Wednesday, December 08, 2010

The Largest Army

Uncle points me to a link over at the Federalist Papers and he talks about our deer hunting habits.
The state of Wisconsin has gone an entire deer hunting season without someone getting killed. That’s great. There were over 600,000 hunters. - -But that pales in comparison to the 750,000 who are in the woods of Pennsylvania this week. Michigan’s 700,000 hunters have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia, and it is literally the case that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.
And he's right, you know. America has a lot of folks who understand guns, and who understand, at least in part, their local woods.
For millenia, philosophers have pondered how one can maintain a well-armed population that can fend off all attackers, while simultaneously maintaining ordered governance. In America, we’ve fulfilled this dream, and we’ve done it so well and so effortlessly that no one seems to have noticed.
And he's right. The United States, once you get out of the cities, is an armed nation, and for the most part, the news is very benign.

Years ago, in Kentucky, we conducted a map exercise at the Armor School. The problem was that somehow, a division of Soviet Armor had been inserted near Frankfort, KY, and were advancing on the Bullion Depository. With the assets we had available at Knox and those assets we could rapidly get as replacements, we were having trouble holding off the Soviet horde. Then, someone started factoring in all the hillbillies with deer rifles and started figuring a realistic attrition rate for the invaders. Inside of 50 miles, we had attrited them to the point where they were no longer a viable fighting force.

As long as the deer hunters are out there, America will never be conquered by force of arms. It's all those other ways to conquer minds that scare me.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now you've done it......

I have to go watch Red Dawn again.

Old NFO said...

Outstanding point! And that was the premise of Red Dawn... :-)

Sammy said...

Your uncle is very wise.

Anonymous said...

Wasn't there a Japanese General or some such who said that invading the USA was stupid and suicidal because there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass?

I've never seen it mentioned, but all the ammunition in all those millions of rifles would have been loaded with soft point expanding bullets. I wonder if that ever crossed the General's mind?

Gerry N.

Anonymous said...

"...We would find a rifle behind every blade of grass." Isoroku Yamamoto

He also said. After Pearl Harbor

I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.
Isoroku Yamamoto

Bright guy!