The great weakness that a government labors under, is that all its weapons and forces depend on a bunch of secretaries and clerks going in to work and processing the purchase orders for the weapons and ammo, and payrolls for the forces. The clerks and secretaries live among the rest of us, and are subject to persuasion that working for the government is bad.
RE nonlethal crowd control methods: the Brits have done quite a bit of study of this going back to “the troubles” in Northern Ireland. What they concluded was that widespread employment of nonlethals (in those days, massive tear gas, water cannons etc) had very nasty unintended consequences. They might break up today’s mob, but the folks in the mob don’t just surrender, go home, and knuckle under to unpopular rule. They go home and dig up their guns, and start sniping stray soldiers. They also start making bombs. Massive use of nonlethals don’t end the problem, it ratchets it up to the next and more lethal level.