Stop fantasizing about a war between U.S. citizens and their military

I’m begging you all, please, stop this. The thing you’re fantasizing about is called sectarian violence. Put aside the question of whether U.S. service members will comply with an order to confiscate rifles forcibly. Put aside the question of whether U.S. service members will agree to engage in armed conflict with fellow citizens (it wouldn’t be the first time). These miss the point. The point is the fantasy that the U.S. military agrees to a forced confiscation program and that gun owners are obliterated in an attempt to resist by force of arms.

A conflict between the U.S. military and those who refuse to give up their civilian rifles would not be quick. It would not be “mostly peaceful,” as the popular media euphemism goes. It certainly would not be bloodless. Indeed, forced door-to-door confiscation would undoubtedly lead to a great deal of death and brutality (if you think no-knock raids involving local police departments are dangerous, just wait until actual branches of the Department of Defense start kicking in doors). Things would only get worse from there. It would devolve into outright sectarian violence, which is and always will be hell on earth.

Ask the Northern Irish. Ask the Syrians. Ask the Rwandans.

Yet, despite history and a preponderance of evidence demonstrating just how costly and deadly these types of conflicts can be, some still wonder whether it would be so bad to pit the U.S. military against those persistent right-wing gun fetishists.

I assure you it would.