What To Do In Case Of A Civil War

There have been rumblings of a new civil war for several years now, as the political divide in this country has broadened.

Many on the right consider it a bit of a joke, as there are more gun owners on the left than there are on the right. However, there are actually more gun owners on the political left than most of us realize. According to information from statistia.com, 16% of Democrats claim to own guns. While that is considerably lower than the 45% of Republicans who own them, it’s not something that can just be ignored.

We’re all aware that Democrats have refused to accept President Trump’s victory in 2016, with those in the Congress and the press working overtime to find some ways to get rid of him. That’s what Mueller’s Russian investigation was about and that’s what impeaching the president was all about, their two most blatant attempts.

But Democrat’s refusal to accept the results of elections is nothing new. They have a long history of contesting election results, including the infamous “dimpled chad” debate in Florida, during the 2000 presidential elections. Al Gore lost that election but didn’t want to accept the loss, so tried to get the results overturned on a technicality.

Democrats used every trick in the book to win the last elections, even resorting to illegal activity if the information I’ve seen is true. There was a considerable amount of violence, as paid “activists” tried to affect the election. But even with all that, Democrats didn’t succeed in changing the vote and getting what they wanted. They’re still denying that Donald Trump won the election fairly and legally.

I’m sure that the Republicans’ hands aren’t totally clean when it comes to the election process, but for some reason, pretty much every case of voter fraud I hear of works in favor of the Democrats. That’s highly suspicious and makes me think that they are clearly the less ethical of our political parties.

Now, before Election Day has even gotten here, organizations tied to the Democrat Party are already talking about what they’ll do, if Joe Biden doesn’t win by a landslide. Put simply, the violence from the death of George Floyd is nothing compared to what they are planning on doing.

Will it be War?

Whether things get bad enough to turn into a war is yet to be seen. Up till now, the mobs of rioters have basically limited themselves to mostly unsophisticated weapons like bricks and Molotov cocktails. That’s probably not because they don’t want to hurt anyone, but rather, because they don’t want to end up in jail. Even so, more and more seem to be carrying firearms.

Just the other day there was a face-off between the rioters and armed conservatives in Nashville. The fact that such a face-off happened isn’t all that surprising, as we’ve seen other such occurrences over the last several years when rioters clashed with counter-protesters. But what made this different was that it was hard to tell which side people were on. From the video, it looks like there were just about as many armed protesters, as there were armed citizens who were there to protect their city.

The amazing thing was that no shots were fired in that confrontation, although there were plenty of angry words spoken… or shouted. Even so, it appears that nobody pulled the trigger. If they had, it would have probably been a bloodbath.

It’s doubtful that we can have many of these confrontations, without them turning violent. There are plenty on both sides who are stoking the fires. But perhaps the most dangerous fire stoking going on is that there are those on the left who are telling their people that Republicans just can’t wait to kill them.

Can you imagine going into a hostile situation with the understanding that the other side just can’t wait for a chance to kill you? How would that affect your thinking? How would it affect your actions? It seems to me, that it would put my nerves on edge, where almost anything could be misunderstood to be a threat. Unless I was highly trained and disciplined (I am), it would be easy to respond to that potential threat by pulling the trigger. Once I did it, others would follow.

For that matter, it doesn’t even take someone pulling the trigger to turn that situation deadly. All it would take is someone setting off a fire cracker. I’m sure there are enough people in that crowd who don’t know the difference and who would react to the noise as if it were a gunshot.

The problem is, there are those who would consider the loss of life in that situation just “the cost of doing business.” They don’t care about the loss of life if it serves their political needs. While they might not light that firecracker themselves, for fear of getting caught, they would probably have no compulsion against ordering it lit.

The opening shot for the Battle of Concord, which stated the Revolutionary War, is known as “the shot heard round the world.” But it is not the only such shot. The Civil War was likewise started from a single shot, this time at Fort Sumter. World War I was started by the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The point is, all it takes is one shot to start a war. If both sides don’t take a big step back after that first shot, the war quickly escalates.

What’s the War About?

There are those who are billing this next civil war as a “racial war;” but that’s not true. All we need to do to see the fallacy in that statement is to look at the riots that have been happening. There have been as many whites involved in those riots, as blacks; and the whites are more likely to be the ones to start any real battles.

The riots we have seen and any further violence is nothing more than a collective temper tantrum. Rioters are making demands of people, businesses, and governments, attempting to force them to bow their knee to the rioters’ demands. Like the demonstrations which have happened on various college campuses, they think that their demanding something should be enough to force everyone to go along and give them what they want. 

This is, by definition, terrorism, using violence to cause political change. While the president has declared that ANTIFA is a terrorist organization, he hasn’t done so for BLM. That one is a bit more difficult because it is hard to separate the BLM organization from the movement in most people’s minds. For that reason, any attempt to label the BLM organization a terrorist organization will be met with a lot of backlashes.

