The insurgents, when they come, will be armed. Seventeen million Americans bought guns in 2020 alone, the largest total of any year on record. Forty percent of purchasers were new buyers.
The number of guns in the United States is somewhere north of 400 million. Americans purchase 12 billion rounds a year, and although a solid estimate of how much ammunition is in private hands is more or less impossible to ascertain, the number probably runs higher than a trillion rounds. When it comes to gun violence, the United States is a complete global outlier, beyond exceptional. There are fifty-seven times as many school shootings in the United States as the rest of the industrialized world combined. Before the outbreak of Covid-19, America experienced a mass shooting—defined as involving more than four people not including the shooter or shooters—nine out of ten days. Nearly 40,000 Americans lost their lives to guns in 2017—12 deaths per 100,000 people, compared to 0.3 in the UK and 0.9 in Germany.
There are no reliable statistics for the rise of ghost guns—manufactured at home with kits and by 3D printing—because they are unregistered, but in May 2019 the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported that 30 percent of seizures were ghost guns. Between 2018 and 2019, the number of ghost guns showing up in Los Angeles County rose by 50 percent and in Washington, DC, by 342 percent.
At this point, gun control in the United States is simply impossible.
Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show in Tulsa, Oklahoma, features the ordinary American gun culture, a resistance culture, on its most expansive display. Wanenmacher’s claims to be the world’s largest gun show and it is certainly large enough. The event fills all eleven acres of Expo Square on the Tulsa Fairgrounds. It takes five and a half minutes, at a brisk pace, to cross from one end to the other, eight hours simply to wander through the 4,200 stalls. You could argue that the annual Shot Show in Vegas is bigger, but Shot Show invites only industry professionals, law enforcement, dealers. Ordinary Americans, not authorities, arm themselves here.
Here the guns are as varied and as beautiful as human experience itself, in every shape, color, and price point, and for every purpose. There are rifles and pistols and semiautomatics, by brand, by type, by cost. Worn old .22s you might give a kid to shoot squirrels with and .50-cals closer to cannons that look like they could take out armored cars. Long-barreled old Colts out of Westerns and neat little Glocks that possess the slick smoothness of MacBook Airs. There is cheap ammunition that you could rattle off, expensive ammunition to test your precision, materials for making your own ammunition, antique ammunition for scholars or nostalgics. Depending on your budget, you can buy an ugly little Arms Co. 22 for $69 or dream about bidding on an early nineteenth-century Artemus Wheeler revolving flintlock valued at somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000. Vendors peddle as much innovation as history: new concepts in barreling, targets, silencers, laser sights, armor, customized hearing protection, triggers that are not in violation of the ban on automatic weapons complete “with a letter from the ATF.” The Barrett .50-cal with night vision and thermal scope is iconic, pure power in physical form. “He’s light there. Pick him up,” the dealer purrs. She’s right. The weight is phenomenal, if unusually balanced in the hand, like a briefcase filled with water. The thing is a miracle of engineering, its muzzle like an arrowhead, a primitive death dealer on the edge of the future.
But it is the AR-15s that people are purchasing: you can buy one for as little as $349, you can get it custom-designed with the Stars and Stripes, you can buy it adjusted to every imaginable specification. The AR-15 is easily the most popular gun in the United States, and it’s useless for hunting and useless for home defense. It’s a civilian adaptation of an M16. It’s been adapted for all kinds of uses with all kinds of claims about its function, but really it’s for a civilian who wants to own a military-style weapon.
What moves a weapon, what really makes a gun sell, is the promise that the government is going to ban it. If the government doesn’t want you to own it, you have to have it. At some gun shows, dealers post lists of weapons that are about to be banned. Any future legislation on guns—more consistent background checks, assault rifle bans—is at this point moot. The United States is saturated with weaponry. The weapons, as impressive as they are, matter less than their symbolism. The main reason Americans buy guns is to tell themselves the story of the failure of government. It’s not for sport; it’s not for hunting. Two-thirds of gun owners own a weapon for “protection.” Protection for when the government fails them, and protection from the government. Gun culture is a culture inherently in resistance to federal authority.
