Revolution in the U.S.

[Scrib]

Every few months, or days depending on which way the news cycle is swinging, we hear about people so dedicated on holding on to their guns because they're afraid that the President and the Democrats will take them away, leaving them no recourse against the tyrannical government. But how much recourse do they have, really?

I've always wondered about this. In the case of a tyrannical US government how much could gun-owners truly do? And I'm not just talking about the actual fighting, I mean the entire idea of revolution. Given the lengths the government will go to to spy on it's citizens and given their skill at it how likely is it that any modern revolution could actually sweep across a country the size of the U.S. and be successful before someone stamped on it?

Or is that not the point? Is it merely a matter of having enough guns to maintain some amount of autonomy through sheer crazy-power:"Fuck with me and I might not win, but I'll damn sure give you a fight you don't want". But even then the above applies; how good a fight can you truly give?

So simple question: how much could (being extraordinarily charitable)an armed rebellion from the gun-owners of the U.S. actually do? A lot? A little? Is it all just the nostalgic fantasies of people on an ego trip or is there something there?

[Ahriman238]

They could die. They'd be great at it.

Showing your face in open conflict with the third largest, best funded army in the world is a real easy way to get it shot off. Insurgent/guerilla tactics could get them a lot farther, but nowhere near toppling the US government. Frankly, bringing amateur rebels against well equipped, trained, and disciplined armies is suicide by enemy action.

[Zixinus]

They would get a lot of people killed but not in any way manage to truly overthrow the US government. Unless something incredible happens, like getting the military on their side, these people will be just violent morons starting shootouts. Essentially, they would be terrorists and guerrilla fighters. They might take over a city or certain facilities for a while but will be unable to hold it against the National Guard (nevermind other branches of the military that would get involved if things manage to get that). They'll certainly make certain regions shitty and dangerous to live in.

The most damage they'd manage is cause riots, kill certain important people, bomb/damage government or other facilities and generally make things shittier. Martial law would be imposed, along with curfews and soldiers on the street.

Citizens with guns have no chance against a military that has tanks, armed drones, artillery, armored troop carriers and truly professionally trained soldiers with equipment that only few of the rebels will have. Remember that you need a special federal license to own an assault rifle or other automatic weapons. Unless you are a policeman, it would be a waste of time for you to buy a bulletproof vest and even then it will be of a lower grade than a soldier's armor. So on man-to-man status alone, they're already fucked. Add in everything above infantry and they'll be crushed.

What they'll archive will be the opposite of their demands of "we have a right to guns!" and probably be for the worse overall. You see, this will then truly justify the government spying on its own citizens in the public eye. The USA will become more of a police nation than it is accused of now. Not to mention stronger gun control laws than these idiots would have feared in their worse nightmares. The USA can easily cease to be a gun-totting nation.

So yes, the idea of a popular uprising is a fantasy full of wank and stupidity. See 1956 Hungary.

[LaCroix]

They just don't understand that the idea "A well armed population can overthrow their rulers" comes from an era where a single-shot muskets and massed bayonet charges was what won the day on the battlefield. Sure, they did have slightly better guns in average, better cavallery, and field artillery, but a big enough group of insurgents could, by using guerilla tactics, and/or capturing enough equipment, win freedom(as demonstrated). You basically had parity in armament, you just needed to throw numbers at someone.

The invention of the machine gun, the airplane and the tank completely destroyed that possibility.

[paladin]

Is it all just the nostalgic fantasies of people on an ego trip or is there something there?

I would say more like the paranoid delusions of people trying to compensate for certain "short comings."

[Flagg]

It depends on what the military does. There are enough crazy gun nuts in the military that there may well be large numbers of defections which could make things... Complicated. But let's assume the entire military (or enough as not to make a big difference) stays loyal to the Civilian Government, it would be like ten thousand Wacos. I make that statement without condoning or condemning.

