Neighbors of the couple who ambushed two police officers Sunday in Las Vegas told local newspapers the pair had bragged about spending time at Cliven Bundy’s ranch during the standoff with the federal government earlier this year.
The shooters then stripped the officers of their weapons and ammunition and badges, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. They then covered the officers with something that featured the Gadsden flag, a yellow banner with a coiled snake above the words, “Don’t tread on Me.”
You know the drill: the shooters were obviously liberal, this was a false flag operation.
Remember back in the day when we were saying that open carrying to political rallies and talking about armed insurrection might lead to this sort of thing and Megan McArdle et al. were telling us that it was all a healthy exercise in freedom?
schrodinger's cat
These people scare me, this has gone far beyond funny.
Chyron HR
Just some good guys with guns stopping the bad guys with guns. Nothing to see here.
GregB
This is also the home state of Sharon “Second Amendment Remedies” Angle.
japa21
Well, obviously these two were lone wolves, mentally unbalanced, and you can’t hold others responsible for the behavior of these two. And besides, as you point out, it was probably a false flag operation coordinated by the socialist, Muslim, Kenyan in the WH to distract from Bergdahl, which was to distract from the VA, which was to distract from Benghazi, ad infinitum.
Oh, and we don’t need no stinkin’ Domestic Terrorism Task Force in the DOJ.
SmallAxe
You forgot to add Bundy’s wife Carol’s quote when asked about them, “I have not seen or heard anything from the militia and others who have came to our ranch that would, in any way, make me think they had an intent to kill or harm anyone,”
IOW: don’t believe your lying eyes, I’m telling you we was peaceful
This will not end well.
Seth Owen
Obviously just a isolated incident. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Bob
I try to forget what Megan sez.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@schrodinger’s cat:
This was never funny to begin with. This is just shit going to Defcon 2.
C.V. Danes
I might be going out in a limb here, but I’m quite certain that when the Second Amendment described the need for a citizen militia, it didn’t mean that the citizens who made up that militia were to be armed 24/7, everywhere they went, or get to decide upon their own how they should act as members of the militia.
Just throwin’ that out there.
The Red Pen
It took me about 90 seconds to find this comment on Free Republic:
piratedan
you know what bothers me… you never hear about guys like Limbaugh and Hannity et al dealing with death threats from deranged liberals, nothing about people stalking Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter threatening to end their lives for preaching the sword and thereby dying by it. If there are rampaging murderous nazi sicalist liberals out there, we’re doing a pretty piss poor job I’d say… must be all of that illegal NSA stuff causing it to die in the cradle perhaps.
No, the victims always appear to be some poor sod working or shopping someplace or some law enforcement or government entity just trying to keep daily life manageable for all when some ammosexual decides to get jiggy with it and start making life “real” for the rest of us just in the process of living it..
already can hear the faint cries of false flag! echoing throughout the media landscape because Gadsden flags were all the rage with Occupy Wall Street movement dontchaknow….
Paul in KY
@The Red Pen: Am surprised it took you that long.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@japa21: Just like Gordon Kahl, amiright?
Tokyokie
@C.V. Danes: I think you may be referring to 2nd Amendment modifier of “well regulated” that goes before “militia.”
Omnes Omnibus
@C.V. Danes: Hence, the words “well regulated.”
SFAW
@C.V. Danes:
I can’t decide if you’re a commie (tryin’ to trample on the God-written Constitution) or a fascist (wantin’ to take our guns away so that the jack-booted thugs can enslave us).
Either way, I’m sure you’re taking your marching orders from the Kenyan Mooslim usurper – he who is both a communist/bocialist AND a fascist.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Tokyokie:
Unfortunately, all 3 of those words were found to be obsolete by the Supremes in judging that Guns are the only real sacrosanct freedom in America.
Morzer
How long before Fox News starts “debating” the issue of whether Obama arranged this incident (which was all done with CGI anyway) to distract from BergdahlBenBundyghazigate?
Five minutes?
feebog
@C.V. Danes:
Tony Scalia and his gang at the Supreme Court beg to disagree. In their view, the Second Amendment is carte blanche to bear arms anywhere, anytime.
Belafon
Watering the tree of liberty to keep it healthy, obviously.
SFAW
@Paul in KY:
Surfing via dial-up always takes longer.
Belafon
@Tokyokie: I joke that the little sign that says “to ramp” means “ignore the yield sign above it.” Similarly, the word “militia” is not allowed to have any modifiers, and therefore “well regulated” is to be ignored.
Morzer
@SFAW:
A bocialist? As in one who secretly worships an exotic and unAmerican Portuguese water dog?
GregB
Rachel Maddow covered this future incident back in 2010.
Link.
SFAW
@feebog:
Fat Nino already tipped his hand on that: he “ruminated” on the idea of privately-owned rocket launchers, and whether they’re allowed by the Second Amendment.
I wish I were kidding.
Elizabelle
How is Fox News covering the Las Vegas shootings? They have a lot of law and order types in their viewing audience, so what are they saying?
Ash Can
The entire right wing will remain in utter denial over this. That’s not news. What will be interesting is how the news media (other than Fox) react. This incident basically walks up to them, hits them square in the face with a frying pan, and screams “RIGHT WING TERRORISM” in their faces. Let’s see if they ignore it, scramble for old photos of Weather Underground idiots to try to prove that “both sides” do it, or tut-tut over violent movies and video games.
Morzer
@feebog:
The irony is that a well-regulated militia was considered a key weapon against tyranny – because it wasn’t a standing army, which was one of the recognized ways in which tyrants kept the people in line (and abused them by billeting soldiers in people’s houses). Now we have an enormous standing army, which ought to make aspiring tyrants very happy, and no sign of any sort of real militia, much less a well-regulated one.
Morzer
@Ash Can:
The media will do what they always do – debate the matter in meaningless “both sides do it so who are we to look for facts” style and then, after a week, happily forget it and go back to carefully assessing the precise curvature of Kim Kardashian’s buttocks.
Villago Delenda Est
@C.V. Danes: Well, what we need is a citizen militia to protect us from the assholes in the citizen militia, it seems.
Time to take the ammosexuals down.
Roger Moore
@Morzer:
I expect truthers to come out of the woodwork and tell us those cops never existed.
Morzer
@Villago Delenda Est:
Just so long as we don’t have to wear those damn tights and tri-corns. I am too old for that sort of cosplay.
SFAW
@Morzer:
Nein!No, a bocialist. (at around 4:25)Villago Delenda Est
@Morzer: Utter asswipe Alex Jones is working on it right now.
PaulW
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Actually, the big gun control case that Scalia decided… Scalia said that guns were still regulate-able. It was just the majority decision ruled against a TOTAL ban regarding handgun ownership in the homes. Limiting access to certain firearms – automatic rifles, for example – were still allowed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller#Issues_addressed_by_the_majority
Problem is, our states and Congress refuse to deal with better regulations and limits, preferring instead to pursue the “Open Carry” and “Stand Your Ground” instead of installing universal background checks as well as child safety/owner safety regs.
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: I don’t like the sound of these “boncentration bamps” myself….
beltane
@Ash Can: The media will almost certainly downplay this, either because they don’t see the far-right as a real threat to their safety and comfort or because they do see them as a threat and are afraid that if they enrage the beast, they will be the next target of its wrath.
