The conflict in Ukraine should serve as a powerful reminder to all nations in the world that an armed populace is an effective deterrent to invasion and an effective tool against any occupation. Unfortunately, Ukraine is learning this far too late.
By all accounts Ukraine has loose gun laws for a European country, but that isn’t saying much though. Stephen Gutowski points out in his article on The Reload that Ukraine has a population of 43 million and that there are 1.3 million civilian owned firearms in the country. For contrast, there are roughly 330 million people in America and there are over 400 million privately owned firearms in the country.
Understand that about 3% of the population in Ukraine can be armed with privately owned firearms. Also understand that the Ukrainian government is moving swiftly to stem bleeding and they are handing out standard military arms to civilians to use for both self and national defense. The Ukrainian Parliament also voted earlier this week to allow for open carry throughout the country. Small gun stores in the country were also selling out their entire stock in the past few days as tensions rose in the country.
This is all to say that Ukrainian civilians were willing to fight for their country but were underprepared. Ukraine was late to the party when it came to allowing civilians to defend themselves from foreign invaders.
What we are seeing in the news today is the complete annihilation of the Ukrainian military by the Russian armed forces. This of course is the obvious outcome as Russia is the bigger country and they have the bigger and better equipped military. Historically, what we will see tomorrow is an occupation of the region by Russian forces. That occupation will likely be successful as a result of ill-prepared peoples.
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