Examples of recent rebellions/civil wars where semi-auto rifles critical to the rebels' success?

[barnbwt]

Perhaps not a 'happy' ending, but the various African and South American communist uprisings have featured a whole lot of small arms that disappear into the bush or jungle between engagements. Small arms were arguably important for disrupting the formal governing systems there, especially early on (small arms & necklaces, that is)

A more interesting question is whether, at any point in human history ever, has such a popular violent uprising led to a better system than what was destroyed.

 

[Browning]

Besides those already mentioned (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland etc) there is also the examples of partisans in WWII (especially in Eastern Europe) and what happened during the Croatian War of Independence and the Bosnian War.

During the Battle of the Barracks in what later became Croatia the Croat police, newly formed Croatian militia and sometimes just armed Croat civilians besieged and captured Serb military outposts, police stations and military bases. Sometimes they were full blown military operations and sometimes it was just groups of friends armed with bolt action rifles, shotguns and a few pistols surrounding a small outpost.



Same thing with the Bosnian Muslims when war came to their part of the country. Since there was an arms embargo they used every gun available to them.







The Croats and the Bosnian Muslims also improvised their own pistols, shotguns and submachine guns as well.



The Serbs generally had no need to use civilian or improvised arms since they retained control of the Yugoslav military. However in some areas independently minded Bosnian Serbs who didn't want to rely on the response of the military formed their own independent militia units and used whatever arms available to them.



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Bjelovar_Barracks

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Barracks



http://texastradingpost.com/yugosniper/

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/04/13/improvised-weapons-croatian-war-independence/

https://www.amfirstbooks.com/IntroP...ckass_Soldier_Of_Fortune_magazine_article.htm

 

[caribou]

The variuos tribes in Afghanistan did a number on the Soviets with mostly bolt action rifles untill they were supplyed with modern arms, as would be nessessary in any war/insurgentcy.

 

[D.B. Cooper]

If this is correct..
http://warriortimes.com/2011/04/24/what-happens-when-governments-disarm-their-citizens/

1911 – Turkey disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1915 – 1917 they murdered 1.5 million Armenians.

1929 – Russia disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1929 – 1953 they murdered 20 million Russians.

1935 – China disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1948 – 1952 they murdered 20 million Chinese.

1938 – Germany disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1939 – 1945 they murdered 16 million Jews.

1956 – Cambodia disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1975 – 1977 they murdered 1 million Educated people.

1964 – Guatamala disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1964 – 1981 they murdered 100,000 Mayan Indians.

1970 – Uganda disarmed it’s citizens, and between 1971 – 1979 they murdered 300,000 Christians.

Speaking strictly as an historian, I have reason to doubt the veracity of the source you linked to. There is no verifiable author to that piece-just someone named "Carlo." (How can we verify that the author knows what he is talking about?) There is not one single reference cited for any of the information in the article. (How can we verify that any of it is correct or has not been manipulated?)

I immediately noticed at least two concerns with the data posted. The number of 16 million Jews murdered by the Nazis far outstrips even the largest estimates typically agreed upon by historians and experts on the subject (6-9 million). This could be a simple typo. The reference to the murder of Christians in Uganda is problematic because Uganda is a predominantly Christian nation. Then again, that was during Idi Amin's reign and I'm certainly no expert there.

All in all, I think the premise (governments disarm citizens and later kill most of them) is certainly valid, even if the details are skewed. I just think we should strive to avoid "fake news" and this has many of the hallmarks.

 

[toivo]

As has been pointed out upthread, there were lots of SKS rifles fielded in Vietnam. In fact, when I brought out an SKS on our club's rifle range, one of our members, a Vietnam vet, took a long look at it and said, "The last time I saw one of those was when I took it off a dead [insert racial epithet here]."

There were also these:

 

[ingliz]

Light weapons are not going to win a war. Guerrilla forces may be able to hold out but they cannot win except in combination with striking forces that can meet the enemy in open battle.

As Colonel Lawrence said,

most wars are wars of contact... Our war [the Arab Revolt] should be a war of detachment

That said, civilian arms are perfectly adequate for the initial 'terror' phase of the campaign.

 

[Tommygunn]

Light weapons are not going to win a war. Guerrilla forces may be able to hold out but they cannot win except in combination with striking forces that can meet the enemy in open battle.

As Colonel Lawrence said,
That said, civilian arms are perfectly adequate for the initial 'terror' phase of the campaign.

One principle of guerilla warfare, or "asymmetric warfare" is the use of small arms to acquire large arms like artillery and the like.

 

[hdwhit]

slinkiusmaximus asked:
What are some examples of successful rebellions or wars that were directly helped by the non-gov't side having access to semiautomatic rifles such as AR-15s or semi-auto AKs?

None.

It might be more useful to ask as a precursor question, "What nations where the population already has widespread access to semi-automatic rifles has had a rebellion"?

Once you establish that, it would be a comparatively trivial task to then look at which ones were successful and see the role the semi-automatic rifles played.

Most governments around the world do not allow private ownership of semi-automatic AR or AK style rifles and the few that do are generally stable and rebellion-free so there will have been very few populations that had more than a token number of such semi-automatic weapons when they collectively decided to start shooting. There are lots of governments around the world with such limited control that they are unable to effectively regulate possession of weapons they prohibit, but in those cases, the weapons in civilian/rebel hands will almost certainly be selective fire and thus not relevant to the question being asked here which specifies semi-automatic rifles.

 

[AlexanderA]

Most governments around the world do not allow private ownership of semi-automatic AR or AK style rifles and the few that do are generally stable and rebellion-free

Good point, but let's not overlook the deterrent effect of widespread gun ownership in keeping those countries "stable and rebellion-free." (I can't think of any such cases offhand, other than the United States.)

 

[JohnBiltz]

Light weapons are not going to win a war. Guerrilla forces may be able to hold out but they cannot win except in combination with striking forces that can meet the enemy in open battle.

As Colonel Lawrence said,


That said, civilian arms are perfectly adequate for the initial 'terror' phase of the campaign.

They don't have to win, they just don't have to lose. They can bleed them out. Lets put it this way. Its unstated but between the lines we are talking about the USA here. The Iraq war was fought in an area remarkably similar to Texas in size and population and in the west pretty similar in terrain. It tied up the entire military of the USA. So great, the entire military of the USA could cover Texas mostly, what about the other 49 states? The term "run rampant" comes to mind. The simple truth is it would take the military of the entire world to put down 5 million men who mean business armed with semiauto ARs in an area the size of the USA.

The left never seems to understand this when they say they could not beat the military. What makes them think the Army is going to stay loyal to the government. There was a survey given by a naval officer working on his thesis. I can't remember the details but it was over 160 questions given to Army NCOs. 2 of the questions were about subjects similar to this. One question was if ordered to go and disarm the civilian population of the US what would you do? It was multiple choice and the majority said they would not follow that order. 2% said they would kill the officer that gave that order and these were NCOs.

 

[RPZ]

If anyone wants to understand why the Germans did not for practical reasons want to try and invade Switzerland, read La Place De La Concorde Suisse, by John McPhee.

 

[RPZ]

On the general question, it's all about attrition. If you have millions of people that possess any useable firearm, no military is going to be able to stand the attrition rate. The armed population is not going to meet your army, tanks and aircraft on a staged battlefield. They are going to shoot your soldiers, tank crews, aircrews, support personnel et al, anywhere they see them.

 

[Robert]

This is getting a bit too far a field for THR.