Two hundred and thirty five years ago, armed resurrection was possible. Maybe even 100 years ago. But today, with the weapons the government possesses, it is totally impossible. The weapons that can take down a government that are threatened, that you should be fighting for are the internet, words, free media...
not anymore--even this image was an OpEd Cartoon
We're never going to be in a situation where using guns to fight police is a viable, reasonable or sane option. The fact is, we have to face the problems we face with ways that can actually work. Martin Luther King faced oppressive injustice and incredible corruption and won using non-violence. People owned guns in Nazi Germany. It didn't help.
Here's the kind of thinking we see. This is comment on a poll on gun control is mild.
Our founding fathers, who would be terrorists by modern definitions, KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that the ONLY chance the citizenry has to be free when faced with the encroaching forces of government is if they have the right, and the means, to defend themselves, their families, and their liberty. This right is now guaranteed to you in the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution.
Powerful forces took control our government almost 100 years ago, and those forces are behind the rush towards the fascist/totalitarian state they would like us to be in. Will you bare your arm as well when they want to implant a microchip in you?
The ONLY 3 things even slowing these monsters down are the the constitution (what's left of it), the internet, and the armed citizenry of this country.
And here's another comment supporting armed rebellion.
From my prospective I seem to be hearing the voices and seeing the signs of a people who have had enough NWO bulls..t. The Bush administration pushed many people to the edge of what they are willing to accept without question. Obama is NOT the answer everybody wanted although he does represent the hopes we all had... ultimately it is us, the people on the street who will be called upon to put the nation back in order, to regain national sanity and reinstate the Republic (not the democracy) of law. Unfortunately it will take guns to do the job, because those who would take our freedom and our nation from us have guns, and they will use them against us all.
This talk of gunfighting in the streets to protect freedom-- it's, well, hard to characterize as other than childish, silly, maybe incredibly angry, possibly impotent and certainly foolish. We need to be facing real problems and coming up with real solutions, not this fantasy nonsense.
The
Oathkeepers, mostly police and former military, have put together their list of oaths:
1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as "unlawful enemy combatants" or to subject them to military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a "state of emergency" on a state.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to "keep the peace" or to "maintain control."
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.
10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
This list is a bit conspiracy theory-esque, but it does not discuss armed resurrection. It considers the threats to the constitution without fantasizing about violent rebellion. There are reasonable positions to take that can defend Democracy, defend the constitution without going off the deep end, gun-wise, and there are far too many people who do go beyond rational and reasonable.
The constitution's second amendment, giving the right to bear arms, states, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
This is not about protecting people from the US. It's about defending the state from outsiders, in my opinion.
Thomas Jefferson wrote about how he opposed the idea of protecting people by stopping them from doing things. He cited Cesare Beccaria's Essay on Crimes and Punishments.
"A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, who dares say to reason, 'Be thou a slave;' who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.
The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons." source
I am not calling for the abolition of gun ownership. But we need to do a much better job of preventing gun ownership by criminals and the severely unbalanced. We need to open up the conversation-- wide open. If a person commits a crime in some states he loses his right to vote for the rest of his life. But can he buy a gun? That shouldn't be. Not only that, he should have to surrender any guns he already owns.
Defenders of the right to buy automatic weapons and the ammunition, like the clips Jared Loughner used, say that gun fanciers have fun firing the automatic weapons. Should the enjoyment of a minority outweigh public safety? There are limits. If the law against automatic weapons had not been allowed to lapse only nine or ten instead of 18 people could have been hurt by Loughner's rampage.
One purported progressive arguing for gun ownership and stocking up on ammunition stated,
" As the banksters steal more homes and impoverish more citizens, as the multinational food-control corporations increase hunger, as computerized voting renders elections meaningless, as wealth continues to be concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer families, civil unrest is likely to grow."
I'm sorry. There's truth to the issues about the banksters, about computerized voting, about Monsanto, but that doesn't mean you should plan to engage in armed warfare with the US government or the police or the army. That's crazy talk.
Yes, we have frightening militarization of the police, as Bill Perry documented in his
photos of the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh.
photo by Bill Perry, at G20 Meeting in Pittsburgh
This is ridiculous excess, funded by Patriot Act homeland security money. Police departments are given unnecessary budgets and they spend them on combat gear that was built for soldiers. It makes the military industrial complex marketers happy. The funding should end. The police themselves, in playing soldier, are fueling the mass killing frenzy with the images they create at gatherings like this.
We need sensible gun control laws that allow sane, law-abiding citizens to own guns that protect themselves from criminals and to hunt in a sportsmanlike fashion. We do not need entertainment weapons to satisfy a handful of people's needs to shoot off rounds of weapons.
We DO need to do a much better job of tracking gun sales, used and new. Let's take this nonsense about fighting for democracy, about defending your house from invading fascists ordered by Bush or Obama guvmint soldiers, off the table.
It's time to cut the hysterical "I need a gun to fight off the police" craziness. That's what it is-- craziness, indulgence in fantasy, nurturing of paranoia by dangerous media menaces like Glenn Beck, who panders to and builds peoples' worse fears.
If you want to countenance the idea of fighting for democracy, don't do it with guns. Try playing video games or with toy soldiers. Don't push for automatic weapon laws that give the power to engage in mass murder.
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