Recently President Asterisk suggested that it was foolish for citizens to own guns because how could they possibly defend themselves against atomic bombs and F-15 fighter jets, suggesting that the government would use those weapons against Americans. It was a stupid comment, and one that army reservist and columnist Kurt Schlichter took issue with, as do I.
The American Revolution was fought by bakers, schoolteachers, lawyers, farmers, butchers, blacksmiths and other ordinary Americans. And they defeated what was then the greatest country in the world. No, the British didn’t have bombs of any kind to drop on Middlesex villages or fighter jets to strafe them from the sky. But they did have a well-trained, seasoned fighting force with state-of-the-art weapons for 1776 as well as a slew of officers and generals. But the colonists were fighting for their freedom. With their hunting muskets, they fought guerilla warfare, not organized army against army warfare. They hid in the woods and attacked the British as they passed by. They destroyed bridges to trap the British where they could pick them off and then disappeared again into the trees. Guerilla warfare is extremely difficult to fight with regular troops. Ask any soldier who fought in Viet Nam. Yet Biden thinks the U.S. Armed Forces would defeat an uprising of incensed citizens with bombs and jets?
We would be talking American soldiers killing other Americans, and those Americans would be fighting for their freedom and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution which each soldier had sworn to uphold. How keen would the soldiers be to fight? How desperate and determined would the freedom fighters be? It would be worse that the Civil War because it would be basically the East and West Coast against the rest of the country, the part of the country that feeds the East and the West Coasts and contains the oil and gas fields to fuel military vehicles. 43% of the oil and gas produced in the U.S. comes from Texas, a Republican state. Of the top oil producing states, 3 are red states, with Alaska, also a red state, coming in a close 6th. To devastate red states would leave the government starving and without the means to fuel their tanks and jets. In addition, if it were Conservative against the Left, of which Biden is now the titular leader, how could you bomb cities and towns that contained your own Democrat supporters? Would you warn them to flee? Or would they just be acceptable collateral damage?
And how many Marines, soldiers, or airmen are going to balk at waging war against their relatives, their neighbors, their friends? How many of them are going to rip off their uniforms instead and join the insurgents? Can Biden be sure? And how well trained are those troops? Many of them only served a tour or two before leaving to return to civilian life, while all of the states are packed with reservists who make up the National Guard. These former soldiers have not only served in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they go on maneuvers regularly. And their armories are stocked with the same weapons that the regular army will have. Does Biden really expect that the 28 Republican Governors are going order their National Guards to shoot their families and neighbors? And if he federalizes them and gives the order himself, how many of them would actually carry out those orders and how many would instead go over to the side of their families? How many National Guardsmen even in Blue states would kill their own families in order to keep a tyrannical government in power? And the moment that people take up arms, those National Guard armories in blue states are going to have trouble keeping their weapons from immediately being looted.
Kurt Schlichter points out that it took three Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) of 4,000 to 5,000 troops to quell the riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating a few years ago. How many BCTs would it take to combat some 165 million Americans in thousands of cities and towns around the center of the country? Do we have enough BCTs to do that in the U.S. and how long would it take to bring them home from elsewhere if needed? And how would the government keep supply lines going when all those farmers have fertilizer with which to make bombs to blow up roads and convoys, not to mention the construction companies who have explosives?
Schlichter also asks if Biden even knows how many operable F-15s are available and how many sorties they could fly per day. As for atomic bombs, prevailing winds would carry the radioactive fallout from red states into the eastern seaboard, killing off all those nice Leftists there. Unintended consequences.
During the Civil War, some families in border states had one son fighting for the South and another for the North, but for the most part, entire states in the South succeeded. They were not heavily sprinkled with Northerners. But every blue state contains large areas of Republicans and every red state has some areas of Democrats. There are few places that can be safely bombed without killing the government’s supporters and allies.
Thus, Biden’s comment was one of the stupidest things he has said. If either side actually takes up arms against the other, it will be the bloodiest civil war you can imagine. But it certainly will not be a quick victory for the government. In fact, the government may well, like Great Britain, lose. There is a lot of patriotism and pride in America burning fiercely in the hearts of middle Americans. They will remember the words of Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty, or give me death!” I don’t think they will give up their liberty willingly!