[Simon_Jester]

Flagg hit the key point- it is bluntly stupid to imagine "CAGE MATCH: US Army versus all private US gun owners!"

More realistically, anything that would actually drive a large part of the American population into armed rebellion would do the same to the military. A lot of soldiers and officers would be citing their oaths to "support and defend the Constitution," not to obey the president like a dictator or whatever.

If the revolt were based on any kind of broad-based political thing, like a mass roundup of a generally accepted political movement, it would be very hard for the central government to form or find politically reliable units that could be trusted to go suppress the revolt. A lot of units would be sitting tight in their barracks and refusing the unlawful orders that the central government would have to issue. Or worse yet, units ordered into the field might be mutinying and going over to the rebels. And it would be extremely dangerous to trust just any member of the military with access to heavy weapons, because they might spontaneously use those heavy weapons to strike at the government that is killing or imprisoning members of their families.

This is a real problem for tyrannical regimes. Qaddafi had this problem in Libya during the Civil War. He had vast arsenals of tanks, jets, and heavy artillery, but very few reliable men to operate all that equipment with, so he could only use a small fraction of it at any one time. On paper he probably could have pulled together enough heavy equipment to crush the rebels before the West even got involved. But if he'd tried, he might mobilize hundreds of tanks, only to find a third of them defecting to the rebels, which would totally defeat the purpose of pulling out the big guns in the first place by removing his advantage of having superiority in heavy weapons.

This is why most successful Third World dictatorships are either explicitly military (so that the senior officers of the military can ensure loyalty to the government by being the government), or are based on an ethnic minority or extended clan that provides the regime with a hard, reliable core of enforcers they can count on (i.e. Saddam Hussein, the Sunnis, and the Republican Guard).

Since the US Army isn't organized along those lines, and doesn't have large formed units picked explicitly for their political reliability in the face of popular revolt, it would be nearly useless in suppressing a genuinely broad-based popular uprising.

They just don't understand that the idea "A well armed population can overthrow their rulers" comes from an era where a single-shot muskets and massed bayonet charges was what won the day on the battlefield. Sure, they did have slightly better guns in average, better cavallery, and field artillery, but a big enough group of insurgents could, by using guerilla tactics, and/or capturing enough equipment, win freedom(as demonstrated). You basically had parity in armament, you just needed to throw numbers at someone.

The invention of the machine gun, the airplane and the tank completely destroyed that possibility.

Why, then, were anticolonial guerilla movements so massively successful in overthrowing colonial regimes throughout what is now the Third World?

[spaceviking]

How well could national guard forces operate independent of the greater military? They could add real capabilities to the hill billy revoloution.

[Wicked Pilot]

National Guard is the same cross section as the active duty forces, reserves, and police. They would fight/join the hillbilly army in roughly the same proportions.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Why exactly are we assuming gun owners are some monolithic block who will act in unison? Also, why are we paying so much attention to what amounts to the ramblings of a crazy minority of the overall population and getting this information from organizations who couldn't focus on what's important if their existence depended on it? The modern news media, at least in the U.S. which I assume is the source of this information, is so far divorced from actual news that it isn't funny. Their sole concern is sensationalizing events and generating ratings.

[LaCroix]

Why, then, were anticolonial guerilla movements so massively successful in overthrowing colonial regimes throughout what is now the Third World?

What exactly is a successful rebellion? Please cite one example - there are simply too many to check them all. Many sucessful ones, like the Algerian or Mozambique war, were not so much a military success but a political, with the colonial forces winning, but then retreating due to political decisions in the home land. Also, in all this cases, the government had somewhere to retreat to. I fail to understand how these should be relevant in case of a rebellion within the united states - where should go?

You could cite the Irish rebellion as an example for a relatively comparable case, as it was very close to their home land, but this is one sucess between many failures, and a mixed case. The Irish were already granted HomeRule, just a few years before the start of the uprising, and then granted independence by the government.