Patrick
@Morzer:
I was watching NBC News this morning. A couple of minutes was devoted to the Las Vegas murders, while 6-7 minutes, including an appearing by Bob Costas, was geared to the Triple Crown controversy. Our priorities are so screwed. Until that changes, one can only assume that these insane shootings will continue.
Morzer
@PaulW:
“You can get any reg you want, at Antonin’s Restaurant.”
rikyrah
Chicago’s Urban Prep applauds first college graduates By The Admin | June 9, 2014 0 Comments
Jamil Boldian headed to college four years ago, arriving in small-town Ohio with a one-way Megabus ticket and $17.91 to his name. He’d been scared to leave Chicago, the only place he’d ever really known. He’d had a rough start in life, bouncing around in seven or eight elementary schools. He wasn’t always sure he was college material. Now here he was on a rural campus, where he knew no one.
But that had been part of the grand plan ever since Boldian had enrolled in Urban Prep, a new charter high school for young black men. Most were poor, way behind in school and living with their mothers in gang-ravaged neighborhoods. But founder Tim King had made a pledge: If they stayed disciplined and dreamed big, they’d get into college. And sure enough, every member in the Class of 2010, the school’s first, was accepted into four-year colleges and universities. Once they’d climbed that hill, though, the mountain was next.
Each student approached college with his own baggage: There was Krishaun Branch, the former hell-raiser who’d flirted with gang life, left Urban Prep, then returned after a tragedy. Robert Henderson, the survivor of a lifetime’s worth of hard knocks. Marlon Marshall, the soft-spoken runner who’d said he’d never had a real childhood. Rayvaughn Hines, the student council vice president and athlete, who grew up hearing the odds were stacked against young black men. Cameron Barnes, the lanky, shy teen still mourning his mother’s death, wondering whether he had what it takes to finish college. Once in school, these students would wrestle with stress and loneliness. Depression and self-doubt. They’d come to know the stomach-churning anxiety of getting a D on a big test. The strain of balancing classes with two, even three jobs and still ending up in debt. The uneasiness of living in a nearly all-white community for the first time in their lives. The sting of hearing your professor predict you will fail in school. They’d have to overcome all that, and more, to make it to graduation. –
See more at: http://blackpoliticsontheweb.com/2014/06/09/chicagos-urban-prep-applauds-first-college-graduates/#sthash.fEx4FxQP.dpuf
brendancalling
what’s disturbing is that it’s nearly 11:30 EST and this isn’t on the NYT website at all, and barely at the Washington Post.
I guess you could call it a “media whiteout”, given the complexion of the shooters.
PaulW
@Villago Delenda Est:
But to do so, we have to purchase enough firearms and firepower to take them down as well. Pepper spray has its limits. And if we buy firearms, we’re pretty much giving money to the NRA (seriously, they own shares in a lot of gun manufacturers, they make money off of every gun and bullet sold).
raven
@beltane: Well, it’s the lead story on bit the CNN and Fox site right now.
Morzer
@Patrick:
Bread and circuses without the bread – the policy of our oligarchs for a happier, hungrier world.
Villago Delenda Est
@Patrick: One one hand, you have Praetorian Guards roughing up people at the Forum, and then you have Bob Costas reporting on the big foofawrah at the Circus yesterday.
Ash Can
Also, the time is coming — and probably soon — when some armed citizens see other, open-carry citizens heading for them and decide that they’re Bad Guys With Guns, and some bar or restaurant or coffee shop gets blasted all to shit and back in the ensuing shootout. There’d be grim justice in it except for the innocent bystanders who would be in grave danger of getting caught in the crossfire or found by stray bullets.
raven
@Patrick: There isn’t that much to report until the 1pm presser.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s because you’re one of them bleeding hearts.
If you were a right-thinking person, you’d have nothing to worry about. According to Niemoeller, at least.
The Red Pen
@Paul in KY:
Me, too, but the thread I clicked on degenerated into a side-discussion on Tracy Morgan’s accident and it took them a while to get back on topic and blame the “Leftists.”
balconesfault
Not going to believe that there was actually a suicide at the end until Alex Jones personally inspects the dead bodies. And for that matter, that the police killings happened until Alex Jones personally inspects those bodies too.
Although maybe not even then, since the whole scene could have been fabricated by BATF as a pretense for killing some law abiding 2nd Amendment devotees and scapegoating them.
beltane
@Patrick: It’s more a matter of cowardice than priorities. Anyone who shines too bright a light on the freedumb lovers will certainly end up on the receiving end of assassination threats if not worse.
Derelict
@Ash Can: Hell, they’ll probably start talking about the Haymarket Riot. That was union thugs, after all.
? Martin
@PaulW:
Speak for yourselves. California tightened gun regulations and is even confiscating guns from felons and people with mental illness. We tried to limit conceal carry to ‘show cause’ and the courts struck that down.
Not everybody is signing onto this madness.
Morzer
@Derelict:
Or they’ll explain that if enough McArdle units of young children had only rushed the gunmen, as they were supposed to do….
? Martin
@balconesfault:
True patriots would never take the easy out. I’m pretty sure Obama droned them in that Walmart.
Frankensteinbeck
@Belafon:
This incident and the Bundy ranch both perfectly illustrate what Jefferson meant. He meant that America is so peaceful that our rebels are pathetic jokes. The letter that quote comes from is sarcastic as fuck, sarcasm being an art form to show how intelligent you were those days. The focus of the letter is that rebellions are an inevitable experience for any government, and you can tell how well a government is doing by how large-scale and organized the rebellion. He was referring to the Whiskey Rebellion specifically, but current circumstances of chicken hawks and lone wolf domestic terrorists fits the general point of the letter.
EDIT – @beltane:
I think they downplay these things because they believe right wing terrorists are just being crass and tasteless, but have the right idea. The national journalist class really would prefer that blacks learn their place again and rich people like them get everything they want.
SatanicPanic
Look on the bright side, at least they’re dead
SFAW
I’m waiting for some wag to state that it was actually a FALSE false flag, i.e., something designed to make Alex Jones think it was a false flag, but really wasn’t.
To be followed by a false false false flag: something designed to make Alex Jones think the it was designed to make him think it was false flag, but wasn’t.
I can only hope that, at the end, Jones will shout “Norman, coordinate!” and then shut down. Of course, that would presume that Jones can actually think, so that’s out.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer: Yep. The “well-regulated militia” is supposed to solve two problems at once: (1) eliminate the NEED for a standing army (national defense) and (2) eliminate the THREAT of a standing army (subjugation). It’s supposed to work so that the people’s representatives can put out the call and summon the people to become the people’s army with the people’s weapons. It makes no sense without that context. It was never supposed to license dumbfuck vigilantism. Well, except for the kind used against Indians, maybe.
? Martin
@Morzer: If only there had been two good guys with guns in that pizzeria to stop this.
How come none of our brilliant teevee people have pointed out that the goal of enough firepower to stop a tyrannical government is completely at odds of ‘good guy with a gun’ being adequate to stop anybody that goes off?
Didn’t we spend 40 years going through this exercise with the Soviet Union?
catclub
@Morzer: Others have opined that the well-regulated militia is another term for slave patrols. It would suggest that the crazy states rights folks had their forefathers helping to craft the constitution. [That resistance to federal tyranny and all.]
Steeplejack
@brendancalling:
It’s on the NYT front page, left column, a bit down. Small headline, though. “Five Dead in Shooting Rampage in Las Vegas.”
