Friday, December 23, 2011

What if the 99% Carried Weapons, Like the Tea Partiers?


They Don't Shoot Rightwingers, Do They?

What If Occupiers Armed Themselves?

by BRIAN J. FOLEY
You’ve probably noticed that our government and corporate-owned media treat the Occupy Movement differently from the Tea Party.
Think back to how some Tea Partiers brought guns to their protests, where some protesters even suggested killing President Obama.  They weren’t pepper-sprayed.  They weren’t bashed in the head, and they weren’t even told to take their guns home.
I’m glad police didn’t stomp on the Tea Party. Even ill-informed, inane, racist protests should be permitted. The problem is that the First Amendment prohibits the government from choosing which protests it allows. Unfortunately, the government doesn’t seem to understand that.
Why such different treatment? Some people say it’s because the Tea Party didn’t camp out. But does camping and building a library (which, in a move reminiscent of the National Socialists in 1930′s Germany, the NYPD destroyed) and chanting and sitting-in merit more government attention than armed people threatening violence against the President?
An even more disturbing difference is that the Department of Homeland Security — which is supposed to use its broad powers to protect us from terrorism – may have helped coordinate a national crackdown on the Occupiers’ nonviolent protest. The Occupiers pitch tents, not grenades. They hang expressive signs on buildings – they don’t pilot airliners into them. The Occupy movement shouldn’t even appear on the DHS radar screen.
The mainstream media are similarly “fair and balanced.” The Occupy Movement is widely criticized (as if according to talking points) as lacking a “clear message.” There was no real criticism, however, of the Tea Party’s cacophony of self-contradictory idiocy. Obama is a fascist and a socialist! This Big Business-friendly President is “a Communist”!  Well, where’s my share of the bailout, comrade?
Mainstream media wondered when the movement will be “over” and suggested it would end when temperatures drop.  The Tea Party, which had no encampments, no library, and just a few short protests, was never seen as having an end; it’s been elevated to the status of a political party.
Remember how, after Obama was elected in late 2008, right wingers, believing Obama opposed gun rights, stocked up on guns and ammunition, as if arming themselves for revolution, or a race war? It was reported as just another interesting story. What would happen if Occupiers armed themselves?
The media would report it as foreboding a revolution. Pundits would muse that “we have too many gun rights.” There would be calls for a screening process for dealers. Gun dealers would discriminate.  The Occupy Movement would be designated a terror group – as it just was in London.
Or (perhaps more likely) gun rights would go untouched — the government probably would just shoot Occupiers, as Ann Coulter has suggested.
Recall last January, when Jared Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and killed several others, including a federal judge.  The government and mainstream media seemed to dismiss the idea that Sarah Palin’s targeting Giffords on a map of Congressional districts – with a gunsight — could have motivated Loughner.  The media made it seem as if it were impossible to determine whether Loughner was politically left or right.
But what would happen if someone shot a Republican?  Politicians and pundits would assert that the shooter, even if he’d never actually rallied or camped with the Occupy Movement, was “influenced” by its “dangerous rhetoric,” no matter how vague.  The Occupy Movement would be declared a terrorist group.
The Giffords shooting isn’t the only violence by right-wingers. Death threats were made, and bricks were thrown through the windows of, several Congressional supporters of Obamacare — little media or government attention was paid.  But imagine if Republicans received death threats?
A lesson to be drawn from all this is that, unequivocally, we have a right wing government that’s supported by right wing media. (Can we finally declare dead the myth of the liberal media?)  If you’re right wing, you can protest all you like, in any way you like – apparently, the only way for you to get arrested is if you actually gun down a Member of Congress.
But if you oppose the right wing government, even nonviolently, well, you’re dangerous.
BRIAN J. FOLEY is a law professor, comedian, and author of A New Financial You in 28 Days! A 37-Day Plan (Gegensatz Press 2011).

13 comments:

  1. I'm armed, and I'm hardly a part of the one percent.

    With regard to Loughner, he was crazy. His political ideology is irrelevant.

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  2. I'm curious, how many rapes occurred at Tea Party events, how many dead bodies did they find at Tea Party events, how many crimes and arrests for crimes were made at Tea Party events?
    For the record, I am not a Republican or a Tea Party supporter, but the writer of this article is an idiot.

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  3. "The Giffords shooting isn’t the only violence by right-wingers."

