Gun Control and Tyranny

Recently Nick Gillespie over at Reason wrote a piece about gun control discussing his discomfort with many of the proponents and their arguments. He makes a quite reasonable argument overall, one I think reflects the thoughts of many people who are pro-gun rights on principle. I am particularly happy he makes the general point that free people are free to own what they will without justification. The notion that people need sufficient justification to own guns (the only thing they are made for is killing people!) has continually come up in the past few months, and I have seen precious few people even challenge it.

However, there is one passage I want to challenge, as people seem very comfortable making the argument without really considering it:

The notion that a rag-tag band of regular folks armed with semi-automatic weapons and the odd shotgun are a serious hedge against tyranny strikes me as a stretch (and I even saw the remake of Red Dawn!).

This is a counter point to the common argument by gun rights activists that gun ownership protects against tyranny, particularly that of our own government. Others who have elaborated (Nick didn't bother) point out that the US government has tanks, bombs, nukes and the like, so how could a few semi-auto rifles and shotguns in the hands of the citizens matter? Likewise, if China gets crazy and invades, are some citizens with rifles going to make the difference?

The main issue of this argument is that it does not acknowledge the different stages of warfare, and how the tools apply to them. I am going to lay out three different types of warfare, and show how the tools, the tanks, missiles, bombs, and guns are used to very different effect. But first, some talk about goals. Because you gotta have goals. 

The classic understanding of how to win a war is to take away your opponent's ability or desire to resist. Effectively this is the economic approach to war as well: it is cheaper over all, both in lives and resources, to either leave your opponent unable to fight any longer, or compel them to stop fighting of their own accord. You do this by either destroying their capability to compete (say by destroying their navy in a primarily maritime conflict) or by making it so costly to continue that they decide that their best option is to quit the war early (say by nuking a city or two.) No matter which path you choose (Can't or Won't) the goal is to avoid having to kill your opponent down to the last man, the worst possible way to win. (If you are in a hurry, skip to the TL:DR heading below.)

So now that we know how wars are won on a high level, we need to look at the types of wars people fight. I am going to go really broad and say there are three types:

1: Conquest

2: Defense

3: Internal

The interesting thing about these categories is that one side is always Conquest, with the other side beginning in the Defense type and transitioning into Internal. The interactions between these types determine the methods that are most useful.

Conquest is effectively "You have stuff, and I want to take it." This is the idea behind China invading the US; they want to control our country or what have you. The second Iraq war (let's just call it that for now) was basically the same thing. Hussein had control of Iraq, and the US and others wanted to take it away from him. Effectively you have an attacker who has to force control on another.

A Conquest/Defensive war looks a lot like how we see war in movies, with battlefields and sides fighting over territory. The defenders try to keep the attackers out entirely, focusing on removing their ability to attack, such as destroying units, cutting bridges, all the usual things we think of with regard to war. At the same time, the defender is attempting to make the attacker lose interest but making attacking costly, by destroying units, and possibly launching counter attacks into the attacker's territory. The latter tactic was pretty much the underpinning of the whole Cold War strategy: no one will attack because if they do, their cities get nuked shortly thereafter.

If the defense wins at this point in the war, things generally end. The attacker gets repelled, and either the defender stops at their border or starts their own war of conquest into the former aggressor's territory, continuing the war from the other side. If the defense loses, however, the war is not over and instead transitions into the internal phase.

The Internal phase begins when the attacker has control of territory, but has not removed resistance to their will. We often think of this as revolution, insurgency or a dozen other terms, but the general point is that while the attacker has control of an area and cannot be stopped from rolling tanks and troops into it they still do not face a populace who will do as they say without direct, individual violence. This is the stance of most resistance fighters, civil uprisings, and underground fighters, either when their preferred government is overthrown or when they deem their government as illegitimate. The internal phase is often referred to as asymmetric warfare, as the would be conqueror has all the military might compared to the insurgents. 

Now, how the attacker goes about things is very different depending on the phase of the war. In the Conquest/Defense stage, there is often a mix of destruction of ability to resist and destroying willingness to resist, but the focus tends to be on the latter for the simple reason that if you destroy everything you are obviating your reason to attack in the first place. You don't want to destroy the very things you want to take. The major exceptions to this are wars of genocide, where the goal isn't so much taking as destroying, and wars that begin to drag on to the point that getting things over with becomes more desirable than any particular city or what not.

The defender in the Conquest/Defense phase, however, often uses destruction of means and will at the same time. Destroying enemies in the field accomplishes both goals, and launching counter attacks, such as destroying factories, often does as well. Importantly the Defender needs to show much less restraint, as if they are only defending, they can destroy their opponent's country freely. Having not had interest in taking it in the first place, nuking a city or two does not change their cost/benefit analysis.