It wasn't exactly an "overthrow", either, since at no time the war was a military victory, even though, as far as I recall, it was faught between almost equally equipped armed forces, as the rebels were well funded, and the British didn't use anything but infantry.

[Ralin]

Also, why are we paying so much attention to what amounts to the ramblings of a crazy minority of the overall population
...
Their sole concern is sensationalizing events and generating ratings.

That answer your question?

[Simon_Jester]

What exactly is a successful rebellion? Please cite one example - there are simply too many to check them all. Many sucessful ones, like the Algerian or Mozambique war, were not so much a military success but a political, with the colonial forces winning, but then retreating due to political decisions in the home land. Also, in all this cases, the government had somewhere to retreat to. I fail to understand how these should be relevant in case of a rebellion within the united states - where should go?

The main reason I raise the issues are twofold.

One is that by your argument, guerrilla warfare should be pretty much invariably doomed and screwed. We should expect the guerrillas to form up with their puny light-infantry weapons, march into the open with banners, and get slaughtered by the government's machine guns and artillery. Game over, the end.

And yet this does NOT happen. Instead, the guerrillas blend into the population, force the government forces to commit unpopular atrocities to rout them out, and often "win" by creating a situation where the government cannot retain effective control. So clearly we cannot say "army has big guns, rebels have little guns, lol army wins." It is not that simple.

The other reason is that in the US, any mass uprising is likely to represent an attempt by one political faction to overthrow the dominance of another political faction. This is pretty much what happened in the Civil War. The powerful political block of slaveowners were basically trying to "reverse" the verdict of the election of 1860, or at least its impact on them personally. Since 1860 had given them an anti-slavery government they couldn't bear to live under, they decided to create a new government that they could live under... and took their states with them into secession.

This immediately complicates the picture until "army versus rebels" is simply not an accurate way to picture the situation. During the American Civil War, rebel forces seized numerous armories and arsenals quickly, and quite a few senior officers of the US military turned coat and joined the rebels almost immediately. Indeed, many of the most talented officers of the US military changed sides, forcing the Union to promote an entirely new generation of talent to prosecute the war effectively.

Another American civil war (note lack of capitalization) would probably not play out exactly the same way. But we could expect to see much the same factors in play. It would not simply be a case of all the gun collectors suddenly being possessed by a brain-controlling parasite and randomly revolting against the government. It would be a case of sharp disagreement between individual Americans about how the future of the United States should look, with (presumably) most of the private citizen gun owners on one side and (presumably) most of the government in Washington D.C. on the other side.

That's not the same situation at all, and it has very different consequences than the CAGE MATCH scenario the original poster seems to have been picturing. In such a situation, the presence of millions of pre-armed and potentially motivated potential guerillas could actually pose a serious problem for whatever military and security forces remain loyal to the central government.

Why exactly are we assuming gun owners are some monolithic block who will act in unison?

They're not, which is yet another reason why "CAGE MATCH: The US Army versus every American gun owner!" is stupid.

In practice, if anything ever happened in America that caused a significant part of the population to rise up in armed revolt, the first thing the government would do is try to convert some branch of the armed forces into a politically reliable 'militia' for suppressing the rebels. All governments try to do this when faced with open rebellion.

The US was actually very fortunate during its Civil War that the rebel officers by and large had the sense of honor to resign their commissions immediately, rather than staying behind and trying to sabotage the Union war effort... and that because the Confederates were a regional secession movement, the US could recruit pretty much at will from the remaining states and expect political reliability.

Well, most of the remaining states.

[rereads lyrics to Maryland, my Maryland, winces]

Also, why are we paying so much attention to what amounts to the ramblings of a crazy minority of the overall population and getting this information from organizations who couldn't focus on what's important if their existence depended on it? The modern news media, at least in the U.S. which I assume is the source of this information, is so far divorced from actual news that it isn't funny. Their sole concern is sensationalizing events and generating ratings.

