How many would it take to overthrow the government of the United States?

[Kkaos2]

Originally Posted by nicet4

The problem in Syria got me thinking.



But there you go, even our third President thought a rebellion every 20 years would be a good thing. Today Thomas Jefferson would be arrested by Homeland Security and sent to Gitmo.

It needs to be recognized as well without a large segment of the American people supporting such a thing it would never be successful. Not in this country anyway. A large segment wouldn't have to me a majority because with a majority all you need is an honest election but with that said I would think 20% would present a very serious problem.

But two threads Gun sales boom in expectation of Obama re-election and Secret militias on the rise in U.S. got me wondering what would it take to be a serious threat to our government?

We've had some Timothy McVeigh's but what would happen if instead of one or two Timothy McVeigh's there were 10,000 of them? What if there were 100,000 or even a million?

We will never see an 1861 civil war but I would think 100,000 Timothy McVeigh's could make the country nearly ungovernable outside the largest cities.

Before I get accused of all sorts of BS let me say Timothy McVeigh was no hero, he was a cowardly little murderer, but I am just using him as an example. We could just as well be talking about Obama's good friend Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground.

The weather underground had this country in an uproar and they had what, a couple dozen hard core members?

Take the IRS for example. 100 or even 1,000 taxpayers couldn't fight the IRS, they would all end up in prison, but 20 million taxpayers could make the IRS unable to function. What it comes down to is they can't put everyone in jail.... they can't even put half of us in jail.

I use the term "militia" loosely not meaning some sort of modern military structure but instead imagine a loose group of people who wanted to cause real problems. So at what point could one of these "militias" start posing a real problem if they wanted to?

But to put your mind at ease I would think most of these militia units are not unlike the modern KKK where every other member is an FBI informant.

Your post seems to shift from what it would take to bring the government down to what it would take to cause a lot of problems. Those are completely diffrent things.

One serial killer on the loose can paralyze a city of millions. It doesn't take much to cause trouble.

But actually overthrowing the government would be next to impossible for a paramilitary group. You'd want to look to some sort of economic sabotage, WMD, or cyberterrorism for that. We're pretty well protected against a few fanatics with assault rifles. To bring down the government you'd have to do something that precipitated a collapse. You couldn't directly overthrow it.