If you want an oversimplified concept, it's a fairly simple concept

Effectiveness probability vs risk probability vs success probability.

If you can succeed, will it do something useful, and what will it cost.

Understand though, we're all armchair strategizing here. Anyone that's going to actually do anything isn't sitting around bullshitting on lemmy. So it's really moot, a circle jerk. That being said, apply the metrics.

Example: shooting Trump. Low probability of success for the average citizen. High cost for everyone in the country. Won't achieve much by itself. Violence is not a smart choice.

Another example: using decentralized attacks against ice agents, with the goal of both reducing their numbers and pulling their focus away from current targets. Good chances of success; they're easy targets with an organized local team backed by larger numbers giving cover and distraction. Effectiveness is high if successful, any decrease in gICEtapo is a net positive. Risks are high; very high. Local teams are likely to take casualties, but of more import, it changes the fight irrevocably towards civil war. Ergo, it would need to be a last ditch option from the perspective of your typical democrat that wants to preserve the system but change implementation.

Everything comes at a price when you're waging this kind of fight. Look at just the previous century, at the various revolutions before that. Any time the people are in a situation where their own nation is the enemy, blood is shed. And by enemy I mean actively acting with violence against the populace, or where the populace intends to take or retake governance of their own nation.

Before any individual or group decides that it's time to accept that fact, they have to be prepared to pay the cost. That cost is not static. The cost in lives alone can shift over days, much less weeks or months. Up or down. Look at d-day at the big end of things. The decision to launch the attack had to weigh losses vs gains in lives, as well as gains in territory and gains in progress vs the enemy. If they launched in the wrong weather, the balance shifts. At the wrong time of day, balance shifts

But, most relevant to here and now is the opportunity to seriously dampen fascists before they consolidate power entirely. Could that be achieved in other ways at all? People like to argue over whether or not killing hitler before he came to power would have prevented the war entirely, whether it would have changed the timing and nature of the war. There's no real answer to that. The only thing we can know for a fact is that the kind of people that engage in fascism do not stop on their own.

Ugly truth. A revolution here in the US would not be against the people in charge. It will be against police first, then national guard, then standing military. It will also be against anyone and everyone that supports the current regime and anyone scared of the chaos civil war brings.

Frankly, I don't think the majority of just democrats have the will to do it. I think the left the actual left doesn't have the will to do it. So it's an uphill battle from the start.

High chances of accelerating towards civil war as soon as the first deaths start dropping cops. High chances that it will be the excuse fascists are looking for to initiate a planned coup that eliminates the facade of democracy they hide behind currently. Even higher chances that people not directly involved will pay part of the price, no matter what happens after it starts.

That's a shit ton of risk, and a very high price to pay. So it would need to be a very good plan backed up with a support resistance network.

Nobody wants that first shot fired. Nobody wants the death and misery it will bring.

But will any lesser form of violence work? The fight is already asymmetric. The usual protest against armed cops methods are purely defensive so as to not escalate. How would you mount an offensive against a police force without bypassing their defenses? You can't. Their defenses are good enough to handle the very less lethal tools they use. So even if you were on a level playing field with rubber bullets and tear gas and water cannons, they've spent your tax dollars on body armor, shields, armored vehicles, etc. So the playing field won't be level at all, unless you use superior weaponry.

There's nothing better than what you'd be facing that isn't lethal because the places you can do enough damage to take a riot cop down and out of the fight is more likely to be lethal or permanently disabling. Head shots, using explosives, shooting under shields at legs. If you want to take them down in numbers, there is zero chance that deaths will not occur.

Maybe, maybe with enough numbers you could stampede and overwhelm, disarm and contain. But the closer you get, the more of your own get dropped, and the more the less lethal munitions creep into lethal territory.

So, would it be better to strike when they aren't massed? Well, yeah. If they're off duty, you could conceivably just kneecap a bunch of them into inactivity. But you still face the escalation. But you've at least cleared some of the numbers. So you get similar risks, with similar outcomes. But you also need to have more skilled attackers. You can face roll a line of shields. But if you're tracking down and taking out individuals, you run into access issues. Getting to them where they are, in a coordinated way. That takes more training than I have for damn sure. And I'm a nutter that's fairly well trained.

Plus, you gonna shoot the cop in front of their kid? Even non lethal, just injuring them with some close proximity beanbag rounds, can you pump a handful of those into someone's chest while their mom watches? That reduces how many people will join in. It's a much higher barrier of entry. And it takes more organization and planning, despite the seeming ease of getting the job done. I'm not capping anyone in front of their kid unless I have no other choice at all, or even just taking a bat to their knees (not that my crippled ass could pull it off to begin with, I'm talking about the barrier to entry here)

So, when is it time to do that? Now. But nobody is ready. The radical left that's armed isn't organized. The democrats that might be organized, aren't organized with that in mind, so it doesn't count.

But it's not an impossible task. You get even a small core group in each city organizing decentralized attacks screened behind other events, you could do it. You could cripple police forces, seize their weaponry, and be ready for the inevitable. If you do it fast enough, you can maybe seize national guard depots after, if you know where they are and can get moving before they spool up.

That slows response times if there aren't already standing military forces in place and ready. There's plans in place for that kind of attack though. The guard is aware that have a chance of being targeted as a resource, so it isn't exactly a cake walk. Their armories aren't easy to get into, but you could deny access to them via destructive means. Unless you have people inside, which changes things a lot. Good luck finding anyone on the inside if you don't already have contacts though.

So, that oversimplified equation of risk, effectiveness, success is only really useful for parsing the decision to take action.