Re:Guns are now killing as many people as cars in the U.S
by caseysoftware on Thursday December 17, 2015 @03:17PM
(#10754200)
Thanks, I hadn't seen that survey before.
Re:Guns are now killing as many people as cars in the U.S
by delecti on Thursday December 17, 2015 @02:52PM
(#10754001)
Your scenario would still present a situation where civilian arms ownership, while the cause of the conflict, is relatively inconsequential in the ensuing conflict itself. The military against itself is still a conflict with military grade arms.
Re:Guns are now killing as many people as cars in the U.S
by pdkl95 on Thursday December 17, 2015 @03:28PM
(#10754271)
That is possible. My point is mainly that it isn't going to be the lopsided "civilians vs army" scenario. The military isn't a single monolithic entity.
As for the utility of civilian being armed, I think you are underestimating the deterrence factor. Yes, they would lose in some situations and are less important in others.
Consider the situation from the perspective of the attacking army. Fighting an army is hard enough, but that attack is a lot harder if you also have to defend against the population in general. The counter to that problem is a scorched earth policy that doesn't leave a population that could be a threat, but such a policy is risky and can easily turn more people against you.
We see this when our army fights in the middle east: when you want to maintain good PR instead of razing cities, small arms and IEDs can be surprisingly effective.
What would be more likely to happen is something like the Civil War where the army itself was also divided. Even more importantly, it is a lot harder to control an army when the targets are the people the army supposedly exists to protect. In a survey[1] of "300 U.S. Marine Corps soldiers" about unit cohesion when working with the UN, the final question asked:
The results of that question suggests a "citizens vs army" scenario is very unlikely. Small groups of people often have some kind of consistency across the group, because the definition of the group self-selects for something. (e.g. the people who choose to attend a chess club tend to like to play chess) As a group grows in size, the makeup of the group tends to become more heterogeneous. Eventually, as the group becomes very large, the makeup of the group tends to resemble the makeup of the general population.The military is a very large group of people, so the individual attitudes and politics of a soldier tends to resemble the attitudes and politics seen in the country in general. When considering a topic that is obviously politically controversial, you should expect that the people serving in the armed forces will be approximately as divided as the rest of the citizens.
[1] http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a293790.pdf