Thanks to American gun culture, large groups of people proudly own weapons that the government doesn’t want them to have. And that means that when the federal government faces a hard-right resistance movement, that movement will be heavily armed.
Many thousands of people in the United States own .50-cal rifles, and it’s not that difficult to convert an AR-15 into a rough approximation of an M16. Along with hand grenades and drones, the war chest of the hard right includes radiological weapons. In two separate incidents, the first in 2008, the second in 2017, police discovered materials for dirty bombs in the residences of white supremacists on American soil. So the hard right in the United States is in possession of any and all weaponry between the pistol and low-level nuclear bombs.
The hard right in the United States is heavily armed. It has military-grade weaponry. It has training. But the US government is better armed and better trained. Infinitely better.
The arsenal available to the American public, and to the anti-government faction of that public, is no doubt impressive. But the US Marines are the US Marines. The Marines have M16s, and M240 machine guns, and M110 sniper rifles, and they have Hummer-mounted BGM-71 TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided) missiles. They have Apache attack helicopters with Hellfire air-to-surface missiles.
When I asked the retired colonel about a hypothetical engagement between a hard-right militia and a professional military force, he was at a loss for an answer. Asking what would happen if a platoon of Marines faced an armed insurrection is sort of like asking what would happen if an NBA team faced the local YMCA Sunday night pickup players. It would be entirely one-sided.
There is no conceivable situation in the immediate future by which a militia force, no matter how prepared, no matter how advanced, could compete with US forces tactically.
After the months required for situational awareness, the General, following established military protocol, starts softening the town by shutting off water and power. Instead of punishing the militias, cutting utilities only hurts the remaining ordinary citizens of the county. The insurgents will have generators, satellite sticks, their own water purification systems.
The military, as usual, misjudges the informational and narrative dimensions of war. Just as they failed to understand the cultural framework of engagements in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Vietnam, they fail again to recognize the narrative effect of the arrival of a massive US force in a small rural community. “Has the President Gone Too Far?” the Washington Post asks on its front page. The New York Times devotes an entire Saturday magazine to the legal questions opened up by an American occupation. The National Review argues that “even liberals are outraged by the President’s overreach.” The MISO officer will beg SCRAG to shut down internet access to the county, but there is no authority to do so, and the rebels remain entitled to the protections of the First Amendment.
The MISO has to use more established psyops and begin show-of-force operations. He organizes a military parade on the road to the bridge, but the insurgents, not the military, know how the symbolism works; they turn their backs. On screens across the United States, audiences watch the Fifth Army greeted by no one. For many, it’s the most frightening scene since the beginning of the standoff. The President and the General begin to lose control of the story. Soldiers deployed to the county are inundated with messages from family and friends begging them not to attack “the forces of liberty.”
The show-of-force operation to intimidate the Sheriff directly is more successful. Using a SEAL infiltration team, the General walks into the Sheriff’s offices after incapacitating the guards. He even knocks on the office door before entering. “Hey there, Sheriff,” he says, shaking the Sheriff’s hand. “I just wanted you to know that I can go wherever you are without you even knowing about it.”
The Sheriff is shaken but manages to smile. “I wish you’d made an appointment. I would have been happy to see you.”
“You don’t need an appointment when you’ve got the Fifth Army.”
“You ever read the Constitution, General?”
What follows is a long and rather boring debate about the nature of the Third Amendment, against the billeting of militias.
The General’s staff begins to make it clear to him that he has been given an impossible task. The President wants the military problem solved, and quickly. The Attorney General demands that no laws be broken. The government and the public insist the General wage war without waging war.
The rules of force issued to the Seventh Infantry during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 specified minimum levels of force in response to levels of civilian violence. The 1992 riots were inherently disorganized, with no coordinating force. But the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issues almost identical standing rules for the Battle of the Bridge. The Chairman has to cover himself against the possibility of future prosecutions. After the battle, if the press thinks there has been too much blood, the standing rules for the use of force (SRUF) will make a perfect excuse. The General is asked to wage war on people while preserving their constitutional rights. He will, he knows, be served up as a scapegoat for the inevitable failure. On the eve of the first battle of the next civil war, the General is worried not about victory but about the paperwork.
