> Which is exactly why we resist laws that ban rifles.
s/Glock/AR-15/, point still stands regardless of what common legal firearm you want to replace Glock with.
> I don't think you fully grasp the extent to which the US population is armed.
You have entirely missed the point. The existence of small arms is not what lead the Taliban to success against the US. They had billions of dollars from the opium trade, donations, and foreign aid. This money was not just spent to purchase weapons; it was used to fund training camps, fund recruiting operations, buy off politicians and local warlords, maintain supply lines, and the other infrastructure you need to wage war. These are the things the three letter agencies would take note of.
tl;dr: Small arms (in any quantity) are a small piece of what you would need to wage an effective insurgency against ol' Uncle Sam.
No it doesn't. The rhetoric of "remove weapons of war from America's streets" does not jive with the "small arms are not good enough weapons of war" argument.
> The existence of small arms is not what lead the Taliban to success against the US.
Okay, but Americans have more than that, they have everything you mentioned. They have the largest economy in the world from which to draw the wealth needed for those things. They have militias, they have state governments with treasuries, a significant portion of the population is trained by way of service in the military.
But even beyond all that, I think you're underestimating the importance of small arms in waging an insurgency. All of those other things exist only to ensure that bullets can be fired.
> The rhetoric of "remove weapons of war from America's streets" does not jive with the "small arms are not good enough weapons of war" argument.
I never mentioned removing or outlawing firearms. But by all means, continue to strawman.
> Okay, but Americans have more than that, they have everything you mentioned. They have the largest economy in the world from which to draw the wealth needed for those things. They have militias, they have state governments with treasuries, a significant portion of the population is trained by way of service in the military.
The functioning society of America has that, but a ragtag insurgency within the country does not. Do you think those state treasuries are physical things you can raid? Do you think corporate America isn't going to help keep the status quo? Do you think all of the anti-crime monitoring (especially in the realm of finance) won't notice any of this before it gets too big? Government gets a whiff of this and it's all too easy to paint the group as a bunch of right-wing nutjobs and sick the ATF on them.
The initiating event would have to be so catastrophic that a large percentage of the population "defects" in a very short timespan. And at that point things are so cataclysmic that the Second Amendment isn't even a factor any more.
> I think you're underestimating the importance of small arms in waging an insurgency.
And I think you're underestimating everything else. The successful insurgencies in history generally did not start out with a well armed population. Small arms are easy to smuggle in once everything else is going--especially when you have a foreign benefactor.
Which is exactly why we resist laws that ban rifles.
> You’re not going to get that in appreciable quantities in the middle of the US without Uncle Sam and several three letter agencies noticing.
I don't think you fully grasp the extent to which the US population is armed.