And doing so makes them feel good, gives them an opportunity to big time it, etc. It does not make them effective. They would last about 2 minutes against competent light infantry, let alone armoured vehicles.
I’d give them a lot longer than that if they had a solid core of people with military training, but they’re doomed if only because when it comes to resupply the regular forces have the supply train to continue when the militia who have survived the artillery and air assaults have run out of whatever they can carry while their LOC are subject to air observation and attack and to artillery attack.
The other problem for a militia armed with an assortment of weapons is that, unlike regular forces, ammunition isn’t standardised so it’s no help to Joe who has run out of 30.06 cal that the recently deceased Fred has a pickup truck full of 5.56mm.
Going back to WWII, and even with resistance / partisan / guerrilla movements relatively well supplied in their homelands (e.g. France and Yugoslavia and to a lesser extent the Philippines) by the Allies, there was never the slightest prospect that any of those movements could hope to conquer the regular enemy occupation forces, which generally weren’t first rate troops. The best they could do was guerrilla warfare and intelligence gathering and, later, scouting and advance operations for invading regular Allied troops.
Similarly, in Vietnam the VC never had the capacity to conquer the South Vietnamese ARVN / US allied forces. It was the regular North Vietnamese PAVN units which went south which posed the real military threats to the regular forces in SVN. Which reinforces the points that irregular forces cannot defeat regular forces to win a war, and that only regular forces can.
Hear! Hear! 
As a people, Americans are bluntly unconcerned with what others think of us, and our way of life.
But as individuals they care more about how they are perceived as a people than any other people I’ve met…but I appreciate the ‘V’ (two fingers) to the above comments. 
Obviously some people feel unconfortable with freedom, specially britons, freedom is not for everybody, that is why I like the US aproach about guns.
I want the second amendment in my constitution too. :rolleyes:
Why? Are you having problems with your movements?
Believe me, lords, my tender years can tell
Civil dissension is a viperous worm
That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth
:o
I will begin at thy heel and tell what thou art by inches. thou thing of no bowels. thou! 
Oddly enough, despite some significant social and other tensions and events during the period, the Britons managed (apart from a rather petulant revolution in one of its minor colonies around 1776 
) to remain rather peaceful at home while Europe was vigorously destroying itself from Napoleon to Franco to Hitler; while America fought a shocking civil war; and while much of the rest of the world was biting at its own flesh.
And, even more oddly, without a written constitution Britain managed to evolve to give its citizens freedoms which are unknown to the citizens of various nations which require papers for every citizen and which have police more like armed soldiers or even armed bandits who can exercise powers even a drunken corrupt British copper could not begin to dream of.
There was a very good reason that Marx went to Britain, as have countless other emigres since including various Islamic lunatics currently residing there, instead of to America or France which both founded their liberties upon similar principles.
Because, liberal gun laws or not, Britain has quietly practised and guaranteed the liberties which its citizens and residents take for granted but which are not enjoyed by the citizens and residents of other countries with rather noisier proclamations of liberty.
Plenty of room here in the Grand Republic my friend, C’mon up! Once you get your green card, I’ll take you tank shopping. and for my other good pals, I will suggest googling up the Knob Creek machinegun shoot in Kentucky. its one of many organized shoots held a couple times each year, You-Tube has clips of it, and you can see how the people are armed.
We as americans do not ever really expect to have to fight the Federal Gov’t, but it is one of the reasons we have the second amendment. Just in case…:mrgreen:
We, (private citizens) also during the 2nd war sent crate loads of donated privately owned firearms to our beloved U.K. cousins, dont recall the program’s name, (or programme) but it was to help the local folks defend their shores should Adolph decide to send a land invasion. Your own form of civilian Militia, I am happy beyond saying that no invasion came, you guys must have scared em’ pretty good.(or MI-6 sent them the recipe for black pudding&Haggis) now I’m hungry,
I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will
not: he there: that he: look you there.
So did we, from a smaller base which denuded our army.
So we were short a full infantry division of .303s when Japan attacked, with bugger all coming back from Britain except Churchill’s empty promises to send us Spitfires which finally arrived after they weren’t of much use, after you Yanks had pretty much saved us in the Coral Sea and at Guadalcanal, with some pretty impressive efforts on our own part elsewhere.
Ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature!..
Wouldst thou have practised on me for thy use…
If that same demon that hath gull’d thee thus
Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,
He might return to vasty Tartar back,
And tell the legions ‘I can never win
A soul so easy as that Englishman’s.’
That Island of England breeds very valiant creatures
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
An armed society is a polite society.
In peacetime, nothing looks better in a man than restraint and humility. But when the battle trumpet blows in our ears, then it’s time to act like the tiger.
The weapons went to the Home Guard (changed from “Local Defence Volunteers” after it was pointed out the initials also stood for “Look, Duck and Vanish”). The difference between the Home Guard and the US “militia” of course is that the Home Guard was largely composed of the same men who had destroyed the German Army in Flanders 20 years before, and who were training regularly during WW2.
Despite it’s “Dad’s Army” image, the Home Guard was actually a pretty serious military organisation…
So long as everyone is sane and (importantly) sober, that’s largely true. Sadly, it is actually quite rare for both conditions to be fulfilled in human society.
Oh, and a counterpoint to the argument about citizens being as well armed as the state being an important guarantor of liberty - the UK has largely achieved this back to front by disarming the state. The (small) armed forces are explicitly loyal to the Crown rather than the Government, and the police are pretty much unarmed. While it is largely true that firearms make people equal to each other, since Governments can rarely mobilise large numbers of bodies in their defence a disarmed government is actually more vulnerable to an unarmed populace than it is where both parties are armed. Now, anyone feel like lynching Gordon Brown? :twisted: