AHC: Interstate Warfare

Your mission is to have, with a POD after 1945, the national guard forces of two different US states have at least one firefight with each other. Wether the conflict escalates or not doesn't matter. Secessionism doesn't count, both sides still need to consider themselves part of the US.
 
Your mission is to have, with a POD after 1945, the national guard forces of two different US states have at least one firefight with each other. Wether the conflict escalates or not doesn't matter. Secessionism doesn't count, both sides still need to consider themselves part of the US.

Best bet maybe a Red Scare. Maybe one guard mistakes another for a communist and voila.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
A SNAFU of gigantic prepositions leads to a night operation with the New Mexican National Guard stumbling into Arizona and attacking Arizonian National Guards, who they mistake for a Drug Cartel. The ANG return fire, thinking they're being attacked by a Drug Cartel. Dawn breaks and everyone realizes what has happened.
 
Your mission is to have, with a POD after 1945, the national guard forces of two different US states have at least one firefight with each other. Wether the conflict escalates or not doesn't matter. Secessionism doesn't count, both sides still need to consider themselves part of the US.

Listverse has an article about bizarre real interstate confrontations and within a state confrontations after WW2
 
Drug cartel

Drug cartel is a good suggestion.
Does it matter whether the drug cartel are 2016-vintage cocaine smugglers or 1920-vintage rum-runners?
To further muddy the waters, what if one state police is on the take and assisting drug smuggling while the second state police are honestly trying to seize and destroy dangerous re fractional drugs.
To muddy the waters even further, have a third party trying to seize the drugs, but re-sell them to the public?

What about directional drilling?
Directional drilling was Saddam Hussein's excuse to invade Kuwait. Iraq accused Kuwait of drilling under the border and stealing Iraqi oil.

What about a gold mine digging under a state border?

What about water rights?
The Colorado River has been over-subscribed for decades (see the book "Cadillac Desert"). Given the current drought, Colorado can dream up a dozen excuses to stop water flowing to: Arozona, New Mexico, Nevada and California.

WI one state stops selling electricity to a neighbouring state?

WI Louisiana starts charging exorbitant rates to ship cargo along the Mississippi River?

WI New York State increases tolls along the Saint Lawrence Seaway?

As happened recently in Oregon ..... herders get in the habit of grazing on state or federal land without paying grazing fees. WI a state tried to collect grazing fees from herders based in a neighbouring state?

All these scenarios are more plausible with a weak federal government supplanted by stronger state National Guards.
 
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Right-wing governor dispatches Guards to protect rowdy anti-abortion protestors, who proceed to march, by the thousands, to the border of a neighbouring state, where residents ask their own guv to dispatch Guards, in case things get nasty. At the border, confusion and chaos reign, one group of Guards think they're been fired on by their counterparts, fire back, etc.
 
If it really escalated to the point of two groups of armed state guardsmen lining up opposite each other, wouldn't the federal government intervene at that time and stick a real army regiment between the two groups to stop it turning violent?
 
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