good points all...Americans Buy a Close to 1 Million Guns in February 2011
In a SHTF scenario where there's a general crackdown on Constitutional Rights and an uprising by the populace, you forget the criminal/disenfranchised element that would also be taking advantage of the situtation as they are in London. Pre-occupied with those mobs, LEOs could little afford to do the bidding of would-be Tyrants in Mordor on the Potomac by opening up a new front against well-armed Patriots.
Doing so, en masse or even one Patriot at a time, would quickly decimate their ranks leaving it up to state level LEOs, again eventually decimated, and then to the Feds with no more local support resulting in even more local chaos. LEOs, even SWAT teams, are trained and equipped for mostly that: Law Enforcement and the possible suppression of an armed criminal or two, not the suppression of a well-armed general uprising. They also have families to protect and might be too pre-occupied with that to even show up for work.
With our own military having a tough go of it in smaller 3rd World countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, what makes you think the entire US could be easily suppressed??
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, Give me Liberty, or give me Death!"
I agree. And another factor to consider is that there has never been a social upheaval such as the one we’re discussing, where the law-abiding population was so well armed. Including with tens of millions of scoped deer rifles. The FLEAs will not be eager to incur the general wrath of a “million deer rifle army of one,” with no group, no membership, nothing but shots fired one at a time from long range.
I’ll remind you what happened to the World War I veterans that camped on the Washington Mall demanding that Congress pay them the bonus they were promised early (google bonus army for the story). This was for the most part a peaceful demonstration that happened at the start of the depression in 1932. A Republican President sent the Army in to kick them out with several people being killed (including a baby). Don’t think that if you represent a threat to the powers that be that they won’t find the time and resources to deal with you, even if everything else is going to hell. Looters that are killing, robbing and raping other peons don’t represent a threat to them so they won’t really care but an armed and organized group trying to take control does and they will react very swiftly and forcefully.
I lived through the LA riots after the Rodney King beating and I can tell you that if you had been shooting at the looters in the nicer parts of town that you would have been arrested (in fact many shop owners were arrested and sent to jail for a long, long time). The Armed Koreans for the most part were ignored by the cops because they were in the middle of the no go zone for the cops. So I would say that it would depend on where you are because even in that situation there were places were the cops still had control. Also, it was more of a political move by the cops to pull out of the black areas rather than a lack of manpower (at least at first).
In any case survival will be your first priority during those time and trust me there won’t be much opportunity to organize a revolution when your looking for the next meal.
good points all...