North King said:Of course they are pointless. Forming a viable civilian revolution is silly, when the vaunted handguns run into tanks.
Reality is a bit different from games. Tank crews need to get out of the tanks to "go to the bathroom", to stretch, to fix the treads. They won't be in the tank all day long, and whey they're out, they're vulnerable to sniper fire, and yes, handguns too. Tanks need fuel and ammo as well. The trucks transporting the fuel and ammo are often much easier targets than the tanks. Creating a roadblock and ambushing a column of trucks could be done with handguns.
Tanks need oil refineries and oil wells to provide their oil. A handgun should be more than enough to get into such facilities and plant simple explosives. Tanks need factories to produce spare parts and ammo. Factories are every bit as vulnerable as oil refineries and wells. Transporting the oil and parts requires access to oil pipelines (easy targets), oil tankers (easy targets), and either railways or highways (easy targets). In all of this, a simple handgun can be the difference between taking out a guard, or being taken out by a guard.