Paul in KY
@SFAW: A prime theorist too of ‘Socialofacism’!!
balconesfault
@Ash Can: John Stewart riffed on this the other day … noting that even gun-toting “open carry” demonstrators acknowledged that some people who saw them carrying their AK-47s into restaurants might be legitimately afraid … while “stand your gun” laws cover you blowing away someone who you view as a legitimate threat … setting up the scenario you envision.
Paul in KY
@SFAW: Hadn’t thought of that. My work has a T3 line, so I iz spoiled.
SatanicPanic
@The Red Pen: This is reason #2 why they will never get the revolution they want- they set the bar for martyr way too high. We’ll be in trouble when the figure out that you have to leave the door open for some new heroes.
shortstop
When America is cruelly tyrannized by having a twice-elected black guy in the chief executive’s spot, you have to expect freedom-loving people to push back a little.
Belafon
@FlipYrWhig: And slaves, especially those that escaped and the people who helped them.
Morzer
@? Martin:
Yes, but remember that Reagan walked away from the Gunfight at the Reykjavik Corral and Gorbachev didn’t. One good man with a gun saved the world!
Paul in KY
@The Red Pen: I knew there had to be a reason!
xenos
@Villago Delenda Est:
Time to dig out the Doc Marten’s with the red shoelaces…
Paul in KY
@Morzer: We call them ‘McArdle Stormtykes’. Nice kevlar romper unis. Lots of esprit de corps, until they find out what they’re supposed to do.
Morzer
@xenos:
What about blue suede shoes?
beltane
@catclub: It’s a true heart of darkness that lies at the core of American history. If you don’t want to fall victim to despair, it’s best not to dig too deep.
GregB
The smug douche Ross Douthat is opining on CNN that releasing a POW is controversial and the President should have known that it was a controversial issue to release an American POW from enemy hands.
elmo
@balconesfault:
You laugh, but half the people on the FreeRepublic threads I was reading were claiming that this was actually stopped by an armed shopper in the Walmart, and that the media was covering that part up.
? Martin
@Ash Can: I told my wife and kids – you see someone with a gun without a badge, you get out of the way and call 911. Don’t even hesitate. I don’t give a shit if they have a permit or not – that’s for them to work out with the police that arrive. In my neck of the woods, they’ll arrive guns drawn. The last murder in my city was a former cop who was hunting police officers and their families.
Cassidy
Coverage? Lebron asked to be taken out of game one for some girly cramping. Who has time to cover a couple patriots exercising their rights into someone’s head?
Kristin
@? Martin: For a moment, I thought to myself, “Hey, maybe people will stop saying that these things wouldn’t happen if every potential victim were armed.” Then, I laughed at myself.
catclub
Charlie Pierce is wondering when the Police Unions will decide this kind of thing is an unhealthy development FOR THEM, and tell the politicians. I wonder that, too.
Also LGM mentions that a political environment that favors such rightwing crazies encourages them to be even more violent. Whocoodanode?
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: Oh, good grief. Waving a hankerchief at someone is enough for Alex Jones to start screaming “false flag”. The man is a paranoid shitstain who should be locked up in a padded cell and then the key destroyed.
Morzer
@GregB:
That would be Ross Douthat who served in.. how many glorious campaigns was it again?
Higgs Boson's Mate
Did the government’s pulling back from a confrontation at the Bundy ranch encourage the ammosexuals to commit crimes like this one? Would a show of overwhelming force discouraged them?
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
What’s the likelihood that this couple was interviewed in a positive light by Fox News while they were participating at the Bundy compound?
catclub
@? Martin:
Does that count the pickup truck that was heavily ventilated by nervous police? I do not remember if those people in the truck were killed.
schrodinger's cat
@Morzer: I only remember the Chunky Reese Witherspoon campaign.
FlipYrWhig
@catclub: @Belafon: I remember that discussion about slave patrols from a few months back. Good point, although IMHO I see a lot more worry about Indians than fugitive slaves. Here’s the analogous passage about the militia(s) in the Articles of Confederation, Article 6:
In Article 9 there’s a bit about how the Congress has the power to order each state to gather up and arm a number of soldiers to fulfill a quota, and that Congress will pay them, with some additional fuss over what to do if the state wants to send more or fewer men. (Source: Yale Law School Avalon Project)
catclub
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Magic eight ball points to yes for both questions.
beltane
@GregB: He has a point. From now on, every POW release should be accompanied by a complimentary gift of a pundit to the POW’s former captors.
raven
@catclub: I haven’t had an 8 ball in a while.
D58826
Not sure why it is even being covered by the media, it’s only 5 dead. Keep moving Nothing to see.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@FlipYrWhig: The well regulated militia and no standing army was because Oliver Cromwell loomed large in the Founding Father’s minds. Cromwell got rid of the monarchy and instead made himself dictator of England Needless to say being ruled by a manic-depressive Puritan with absolute power was no fun.
David in NY
@PaulW: Agreed. The Supreme Court has clearly not said that state’s can’t regulate gun possession or use in reasonable ways. As I recall, the Heller case pretty much said that it did not invalidate any federal law restricting gun possession. And as far as I am aware, no regulation of gun ownership or possession, less stringent than a complete ban on possession, has been declared unconstitutional. Prior to Heller many states recognized a Second Amendment type right , under their state or maybe even the Federal constitution, but nonetheless upheld any reasonable regulation of that right.
In New York State, when Andrew Cuomo tries to pretend he’s a liberal, one of the two things he can point to is increased regulation of firearms (following Sandy Hook, I think). This is the one thing that has made him unpopular in upstate, rural areas, which are littered with signs calling for repeal of the “Safe Act,” though I would be happy if the people displaying those signs continued to be bound by provisions of the law (no high-capacity magazines, background checks, etc.).
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane: No, it should be at least a five pundits to the POW exchange.
Of course, this opens up the “Ransom of Red Chief” scenario…
D58826
@Villago Delenda Est: or Bush advisors
Morzer
@schrodinger’s cat:
If I remember rightly, didn’t the barrel of Colonel Douthat’s musket droop at the critical juncture?
? Martin
@catclub: Thankfully (and amazingly) they were not killed. Quite a large settlement from the city, IIRC. I haven’t followed the story on those officers but I hope to hell they never get a gun again.
These guys are trained pretty well and they still did a completely dumbshit move like mistake the paper delivery (two Vietnamese women) for a gunman (large black man) and opened fire into the truck and the homes behind the truck. You can only imagine what our citizen militias would do. (Beyond gunning down kids armed with Skittles.)
FlipYrWhig
@catclub: Police groups have been doing that for years. See National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence.
taylormattd
Let’s be clear: Every person who is part of the propaganda arm of the republican party – whether it be a Fox News personality, a wingnut newspaper columnist, a blogger like McMegan, or the mealthy-mouthed “both sides do it” talking heads – is part of the machine that creates right wing terrorists.
gbear
@Morzer: Don’t tread on them!
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin: Hey, look. ANYONE could confuse two Vietnamese women with a large black man. It’s not like any of these types was an upstanding (white) citizen, ya know!
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Cromwell was sort of the proto-Napoleon: the military leader who took over what was initially something closer to being a people’s revolution.
Heliopause
Our society ought to come to the realization — ought to, but won’t — that right wing white extremists are a far bigger danger to us than all those brown-skinned folks on the other side of the world ever will be. Two “revolutions” in three days ought to wake up the people who run the country, but they’ve invested so much in directing our collective gaze overseas that they’ll be hard-pressed to change the narrative now.