    Since when was Loughner a "right winger"?

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  4. FatWhiteMan has a point. Loughner's ideoology is hardly the point. His being a batshit KKKrazzepants with total access to deadly weapons was the problem.

    "I'm armed, and I'm hardly a part of the one percent."

    sez Greg Camp. Please see previous comment re: Loughner. Your ideology is not a concern to me either. Anybody who has to have a gun to feel safe is suffering from a mental defect of some sort.

    'I'm curious, how many rapes occurred at Tea Party events, how many dead bodies did they find at Tea Party events, how many crimes and arrests for crimes were made at Tea Party events?"

    I don't know, do you? Or are you just tossing shit at the wall to see what sticks?

    "For the record, I am not a Republican or a Tea Party supporter, but the writer of this article is an idiot."

    Sure you're not.

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  5. Democommie,

    Anyone who has to have a gun to feel safe is suffering from a mental defect? Then explain soldiers and police officers. I don't carry a handgun to feel safe. I carry one to increase my safety.

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  6. Greg Camp:

    You're right, of course, cops and soldiers (and professionals whose jobs require them to be armed) DO need guns--not so much to feel safe as to be able to defend themselves against KNOWN bad people/enemies, on pretty much a daily basis. Whankers like you need your gun just to be a man.

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  7. Loughner was a right-winger because he was a mental case with a gun. Lefties rarely fit that description.

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  8. Loughner was a right winger because his political views, as his schizophrenia developed,went from being a liberal a number of years ago to enthusiastically embracing the views of a right wing extremist. His writings during the time he began contacting Gabby Giffords through the time he did the shootings are full of those views.

    I don't mean to suggest from this that all people who embrace a right wing political position are schizophrenic, but the positions that Loughner embraced WERE pretty crazy, and to be fair are repudiated by more centrist right wing believers.

    So I would disagree with MikeB that simply being fanatic about guns - which Loughner was - made him a 'right wing mental case with a gun' is fair. But he WAS a gun nut who strongly felt he should have guns if he wanted, and he went through increasingly more strong and more extreme right wing beliefs as he became more disturbed.

    It is significant to this discussion that he did not have to pass any kind of mental health testing, that he would certainly have resisted any sanity threshold to having firearms (based on his resistance apparently to any mental health assistance or testing when he could refuse it).

    We have too many crazy people, or people who are at the very least highly emotional and who lack a solid, working mastery of their impulses, who have guns, who want guns, and who are adamant that no one can separate them from the weapons they then go on to use against innocent victims.

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  9. Dog Gone,

    Name the mental health test that will identify who is going to be a danger to others with a handgun. I don't mean one that makes you suspect this. I don't mean one that gives hints. I mean one that can identify every time that this person will be safe, but that person won't.

    The point here is that I don't support tests that will produce a lot of false positives, nor do I support taking away rights "on spec," to use your phrase.

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  10. Greg Camp:

    "Name the mental health test that will identify who is going to make the world safer with a handgun. I don't mean one that makes you suspect this. I don't mean one that gives hints. I mean one that can identify every time that this person will make the world a safer place."

    Feel free to lard your rant with non-stats by John Lott and his fellow liars for the NRA.

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  11. Democommie,

    You can call my remark a rant, but it's a valid question. Name a test that will accomplish the task that your side claims to want: identifying people with dangerous mental illnesses. The problem is that there will be false positives, so people who would never cause a problem will be denied firearms. Your side doesn't really care about that, though.

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  12. Greg Camp:

    Name a test that will guarantee that you can hit the broad side of a barn with your Manzgunz, when somebody is actively working at hurting you.

    You're so fucking sure of yourself that you dismiss any suggestion that you might not be able to perform to the level that's necessary to deal with a threat that you can't identify.

    I would leave any room you walked into, not because I'm afraid you might try to hurt me, but because I think you're going to kill someone sooner or later and I don't want to be there when it happens.

    In any event, in the case of a lot of the folks who actually, y'know, fucking KILL PEOPLE WITH GUNZ, they ARE criminals who live in areas where gunz are very easy to obtain. You're all for that. You're an idiot.

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  13. Democommie,

    So I'm to conclude that you can't name such a foolproof test. Just as I expected. As for the rest of your comment, join me at the range to see what I can and cannot hit. Oh, but you said that you'd leave if ever I show up. I'm going to call that a side benefit of concealed carry.

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