Only difference you could possibly make would be to shoot some army guy in a bullet-proof vest, before they take you down using superior firepower.
Look at Afghanistan for an example of how well superior firepower serves the US.
M
The genocide piece is somewhat held at bay as long as we retain our gun rights. Without them, it'd be one helluva scary place.
M
But there's no genocide in question. If they would like to massacre everyone, they would do fine.
Also it's a foreign country. Imagine if US decided to crackdown on it's own citizens. Nowhere to hide.
And finally do your gun rights allow you to carry an rpg or some grenades, and would you strap a suicide vest on yourself and blow some tank?
Compared to the alternative, it'd be an option to consider. I certainly wouldn't just stand around and let myself and mine be slaughtered.
M
I certainly wouldn't go the suicide route.
But I would run for the hills, and keep my powder dry. If the SHTF and the civil government breaks down completely, the cities are going to be horrible places. I'm a country boy at heart, and the mountains and forests are my friends. I would encourage anybody to learn outdoor survival as a hobby and a mode of preparedness in the event of massive breakdown of the existing order. It's "power" is based on subtle threat and a great deal of propaganda and outright lies. It can't stand. No Empire ever has, and this one is vastly overextended. I'm not overly concerned about these assault rifle bans, as they are absurd. Most criminal gun violenc is commited with handguns, as are most defensive shootings. The PTB go after military style rifles for basically two reasons. One, they elicit a visceral response. They look mean. And two, even though they account for so little of the crime rate as to be negligible, in a guerilla war, they would be incredibly useful to the opfor. For those woh think that government exists to protect us, WE are the opfor in their eyes and most of them don't even bother to hide it any more. If you are my age, you will easily recall when cops were not outfitted like light infantry, because they were not intended to be an army of occupation. Now they are, and now they are. In the event of a general break down of the ruling apparatus, and it's resultant crackdown, the citizen is not going to be battling the army, but the police. The Armies are already spread so thin on so many fronts that they would not be able to recall them in sufficient force fast enough to matter.
Guns are only a small part of the equation, and if the need arises for me to have a fully automatic weapon (not a semi that looks cool), I'm sure there will be plenty of the lying on the ground. In the meantime, it would be nice to have a couple of the semi auto versions of the AK simply for practice, both in teardown and shooting. It pays to be familiar with the weapons you may have to use.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I've had many discussions with tankers about what they fear. Almost to a man, it's a guy with a HE grenade sneaking up on them. NOT other tanks, NOT artillery, and NOT RPG's. No army can stand for long against an angry, armed populace. Yes, they can and likely will kill a great many of said people, but in the end they are savagely outnumbered, and they know it. That is why they put so much effort into raising non issues and downplaying real ones. It's called "engineering consent".
