The more pertinent question is, “What good can a handgun do against a Hellfire missile?” Answer: Not much. There is yet another, more pertinent question. How many of those Hellfires will be launched until there is nobody left to launch them?
A supervillain with a superweapon is always succumbing to a hero. It pleases us to be so. But it is also the law of nature. There is only one such guy left on Earth; he is a dictator of North Korea. He is alive only because he doesn't bother any of his neighbors. Historically speaking, we saw many such supervillains, and they often had superior weapons. Those suprevillains are all dead and buried.
In this case, a Hellfire missile requires several important factors to be just right. Such as:
- The target audience. You are supposed to be sitting at home, watching TV and not expecting a Hellfire in your window.
- The intelligence about the target. Your neighbor, or an assigned police watcher, or another drone, has to track your whereabouts.
- The availability of the missile. Their stock is not infinite, and you can be assured that not many more will be made when the extent of the domestic carnage becomes known.
- The availability of the operators. Most of them protect the Constitution, not a wannabe dictator. Those who support the dictator, please see (11) below.
- The orders. Not everyone in a long chain of command wants to become a war criminal. The commanders are all highly educated military specialists, and they understand that their chances of "winning" this war are not more than zero. When they are done, the new Nuremberg trial will be underway, and there will be many foreign countries willing to lend a hand, for their own reasons.
- The Congress. However mad they are, they aren't likely to authorize a large scale war against their own people. This alone will give the military all the excuse they need to delay the war. If the Supreme Court also opines that it might be not a good idea to kill americans left and right, then the orders from the White House are null and void.
- The competence. The White House cannot solve much easier problems in peace conditions. Why should we expect them to exhibit characteristics of a genius when it's war out there?
- The sabotage. If the military cannot refuse the orders that came down the proper chain of commands, they can mess them up. (The term SNAFU was born during many training exercises for that event, I guess :-)
- The opponent. Returning back to the first item on the list - the opponent is not very likely to sit quietly and expect the missile. Many of the high value opponents have military background themselves and know what to do. There aren't enough Hellfires in the whole world for all the low value targets.
- The country. This is a very large place. You can hide in cities and in forests, in hills and in deserts. No Hellfire will find you there. If the police finds you, the Dorner's case shows that they will pay dearly for that mistake. The attacking side always has more losses than the defending side. Even one to one exchange is unacceptable for the attackers; however the defender can always take one terrorist down with his first shot.
- Mutual proximity of both sides. Both the population and the terrorists will be living in the same cities, driving to work on the same roads. Short of locking themselves up on fortified bases, the terrorists will not survive for long if the population knows where they live. If they do lock themselves up, I suggest they have plenty of stockpiled food and water, lest they get a pinch of rat poison in their chow. No convoys with food and munitions will get through to them. A MRAP can protect them from IED, but no MRAP, as far as I know, can levitate over destroyed portions of roads. An airlift is yet another level of cost and complexity; the choppers need the fuel anyway, and it has to come from somewhere. There are no underground pipes from refineries to bases, AFAIK. If there are some, they are vulnerable.
- The money. The US government needs lots of money to wage war, especially because all raw materials and most of electronic components come from abroad. What are the chances that China will keep propping up the empty shell and lending money to the paper tiger? China will do well if they switch sides at that very moment. I cannot imagine any country in the world that would support the US government from that point on, for the same reason - it has no future, win or lose.
I'm sure there are more interesting factors to discuss. But if we focus on Hellfire, the first one will be also the last one.