Well, the reason we don't decisively win like you'd expect when we try to occupy foreign cities basically comes down to not wanting to slaughter the masses.

Obviously, if it were considered morally ok by everyone involved (the media, our own government, our soldiers, etc), we could easily just annihilate an Iraqi city and kill virtually everyone in it and declare victory. We certainly have the weaponry for it. But when every little civilian casualty causes an uproar, you have to tip-toe around and try to coerce the population into submission without killing them all. *That's* a hard battle to win. If the military were ever deployed against Americans domestically, they'd be in the same scenario.

As for the likelihood, that's really not even important to me. I don't expect the military to ever seize control of the public in the US. But I also think that the fact that the populace here is armed, which would make such an endeavor much more costly and difficult for the military, is an important part of the checks and balances that keep this country free from tyranny. It makes sure that the thought doesn't cross someone's mind down the road, under different circumstances.

Bottom line is there are places we need to be and places we don't.

Eventually our nation will learn from the mistakes it makes... eventually. Probably several generations down the road... lol.

Thank you to everyone that has participated in this thread. The fun thing about this is I'm writing a 16 page research paper that originally had the topic of the controversy behind Drug testing for employment. I Have have since changed topics and have gotten lots of insight into different views that some people have regarding firearm ownership.

While we may not all agree its nice that most people have been kept a civil discourse.

And Thank you again to Semtex for his allowing the beginning of this dialog to happen in his thread.