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The whole thread is mostly on semantics of firearms and their presence.

I've found this to be pretty much any article that even tangentially relates to firearms. Gun nuts will never leave semantics and have an actual discussion.

Gotta be extremely naive to believe laws are for anybody except the poor, minorities, indigenous, etc.

It's always been more than legal to enforce privilege through violence, planetary destruction, etc.

Expecting to use violence to control people in the USA is like expecting to control bears with bear spray.

If Trump thinks he can pull a Tiananmen Square then he's about to find out the tanks can lose.

Yes but these are the talking points the NRA give out that "liberal gun owners" also start regurgitating. The idea that their Emotional Support Assault Rifle (ESAR for short) is safe and important because it isn't the standard issue weapon of the US military.

Its why you see so much "an M4 is not an AR-15" stupidity (that firearms experts and "guntube" continue to call idiotic). Which is an outright lie because the M4 (and M16 before it) is literally a military designation for a specific configuration of the AR-15 platform (actually a family of designations because M4A1, M4A2, etc). Pretending that it somehow stops being an AR-15 because it has select fire capabilities is like pretending it stops being an AR-15 once you put an optic on it.

And a lot of that boils down to one of the biggest poison pills in what little gun control the US has (which I'll refer to as the NFA for shorthand). The idea that the big danger of privately owned firearms is automatic fire is an outright lie when militaries around the world actively discourage soldiers from using automatic fire on anything but a machine gun (and said machine gunners are trained to fire in very controlled bursts, if not single shots, even when suppressing an enemy position...).

And it is especially hilarious because most modern ESARs are based on weapons systems that were specifically designed for military use and where re-enabling the holy automatic fire is the work of a dremel and a trip to the hardware store.

As a tangent. Funny enough, the past decade or so has seen a very large rise in Emotional Support guns that are actively NOT suitable for any modern combat (still great for slaughtering kindergartners though).

The rising cost of intermediate ammunition (e.g. 5.56/.223) because everyone panic buys it every time the world catches on fire has led to a huge rise in "pistol caliber carbines" which are just military rifle platforms (e.g. the AR-15) but chambered for handgun ammo. So... reinventing submachine guns but with the appropriate attachment points for all the tacticool shit.

And then you have the Keltec Specials which are borderline novelty guns designed to get some publicity at a convention and then be sold to rich people and folk who need an ESAR but cheaper. The "joke" being that if you got one of those designers even slightly drunk they would outright say that anyone who thinks those will hold up under even slightly adverse conditions is a moron.

That's all police in a nutshell.

Don't worry,, he'll make sure all the shot people stop being citizens after the fact.

P320 is M17, shorter barrel is named M18. I suspect that just like USAF, the NGs use mostly M18 which were cleared from possible malfunctions except that they wear down from use too quickly for heavy use.

The National Guard are the remnants of the militias that the US used to depend on and that the second amendment was actually about. The idea of civilians with military training who can be raised in times of great need and... what many (most?) Global North countries have as their default.

Many of them are former active duty military (e.g. The Army) who wanted to keep pulling an extra paycheck and benefits after becoming civilians. Others are just dumbasses who got tricked by the "Just spend two weekends out of the year training and you too can have an ice sword that kills dragons" nonsense.

Their actual role is... questionable. Sometimes they get pulled in to help with natural disasters but they have no meaningful training outside of holding guns to scare people and maybe building sandbag walls. According to a climbing buddy who had to interface with them back during Hurricane Katrina... they actively made everything worse and got in the way constantly and she had to unofficially allocate resources to protect the Guard that could have otherwise been spent helping rescue those in need. But, Support The Troops(TM) and all that. Back in uni, they were the jackboots who were called out any time people "rioted" (theoretically because a sports team lost or it was Spring Break. Mostly because kids started protesting) and their job was to look intimidating and bully/beat on anyone who was out past curfew.

A not insignificant number were also sent to Iraq/Afghanistan when the US Military realized they couldn't keep stop-lossing everyone who was dumb enough to sign up for the Military proper.

In their day to day civilian life? They are basically just normal people. Some work in tech, others food service, and MANY are small town cops because that also lets them carry a gun. The key unifying factor is they all will act like they are heroic veterans who killed fiddy men and make damned sure to flaunt their military credentials to board planes faster or to get a discount at the hardware store.

Like a lot of things modern military, it is worth looking at the Invasion of Ukraine. The professional soldiers (former standing military and PMCs from around the world) make up the forces that actually take ground or are deployed for operations where skill and discipline are needed. The civilian population that were conscripted and given a gun man the trenches because all that is really needed there are bodies to send bullets down range and soak up the ones coming back at them.

The National Guard are very much the latter.

Basically reservists, the National Guard is brought up under control of the states/feds for emergencies/disasters. Generally you'd see them building flood levees or rescuing people in hurricanes or (occasionally) shooting college students in the '70s. They're not really designed for peace time occupation but the admin's gotta find jack boots somewhere.