[TheForge] coffee and guns

[Jerry Smith]

Guys,

This could be a long windy debate and lots of
variables can be brought forth.

The one thing I do remember from the guerrilla war
that I fought in was the 11 year old sniper who gave
his life for something he probably didn't understand. 
Over whelming fire power took him out, but he wounded
two soldiers and kill one other before a Sandy drop a
nightmare of ordinance on him.

Colin Powell's doctrine of overwhelming force is a
good military strategy, but many others pretty much
said and did the same thing thru the ages. During WW
II in Europe the Allied Air Forces bombed 24 hours a
day. In Vietnam, Nixon finally allowed bombing of
Hanoi and the mining of the main harbor in North
Vietnam. I feel that Hanoi should have been a free
fire zone through out the war, it would have ended
much sooner when a crater remained after BUFFs dropped
their 72,000 pound bomb loads, one right after
another.

But remember no amount of fire power could have done
what ended the Cold War, that was economics.

For the Wackos in Waco, one Cobra could have done that
compound in. The attack time would have been minutes.
A 500 pound bomb would have not been really the
effective attack that we would think it would be, try
a BLU-73(fuel air bomb)or the more well known Naplam.
But that would have been a PR disaster for the gov.

As far as a small militia group taking over the
America, it would not happen. The U.S. Armed Forces is
mighty, but watch the old Burt Lancaster movies; 7
Days in May.


Lets get back to heating and beating.

It will help warm ed up, it's cold out.

Jerry

--- ries <ries at riesniemi.com> wrote:

> 
> On Dec 17, 2007, at 1:21 PM, Andrew Vida wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And finally, Jim is spot on.  The ONLY thing keeping
> government from  
> running wholly roughshod over us is the fact that we
> are pretty well  
> armed.  Were it otherwise, the few rights we retain
> would probably  
> have flown away decades ago.
> 
> 	-Andy
> 
> 
> 
> Andy, you are a great guy, but you are completely
> FOS on this one.
> No war in history has been won by small arms alone,
> and the ONLY  
> thing keeping government from running roughshod over
> us is the  
> constitution and our rule of law- GUNS HAVE NOTHING
> TO DO WITH IT.
> 
> Any serious government, equipped with helicopters,
> tanks, jets,  
> napalm, AC-130's, Bradley's and Strikers and
> Predator drones, along  
> with the money to buy a few billion rounds of ammo a
> month, laughs at  
> the small arms owned by individuals in the USA.
> Without a foreign nation supporting us against our,
> or any other  
> government, we would be toast in two weeks.
> 
> The successful guerilla wars of the last 5 decades
> or so were all  
> only successful because a large industrialised
> nation, be it China,  
> the USA, or the Soviet Union, supported the
> guerillas with a steady  
> flow of new weapons ( in real combat, guns wear out
> very fast-  
> machine gun barrels may last one day sometimes, and
> even a very well  
> maintained assault rifle has a short lifespan) ammo,
> and, most  
> essentially, crew served weapons.
> Without medium to heavy machine guns, mortars,
> rpg's, surface to air  
> missles, and hundreds of tons of explosives, all of
> which are in very  
> short supply in private hands in the USA, you have
> about a snowball's  
> chance in hell of surviving a few days against the
> average big city  
> police department, much less a real army.
> 
> With all that stuff, and bucketloads of US dollars,
> the likes of  
> Osama and his Mujadeen in Afghanistan were a public
> relations  
> annoyance to the soviets- but they didnt win any
> war- they just  
> convinced politicians at home to pull out.
> 
> Koresh had 50 caliber rifles, full auto weapons, and
> a reasonable  
> supply of ammo for a private individual in the USA.
> He and his  
> managed to kill a few feds by surprising them, but
> in a war  
> situation, his seige would have lasted 2 hours, not
> 51 days.
> A couple of runs by F-15's with 500lb bombs, and it
> would have been  
> over by lunch.
> 
> So if the government actually decided to flex the
> incredible force it  
> has as the largest military power on earth, no
> amount of deer rifles  
> and glocks and shotguns would make much difference.
> 
> This has nothing to do with our second amendment
> rights- its just  
> pointing out that the private ownership of weapons
> in the USA has no  
> impact whatsoever on our internal freedoms- the
> Yemenis own more  
> weapons per capita than we do, and they live in a
> feudal, religious  
> state of opression, where you can pretty much shoot
> anybody you want,  
> but a woman cant walk down the street unescorted.
> 
> Guns are good for a lot of things- but their mere
> presence does not  
> mean freedom, democracy, or a hands off government.
> 
> ries
> Ries Niemi
> Industrial Artist
> http://www.riesniemi.com/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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