In the Conquest/Internal phase, the attacker is further restricted in their behavior. Unless they absolutely see no value in the populace (which is possible, but unlikely) they have strong incentives to not be destructive for two reasons. Firstly, they have already taken control of non-human resources, and so destroying the area to remove resistance is counterproductive. Secondly, while some portion of the populace might be willing to accept the killing of insurgents (say in the case of civil war, or simply those who don't want to fight the attacker any more) indiscriminate killing will only create backlash against the attackers, making their occupation more expensive, and possibly being counterproductive. It is possible that massacres and extermination will decrease resistance to an attacker, but in general it is not considered likely. So, between destroying the very resources and people you wish to control, and likely increasing resistance over all, the attacker needs to be careful to only choose tactics which will on whole reduce the insurgents’ willingness to resist, as destroying ability is generally extremely costly. 

The insurgents, however, have a somewhat clearer position, with many more degrees of freedom. Destroying the attacker, say by ambushing patrols, convoys or the like, is easier because it is clear who the attacker is. If this is not an option, simply making control of an area extremely expensive is very much an option, by very much the same tactics. By being able to blend back into the populace, the insurgents become effectively the prize and the enemy, making the attacker use very labor intensive methods to root them out. From the insurgent's side, all they need to do is make the cost of control more than the benefit.

To add just one more layer to these considerations, let’s look quickly at how you fight from an economic standpoint. That is to say, do you fight in a labor intensive manner, or capital intensive?

Labor intensive is how wars used to be fought: more bodies, each with very limited capability, but there are lots of them. As technology improved over the eons, however, things start to shift towards capital intensive warfare, where you spend more on each soldier to make them more effective. Fewer bodies, but they are individually more effective. 

Some examples over time would be the Aztec hordes (labor intensive) vs. the Conquistadors in their armor (capital intensive); the Russians in WW2 (labor intensive) vs. the Germans (capital intensive); the North Koreans (labor) vs. the United States (capital.) Essentially, it is a question whether a side has more access to lots of people compared to lots of equipment, training, defensive positions, etc. 

The difficulty with capital means of warfare is that they generally destroy indiscriminately. Bombs do not kill only those who fight you, but everyone nearby. A tank is not effective for guarding anything you don't want big holes in except against other tanks. Only human capital in the form of highly trained troops and personal equipment for those troops can function as a scalpel in combat, but that still leaves the difficulty of knowing just who your target is. Importantly, those forms of capital make shifting to a labor intensive process such as policing and occupation even more expensive, as each soldier is more expensive individually. (Arguably, this is why the USA currently fields very elite units such as Marine, Rangers, etc. in addition to the regular army; the highly trained troops take areas, and the lesser trained, and thus less expensive, troops hold them.) 

TL:DR

So, consider the scenarios brought up by both Nick and anti-gun advocates: gun owners against domestic tyranny, and a foreign power invading.

In the first case, we see a direct move to an attacker in tyrannical government vs. an insurgent force. As recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is a difficult position for the attacker. In fact, the entire war on terror demonstrates the difficulties of an attacker attempting to destroy an insurgency armed only with basic weapons. The improved capital of the attacker, the tanks, bombs, and missiles that we are in awe of in the battle between states do the attacker very little good unless they are willing to destroy indiscriminately. The conflict quickly turns into one of small arms and improvised weapons, and in many cases the insurgents have the advantages. If the general populace is generally supportive of the insurgence, the job of the attacker of even knowing who to shoot is exceedingly difficult, while the insurgents can easily determine their enemies. Further in such conflicts the difference between small arms is very small; a good deer rifle is an effective sniper rifle, a semi-automatic AR-15 is roughly as good as an M-16, an IED works as well as a landmine. Making things impossibly expensive for the attacker is well within the ability of a small armed group if they have support of the populace. The Second World War and many later conflicts clearly demonstrate that even irregular troops can make a very effective fortress out of a city, against which tanks and planes are only effective if the attacker is willing to outright destroy the entire city. In the case of Stalingrad even that was not sufficient.

In the case of a foreign invasion, it is true that the small arms of the citizenry will do little in the Conquest/Defense phase of the war, but all wars of conquest devolve into an attacker required to control ground, at which point we are back the situation of tyrannical government vs. an insurgent force discussed above. 

The question people often ask when confronted with the statement that personal firearms are needed to defend against their own government is often "What is granddad's shotgun going to do vs. a tank or bombs?" This is, however the wrong question. Tyrants cannot use tanks and bombs effectively to enforce their will on the people, they need soldiers performing a police role, and shotguns work perfectly well against people. The oppressed do not even need to destroy every tank and every soldier, but only make the cost of control greater than the tyrant is willing to pay. A tyrant or conqueror who wants to take control of a country for its resources must preserve the population, as people are the most valuable resource. Being able to resist this control by multiple means is the key to freedom.