Paul in KY
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: 2/5
? Martin
@David in NY: Assault weapons are banned in CA by Reagan. That’s been challenged and has been upheld. It’s been expanded upon and mostly upheld. Magazine size is regulated. Who can be licensed is regulated and upheld. I believe even our confiscations have been upheld.
The only thing I’m currently aware of that hasn’t been upheld is the right of law enforcement to deny a conceal carry for insufficient cause. We had a law that said you needed to prove you had a legitimate need for a CCW when applying (restraining order, etc.) That got struck down. Anyone can apply and be granted a license. I think the legislature is planning on beefing up the requirements to maintain that license (training, etc.)
Omnes Omnibus
@catclub: Militias were a staple of colonial life. While they have had an involvement it catching runaway slaves in the slave states, they did exist and have a legitimate function in the colonies. The troops who were not part of the Continental Army during the Revolution were militia troops. The regiments in the Civil War who had a state as part of their name were basically militia troops.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
And because every time something like this happens, it threatens to invalidate their cherished narrative in which DFHs and other Fucking Liberals are the reason for all this hatred and divisiveness. It’s especially hard to maintain the fiction when right wing gun nuts do this over and over and, no matter how frantically they look, the media just can’t come up with a left-wing equivalent to play equivalence with. At least forty years ago you had the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, rising gang violence, inner city riots to contrast with police and right-wing violence. Not anymore.
Stories like this directly challenge the unspoken corollary (“But Liberals Are Worse”) to the mainstream media’s central creed (“Both Sides Do It”). Of course they do everything they can to downplay them or, when they can’t do that, at least derail the conversation onto meaningless platitudes of the “terrorism has no ideology!” kind.
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: And the idea lasted until it proved unworkable in 1793, when it was determined that untrained armies couldn’t win the Northwest Indian Wars.
beltane
@Heliopause: It’s much, much easier to bomb people “over there” than it is to deal with problems here. We could flatten the entire middle east and it would be nothing but an abstraction for most Americans. Neutralizing the threat within, the one that terrorizes us on a constant basis, will take a huge amount of courage and sacrifice. I’m not sure we have it in us as a people.
shortstop
Really? Ethi.nyl estra.diol got me filtered? I can’t keep up with what the kids are smoking these days.
beergoggles
I’m still mad that the whole group of Bundy campers didn’t get arrested and have their firearms confiscated. Would have saved those people’s lives. But of course those campers are white, so they have constitutional rights to threaten government officials and evade taxes with no repercussions.
Fuck all the people who said we should wait it out.
FlipYrWhig
@Suffern ACE: And hence the Constitution has been stuck in beta for 200+ years.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
Freedom’s just another word for no one left to shoot.
Tokyokie
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Yeah, I know. “Originalists” like Scalia apparently use a ouija board to determine which parts of the Constitution are to be taken seriously.
celticdragonchick
@Morzer:
Rev war re-enacting does not include tights…and tricorn hats are for civilians only (actual soldiers wore cocked hats or shakos and similar helmets). Women and men wore wool stockings generally (cotton was damned expensive before the cotton gin, and it had to be imported from Jamaica, like rum) and women also wore stays made with whalebone over their chemise. Linen was commenly used, as was sustian (a linen cotton blend). Men often wore buttons, but women stuck with hook and eye fasteners or pinner gowns and aprons (actually pinned together with long bass pins).
In any event, accurate Rev War re-enacting is expensive and demands a type of OCD syndrome regarding authenticity.
Now, the polyesther patriot cosplayers have different standards of course…
Morley Bolero
No one could have predicted…
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
A worthy embellishment of the same principle. I really think most national journalists are the ‘Reagan Democrats’ they cherish, a bunch of rich assholes who think of themselves as liberal but learned from Reagan that the way to help the poor is to make them work harder and black teens are all in street gangs and cowboys talking tough protect us from the Evil Empire. Only hippies think being nice to anybody helps anything, and only nerds care about facts or numbers!
celticdragonchick
@beergoggles:
You do understand that they were waiting for that sort of thing in order to start a firefight, don’t you? Do you actually think they were just going to put down the AR-15 rifes and walk out?
pseudonymous in nc
Those two patriots were just upstanding Open Carry advocates defending their freedom in a restaurant right until they shot the two cops.
As well as the false flag nutjobs, there have been people latching onto the idea that a Good Guy With A Gun™ took a shot at one of the killers in the Walmart. Talk about grasping at fucking straws.
Tokyokie
@Belafon: For the sake of efficiency, I choose to leave out the “not” between “shall” and “be infringed.” Strikes me as an equally valid reading of the language.
gbear
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I think a show of overwhelming force would have been really dangerous. You have one side that you know has a bunch of whackos who think it’s a winning idea to start a bloodbath, and they’re willing to put their wives and children at the front of the line to prove it.
No matter how disciplined the government forces stayed, one of the ammosexuals would have taken a shot and then all hell would have broken out as the rest of them started shooting, and Fox News would have turned them all into martyrs even after it was discovered that their wives and children had been shot from behind.
smith
@beergoggles:
And yet the OWS protesters were to a large extent white, and they still got gassed and their heads were bashed for camping in the park. Wonder what the difference was?
Jewish Steel
One of my all time favorites. Dead at 56. What a bummer.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27770266
pseudonymous in nc
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It was a combination of things, all derived from 150 years of history that was well known to them. Standing armies can be used by tyrants, but standing armies also cost a fuck of a lot of money, and once you commit to funding a standing army, the beast has to be fed.
…as we can see from the trickle-down of military-spec hardware into Bumfuck County sheriff’s department, where it will be available for Deputy Buford and perhaps one or two recruits who spent chunks of the last decade in Iraq or Afghanistan.
beergoggles
@celticdragonchick: You know we keep making fun of their gun fetish by saying there’s no way they can go against the government with the superior technology, drones and firepower the government has, and yet here they are holding the government off. So apparently they are correct.
And if they don’t put down their rifles, they can be taken out there before they become a danger to the general public. Isn’t it a lot better to take the crazy people out when they are all together in an isolated area instead of when they have innocent bystanders to shoot? There are drones for that.
Morzer
@celticdragonchick:
I still can’t decide whether bi-cornism is genetic or a choice. As for tri-cornism….
Chris
@beltane:
Yeah, I’ve increasingly realized over the years that this is the case.
It’s not unusual in my case to casually hear “oh, you’re studying IR/the Middle East? Oh, maybe you can explain – seriously, why haven’t we bombed Iran yet? Or at least let Israel do it?” The same way you’d ask why the garage hasn’t fixed your car yet. It’d be easy to dismiss if it only came from frothing-at-the-mouth Fox News viewers, but it’s widespread far beyond that. Even among people who don’t want another war, per se, but c’mon, a few bombing runs to put them back in their place…
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yeah, I think I agree. Although I’m not sure how many of them even identify as “liberal” anymore (as opposed to moderate or whatever), or what exactly they imagine that word means.
celticdragonchick
@smith:
You can back 150 years and see a pattern of government and corporate violence against progressives. Blair Mountain West Virginia (army air corps bombers made air strikes on striking miners)…machine gunning miners families in Colorado…police violence in countless strikes and demonstrations.