I think you're conflating US behavior in times of severe political unrest with the way the US now behaves, at a time when no Americans' actual survival or political beliefs are in real danger of being oppressed or destroyed.

People can get surprisingly hardcore and serious after a long period of frivolity and seeming decadence, once they conclude that they are in actual danger.

[Wing Commander MAD]

I think you're conflating US behavior in times of severe political unrest with the way the US now behaves, at a time when no Americans' actual survival or political beliefs are in real danger of being oppressed or destroyed.

People can get surprisingly hardcore and serious after a long period of frivolity and seeming decadence, once they conclude that they are in actual danger.

That's just my utter contempt for the modern news media showing. It was more a poor attempt to point out how truly ludicrous talk of armed rebellion at this time is to non U.S. residents, some of whom seem to have very skewed views of this country having primarily seen it through the lens of the media. Scrib's OP to me seems that he is taking the far far right more seriously and as more significant portion of the population than it actually is because the news is covering it, when the actual reason for such coverage is that its cheaper to produce and probably provides better ratings than real news. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, and it's simply speculation much the way the various VS debates in Sci-Fi and Fantasy go. I've no doubt the country, even the god-awful talking heads, could get serious if some existential threat came about.

[Mr Bean]

From someone raised on the edges of this movement. Who had friends who got themselves named Chairman of X county Tea Party group let me try to shed some insider prospective.

In America if you are a gun owner you will be massively targeted by the gun industry. We can't send you enough guns and ammo, soldier of fortune and related publications. The same place you go to buy your ammo or shot your guns could double as a Republican party meeting hall in a pinch. I've been to several were local conservative groups WERE using the gun stores back room as a local meeting hall or failing that the bar next door.

Of Americans who fall into the guns and ammo bloody armed revolution group there are four groups with several cross overs.

1. Survivalists/Doomsday preparers
The part of which I used to be affiliated with I freely admit. A decade and a half ago I was a nature nut and spent long hours praticing how to "rough it" of the traditional knife, hang able sleeping bag and grab bag. Making solar purifiers, learning how to hunt and fish without 10,000$ gear just with what you could make with a knife, some good cable and your hands. Proper full time members of the group are the build a cabin in the woods types. Or a bunker if they have the land, money or training.

What makes this group so generally safe from having the feds break down their door or go preach or participate in violent revolution is the inherent belief of riding the storm. Your not building a woodland return as a fallback base for your glorious freedom fighters. If American government collapse as you believe it sooner or later in your life time will... you'll be turtled up and staying low. If you were given a billion dollars you'd found Vault-Tech in an instant so you can be ready.

Note this is a very long cultural heritage lost in most other countries. We unlike Europe or Russia had our "hostile natives" period less than two hundred years ago. We have family where grand father kept a rifle on the farm to scare off those "Injuins". We have people living in homes their family built and have expanded since the great depresson put a generation into poverty. And we have still living people who filly embraced the Red Scare and shopped for Fallout shelters like you shop for a new blender. Not as a curiosity but as serious consideration if you had enough land to fit in the Mark 5 "Withstandator"

In the end they are not planning to tear down the order but for what comes after.

2. White Supremacists/Neo Nazi/Non-Drug related gangs
Locally a threat, nationally not an issue. Thirty years ago they were still causing terror in the south and they still have strong local effects. But the FBI has an excellent track record of infiltrating nearly all of these groups and anytime major serious organizations start forming and leaders start emerging how quickly the FBI shuts them down.

While these groups might over time grow large and dangerous they face the problem that these groups have literally been under watch since world war 2. Daddy a racist? Well we going to slip Agent Jethro into your first little concerned citizens meeting and keep an lose eye on your group for the next twenty years. And it's not to say these groups are all watched by 50 FBI agents per day. But get a trusted 3rd LT in the group and use his contacts to monitor a dozen other small groups for you. You'd be surprised how far a hundred or less in person infiltrators can hear and learn and get any group who gets to big or dangerous or organized down with any one of two dozen laws left on the books specifically for picking up these types of groups.


