Oregon militia take-over

Hate filled gun talk

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

3d image hate speech issues concept word cloud background

I have been writing this blog for quite a few years now. When I first started writing on my other platform ( commongunsense.com) I didn’t know the nuances of blogging. So I just let people comment as anonymous commenters and comment they did. It took me a while to figure out that I could make sure commenters signed on with their names ( or at least a pseudonym). And I learned to moderate comments.

What I got and what I learned is that there is sub culture of gun rights extremism that includes people who are willing to say, and maybe do, anything in defense of their “God given and inalienable” gun rights. I have been called the worst names possible and demeaned, diminished, attacked, offended and (just a few times) threatened. The people on the other end of those comments must have thought I would give in and change my mind or stop writing or run away scared. I am a woman. That entered in. They thought they could intimidate a little woman who didn’t know what she was talking about.

And these are the (mostly) guys with the guns.

It’s nasty out here in the blogging world. Especially if you dare to challenge the gun rights extremists and their ideas. When I write, I link to websites or articles to defend and corroborate my views and my assertions. It’s not hard to find the hundreds of articles about actual shootings about which I write in my blog. For example, in today’s Star Tribune there is an article about a Fargo, N.D. police officer who was shot and killed yesterday in an alleged domestic incident. But more, from the article, reveals something else:

Todd said he was confident that Schumacher meant to shoot at officers.

“I doubt it was random,” said the chief, somber with a strip of black tape around the badge on his chest, symbol of a fallen colleague. “There was a squad car that was shot up [earlier] in a different location than where Officer Moszer was hit.”

This is disturbing, if true. What is going on when our culture has made things like this possible? Earlier in the article we learn that the man who shot the officer should not have been able to have guns. From the article:

Schumacher has a criminal history that includes a conviction for negligent homicide for the October 1988 shooting of a 17-year-old boy, Maynard Clauthier. Schumacher was sentenced in 1991 to five years in prison, court records show.

There is a serious unaddressed problem in our country. We are making it easy for people like this to get their hands on guns. Anger, hostility, and illegal behavior just do not go with guns. And now a young police officer is senselessly dead. The shooter maybe took his own life but that has not yet been determined. And the people of Fargo, police and law enforcement officers,  family, friends and neighbors ( who were terrified by what was going on in their neighborhood) and the community have suffered the ripple effect of gun violence.

It doesn’t have to be this way. But it is. Back to the topic at hand of the ugliness of the gun culture. Unless you’ve been under a rock, you likely know that the Bundy group was finally arrested in Oregon. Nice bunch of guys, those. From the article:

After repeatedly threatening to shoot himself, complaining that he couldn’t get marijuana, and ranting about UFOs, drone strikes in Pakistan, leaking nuclear plants and the government “chemically mutating people,” the last occupier, David Fry, 27, lit a cigarette, shouted “Hallelujah” and walked out of his barricaded encampment into FBI custody.

Sigh.

And the guy who started some of this nonsense when he refused to pay the government for grazing fees in Nevada, Cliven Bundy himself, has also been finally arrested.

These are the guys with the guns fomenting fear, paranoia, anger and conspiracy theories. They get support from many of the gun lobby groups, most especially the NRA who allows the infamous Ted Nugent to remain on their board of directors in spite of a continual rant of offensive, racist comments and posts on social media. His latest has certainly gone over the line of common decency as if the others didn’t. But when will people like him be marginalized by their own? The NRA must like the dangerous soup brewed up guys like Nugent. Why? Does it lead to more people joining their organization? Or maybe buying more guns to protect themselves from the folks in the cross hairs of Nugent’s rants?

Here is the latest one from the linked article above:

Nugent, an outspoken Second Amendment advocate, posted a photo on Facebook earlier this week calling Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), “Jew York City Mayor Mikey Bloomberg,” former senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, among many others, “punks” who would “deny us the basic human right to self defense and to keep and bear arms while many of them have paid hired armed security.”

The Israeli flag appears over or next to each of the 12 faces in the photo, which is the same one that has been shared many times in white suprema­cist cir­cles, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The post prompted applause from anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi groups.

Sigh.

One of Nugent’s targets in his post was Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign. Here is his comment about what Nugent did:

Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, took aim at Nugent as well after being featured in the Facebook post.

“Ted Nugent’s latest comments go beyond being anti-Semitic — they are ignorant and do nothing but fuel hate,” Gross said in a statement. “Personally, I am repulsed — my brother was shot and seriously wounded in a religiously-motivated mass shooting on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Reasonable people on both sides of the debate recognize Mr. Nugent’s comments for what they are: hate speech and nothing more.”

Is this the kind of country we want? We are more polarized than ever and the rhetoric in the Presidential campaign certainly isn’t helping us work together better for the common good. Common sense seems to be out the window for many folks.

If we truly care about our country and the fact that bullets from guns are taking the lives of way too many Americans, we will come together and work out solutions that make sense. A recent article shows evidence that Americans are dying younger than people in other democratized countries because of guns, drugs and cars. Is this OK with us? Is it OK with us that an 18 year old boy on a hoverboard had a gun and lost his balance, sending a bullet into the head of his 13 year old cousin, killing him?