The conflict will obey the logic of reality television rather than revolution. The more defiant the Sheriff, the higher his engagement numbers. The most extreme opinions, the most vivid conspiracies, the most spectacular threats, gather the most attention. It will be in nobody’s interest to find common cause or to explore ways out.
The mainstream media, uncovering the layers of support for the Sheriff, inevitably provides massive exposure to fringe figures with extreme positions. The camera phalanxes of pro-militia websites distribute their iconography and their message to unprecedented audiences. Virality concentrates attention. The Sheriff keeps talking about interposition and federal illegitimacy, taking ever more extreme positions. Eventually he talks himself into a declaration of independence. “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them, a decent response to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation,” the Sheriff reads out at the foot of the bridge. “And our founders, I know, would celebrate this gathering of sovereigns.”
To the public, it is just another wild speech by the most famous outlaw in America. The use of the word “sovereignty” will shock the President and the General with its implication of a separate power. The protest of federal authority has morphed into a threat to national unity. The President will have no choice but to respond if she wants to preside over what are still the United States.
The torchlit rallies, during which the rebels whip themselves into furies, often end with weapons fired into the air. The night of the assault, a few stray bullets puncture military vehicles at the perimeter. That will be enough to justify an assault. The SRUF from the Joint Chiefs of Staff will mandate that “every incident of gunfire is to be investigated.” The night before the battle, the Sheriff’s forces will let off their guns as usual. This time the General will take it as justification.
The General retires to his room to pray. He knows that he will have a place in history now—the General who used American forces against American citizens. He thinks about Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion. He thinks about Lee and Grant. He thinks about Sherman marching to the sea. He cannot help remembering the sectarian conflicts of his youth, in Iraq and Afghanistan, how all their military control had spiraled out of control, how he had hated the people who had thrown him and his buddies into chaos for reasons they themselves didn’t seem to fathom. The leaders he had despised asked their men to kill and to die in order to change the world. They changed the world. They had not thought through what they were changing it into. He hated the decision makers then. Now he is one. Just another confused man doing what he feels he must as history rolls over him. The General must ask other American soldiers to kill and this time their own people. Who can say what the outcome will be?
Apache helicopters destroy the major points of militia communication networks within an hour. The street battle has ended by the time the media arrive at dawn. The anti-government patriots barely have a chance to resist. Those who can, flee. The rest are taken prisoner.
The group that puts up the most resistance by far is the “flipped” former members of the US military who join the anti-government patriots. A SEAL team takes the Sheriff in his office. As he is dragged away, the Sheriff shouts to a white nationalist journalist he has been streaming with: “Tell my story! If the British had captured George Washington, he would have found himself in the same position I find myself in now.” Leaning back over his shoulder, he howls, “Is not what binds America together our pursuit of freedom?”
The morning will be a harvest of ashes. Bodies litter the banks of the river. Panoramas of the bridge and the town reveal shattered corpses and craters, a quiet rural town turned into the kind of battleground scene remembered from military adventures in the Middle East. A photo captures a severed hand in the street. An orphaned child wails in a whirl of dust. The army loads bulk groups of prisoners into buses for processing in a small POW camp in the neighboring county, under the watch of cameras at a distance. CNN mourns the death of a unified country. Fox News mourns the death of liberty. Factual descriptions of the battle are indistinguishable from the conspiracy theories that light up the internet with fantasies of imminent white genocide, Chinese infiltration of the Fifth Army, Jewish cabals, the nefarious influence of the CIA and other governmental agencies, alien invasions, stories of angels coming to the aid of the Sheriff, strange beams of light illuminating the battle. The horror overwhelms; the hunger for revenge grows with what it feeds on. The slaughter bolsters the righteousness. There is no collective mourning, only panicked preparations and fury.
The battle itself matters much less than how it resonates. It sows trauma and loathing; each side regards the other as murderous traitors, the very opposite of America.
