers believed that military technology in the late 1700s would NEVER progress?  That black powder, muzzle-loading muskets were as far as any army could ever go?  Highly presumptuous.  Of course, there is no evidence for that position.  I’d say the Founding Fathers could better imagine better versions of firearms – which they had then – than they could the Internet, but you don’t hear liberals admitting that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to the Internet. 

“We, the Militia”.  Thank God the First Amendment protects the right of free speech, religion, and assembly – of the militia.  That the Fourth Amendment protects…the militia…from unreasonable searches and seizures.  That the Fifth Amendment prevents the Militia from testifying against itself.  Thanks to the Sixth Amendment, the Militia has a right to a speedy and fair trial.  The Militia merits a jury trial – by a peer of militias (Seventh) – and no excessive bail will keep the militia locked up or subject to cruel or unusual punishments (Eighth).  The Founding Fathers – including NRA Founder James Madison – didn’t really mean “people” when they said “people” could bear arms.  They meant that the armed forces had the right to bear arms.  What a radical idea!  That’s why it’s sandwiched between the first and third amendments (no militia quartered among the militia, without the consent of the militia).  In the Militia’s Bill of Rights.  If it comes to a toss between Chief Justice Warren Burger and James Madison as to what the Founding Fathers intended, I’ll pick Madison.  Not only was he there, he was one of them.

Anyhow.  SO then the liberals sneer that civilians armed with AR15s would be no match for SEAL Team Six.   “Black Hawk Down”, people.  Mobs of angry, well-armed Somalis made life very difficult for us in Mogadishu.   Mobs of angry, well-armed Americans can make life very difficult for regular US soldiers, just like the Viet Cong made life difficult for US soldiers in Vietnam, the Taliban did so – and continues to do so – in Afghanistan, and Iraqi rebels did in Iraq.  This despite all the horrendous damage that our advanced military technology could inflict on our opponents.  Funny how the liberals who laugh about the VC or Taliban giving our much-vaunted high tech military a hard time conveniently change their tune when the roles are reversed.

And that’s US soldiers fighting against foreign guerillas.   You really cannot assume the reliability of ordinary soldiers sent to fight against their own people.  All bets are off.  Sure, there will be some hardcore nuts who “love the smell of napalm in the morning” – and who are as likely to be shot from behind as from the front. 

During our own War of Independence, we did raise conventional forces, trained by Baron von Steuben, but we never had enough to avoid relying upon irregulars.  Von Lettow-Vorbeck, arguably the best guerilla warfare leader Germany ever produced (yes, I know that’s a very small group), knew that guerillas do not necessarily have to overcome conventional forces on the battlefield to be strategically effective: they can tie down such forces and spread them out.  Every Commonwealth unit wasting its time chasing VLV and his Askaris around Tanzania and Mozambique was a unit that wasn’t fighting at the Somme.  And every now and then – early 1800s Haiti, Dien Bien Phu in 1954 – a guerilla army will defeat a conventional army.  In our case it would simply be enough to make a constant nuisance to the conventional forces.  If we ran out of patience in Vietnam and Iraq, we’ll certainly run out of patience fighting ourselves. 

Che Guevara.  Here’s another funny thing.  Liberals love Che Guevara.  Wasn’t he brave?  He fought against Batista (who ran away quickly); he fought in the Congo; and then he fought in Bolivia, until taken down by the Bolivian Army assisted by Felix Rodriguez and the CIA.  You would think that liberals would be cradling their semi-auto AK47s and training in the backwoods like Che and the VC: “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!”  But they didn’t do that when Reagan was president.  They didn’t even do that when George W. Bush was President AND we had the Patriot Act, which might have inspired some to prepare against a right-wing dictatorship.  Should we be surprised?  If liberals think the AR15 – a civilian, semi-auto version of a full-auto military rifle - is the pinnacle of military technology and get PTSD simply firing one, no wonder they lack the courage to emulate their hero.