What's In A Name?
There are those who convince themselves that America is safe. After all, it has not been invaded in hundreds of years. They might attribute that to the oceans that lie between us and hostile nations. Or to the might of the U.S. military. Or to the vastness of our nation. But today, oceans are ponds, military installations can be eliminated by the push of a button and a literal flash, and larger empires have been lost.
The reality is that, even if an enemy could land an invading force and subdue our great military power, they would face a much larger hostile force in our armed populus. While the historical validity of the quote is debated (though I challenge anyone to find written or recorded proof of everything that everyone ever said, especially almost a century ago), the sentiment of the allegedly fabricated quotation of the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto illustrates our vision:"You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass."
For context, the military consists of:
- 1.38 million active personnel with about 800 thousand in reserve (let’s call it 2.2 million).
- 4.5 million small arms.
- A stockpile of about 1 billion rounds of small arms munitions.
In contrast, We the People are:
- 331 million strong (150 times the size of the military).
- About 100 million armed (30% of the population; 45x the size of the military) with over 430 million guns (95 times the might or our military, and more than 1 firearm for each of the 331 million citizens).
- 12 trillion rounds of ammunition (12,000 times the might of our military).
The infographic below shows the proportional difference between our military and our civilian might. And that civilian force is in no way centralized or easily dismantled.