The Department of Justice charges the Sheriff with treason and a few of his closest conspirators with sedition. The rest receive fines or smaller prison terms on the basis of the Insurrection Act. All are banned from running for public office. The Sheriff, converted instantly into a martyr by the hard right, is imprisoned in the same Colorado cell block where Ramzi Yousef, architect of the first World Trade Center bombing, is serving a life sentence. The only other prisoner in that wing is the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. They share their hour of yard time together every day.
The army could not take up residence in specific structures in the county—a violation of the Third Amendment—but they are permitted onto any property to reconnoiter. The local residents feel the intrusions, and the subtle intricacies of the supposed constitutionality won’t make them feel any better.
At present, the official US counterinsurgency strategy remains a version of General Petraeus’s 2006 Clear, Hold, and Build strategy. In the current edition of Joint Publication 3-24, it is outlined as “Shape, Clear, Hold, Build, Transition,” part of a suite of counterinsurgency strategies that include the generational approach (engaging with youth who are most likely to join insurgencies) and network engagement (through social media). All of these strategies smack of desperation in their operating modes. The military holds on to these strategies because at least they are strategies, not because they work. For fifty years the US military has been defined by its ineffectiveness against insurgencies in foreign countries. Why would they do any better at home?
The problems US forces face in the occupation of foreign soil would be that much greater in an occupation of the homeland. The theory of Clear, Hold, and Build predicts that peace and security will spread like an ink stain from a central position to an entire zone of control. American troops in Afghanistan had another metaphor for the strategy: “mowing the grass”—the moment they thought they could start building, they had to begin again with the process of clearing.
The county is only a locus of a general American chaos. The insurgents rally there, then disperse. Their support moves online, or underground, everywhere. It is tactically impossible to contain a terrorist force when it is supported by broad swaths of the population outside the zone of control. Then there is the question of America’s sheer size: How do you clear and hold the whole of the United States? (This question is addressed in Dispatch Four.)
The larger problem is that it is impossible to build legitimacy as an occupier: the process of holding, even with the best of intentions, is humiliating and disruptive. Anyone who has passed an American checkpoint, or entered an American prison, or even crossed the American border, knows the inherent dehumanization of the protocol. The illegitimacy of any occupying force—the French in Algeria and Indochina, the Russians in Afghanistan, the English everywhere—would meet greater opposition than ever in an American-on-American context. The defiance begins in a claim to the illegitimacy of federal authority. If you are occupying an anti-government patriot stronghold, any state-building of any kind will be forced. The locals don’t want government. That’s the point. But how could any force address the “drivers of violence” without the machinery of legitimization?
You don’t have to look very far to find an example of a failed occupation on American soil. The South under Reconstruction spawned the Ku Klux Klan, Red Shirts, and White League—terrorist organizations that beleaguered the Northern administration until they abandoned the project of reconciliation. The resentment of the occupation after the first civil war survives to this day. The South has not forgotten the abuses of Sherman’s March to the Sea. Nor have they forgiven the Northern authorities for the humiliation of subjugation. The occupied Americans hated the occupying Americans. That hatred endures.
The General resigns six months into the occupation after a scandal over the destruction of the information gathered for situational awareness. That destruction, ninety days after the battle, is mandated under Field Manual 3-28, Civil Supports Operations, but the SCRAG didn’t give prior authorization. It looks like a cover-up. The General has to go.
Within six months, Americans are equally divided on the occupation. While 49 percent of respondents accept the description of the Sheriff as a traitor, 49 percent accept the description of the Sheriff as a patriot. The next civil war won’t be divided between organized sides, distinct ideologies, or ethnicities. It will be a struggle between the forces of order and chaos—a struggle to preserve a coherent definition of America itself.
As part of the rebuilding effort, US forces raise a new bridge across the river.
I. The colonel who talked me through the planning for full-spectrum operations in the homeland would only speak on the condition of anonymity due to threats. After learning of his involvement in constructing homeland scenarios, anti-government patriots took out billboards in his neighborhood with his face on them asking why he was planning an assault on his country’s liberty. The FBI and, more importantly, his wife had concerns for his safety. I am grateful for his courage in speaking to me.