For one thing, progressive groups are not as likely to be armed. Also, they are easily smeared as foreign agitators or dumb kids who need to be taught a lesson and this works time and time again to isolate and marginalize left wing causes. This does not translate well to right wing types who wave the flag. Even when they resort to violence, right wingers are still often seen as defending “American values” while progressives are typically cast as hostile to “American values”. That is also why left wing vilnce almost always backfires in a way that right wing violence does not, since they are seen as attacking America while right wing loons are seen as defending it.
shortstop
@Jewish Steel: Ouch.
wuzzat
@C.V. Danes:
And once again, we already have a citizen militia. It’s called the National Guard. At best, these whack-jobs are guerrillas, but that assumes a level of competence that discipline that just ain’t there.
Morzer
@Chris:
Americans seem to have a strange double consciousness of the Middle East. On the one hand, it is remote, backward and populated by ignorant savages (except for the Blessed Israel) and we could wipe them out (except for the Blessed Israel) in a couple of minutes using an All-Pro toothpick; on the other hand, it is right next door to Mexico and populated by the most vicious and deadly terrorists ever known to man who have the most advanced hardware devices and are always about to kill us all in our beds if our army of 300 heroic white men (those who haven’t been eunuchized by all the homosexuals who keep sucking their cocks) didn’t prevent them by holding the pass when the French deserted us .
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
It means they can tell themselves that they want to help people but they’re mature adults who understand that tough love is brave and mature and they’re mature enough to always vote for Republicans even though they uphold the ideals of Democrats. Hippies, of course, are not mature. Anyone who thinks you can help people by helping people is a naive, childish zealot.
Humans are really good at making up self-aggrandizing justifications. Patting themselves on the back for being an asshole is one of the major features of assholes.
beergoggles
@smith: Because they didn’t call Obama the hnic.
Villago Delenda Est
@beergoggles: This is because the government does not behave the way they do. The government, when dealing with reichtards (not minorities, obviously) does not shoot first and ask questions at the inquest. They give these vile sacks of nihilist shit all the latitude in the world.
The reichtards/teahadis/open carry assholes are all about being loud and proud of their desire to wear brown shirts and stomp on Jews.
Steeplejack
@pseudonymous in nc:
From the New York Times today: “War Gear Flows to Police Departments, Discreetly.”
And Neenah, WI, population 25,000, gets a 30-ton armored combat truck.
Neenah has not had a single homicide in five years.
ETA: Love the part about Neenah’s “old armored car.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
While being too cowardly to go far enough to actually make the government treat them like rebels. They’re little kids in a car yelling ‘I’m not touching you!’
C.V. Danes
@wuzzat:
Exactly. If you want to exercise your rights under the Second Amendment, join the National Guard. But the last time I checked, they kept their M16s locked up.
Chris
@celticdragonchick:
But the people who wave the Confederate flag or join the Alaska Independence Party and couldn’t be more blatantly saying “fuck you, America” if they were burning the stars and stripes in front of a Che Guevara poster, still get the same pass as the ordinary flag-wavers.
I agree that the same narrative doesn’t translate well to right wing types, but that’s largely because a narrative was created over those 150 years that almost Pavlovian-ly taught us to associate certain causes with unpatriotic values, and to overlook the obviously unpatriotic values of others. Don’t know if that contradicts what you were saying, but thought it was worth clarifying all the same.
celticdragonchick
@beergoggles:
I have no idea why people here have been making that argument. Several million armed right wing types are nothing at all to laugh about…and we already discovered that nuts with AK-47s can really create problems in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Something else to keep in mind: the military is overwhelmingly hyer-conservative. Many if not most of the combat arms guys come from southern states and have plenty of their own guns already. Twenty years ago, I heard from friends in the 72nd Ranger that a study had been commisioned regarding unit retention in the event of a civil war or something similar. The study supposedly found that up to one third to even one half of soldiers in most units would either refuse to fight or actively defect to the rebels…depending on the cause of fighting.
Don’t assume that the army will go in and kick ass. You may see an awful lot of combat ineffective units getting shot at by their own former soldiers.
FlipYrWhig
@Tokyokie: What the Articles of Confederation example indicates to me is that the people who wrote the 2nd Amendment were envisioning public stores of weapons and other equipment. But people did keep guns for hunting at home. Are those “arms” per se? I would say that “arms” by definition have to do with war exclusively. But it’s debatable. (Is a highwayman “armed,” or does he simply have a gun? Is a hunter “armed”?) And that’s partly why this is difficult and degenerates into fanboy stuff about what guns look like and are used for.
C.V. Danes
@feebog: Tony Scalia and his gang at the Supreme Court beg to disagree. In their paid view, the Second Amendment is carte blanche to bear arms anywhere, anytime.
I added an extra word to your statement (in italics) for clarification :-)
srv
@beergoggles:
The Alamo did not turn out so well for Mexico in the long run.
Change comes through violence. Y’all better get real about re-imagining the 2nd Ammendment in the courts or move on to something more productive.
Villago Delenda Est
@C.V. Danes:
That’s not fun! These are adults who want to “play army” without the all the strings attached to actually “playing army”, A soldier once told me that he loved the Army, because he was paid to “play army” all the time. Then he confessed that he had no idea that “playing army” involved a hell of a lot more than displaying a death p3nis for everyone to see…the latrine digging part is the one that you never experience as an eight year old.
David in NY
@? Martin: I was not aware of that Ninth Circuit opinion. I think it’s an extension of the Supreme Court’s cases, and I’m not sure it would survive review by the Supremes. But who knows. (Anthony Kennedy may, but that’s about it.)
Anyway, rehearing en banc (by the panel or an en banc panel of the Ninth) has been sought. The State, which was not a party, but whose statute has been declared unconstitutional, has sought to intervene. It will be a while before the final resolution in the Ninth Circuit is known.
Villago Delenda Est
@FlipYrWhig: One can argue that the only way to “bear arms” is under the auspices of the “well regulated militia”. All that regulation, by the way, involves plenty of repetitive drill that is WORK, not play, and is not a great deal of tun. Especially with muskets. Everyone forgets that ammunition as we know it now didn’t exist at the time of the colonial insurgency. Being a militiaman involved a great deal of training and repetitive drilling to be proficient, something that the modern “militia” has no inkling of, and would reject outright.
celticdragonchick
@wuzzat:
Strictly speaking, the national guard isn’t actually the militia but it sort of came to fill that role. The militia was supposed to be all able bodied men of good character from age 16 to 60 ( depending on what colony you were in) who were required to show up for muster, often on Sunday after church. The militia was a civil responsibility for the entire community. They may have to repair a bridge that was washed out or search for criminals etc.
I think it is to our detriment that we lost that type of civic approach to law enforcement and local defense and emergency management. We have professional police who now treat everybody like a Fallujah insurgent and use overwhelming force to subdue WW II veterans, pregnant women and unresisting protesters like you saw in Occupy NY, Occupy Chapel HIll and Occupy Oakland (which is still paying out on lawsuits for police brutality). I don’t consider that an improvement.
Fire about 80 percent of the SWAT teams, keep the forensic types as is and start requiring folks with guns (like me…) to participate in training and then be on duty once a month in community policing or emergency standby for search and rescue etc.
Actually make the “well regulated militia” mean something again.
Paul in KY
@C.V. Danes: That’s why they are no fun to join…
Richard Bottoms
I told you so.
celticdragonchick
@Chris: I think we are making the same point.
feebog
It’s going to be interesting when the names and pictures of these two faux revolutionaries are released, most likely later today. I can just see the crew at TRMS scrambling to find video of these two at the Bundy Ranch. You just know there has to be a clip out there somewhere.
