Let's think about the need for weapons to repel an out of control government coming for YOU.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

24. If you want to control a population with force, at some level you need

to "control the streets". The people and neighborhoods and streets need to be controlled. Businesses don't run themselves, money doesn't do anything without people to work with it, and cities aren't valuable without their people in compliance. Governments and nations are built in a pyramid scheme, and without the populace, the rest of the governments sitting atop the people falters.

Your OP ignores the end game of a tyrannical government. The fact that the government has tanks, planes, nukes, and ships is irrelevant. They will not help to control a population at the street level. Those items only serve to make America stronger because we evidently don't give a shit if OTHER countries cities get destroyed... that's not our problem. I fail to see how the US destroying it's own infrastructure is productive to itself. You don't control millions of people in a city by destroying it. We're not talking about little pop-guns defeating a Soviet nuclear strike or anything.

At some point, to maintain or establish government control over The People, government boots will have to hit the ground. And what awaits government forces in the public jungle? Nearly 300,000,000 firearms owned by an estimated 80,000,000 people. If only 10% of gun owners are, as you say, stupid enough to resist our Armed forces... they would outnumber US troops 8 to 3. And the resistance would look American, speak American, smarter and more learned than other countries/enemies, and blend in to the rest of society 100%. The collateral damage would be so severe in such a campaign, that more enemy resistance would be created than destroyed.

If you doubt this is the case, look at Afghanistan. I'm currently stationed in Afghanistan as I type this. These are people who have little infrastructure, they live in mud/shit huts (the ones who aren't lucky enough to find enough trash and nails to construct a hard shelter), an have AKs and other remnants of 1960's technology Cold War souvenirs. Sure, we bombed the shit out of Afg to kick off this campaign. We tossed their fucking salad with billions of dollars of missiles, rockets, bombs, and jets. We even have that nifty CIWS/Phalanx over here. And what happened when it came time to actually take control? Ten years... over ten years they've resisted the Armed Forces of the most technology advanced and powerful military empire the world has ever known. I have little doubt that our Nation's millions of guns can adequately protect it from it's own government.

And nothing I wrote above even begins to address the fact that you think American Armed Forces, who exist to protect america and her citizens, would turn guns onto other Americans. To think that American troops would kill other Americans... your post, when viewed in that context, is absolutely disgusting. Fucking disgusting.