Yes, Virginia, you do need a gun

(Via The Woodpile Report)

Not that most of the people who stop by here need to be convinced of that fact. As we all know, you need several. And magazines. Ammo. Spare parts. Ammo. Training. Ammo. Friends with guns. Ammo–have I mentioned ammo? You need plenty of ammo.

Kurt Schlichter has a piece on Town Hall pointing out that if you don’t have an “assault rifle” then you really need to get yourself to the nearest gun show or real gun shop and get yourself one, because the day may be coming where you need it.

Nothing to argue with there.

However, what I find most interesting is this. Read this carefully and then we’ll do the math. Schlichter was in Los Angles for the Rodney King riots as an Army 2LT. He has this piece of wisdom from that event.

Being the new officer in the unit, I got put with the battalion commander as his assistant S3 (operations officer) so he could observe me and decide if I was worthy of getting a company command (I eventually got two). I went everywhere in his hummer because our troops were everywhere. And I was hugged by the residents because we brought safety to their neighborhoods – something they had not had even before the riots. All it took was two divisions, about six combat brigades, of soldiers and a bunch of Marines to pacify just one part of one city.

The Army currently has 58 active and reserve brigade combat teams. Again, do the math. The military will do its best, but the cavalry is almost certainly not coming.

So it took six brigades and some Marines. Let’s call it 7 brigades to bring those riots under control. So if all of Los Angles had decided to go apeshit, it could in theory take the entire US Army’s active and reserve combat force to bring it under control. If there are problems in Dallas, or Atlanta, or Charlotte, or insert the name of your least favorite big city here, well, they better hope there are a lot of Marines with nothing to do. After that, you’re looking at the Navy, the Air Force and the Coast Guard, and the last I looked they’re a little light on combat brigades.

We’re not even going into the facts that our military is spread all over the world and it takes time to spin reserve components up to combat readiness.

You might want to add some more ammo to that buying trip.