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: I disagree. If and when a terrible situation like that occurs, I have no doubt that the vast majority of soldiers/airmen/marines will follow their lawful orders.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I think the founders certainly thought a home rifle/blunderbuss/etc. was a ‘firearm’. Swords & pikes would have been thought of as ‘arms’.
My opinion here.
Frankensteinbeck
@celticdragonchick:
I must disagree. It is precisely this civic approach to law enforcement that leads to lynchings, religious prosecution, violently enforced conformity, and coverups of crimes like domestic abuse. The smaller the community, the easier it is to have a majority (or even violent minority) who can oppress everyone else. It’s just easier to get enough people to agree and organize, and there are less folks to resist. This is basically why Teatard types want local government. They long for the day when you could string up a negro or a queer and the federal government would never hear about it.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
That is a line worthy of praise. Pithy and true. Plus it rolls right off the tongue like it’s on skates.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: Loading the musket was a 6 or 7 step process that had to be correctly completed or you would end up with a club, when the Shawnee or Redcoats were charging you.
FlipYrWhig
@celticdragonchick: Not a bad idea in theory, but I imagine that in some places you’d end up with a posse of better-trained George Zimmermans harassing Those People, and no legal liability for what happens when their actions go awry.
@Villago Delenda Est: I agree, but if not all guns are “arms,” then some of the non-arms-bearing people will still have guns, so while the categories would be a lot clearer (essentially military “arms” vs. non-military “guns”), we’d still end up in a similar place in terms of public safety.
Cassidy
@celticdragonchick: That’s just simply not true. Here’s why: for an armed insurrection to reach the point of fighting federal troops, they’d have to have gone through at least two rounds of conflict with law enforcement and the NG. By the time the AD military comes in, it’s an enemy willing to engage the Army. No one likes getting shot at.
Morzer
@Paul in KY:
And if you managed to misfire the thing or just got unlucky with the manufacturing quality (free market!) you might just blow a good chunk of your own head or hand off.
celticdragonchick
@Paul in KY: Historical precedent from the Civil War does not really agree, although it is true that regiments were regional and thus could defect en mass.
Given that the army is far more conservative then the American polity at large (shown repeatedly in studies) and that soldiers, airmen etc tend to be drawn from southern states of the confederacy…I do not share your optimism.
When I was in the army from 1992 to 1996, I noted that insubordination towards President Clinton saturated the ranks and the officer corps, and I heard numerous discussions of armed resistance to alleged potential unconstitutional orders from the president if he gave them…including from officers. Considering I was an E-4…that is one hell of a thing for a 1st lt or a CW-2 to say around enlisted people.
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: That would probably stop the militarization of these units. Conversely though, the community units would have to have a quasi-military hierarchy & order enforcement to stop the ‘citizen-police helpers’ from disobeying orders, and other actions that would adversely affect the operation they wee taking part in.
Also saw Frankensteinbeck’s comments about the units being susceptible to mob actions, etc.
Mike in NC
Before Christmas some nut(s) in this country will blow away 50 or more people and the media will just shrug.
celticdragonchick
@Cassidy:
You assume that these guys are going to stand and fight like the IRA in the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and get blown away by heavy artillery. Not gonna happen. (the idiots will die quickly and smart ones will start sniping at cop cars at night, rigging booby traps, blowing up stuff and making life hellishly difficult for the rest of us)
The United States has a loooong history of anti authoritarian violence, armed revolts, assassinations and bombings.
I hope to God we are not entering another phase of the above.
Morzer
@Mike in NC:
I think that estimate might well be on the low side. I wish I didn’t feel so pessimistic, but we do seem to be seeing a trend towards more gun crazies getting their freak on.
Paul in KY
@Morzer: Definitely! Maybe the Shawnees or Redcoats would consider you out-of-action & wouldn’t waste their time scalping you?
That’s your best hope in that situation.
Ruckus
@celticdragonchick:
That’s the sort of talk you might hear at anytime in the military. I occasionally heard things along that line during Vietnam. Now what constitutes lawful/unlawful orders might change depending upon the political landscape but talking about it, I doubt that is much different. And of course this can change depending on your post. I was stationed on both coasts during Vietnam and can say that which post/ship/deployment you were on may have changed everything. Of course I don’t really understand the entire right wing party line so maybe I’m not the best person to discuss this.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: My impression is that “arms” are what the “army” uses, but other things, like “fowling-pieces” and so forth, may be used to shoot, but aren’t strictly speaking “arms.” If I’m right, that imparts a more precisely military context to “keep and bear arms,” which relates to what can or can’t be abridged. IOW, the right to bear guns-that-are-not-arms should be perfectly well abridgeable, and the right to bear arms per se would go back to being a collective right of the people, handled by careful storage in armories, which is entirely in keeping with the practices familiar to the people who wrote the Constitution. But, you know, the Supreme Court says otherwise, informed by stupidity, misreading, and 20th-century political considerations.
Cassidy
@celticdragonchick: Personally, I’ve never considered a Clancy novel as a blueprint for real life.
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: You’ve been in more recently that I.
Frankensteinbeck
@celticdragonchick:
We’re not, and we’ve already proven we’re not. The Bundy Ranch was IT. That was the call to action they’ve been waiting for. An armed standoff with the government praised far and wide by conservatives with the militia rallying to their cause. That was the spark that brought out all the revolutionaries waiting to take back their country from the brown horde and the hippies who enable it.
Their numbers were pathetic, their loudest supporters suddenly had to check if they left the oven on, and the militias fell apart because they’re assholes incapable of organization.
We’ll get occasional individual terrorist actions like this. That’s it. These murders are disgusting, but they’re a far cry from widespread insurrection.
David in NY
@FlipYrWhig: Garry Wills wrote a great piece on the historical meaning of “to bear arms,” probably in NY Review of Books. You could probably find it on line.
celticdragonchick
@Paul in KY:
Yes. Historically speaking, men in the milita who were under arms were also under authority of the militia commander (who was often voted in) and subject to discipline while under arms.
Today, I would not think it necessary for the militia to be armed 99 percent of the time. Unarmed (or minimally armed) neighborhood patrols, cordoning off a perimeter during an emergency and disaster response would be ways to employ people in civic duty.
The American people were all but begging for something like this after 9/11. We wanted something to bring us to work together.
Instead…we got “Go shopping!”.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: Back then, there was no difference in quality or capabilities between what a soldier carried & what a civilian might have in their home for hunting. Just an observation.
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: As long as they are unarmed & stay unarmed, it sounds like something that might improve police/rescue work.
celticdragonchick
@Cassidy:
I don’t care much for Tom Clancy. I merely think that civic duty is a progressive value as opposed to the Rand worshippers who think hyper invidualism solves everything. The Founders took it very seriously. Sadly, we do not.
Anyways, I do believe that if the 2nd amendment is to mean something beyond shooting kids walking home at night with ice tea and candy, then the well regulated clause should be enforced.
D58826
And yet for all those people yelling about intrusive government and Obamacare coming between you and your doctor here is the latest from Jindal land
. This is the same state that will not expand Medicaid to non-brain dead women. I guess if you poor and want medical care you have to go the brain dead route.
Elizabelle
@feebog:
Maybe, maybe not re these shooters having actually been at the Bundy ranch. That could be talk.
