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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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