3. Sovereign Citizens/Secessionists/Libertarian Anarchists/Ultra-Nationalists
The most dangerous individual groups on average. They are normally always very dangerous individually, very hard to infiltrate and unpredictable. To call yourself a secessionist in this day and age as your primary identifier takes a special kind of crazy in any southern state. A white supremacists might hate THIS government but he's not opposed to all government period. All three of these groups hate government period. Man should be entilted to sweat of his own brow, you don't owe me and the like.

The reason why the groups are so functionally dangerous but nationally harmless is simple. Again critical mass, you can't go to a sovereign citizens rally without making even a 24/7 Fox news view think these people are nuts. Secessionists have to much cultural baggage to get far. They can claim a few high profile people or the occasional political pander but it's like advocating a return to slavery for the Nergo for his own good... even the White Supremacists think that's not supposed to be front and center on the party platform. Treat them like 3rd class citizens and put them under apartheid conditions sure... but chains and whips? come on now this is America.

4. Drug gangs, home grown and foreign terrorists.
Let me put it bluntly, Mexican drug gangs while very dangerous in Mexico would be met by the 101st airborne if even 1 day of what goes on during the bad weeks in Mexico happened on American soil in some small town.

And terrorists by their nature fair poorly in American recruitment because killing Americans brings out the same impluse be it terrorists or drug gangs. Serious violence in any geographic area (Not an inner city) would be met by 90% approval ratings and giving absolute control of the Galactic Senate to Senator Palpatine "for the duration".

[Dominus Atheos]

You forgot the group under discussion:

5: Ultra-conservatives/"Teahadists"

People who are absolutely convinced that B. HUSSEIN Obama is days away from turning the USA into a fascist Caliphate and they and their guns are the only thing that can stop him. They technically support the current form of government (or at least constantly refer to the constitution) and honestly consider themselves the "last line of defense" against (Obama's) tyranny.

When some bureaucrat suggests such an obviously political group maybe shouldn't be eligible for non-profit status that's supposed to be for charities, they go apeshit and are absolutely convinced that this is the start of the tyranny/Caliphate they were warning about all along.

[Mr Bean]

You forgot the group under discussion:

5: Ultra-conservatives/"Teahadists"

People who are absolutely convinced that B. HUSSEIN Obama is days away from turning the USA into a fascist Caliphate and they and their guns are the only thing that can stop him. They technically support the current form of government (or at least constantly refer to the constitution) and honestly consider themselves the "last line of defense" against (Obama's) tyranny.

When some bureaucrat suggests such an obviously political group maybe shouldn't be eligible for non-profit status that's supposed to be for charities, they go apeshit and are absolutely convinced that this is the start of the tyranny/Caliphate they were warning about all along.

That's all in group 3 the Sovereign citizens. I've added the tag Ultra-Nationalists because if you swap Russian for American you get the bad guys of the modern warfare games which amuses me.

This falls into the catchall group 3 since I use Sovereign citizens as a catch all group for possibly violent conspiracy nuts. Also any grouping of any one of those in group three typically features fellow travels from the other parts of 3 like Teahadists.

*Edit here's an edited wiki entry from the Call of Duty Wiki

The Ultranationalists are a revolutionary political party and armed organization in America who wish to return the country back to what it was during the days of the 1950s. They believe that the Democratic Party does not have the best interests of the Russian people at heart, siding with Foreign interests both philosophically and economically, and they perceive this to be destroying or weakening the America state. The Ultranationalists idolize the 1950s out of a sense of national pride, though their actual commitment to America political and economic ideals are left ambiguous and unknown.

