Riots vs. pogroms

Modern homes are not built as fortresses. They are only as strong as the people defending them.

I hear quite a few worried comments about the possibility of civil unrest in the US. Looking at the precedents, I see three directions it could take: riots, pogroms and freelance criminal activity. The latter, individually perpetrated crime, is what we have now and outside the scope of the post. I suspect that we’ll see much the same level, plus or minus a few percent. For the sake of clarity, I would define riots as mass looting, attacks and other criminal impositions conducted without government sanction. Pogroms would be the same but conducted with either tacit or overt official support. Police might either stay out of the fray or actively suppress minority resistance.

A typical pogrom against European Jews seldom met with much resistance as people were afraid of “provoking them further”. A typical African pogrom tended to have such an overwhelming disparity of numbers and arms that the victimized communities simply disappeared into mass graves. Historically, American riots have been smaller in scope and duration, with the exception of 1967-68.

One reason why the New Orleans situation concerned so many was the questionable behavior of the civil authorities. Some cops were later convicted of murder, more than a few got away with raiding the lawful people and disarming them. For the near future, the position of police and similar agencies may become the greatest factor in the development of riots.

A typical American city (that excludes certain un-American aberrations like New York and Chicago) has enough hunters and recreational shooters to be impregnable to a typical rioting mob. Not counting various purely defensive arms like handguns and shotguns, every good neighborhood has several people with scoped rifles capable of reaching out to the limit of available line of sight. A modern deer or varmint rifle is no less accurate than most WW2 sniper rifles and has far better optics. A 200 yards shot on a deer is not a stretch for a typical hunter, and kill zone on a deer isn’t any larger than that on a hoodlum with a Molotov cocktail in hand.

More @ Oleg Volk