Various quacks and fraudsters in the right wing are now floating the notion of “Libertyvilles”, fortified communities where everybody is armed and there’s no government to get in the way of Ayn Rand’s dream, fortified to keep out the hoards of “takers” that want to steal all their wealth (both of their teeth worth of it) and fortified to keep out the eevil gubmint that wants to take away their guns. “From our cold, dead hands!” they scream at the top of their lungs. Well, here’s the biggest problem with saying that kinda thing, a problem that David Koresh ran into a while back too…
Slight problem with gun enthusiast tactics here
One of the problems we’re having in Afghanistan is actionable intelligence. The Afghans know we’re just visiting and will leave sooner or later, so they see no reason to tell us where the guys are that we want dead. But in the case of gun nuts, the phrase “actionable intelligence” doesn’t quite apply, because it implies that there is some intelligence to be actionable upon. I mean, c’mon. Standing up and putting a target on your back ain’t exactly the action of a friggin’ genius, yo! If they truly cared about fighting a tyrannical government, they would read the words of people who fought successful guerrilla actions against tyrannical governments. Of course, most of those people then imposed their own tyrannical government to replace the one they overthrew, but that’s a minor quibble. So… what’s rule #1 of the successful guerrilla?
Hint: DON’T STAND OUT. As far as anybody who isn’t your immediate family is concerned, you’re just average Joe Bloke. Or as Mao put it, “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.”
Meanwhile, I’m suspecting that some of the scammers pushing these “fortified communities” may end up in a different kind of fortified community:
That *other* kind of secure community
Just sayin’.
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
If it would just the gun nut by his or her self congregating with like-minded nuts, that would be fine with me. Let the idiots cluster in compounds and spend their days obsessing about their weapons and the evil, evil government while making it easy for targeting with Predator drones. Unfortunately, lunatics tend to drag spouses and kids along with them. A lot of kids (about a dozen of them under the age of 5) died at Waco. Granted, David Koresh was a religious nut instead of a deluded libertarian, but anyone charismatic enough to persuade fellow gunnies to cluster in groups instead of hunkering down in their bugout bunkers is also going to persuade them to drag along their spouses and kids.
That, incidentally, is why I figure they’re never going to form their libertarian gun-toting communities. Most of the hard core gunnies are so paranoid they don’t trust anyone. Their idea of the ideal living spot is a fortified bunker hidden somewhere out in the boonies where they can hunker down until the rest of us have died off because we lost our can opener or ran out of local IGAs to loot.
Getting a little sick of each and every minor political setback always signalling the End of Days.
Gun regulation is about as slippery a slope as Death Valley. Each and every inch has to be fought tooth and nail, over years. (At least in the “more regulation” direction.)
This doomsday/survivalist movement is just another scam to relieve the suckers of their cash. All in the name of getting inside the circle where they’re sold secret squirrel information that is being hidden by the gubmint. (Quick, buy more gins/ammo before the Kenyan tries to take your guns).
Charles Ponzi must be grinning. I know the likes of Glenn Beck and the NRA are.
Yes, pa joe. Seemingly, none of them have noticed the answer to every crisis or ominous lack of crisis… is buy more guns and ammo! Or just plain give the money straight to us!
Apparently the folks who insist that the militia is every able-bodied male between ages 18 and 45 also didn’t note the part of the 2nd Amendment that says the militia should be “well-regulated”. Which implies that even if you do consider the whole adult population to be “the militia”, it’s quite reasonable to regulate how, when, and where they can access firearms. I mean, c’mon. You go to a military base, the vast majority of soldiers are *not* carrying firearms, because it’s not allowed on base except for travel to and from drills and exercises. Soldiers report to an armory to receive their weapons prior to the drill or exercise, and turn the weapon back in at the armory after the end of the drill or exercise. The only people who are carrying weapons on a daily basis are police officers or guards. There’s more guns on Main Street USA than on Main Street Fort Polk. Just sayin’.
So, even if the 2nd Amendment did cover military-style weapons in the hands of individuals as part of the militia, the “well regulated militia” part as applied to modern militias such as the National Guard would call for those weapons to be placed in arsenals when not in use for drills, exercises, or deployments of the militia. Is that truly the argument the NRA types want to make when they whine about “the militia is *everybody*”?!
- Badtux the Militant Penguin
Well regulated meant well equipped in the 18th century not regulated in our modern sense of the word as in controlled by the government.
That’s interesting! As in, “well equipped to be regulars”?
I don’t think the Second matters, anyway. The rights listed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were never meant to be an exhaustive list of the ONLY rights we have.
In other words, if it’s not a direct threat to the common welfare, then it’s a right. I have a right, as an American, to snarfle my glomdingers, even though glomdingers haven’t been invented yet, snarfled or otherwise. If they should turn out to be dangerous, however…
this article offers several variants on the term ‘well regulated’ as it applies to a militia:
http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndmea.html
eventually coming to this conclusion:
“The quoted passages support the idea that a well-regulated militia was synonymous with one that was thoroughly trained and disciplined, and as a result, well-functioning. That description fits most closely with the “to put in good order” definition supplied by the Random House dictionary. The Oxford dictionary’s definition also appears to fit if one considers discipline in a military context to include or imply well-trained.”
So, not so much ‘well equipped’ as ‘well trained’.
Well regulated meant well equipped in the 18th century not regulated in our modern sense of the word as in controlled by the government.
Wow – so when the Constitution also says that Congress has the power
- “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;”
then that should in no way ever ever ever be taken to mean, you know, that Congress or the States are able to pass laws on organising, disciplining or training people who carry guns?
I’d like to “well-regulate” all these screaming gun nuts into Afghanistan to replace the actually well-regulated types who would prefer to be home without weapons in their hands 24/7.
I’ve seen quite a bit about the place in Idaho, and some about Glenn Beck’s pipe dream/con job. The first thing that came to mind was Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”. If they didn’t shoot each other in a frenzy, their lack of sanitation systems (gubmint program! Won’t pay for it!) would do them in, given a year or less. Their guns and overpriced gold coins won’t help a bit.
Thoughts like this cheer me on long winter nights.
What the militia really was;
http://truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery
Isn’t that picture of the future bush family homestead? If not, it certainly should be.
The cartoon is very apt. This clearly demonstrates why every American needs to have his/her own shoulder-held rocket launcher. Then we’ll see how them gubmint bombing raids will work out.
Remember now, a well-armed society is a polite society.
Which is why modern-day Somalia and Iraq are the politest societies on the planet. Oh wait, you say they’re violent hellholes? WTF?!
Yah, I’m always amused by people who quote a WORK OF FICTION BY A SCIENCE FICTION WRITER, one who explicitly said that his work was intended for one purpose only — to make money so he didn’t have to get a real job — as the justification for their love of all things gun. Thing is, they apparently didn’t even read that novel. If they had, they would know that it was about a penal colony where all the inmates were hardened criminals, and that the narrator is an unreliable narrator. Are they saying that America is a penal colony where everybody is a hardened criminal? Wow. Talk about a gang of people who hate America!
[...] The Penguin is skeptical about the plans of our patriots. [...]