But no doubt some serious photo examining will commence.
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: I’m not an expert, but I don’t think that’s right. It’s kind of the difference between shotguns (small shot that flies in a lot of directions, better for hunting birds) and rifles (bullets, better for killing Conestoga or redcoats).
FlipYrWhig
@Paul in KY: But if I’m wrong, so be it.
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
We tried having non-professional police. It didn’t work. Which of your non-professional neighbors would you trust to correctly do a rape kit on you in the emergency room? Who would control the chain of evidence to take the rapist to court?
IMO, the problem is that so many cities decided to take on the William H. Parker model of policing because it saved them money, but at the cost of setting the police up as a paramilitary force that saw all civilians as potential enemies.
Morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Actually, I think Paul pretty much is right. The quality of muskets of the period was very variable, but by and large they followed the same fairly ineffective basic smoothbore pattern. There were makers of hunting guns and pistols of higher quality (Joseph Manton, for example), but those were relatively unlikely to turn up in daily life. Armies also tended to be quite conservative in adopting new technology, partly because a rifle as opposed to a musket was harder to handle, demanded more training and was slower to load and fouled more rapidly.
Suffern ACE
@Elizabelle: Yeah. I’m going to go with “no” they weren’t kicked off the ranch. They probably drove up for an afternoon and told that they could go back home.
FlipYrWhig
@Morzer: Fair enough.
celticdragonchick
@Paul in KY:
Differences in quality…no. Difference in type…yes. A civilian rifle or fowler was not built to be used in combat. They could not mount a bayonet and typically had slender stocks (in rifles, they were tyically built to your arm length specificatins and were very expensive) that would break if used in hand to hand fighting. Rifes were highly accurate and could kill a man at over 300 yards…but were difficult and time consuming to load and fouled from powder residue very quickly.
A King’s 2nd pattern “Brown Bess” musket or French Charville musket could be loaded and fired 4 time in one minute by highly trained troops. The American average was about 3 shots a minute (I have managed 3 shots…but it is not easy and I trained a lot with the 2nd NC Continental regt in close order drill and shooting)
The Brown Bess is not all accurate, since it is a smoothbore weapon, but 50 guys shooting in the same direction will hit something. The main killing part of the musket is actually the bayonet. THAT is what the British relied to carry them to victory time and time again. Charge at the rebels with cold steel and watch them run…at least until Guilford Courthouse when the 1st Maryland charged the British Guards with bayonets fixed…
There were military rifles used by the Hessian Jaegers and also British infantry under Maj Patrick Ferguson who developed his own breech loading black powder rifle that fired 6 accurate shots a minute and featured a bayonet. He was killed at King’s Mountain and Furguson rifles were taken from dead British soldiers were used by Confederates in the Civil War…presumably inherited from Grandpa who took it as a war prize.
celticdragonchick
@Mnemosyne:
I said earlier that you would need to keep forensic people as they are. My spouse is finishing a degree in forensic biology and it is simply too specialized for lay people.
Cassidy
@celticdragonchick: That’s not what I meant. You’re assigning these insurrectionists some sort of “evil genius” status. That ain’t them. They get their “tactical” knowledge from tv and movies. Some of them will pick a real fight and when they do, they’ll be squashed. The majority will continue to cosplay.
Jay C
@Steeplejack:
Well as of 13:30 MOnday (ET), the NYT website still has the Las Vegas shootings set up basically the way the dead-tree morning edition edition did – inside at the bottom of the “National” section – and with the same, fairly dry and informative text. No political motivation mentioned and only vaguely suggested.
Fairly ironically, IMO, they did have this piece frontpaged, about local police departments getting “upgraded” with tons of military-style equipment, i.e. “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with an MRAP!”
beergoggles
@celticdragonchick: I doubt the DOJ can just sic the military on the campers but there are other federal agencies that are equipped to handle it without the military baggage. The military isn’t the only office with access to drones either.
I’m just absolutely sick of these murderous traitors getting away with treason and then going on to murdering innocent people. There’s no point in having a government if they get to brazenly flaunt laws.
And whatever happened to all the armchair theorizing that the FBI would snag these creatures the moment they left the ranch and were vulnerable? Apparently that never happened.
Chris
@celticdragonchick:
I can only speak for myself, but…
Personally, I’m not laughing at the idea that a few irregulars with AKs could cause a lot of damage to the U.S. Army (as you said – Iraq and Afghanistan). I’m laughing at the idea that the militia movement are the people to do it.
Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t America. They were both societies that had already been shaped by decades of brutal war (international and civil) by the time we moved in. Which is important for two reasons; one, the “militia” types there actually had the experience to know how to fight a war, and two, they had popular constituencies that were willing to follow them (thus making them “a real insurgency reflecting widespread rejection of our authority” as opposed to “a few idiots with guns.”)
Neither is true in America. Most militia nuts are gun nerds, not hardened veterans. I seriously doubt if they have any idea what an actual shooting war with the U.S. government would entail. Not that they couldn’t learn, over time, as the war culled the idiots from their ranks and slowly, the smart ones survived and created more proficient militias. But that’s not likely to happen, because as Frank pointed out – they’re not in a position to spark a revolution. We just saw them try it, and even many of their own fellow gun nuts found reasons to be elsewhere, to say nothing of average Joes. Which IMHO, is because of difference # 2 between us and the Middle East – we’re not a war-torn society, we’re a functioning society, more or less, where even in bad economic times, the average citizen still lives well enough that he’s not willing to risk everything he has on something as uncertain as war.
Widespread right wing sympathies and fantasies are different from the willingness to act on them, also too. There was plenty of radical left-wing sentiment in Western Europe a generation ago, including many who loved (in the abstract) the idea of society being completely remade into something different and (rhetorically) spouted revolutionary slogans. But the Baader-Meinhoff, Red Brigade, Action Directe crowd were still isolated freaks and outcasts, because people who were actually willing to put their money where their mouth were, as it turned out, were a rarity even in the radical community. American militias so far seem to be pretty much the same.
Lolis
I wonder if the cops will take note and realize who is the biggest threat to them and democracy.
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
So your proposal is that the investigators be non-professionals? We can keep the forensics staff to do the evidence-gathering and testing, but the people doing the actual investigation, securing the crime scene, talking to witnesses should all be non-professionals?
You are assuming that our current adversarial model of policing is the one and only way to do policing, so the only choice is to completely dismantle the professional police force. It’s not. There are multiple models for policing. The American way of policing is seriously broken, but that means we need to fix the model, not abolish the professional police force. Vigilantism is not the way to get justice.
celticdragonchick
@Cassidy:
Hardly evil geniuses…but thousands of armed idiots with guns will still ruin your day.
Also, assuming they wil just drink beer and cosplay is an assumption that ignores our history. Maybe you are right…but I would not bet on it. In any event, one Timothy Leary is quite enough.
celticdragonchick
@Mnemosyne:
My proposal was more along the lines of get rid of most of the SWAT teams and have a greaty expanded and trained citizen auxillery working with trained LE. There are still some examples of this in parts of Colorado where civilian posses can still be called by the sheriff (and have been). If you own guns, you are responsible to show up and be trained in first aid, disastor response and unarmed community policing and you are on duty once a month or when called by elected officials. You do not replace professional LE, but you support and augment them. It would hopefully reduce the militarism we see in our police as well as promote civic pride and responsibility.
