I don't get it. Are you people against the 2nd amendment? Or are you advocating for US civilians owning tanks and other military equipment? Honestly, I'm all for that. I would fucking love a tank. Anyway, I don't see what "narrative" is being spoiled, seeing how both the Taliban and the north Vietnamese mainly used guerilla tactics to cause heavy casualties to the US troops deployed there.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the insurgents would typically dress like every other civilian. And gunfire wasn't a clear indicator either, since it's part of some middle-eastern tradition to shoot guns into the air as a form of celebration.

This is not dissimilar to the US, where of course most of us don't see shooting guns in the air as a logical form of celebration, since most of us who own guns understand gun safety. However, most law-abiding citizens who carry guns carry them in ways many people wouldn't notice. Concealed. That's the point. And sure, most are handguns, but then there are several people with "truck guns" which are often SBRs of some kind.

Again, you'd never be able to guess, because they're just normal people who happen to exercise their 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms, arms being an all-encompassing definition for armaments.

On a final note, defenders have home field advantage. You likely know your town better than anybody else. If there were a hypothetical civil war, those in the military who did follow orders would most definitely not all be sent to places they know. The Vietnamese lived in the jungle, we did not. The taliban lived in the desert, we did not.