While the riots we are seeing in this country have been birthed out of the Black Lives Matter movement, they have nothing to do with saving black lives. Rather, it is a Marxist revolution, intended to bring down the current order of things and replace it with socialism/communism. We can see this from the types of things that the left is demanding, such as defunding the police, tearing down monuments, changing names to just about anything that connects us with our past, and demanding redistribution of wealth.

Quite literally, this war will be about keeping America or losing it. If it is won by the revolutionaries, it will no longer be the land of the free and home of the brave. It will be a socialist or communist country, descending into poverty. We will not only have failed ourselves, in losing this war but the world as well, as the next two strongest countries in the country are China and Russia. Neither of which will be spreading democracy across the globe.

The Horrors of this next War

Compared to the last Civil War, this one would be much more horrible. A total of 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South. That’s more than have died in any war our country has fought, before or since. Yet I fear that this next civil war will far outstrip that number, and that’s something I just don’t want to see.

In most cases, you can’t tell a person’s political affiliation by their clothing, and in Louisville, they were mostly in tactical clothing. So that eliminates the visible affiliation shown by printing on T-shirts and MAGA hats.

Nor will there be any clear geographic boundaries in this coming war. About the closest we could say is the coastal liberal enclaves, versus the rest of the country. But even that is a false boundary, as there are many conservatives living in those coastal areas, just like there are many liberal cities in the rest of the country, even in conservative bastions like Texas.

Without any obvious uniform differences or geographic boundaries, it’s hard to tell how this war will go. Most likely it will be a war limited to urban areas, especially the larger cities. Since it will grow out of the current riots, it will probably start in the same places, mostly inner-city areas, largely inhabited by the very same people who the revolution claims they want to help.

What we’re looking at is long-term battles for the streets of our cities. Without clearly defined armies and boundaries, it will be hard to win any battle. Rather, there will just be ongoing battles every night, which could go on for years.

This is the future I see, one in which constant battles are being fought across our land. It will be urban guerilla warfare of the worst kind. Perhaps the only saving grace will be the lack of large weapons. But having seen how creative people can be in devising improvised weapons, I doubt it will stay that way.

Many innocent lives will be lost, perhaps more than of the combatants. Both sides will break the law, one in trying to bring about change through revolution, while the other is trying to protect the country. But to succeed in protecting the country from lawlessness and revolution, those fighting will have to become lawless themselves. Otherwise, they will be limited to fighting a purely defensive war.

That’s the only way the right can remain righteous in all this, fighting a purely defensive war. Using deadly force is still legal in all 50 states, although there are some which are limiting what you sort of firearms you can use. Even then, we’ve already seen examples of how left-wing prosecutors are going to try and villainize those who defend themselves, stretching credibility in an effort to charge them with crimes, while allowing those on the left to get off scot-free.

Avoiding the War

I have no desire to fight in this war, although that may not be possible. It is my hope that I can limit my involvement in protecting my home and family. But I swore an oath once when I received my commission in the Army and that oath doesn’t have an expiration date.

The best way to avoid the coming war, assuming it does come, is to not be where the fighting is happening. That may seem a bit simplistic, but it has been what civilians have tried to do in past wars, through the centuries.

Considering that the war will most likely be fought in the large urban centers, the best thing we can do is to move out of them. Even moving to suburbia would be advantageous, although I’d avoid areas inhabited by the wealthy. It seems those are beginning to be targeted, and with all the efforts from politicians on the left to villainize the wealthy, I’d say that the war will probably target them as well.

If you can move to a rural area, that will probably be best. Not only are there not enough people in rural areas to attract the troublemakers who are doing all the rioting and who will probably be pushing for war, but most of the people in those communities are also conservative, so they’ll band together to protect their homes and their community.

A Political Option

Of course, the other possibility is to allow the nation to go back to being what it was when it was founded. As the country was settled, states were different. Our founding documents recognize this and created the dual-sovereignty system, recognizing the sovereignty of both states and the nation. This allowed states to be different, except in a few well-defined areas.

Through the two-plus centuries of our country’s existence, the federal government has encroached more and more on state’s rights, primarily thorough their right to regulate interstate commerce. Since just about everything affects commerce and is affected by commerce, that has given federal lawmakers the opening they have needed, to be able to force the states into conformity and submission.

If we were to go back to the original plan, allowing states more autonomy and individuality, that would allow states which want to embrace left-wing ideas to do so, while states which wanted to keep what they have, remaining conservative, could do that too. It would allow us to remain united as a nation, even while permitting our differences to peacefully coexist.

But without that, I really don’t see any way to avoid this coming war. It’s just a matter of who fires that first shot.

Resources

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/249775/percentage-of-population-in-the-us-owning-a-gun-by-party-affiliation/