Is it OK that with us that an American woman is shot every 16 hours by a romantic partner?

We just can’t tolerate what is going on right now. We’ve had #enough of this stupid and dangerous rhetoric which sometimes leads to actual shooting deaths.

We are better than this.

Armed white men, or insurrectionists or ….

commongunsense, , , , , , , , , ,

Marine“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.” So in our country we do have a “well regulated militia” in the form of our standing military and national guard. What gives people the idea that they need to perform that role ala the second amendment?

 

Frightening and crazy things are happening in a small town in Oregon in the name of militias. Armed insurgents have taken over a government building in Burns, Oregon under the auspices of protecting land rights. Now it is turning into a possible movement that could spread to other places in the country. This article highlights what is actually going on in Oregon. From the article:

Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward said in a statement Sunday that the group of armed protesters came to town under false pretenses.

“These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups supporting local ranchers, when in reality these men had alternative motives to attempt to over throw the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement across the United States,” Ward said.

The sheriff says he is working with local and federal authorities to keep the citizens in his county safe and to resolve the situation as quickly and peacefully as possible.

People in Burns are used to worrying about friction between the federal government and locals, but takeover is raising concerns to a new high.

Keith Landon, a longtime resident of Burns and employee at the Reid Country Store, said he knows local law enforcement officials who fear their kids will be targeted by angry militia members. The mother of one of his kids is now involved with an officer, Landon said, and they decided to send their children to another town after they were allegedly threatened by an angry protester.

“I’m hoping most of it’s just muscle, trying to push,” Landon said. “But it’s a scary thing.”

This is terrorism. The people of the town of Burns are rightfully worried and scared as well they should be. When armed people take over, all bets are off. My friend from Oregon, Baldr Odinson, who blogs has written this post about what is going on:

And the only “tyranny” here is a bunch of armed now-felons terrorizing the local community.

But, hey, there is a long history of militia members and groups committing crimes and plots, including murder, insurrection, and even genocidal schemes.  So it’s not like this is totally unexpected.  In most countries, “citizen militias” would be outlawed for what they are: homegrown terrorist organizations. This is just the latest and, perhaps, most flagrant of examples.

This occupation follows a peaceful parade by around 100 anti-government sympathizers earlier in the day in Burns, Oregon, organized by a small-time right-wing talk show host.  They met in a Safeway parking lot to do speeches, then marched a mile to the home of one of the convicted ranchers they support, and then drove to the local Sheriff’s office to throw pennies at the building for some reason (which were quickly snatched up by a couple of girls), before returning to the Safeway parking lot.  But pro-gun bullieshate peaceful protests.  Successful peaceful protests run counter to their flawed argument that guns are needed to enact change.

(…) I can’t imagine a more pitiful example of a “revolution” than this.  Not only do the Hammonds and the community not want the militia there, but the crime is taking place in one of the most remote and sparsely-populated areas of Oregon, at a time of year when no one goes there, and in a month when the temperatures are at the lowest.  At the time I’m writing this, it is -1 degrees Fahrenheit.  Good luck staying warm, felons, particularly after your electricity is cut and any fuel for your generators (if you have any) runs out.

It’ll be interesting to see how law enforcement and the government respond to this situation in the coming days.  The insurrectionists and Bundy family are clearly wanting a shoot-out to occur, a la Ruby Ridge, making them some sort of “martyr” to their extremist cause.  But I’m guessing that, if they don’t fire first, they are more likely to be surrounded in a siege until they either give up or they freeze to death.  Assuming they survive, it is comforting to know that their new felon status will prevent them from legally purchasing or possessing firearms.

So what we have here is anti-government sentiment expressed with firearms. That is quite different from, for example, protests by Black Lives Matter groups to work towards racial justice and calling attention to law enforcement shootings of young black people. Thrse are unarmed people protesting and yes, there has been, unfortunately, looting and property damage when it gets out of control. But there have also been armed white folks taking matters into their own hands as in what happened in Minneapolis last month.

Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post wonders what exactly we should call these folks. He even has a poll question which I answered. Most who responded called them terrorists or extremists. Going forward, if this continues in other places as it looks like it could, we should call it like it is and not be afraid of offending the corporate gun lobby or the armed folks themselves. But then, they are armed. Sticky situation

Anti-government sentiments are being fomented by none other than Presidential candidate Donald Trump and other (mostly) Republican candidates.  The corporate gun lobby also spews out fear and paranoia of gun confiscation and government take-over of rights and guns if any reasonable gun safety reform laws are passed.

We are seeing the results of the fear, paranoia, and hatred acted out in small towns and large urban areas all over America. When it comes to the gun culture in our country, we are seeing what has been predicted by the gun rights extremists and the right wing extremists. Fighting against government policies should not come at the end of a barrel. Using the threat of violence is not patriotic or the American way. We change things through discussions, lobbying, getting involved, voting, organizing and having some common sense.

If we are going to start using guns and the threat of guns to change the government, the leaders and/or the policies, we are not a democracy any more. This is ludicrous. And it points to the dangers that come with fear mongering.

We have better things to do in this country like trying to keep our children and communities safe from gun violence. Let’s get to work on that and put away the guns.