w/r/t firearms: there's a reason I spoke about retired military in my (probably unlikely) fantasy of a coup in the U.S., and particularly a reason that I mentioned it happening at the level of the Colonels. The Generals are generally too tied to politicians and the military-industrial-complex, many colonels and lesser ranks less so. The enlisted people have all the same social and economic concerns that regular Americans do (and this, parenthetically, is why there have been a lot of very cogently argued pieces calling upon left-wing people to join the military—for the very reason that they are often disinclined to; so that they can gain experience and possibly even do things a bit differently if given authority to do so.) Retired military also have the same concerns as everyday people, perhaps even more so.
In addition, Americans are an armed people. While we do not have tanks or nuclear weapons or even fully automatic weapons for the most part (exceptions being a smaller than the naïve or Hollywood-informed assumption would believe number of criminals, licensed/registered arms dealers, and people willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money on them, the cheapest fully automatic weapons of thousands of dollars and good ones are at the high end of that at least), military organization and so on, but in a coup-type situation, the coup could be joined by ex-military, armed civilians, law enforcement officers, and so on, not with the idea of physically attacking and prevailing over the other elements in the military but of holding enough power to be able to deal with the "untouchables" like the bankers, political establishment and lobbying organizations (especially foreign), and so on. There would have to be a lot of organization, done in secret, cooperation from within the intelligence sector; tanks more or less simultaneously have to roll in major coastal cities, military bases, media and government centers, Internet and communications infrastructure, tech companies like Google and Facebook, other organizations for information and propaganda, infrastructure like power plants and dams, etc.
Mass arrests of government and corporate malefactors, preventative detention of potential troublemakers, expulsion of malignant foreign influences, etc. and closure of nonessential state apparatus would have to go on for some time. Hopefully this could be achieved to some degree with and then counting on increasing support of many veterans, armed civilians, law enforcement agencies, even others. Even if a criminal organization has de facto control over an area, perhaps their assistance would be useful or even necessar. Thus embedding average people already into the system (one of the major problems of having a professional as opposed to a conscripted military, as I'll talk about below, is that this is less so) and addressing real concerns. I doubt the outcome could be worse than what we either see now or where we would have to be in order for any talk of this could be remotely possible.
Our country is so vast, of course, and our military so complex, that this might not be possible at all, but a good place to start might be state National Guards; even if only some part of the country can be held down, possible results might be able to be achieved. A place like New York (desirable for finance, the U.N., propagana, many other things), or D.C., of course, would be quite difficult as would be non-cooperating military bases and so on; but in a situation where things are really degenerating, it is not beyond the imagination that several batallions of National Guard could, with good leadership and propaganda, seize substantial territory and obtain some measure of results. A bloody Civil War like Lincoln's would be unfathomable to the American sensibilities today, although, of course, the perpetrators would be labeled as "terrorists," but it could go a lot of interesting places and the ability of the government to rapidly act to counteract it might not be so easy. Again, this is in a hypothetical nearish-future where things have gotten substantially worse for the country in a lot of ways (I see no other possible direction.) The big threats would be special operations, of course, overwhelming military power used against fellow Americans not being something which could likely be politically feasible. Control of a nuclear facility or two could help make people think twice. The coup would need ground, air, quite probably sea, forces, and very importantly, elecronic/information warfare capabilities and excellent leadership and propaganda to ever pull off.
Again, this is unlikely, I think, a fantasy, but also, I think, were these possibilities to eventuate, one of the only possible ways forward. Armed resistance and lone-wolf or even cell-structured terrorism will not overthrow a government like ours and will probably only make things worse and mass civilian movements will not overcome as powerful a propaganda machine as ours or as totalitarian a government as ours and will also probably only make things worse by fractioning the people doing the protesting and allowing the government to give token concessions. This is why I think for things to improve we'd need the military. The military would also need us. Where to go from there, of course, is a major question. I of course would wish for a classical-fascist, corporatist [in the traditional sense]/national-syndicalist type of government with a strong head of state and limited exercise of mass democracy but rather the achievement of the people's will via corpora or syndicates. Others would have different visions. "We want our country back." We do, but we won't get it, we never really had it in the first place, least of most all during our lifetimes and almost without a doubt within the lifetimes or perhaps even living memory of those who would be around for when the opportunity to implement this kind of situation eventuated.
But whether this could happen even in the next 20-50+ is greatly questionable. With every year passing, though, the need for such radical action would increase and the capability to suppress it would probably increase right along with it; some great crisis would have to take place with informal networks between men of action already existing. The first step would be to make these networks or alliances. Maybe even, if we're really starting to talk fantasy, on a multigenerational level going forward holding certain sacred ideals.
This is starting to get far out, though. I'm just talking out of nowhere, really, about what I think it would take to unfuck this country.
Definitely more than the ballot box or our individual cartridge boxes or Linux boxes. That's for sure.
As a footnote, and a more realistic topic, although not one really with which to distract this already mightily-distracted thread,
I am also strongly in favor of reinstating a peacetime draft and/or mandatory service for young men around 19-21; women, too, given the size of the population not all of the mandatory service would need to be as warriors, although some women could chose that role and men chose others as well, although I still strongly believe the military draft in particular had ought to be male-only and that the presence of women in the military is not without it's issues. Not to derail the thread there, please..
Not only do I think will it make it harder for political leaders to call for needless wars, but it will provide military training for a wider swath of the population, as well as being likely to be a pretty good cure for a lot of the diseases of the "millenial/post-millenial" psyche, i.e. delayed adulthood, etc.
