[Mannix]

As useful as the internet is, the single most persuasive way to disabuse another nation of the notion of occupation is to send people home in flag-draped coffins. Most people in the US are against the war in Iraq because Americans are coming home in body bags. If the insurgency confined its self to blogging I can only imagine how little of a shit Jow Blow would give. Similarly, a nation is impossible to occupy if there are no safe havens for your forces to retreat to, or if you can't secure a local supply line or even just any supply line. 300,000,000 armed, angry, terrain-familiar citizens present a significant threat to both of those things regardless of what the military is capable of. The VC held and the Iraqis are holding their own against all of our tanks planes and various other technologies with just AKs and IEDs. To quote Admiral Yamamoto "I would never invade America; there would be a gun behind every blade of grass." (To be fair I can't give you a source so take it with a grain of salt.)

In the same vein, if W declared himself Emperor he wouldn't have very long to live; army or no. The military of the US represents at max roughly 1% of our total population. Even if he had every single one of those people surrounding him and loyal to the death he could still be deposed. Why? Because all of those pilots and tank crews gotta eat and shit, and they can't do that in their machines. How long do you think 3 million people (roughly how many people are in the Army, Navy, Marines, and Airforce) would last against 250 million (that's roughly how many civilian guns there are in the US) ? Not very long.

The only really sound argument to my mind that can be made for the abolition of the second amendment is for that of public safety. The only counter I have for that is the Jefferson quote in my sig.