Commonplace =/= prevalent. What wars are you thinkint of? No snark, just curious.
In terms of prevalence, I don't think there is an apt comparison in the historical narrative for the US. I heard, but cannot confirm, that we blow off more rounds for target practice than the active conflicts around the globe use in combat. Even if that statement is incorrect, I can think of no other nation with an equivalent saturation of small arms.
Target practice plus bird hunting, which can use a lot of shotshells with little to show for it if you're not so good at it like me ^_^. I don't think most other forms of hunting use that very many rounds.
US civilian production is between 13-14 billion rounds per year (military production at Lake City, I don't know, but we get sold canceled orders and lots that fail milspec tests but are otherwise good ammo). Rimfire production alone is 3 billion. For some time a lot of that has been getting stored for ... a rainy day. And if you do the math that's only a bit more than 40 rounds/person/year.
But the number is still very very large. Heck, in one high school academic year on the JROTC rifle team I probably shot over 2,000 rounds of .22 LR (for every morning of practice, 3 sighting in shots plus 10 rounds each in two positions).
As for "saturation", yeah. In the last three years, the number of Missouri state issued concealed carry licenses (note any state's is good, and many are cheaper) in my county has almost doubled, to the point where 5% of the age eligible adults have one. And the 19-20 age range has only been eligible for about a year, while those getting them are largely the older, age and less ability to defend yourself + the Baby Boomers entering retirement age is a major driver.
42-3 states have "shall issue" concealed carry regimes, and California and Hawaii look to be following soon (it's being litigated, but some large population counties have already thrown in the towel); the Supremes could extend that to all states. In the last 4 years, Chicago went from nobody but the anointed being allowed to own handguns to shall issue concealed carry and more than a few incidents of legal self-defense with them.... Etc. etc.
Point being that if it ever goes Red Dawn whoever is doing the invading is going to have a rough time of it. We ['muricans] shoot a lot. We even hit stuff occasionally :|
Indeed; per the misattributed Yamamoto Isoroku quote, "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
What wars are you thinkint of? No snark, just curious.
I was thinking of the invasion of Western European countries during the second world war, but those are just the first ones that came to mind. Weaponry easy enough to come by (especially during an actual shooting war), but civil uprising and rebellion relatively sparse.
I think there is a difference between the weapons technology available today v. what was available in the 1930's. Many regulars went into battle with WWI era weaponry. The civilian arms complement was even older in many cases.
An interesting example of a 'heavily' armed society in WWII would be the Balkans region. Germany was smart; short of paras and specialist, they left the chekist and partisans to slaughter each other [sewing the seeds of the 90s conflict] as well as their Jewish populations.
To date, i can think of no example of a well/heavily armed society being invaded. There really aren't that many to pick from.
In terms of prevalence, I don't think there is an apt comparison in the historical narrative for the US. I heard, but cannot confirm, that we blow off more rounds for target practice than the active conflicts around the globe use in combat. Even if that statement is incorrect, I can think of no other nation with an equivalent saturation of small arms.