Monday, April 19, 2010

Sending a message with guns

Daniel Almond, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, is ready to "muster outside D.C." on Monday with several dozen other self-proclaimed patriots, all of them armed. They intend to make history as the first people to take their guns to a demonstration in a national park, and the Virginia rally is deliberately being held just a few miles from the Capitol and the White House.

Almond plans to have his pistol loaded and openly carried, his rifle unloaded and slung to the rear, a bandoleer of magazines containing ammunition draped over his polo-shirted shoulder. The Atlanta area real estate agent the rally because he is upset about health-care reform, climate controlorganized , bank bailouts, drug laws and what he sees as President Obama's insistence on and the Democratic Congress's capitulation to a "totalitarian socialism" that tramples individual rights.

A member of several heretofore little-known groups, including Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and Oath Keepers -- former and active military and law enforcement officials who have vowed to resist laws they deem unconstitutional -- Almond, 31, considers packing heat on the doorstep of the federal government within the mainstream of political speech.

Others consider it an alarming escalation of paranoia and anger in the age of Obama.
Read the rest here.

15 comments:

Unknown said...

Is anybody else very, very afraid of the way our country is currently heading?

John (Ad Orientem) said...

I am very very frightened. When you get people who think they have a right to veto an election with their guns advertising this publicly, we have a problem.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Frightened of what?

John (Ad Orientem) said...

Politically motivated violence, assassination, terrorism, insurrection, treason...

What other message could they have been delivering other than that they were prepared to use force against those with whom they disagree politically?

Anonymous said...

Civil war is one possibility leading to martial law leading to a military junta, ( all in the guise of saving democracy of course).

John (Ad Orientem) said...

Civil war seems pretty unlikely. Aside from the nut in the governors mansion of TX I am not hearing any threats of disunion. But organized violence by extremists seeking to overthrow the last election by force is a real possibility.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

What other message could they have been delivering other than that they were prepared to use force against those with whom they disagree politically?

The message I read is the reminder to government that it serves at the sufferance of an armed citizenry--it does not rule over disarmed subjects--and who, when pushed, are quite capable of pushing back. The only people who have anything to fear from such attitudes are government actors.
Otherwise, you are far more likely to suffer violence from criminal thugs.

John (Ad Orientem) said...

That view seems to ignore that the government did not just materialize out of thin air. It was put in office by an open popular election. Nothing it has done so far is outside the mandate it was given by those who elected the current administration and Congress. Any violence against it is also violence against the people of the United States and our Republic.

Everyone has a right to disagree with public policy. No one has a right to veto an election at the point of a gun.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

I think a free people have a right, if not a duty, to resist a government that violates its charter, whether the government was popularly elected or not.

It occurs to me that as our governing elite continue to subvert and mock the values of the traditional-minded men who actually fight and die in its wars, there will be more of these types of demonstrations. If this makes people uncomfortable, then perhaps they should think twice about having the government force their fellow citizens to fund a hostile, gnostic agenda to which they are viscerally opposed.

John (Ad Orientem) said...

What you are advocating is not a Republican and Constitutional form of government but rather armed anarchy. When private citizens reserve to themselves the right to refuse obedience to public laws or to harm public officials who espouse political views with which they do not agree we are entering into dangerous waters.

No nation or government can exist under such circumstances. Indeed what would prevent those on the left from adopting a similar attitude towards what they perceive as an abusive right-wing administration and taking up arms against it?

Your position is outside the bounds of reason.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Government itself is institutionalized violence. People endure the government's long list of indignities because it has the nuclear weapons. For that matter, democracy is just counting up the guns and giving the election to the bigger army.

What you are advocating is actually fascism: nothing outside the State.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Also, "nation" (the people) cannot be equated with government (the individuals who make up the bureaucracy) or the state (the formalistic construct which employs the bureaucracy). The Jewish nation, for example, exists quite apart from governments and states.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Anti-Gnostic is expressing what I meant by using the term "civil war".

John (Ad Orientem) said...

So your an armed anarchist too?

Anonymous said...

Government is force - nothing less - this is well documented and a fact. I know no anarchists - just concerned citizenry. That said, as an Orthodox Christian, I actually have no dog in the fight - it doesn't matter what government I live under - my mandate is clear - love my neighbor and God with all my heart.
There is nothing to fear.
I used to lose my peace over this stuff - no more. Christ is risen and not one dead remains in the grave.