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I think this isn't applicable to a theoretical "disarmed" US. Just look at how other recent civil wars started out, where an autocratic Government pushed the populace to far. Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine.
They all tried to violently suppress street protests, and the moment the badly armed population needed to fight back because they were getting shot in the streets, they either sacked police stations and military armories; or entire guard/police/army battalions switched sides and brought their guns with them.
I see no reason to think the US would turn out different. It's unthinkable that large-scale violence would be used against citizens in the streets with police/national guard/fed. armed forces just watching their neighbors and brothers being killed. The US still has sufficient diversity in its armed forces, there is no large distinct outgroup they would collectively tolerate being violently suppressed.
Also, police armories have gotten ridiculous, and defending them seems like a daunting task once you start slaughtering people in the streets. We've seen burning police stations before, at much lower stakes. Looting them before setting the fires is kind of a given.
This all depends on state capacity. The state capacity in these shithole countries is low and the discipline and morale in their armed forces is even lower. This can't happen in HK at all.
History has shown that they will kill if ordered to. Kent state is the most obvious example but there are others.
True, HK is a totally different story. But it's also very different than the US. I'm also not at all convinced that a few hundred thousand AR-15s would change their situation all that much.
That's kind of my point. Kent State is the obvious worst case example. At 4 dead and 9 wounded. The number of guardsmen actually aiming at bodies was probably lower than those two numbers, and it happens exceedingly rarely.
Which brings us back to discipline and morale. Unless some out-group is identified and systematically "othered", I can't see a guard unit murdering students in larger numbers without both going out the window on day one.
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Vietnam war protestors were pretty much hated by working class Americans at the time, IIRC, to the extent of unions siding with republicans when it meant they got to go beat up some of them, so the national guard being violent and brutal towards them means less than you think.
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I don’t think this is true. The US security forces are pretty much all blacks and republicans. The FBI is a small minority.
Just above 20% and just below 60%, respectively. I'm not too worried yet. Also, in the grand spectrum of possible political ideologies, Republicans and Democrats stand pretty closely together.
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