In this crusade for national liberation, the Ultranationalists consider the powers of the Foreign world, specifically the China and the EU, to be major obstacles in their path, as well as any America who do not support their aims, which includes the political wing of the party which advocates peace with the foreigners. The extremist group's funds come from several criminal activities such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, hijackings, arms dealings and kidnappings.

Okay the crime does not make much since else I just edit it down to "The extremists group funding comes from rich old white guys and charismatic evangelists"

[Dominus Atheos]

I'd really disagree with putting " Ultra-Nationalists" in the same category as Secessionists and Anarchists. They are definitely their own category. Look at what you wrote for Secessionists/Libertarian Anarchists:

A white supremacists might hate THIS government but he's not opposed to all government period. All three of these groups hate government period...you can't go to a sovereign citizens rally without making even a 24/7 Fox news view think these people are nuts.

The people I'm talking about are the people who watch Fox News religiously.

[Zixinus]

The people who watch Fox News religiously are not going to seriously start a revolution. That defeats the purpose of the propaganda channel. Some might talk about starting a revolution, but not really consider actually starting one. Mayhem would brake out, the channel taken down and people left without a easy, central way to be organized and told what to do (unless a series of backup networks are made).

What these people will do is allow themselves to be organized by Fox News for specific political goals. Star rallies, make a tsunami of letters to their Senator, obstruct government functions, etc. Do political activity that they would not otherwise do for the benefit of the views of those making Fox News while the viewers think they are acting for their own benefit.

[Dominus Atheos]

You are talking past me. I'm talking about the gun owners under discussion by the OP, who think they will use their guns to fight the government it it ever turns fascist.

Of course they won't, but what we're discussing is what would happen if they did.

[LaCroix]

The main reason I raise the issues are twofold.

One is that by your argument, guerrilla warfare should be pretty much invariably doomed and screwed. We should expect the guerrillas to form up with their puny light-infantry weapons, march into the open with banners, and get slaughtered by the government's machine guns and artillery. Game over, the end.

And yet this does NOT happen. Instead, the guerrillas blend into the population, force the government forces to commit unpopular atrocities to rout them out, and often "win" by creating a situation where the government cannot retain effective control. So clearly we cannot say "army has big guns, rebels have little guns, lol army wins." It is not that simple.

Me: Rebels only win if they have almost equal weapons and superior numbers. People rising up and overthrowing army with private guns is almost impossible, due to superior armament of armies.
You: Modern rebellion would not only be civilians, but include parts of the army switching sides.

We are both essentially saying the same thing, unless some units of the army switch sides (or the rebels are armed by someone), the chances of winning in an open revolt are non-existent.

Guerillia/Terror warfare is possible, but in the USA, it would be much harder to do, since the population you are trying to terrorize - surprise - is armed... Also, the police is quite capable of dealing with armed groups, as they constantly deal with such groups.

[Zeropoint]

I like guns and have what many people would consider "a lot", but I just see them as fun toys (that need to be handled with respect, like power tools and automobiles). I fervently hope that I never have cause to point a gun at another human being in real life. Politically, I'd be quite happy to see our country turn into a "godless, socialist" country like, say, Sweden. Yeah, I favor social justice, universal health care, AND gun rights . . . plenty of people will have trouble wrapping their heads around that.

I just wanted to point out that not all gun owners are rabidly right-wing.

[Patroklos]

As has been mentioned already the most hard core of the gun rights crowd are either military or ex military and generally the ones on the pointy end of the spear to boot.

The assumption seems to be it would be the military verse these people where as I see it if we are at a point where we are ordering the military to actually attack and kill large swaths of the citizenry the military will probably sit it out and/or in part dissolve to a not insignificant degree. I, as a military member, can't think of too many general scenarios where I would not be violating my oath by following orders that would cause me to harm domestic citizens unless there is a very acute and organized group to be targeted that has overtly and violently challenged the government. And even then only if civilian law enforcement can't handle it. If its just "round up all the guns" then no, an illegal order (I never expect to get).