Morzer
@Chris:
One has to wonder what the fantasy mass-uprising would eat. Not so many supermarkets in the mountains and a limited supply of squirrels for the Mike Huckabee fanbois. Maybe they could eat the bootstraps they pull themselves up by every day.
elspi
This seems to be his facebook page. I think a trigger warning for anyone remotely sane is in order.
celticdragonchick
The back pain is getting up to where I need to lay down…so see you all later.
celticdragonchick
@elspi:
He’s a chemtrail troofer. Bad crazy.
Mnemosyne
@celticdragonchick:
Sadly, police brutality isn’t reserved to SWAT teams. The police who tasered an injured 16-year-old weren’t on a SWAT team. Do you envision a trained civilian riding along in every patrol car for every shift? Having one or two respond to every police call?
Morzer
@elspi:
Interesting string of interests under Other:
Clearly a militant leftist.
Morzer
@Mnemosyne:
Have police leave weapons and tasers in the armory and only take them out for incidents that specifically involve violence. It works for the British police, far from ideal though they are in many ways.
Paul in KY
@FlipYrWhig: I was speaking generally. Soldiers usually carried a smoothbore musket with a detachable bayonet. A rifle like Daniel Boone carried was a much more lethal weapon (more accurate & bullet travels farther). D. Boone did not have ability to affix a bayonet to his (although he could have had one fixed up, if he had wanted).
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: Appreciate your excellent writeup!
Paul in KY
@Morzer: Sagebrush & rattlesnakes! Also each other when they have been cornered for about 3 or 4 months.
FlipYrWhig
@celticdragonchick: What I like about this is that it could be spelled out in a gun license. By accepting this license you also accept all attendant responsibilities for disaster preparedness, civil disturbance, etc.: you can be called up into active duty, so to speak, so you’d better train and keep your licenses in good order and so forth. I don’t know if I’d want it to replace professional policing, but I think it’s an elegant way to attach responsibilities to liberties.
Morzer
@Paul in KY:
It is every PATRIOT’s duty to lay down his well-marbled thighs and drumsticks for HIS COUNTRY!!!
Paul in KY
@Morzer: Lord bless them…they taste so good!
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I actually don’t have a problem with the “civilian emergency corps” part of the proposal — especially as budgets are cut and climate change causes more severe weather, it’s probably a good idea to have a backup corps of civilians who have been trained and can step in to help with rescues, crowd control, etc.
It’s when we get into the part where citizens can do ordinary patrols instead of professional police that I think we get into some potentially disastrous situations, like when neighborhood watch guys in gated communities in Florida decide that a kid carrying Skittles is a dangerous criminal.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Ash Can: Looks like today it’s “all of the above”.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@FlipYrWhig:
The slave patrol argument has always seemed specious to me. In NC, slave patrols were mandated by the General Assembly starting in 1753; all citizens (read: white guys with property) were required to participate, but the slave patrols were organized at the county level and run by the courts. The State Militia was a separate organization run at the state level, and was only called out in the event of civil insurrection, large scale civil disorder, or problems with the Cherokee, Tuscarora, or other tribes. There would have been overlap in membership, but State Militias had specific duties which did not involve slaves (except in the case of a large scale slave revolt, which would have come under the heading of civil disorder). All states, free or slave, had militias. It was the accepted alternative to a standing army.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@FlipYrWhig: Exactly, and you can see the FF thinkuing “We lucked out with Washington, but what about the next victorious general…?” Considering the example of Mexico with Santa Anna the US did get off lightly. But think the point was the whole people’s militia was just a stage in our early history.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I invoked Zimmerman above.
pseudonymous in nc
@celticdragonchick:
Well, it depended on the state.
Everyone tends to think in terms of the civilian militia in Virginia which was “turn up and muster after church”, hence Jefferson’s bit on the right to keep and bear arms in the VA constitution, but in New York, the militia was a lot more like the National Guard, structured from the top down, and there’s no equivalent clause on personal rights in its state constitution.
The federal 2nd amdt. was a committee-room fudge between those two different models, which is why it’s such a mess.
Dave
@celticdragonchick: It’s not as hyperconservative as you think; conservative biased yes a too strong strain of hyperconservatism yes but not overwhelmingly
Dave
@celticdragonchick: It’s not as hyperconservative as you think; conservative biased yes a too strong strain of hyperconservatism yes but not overwhelmingly
Dave
@celticdragonchick: It’s not as hyperconservative as you think; conservative biased yes a too strong strain of hyperconservatism yes but not overwhelmingly
Dave
Whoops; and I will say this the more apocalyptic radical reactionary streak is disturbing and more common than I am truly comfortable with but it’s not anywhere near the dominant strain yet. And the points made earlier regarding the requirements for an effective insurgency remain true. And there is a small corp of individuals with hard experience gained in Afghanistan and Iraq that could potentially become a serious problem but unlikely on the scale of a true rebellion/insurgency but this is just my read on it.
Jesus California
@C.V. Danes: They don’t seem all that well regulated, do they?
Chris
@Dave:
What I’ve heard mostly from veterans here is that the officer corps leans leans disproportionately RWNJ, while the enlisted ranks sort out pretty evenly between liberal, conservative, and who-gives-a-shit, but learn to smile and nod at those officers who go on right wing rants in the name of “unit cohesion.”
The tolerance of politicization in the military is troubling (especially for a culture that used to pride itself on being so apolitical that quite a few officers didn’t even vote), but obedience to civilian authority seems to be pretty well ingrained, too. The week Obama fired McChrystal, I was in the heartland with family some of whom were true RWNJ veterans, and every one of them thought Obama had done the right thing, because “there’s no room for that kind of insubordination in the Army” – and these were the kind of people who if Obama walked on water, would say he can’t swim. It would take a hell of a lot of critical mass for military personnel to start defecting in any significant numbers, I would guess.
DavidTC
@celticdragonchick
Strictly speaking, the national guard isn’t actually the militia but it sort of came to fill that role. The militia was supposed to be all able bodied men of good character from age 16 to 60 ( depending on what colony you were in) who were required to show up for muster, often on Sunday after church. The militia was a civil responsibility for the entire community. They may have to repair a bridge that was washed out or search for criminals etc.
Wrong. Don’t fall for the right’s propaganda. You’re not quite where they are, but you’re still wrong. The way you said it is about two inches from their insane idea that anyone who wants to be is part of the militia.
Militias were ‘all able bodied men of good character from age 16 to 60’ if and only if the government wanted them to be. A militia is basically a standing draft, the ability of the government to force anyone it wants into service.
A militia only contains people if the government wants it to contain people. It doesn’t magically contain all people, and random people calling themselves a militia are not one. The only difference between it and a military is that a military contains people who are only soldiers, whereas a militia contains amateur soldiers that have other jobs also. Both of them completely and utterly under the control of the government. (Either state or federal.)
And, yes, the National Guard is the militia of the US, or rather the militias of the individuals states that make up the National Guard are the US militia. That sentence is 100% correct. There are no qualifiers on that sentence, it is not technically wrong or fudging the fact, it is literally, 100%, as true as can possibly be true. The National Guard is what we call the nationalized militia.
(Some states, incidentally, have additional militias, formed after congress nationalized the existing militias back whenever. I’m not sure what the hell the point is there. Both those and the National Guard are militias, and, under the constitution, they both can be called into the service of the US and would have the president as commander-in-chief.)