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Junkie
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One man, no. Give me twelve trigger-pullers behind .30 calibre semi-autos, and you've got a trashed convoy. Urban, rural, doesn't matter; twelve people, perhaps just six for a smaller setup, and groundpounders are toast, armor included. The trick is to play to the aggressor's weakness. Here's what it looks like.
Convoy Alpha is driving through, say eastern Kentuckey. The roads are narrow and full of switchbacks in the mountains, and as they come around one of the curves, the come face-to-face with a rockslide that has covered the road several feet deep in stones ranging in size from golfballs all the way up to one big ol' sucker almost as big as a Humvee. Around-about the time the CO figures out how sucky this is about to get, 200 gallons of ANFO buried 100 meters behind the rockslide explodes. This does several things: it destroys any vehicle in the neighborhood, it cuts the convoy in half or isolates it entirely (preferably the latter), while creating a deep, steep crater that even tanks will have a hard time traversing. The poor ol' CO's ears have just started ringing when a .30 bullet smacks him in the left lung from 600 yards out. Several other people unfortunate enough to be sticking out or obvious targets (ossifers, gunners, radiomen, drivers) suffer the same fate at about the same time. Everyone scrambles to button up or get behind cover as a three-man enemy fire-team opens up on the convoy. In less than fifteen seconds, the shooting stops. A moment later a second enemy element, also a three-man team using .30 rifles, opens fire from the opposite direction. The guys who were behind cover or at least concealment from Bandit Alpha are now sitting ducks for Bandit Bravo. Bandit Alpha is, meanwhile, relocating and reloading. Each team, Alpha through Delta, fires one 20-round magazine apiece, then falls back to a secondary position. Ideally, they would be pre-ranged from both positions. In addition to exposed personell, the enemy would also target the viewing periscopes and thermal optics of tanks and APCs, and the engines of trucks and Humvees. If one of the insurgents is fielding a 12.7mm rifle, which is possible, this anti-materiel work could be done from a mile away.
The poor Federales would be having a -very- bad day by this point. Assuming even 25% hits by the insurgents (and I've met many who were -much- better), that's 15 casualties every 15-30 seconds. Meanwhile, the tankers are going blind as their scopes keep getting shot, and the crew-served weapons are doing little good because every time somebody gets up to use one of the damned things, he gets shot. If he gets shot by that 12.7mm gunner, he makes a -big- mess. From 500-600 yards away, it's difficult to determine with any accuracy where the shots came from; lack of visible smoke and muzzle-flare means that the enemy riflemen are almost impossible to spot without magnification. If this is going down at night, everybody has muzze-flares to shoot at, but the insurgents are pre-ranged if they're half smart.
In less than three minutes, the shooting stops. It takes awhile before the survivors stick their heads out, possibly several minutes before communications are re-established. If there are any survivors, that is. The insurgents, of course, have either moved into the kill zone and secured it, or retreated into "the bush." Assume the insurgents have retreated. Three minutes of fighting at about one hit every two seconds comes to a lot of dead, wounded, screaming men who have just been shot to ribbons and know it. Trucks and Humvees are immobilized; engines shot through and/or set on fire. Tanks and APCs are stuck driving "hatches open" because some asshole insurgent with a sub-MOA competition rifle kept shooting out the 'scopes every chance he got. The survivors are pissed. They call for air-support, ASAP, Napalm, the works.
The brass, however, have a problem. Identifying the insurgents is difficult. People are disinclined to discuss the issue, even with significant "help" from their interrogators. And ever mistake, every instance of "collateral damage" breeds more insurgents. It breeds more of that uniquely American species of insurgent that's capable of hitting a man from 600 yards away. If this sounds like Iraq Squared yet, there's a good reason. The US is losing in Iraq, to a bunch of mostly untrained fanatics and nationalists who can't shoot and don't grok small-unit tactics very well. And only 20,000 of them.
Assume, if you like, that 1% of America's 85,000,000+ legal gun-owners decide to resist the Gov't by violence. That gives you roughly 850,000 combatants.
Assume further that the 1% who decide to resist retain posession of 1% of the US's 270,000,000 known legal firearms. This leaves you roughly 2,700,000 firearms; enough for each insurgent to field two rifles and a sidearm each.
Assume finally (because it's true) that a large portion of this 1% is composed of people from military backgrounds who have spent the past decade or more passing on their knowledge and training to their counterparts.
If this isn't turning into a very, very ugly picture yet, check your pulse. 850,000+ insurgents operating on their own ground from within their own communities would be a nightmare for both sides. The casualties would be murderous. But the Gov't would lose, because no Gov't has ever won a guerilla war fought on their enemy's home soil and terms. It took 800 years for the British to finally get the hint, hopefully the US will have a sharp enough learning curve to avoid provoking such a thing.
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