Also, as far as the revolution talk goes for every person talking about gun fanatics there is an occupyesque guy claiming income disparity is going to cause an overthrow of the elite. They are both far from the mark and in my opinion shows just how stable our system is that this sort of talk can be laughed at from all directions. No insurrection or any sort is going to happen, and the government is not going to do or not do something that will change this.

[Simon_Jester]

On the other hand, Patroklos, the fact that this sort of semi-revolutionary talk from the fringe seems to be getting more common should probably worry us. Maybe it doesn't mean that a revolution will actually happen, but the fact that there's so much hot air hissing out from the joints in the mechanism should tell us something funny's going on inside the machine.

I don't remember this country having any calls for left-wing revolution until the 2008 financial meltdown turned our economy into Great Depression: This Time With Food Stamps! I don't remember any right-wing calls to overthrow the government during the Bush years, and honestly in terms of policy not much has changed since the Bush years.

Something, or some combination of things, is causing people to freak out. We should at least take that seriously, because it may be that there's something very, very dysfunctional about our politics that causes people to talk 'revolution' who would never have done so five or ten years ago.

Me: Rebels only win if they have almost equal weapons and superior numbers. People rising up and overthrowing army with private guns is almost impossible, due to superior armament of armies.
You: Modern rebellion would not only be civilians, but include parts of the army switching sides.

Er: it's more like:

LaCroix:
Rebels only win if they have almost equal weapons and superior numbers. People rising up and overthrowing army with private guns is almost impossible, due to superior armament of armies.

Simon:
1) Rebels routinely turn into persistent guerrilla forces while armed with nothing but rifles and improvised bombs, and have been doing so since World War Two despite massive escalations in the firepower of modern weaponry. It is fairly common for these guerrilla forces to'win' or at least survive until the occupying power collapses.
2) BESIDES, a modern rebellion in the US would not only be civilians, but include parts of the army switching sides.

We are both essentially saying the same thing, unless some units of the army switch sides (or the rebels are armed by someone), the chances of winning in an open revolt are non-existent.

Since this will basically always happen, the counterfactual "But... WHAT IF IT DIDN'T?" is kind of pointless.

The real heart of my position is that the premise of "CAGE MATCH: US Army versus all private gun owners!" is so fundamentally stupid that it's not even worth talking about. The thread title, "Revolution in the US," is definitely worth talking about because it's more interesting... but only because we're smart enough to recognize that it's not a cage match.

Guerillia/Terror warfare is possible, but in the USA, it would be much harder to do, since the population you are trying to terrorize - surprise - is armed... Also, the police is quite capable of dealing with armed groups, as they constantly deal with such groups.

If a situation somehow arose in which there was a strong correlation between owning personal weapons and willingness to join the revolutionary forces, that might happen.

Honestly, while it's incredibly unlikely for this to actually happen, the Democrats have been politically reckless in the US by actively courting it, by raising the probability from, say, 0.00001 to 0.0001. They have done this by the way they've pushed the gun control issue, which has massively, needlessly alarmed a lot of twitchy people.

If the Republican Party had become the party of gun control in addition to their other policy planks, I suspect they would have ceased to exist as a functioning political organization by now. And I honestly can't see why the Democrats are a better match for gun control than the Republicans are.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Something, or some combination of things, is causing people to freak out. We should at least take that seriously, because it may be that there's something very, very dysfunctional about our politics that causes people to talk 'revolution' who would never have done so five or ten years ago.

I can offer you perhaps three ideas as to what those are, based on the rest of your post:

1. The Democrats being in the White House
2. Obama, a black man, being President
3. The fact that Obama's administration was the one that finally got bin Laden and "won the war" so to speak.

Gratned that's just my opinion, but a large amount of people who are talking in this revolutionary way seem to mention Obama a lot, as if everything is his fault. The 3rd option is pure speculation however.