One thing the article talks about is how the National Guard was tasked with taking up guns after Katrina. This is a verifiable fact, so I don't see how it is paranoid to say, "Look at what can happen in the confusion of a crisis--lets try to take actions to prevent this happening in the future."
Kurt, you flatter your buddies in the 3% movement to say it's because of them.
T., for one thing, the National Guard is not The Marines. For another, your verifiable fact is an exaggerated bit of pro-gun propaganda. That's why they played the video of the old lady over and over - because there wasn't all that much to it.
Kurt, you flatter your buddies in the 3% movement to say it's because of them.
Um . . . if you don't know that the Oath Keepers and the 3% are two entirely distinct entities (with, I'll grant, some overlap), the effort of trying to foster any understanding in that strange, strange mind of yours is probably wasted.
So, because the media didn't cover the full extent of it, and because it only happened in a limited area, it's all good huh?
It happened, and it could happen again. Yes, it was the Guard the one time it already happened--why does that mean that it's not legitimate to ask others not to comply with similar unconstitutional orders if they are given at some time in the future?
No, of course it's not all good. No abuse is good, but it was extremely limited and unlikely to ever occur on a large scale like you guys keep pretending.
Without conceding on the (unsupported) notion of the supposed "unlikelihood" of mass gun confiscation, I have to ask: are you arguing that there's something wrong with protecting against unlikely catastrophes? Unlikely things occur--that's why language makes a distinction between "unlikely" and "impossible."
. . . on a large scale . . .
So we should not take steps to prevent small scale abuses?
Like all other decent people, I utterly reject that.
"Like all other decent people, I utterly reject that."
No, like all other paranoid and biased gun fetishists, you utterly reject that. Most gun owners, being reasonable, think the possibility of the MARINES coming to take your guns away is so unlikely that they might call it impossible.
No, like all other paranoid and biased gun fetishists . . .
I wouldn't know--I've never encountered one.
Most gun owners, being reasonable . . .
If "most gun owners" are "reasonable," why do you want half of us forcibly disarmed? Oh, and who is going to do that forcible disarming? Do you think there are enough cops to do it?
Or do you think they'll need some help from the military--perhaps--oh, I don't know . . . the Marines?
How are most of us reasonable, and yet most of us are also compensating for tiny penises, unqualified to own weapons, etc.?
It's also interesting to me that you are saying that the issue is that the suggestion was that the Marines would be sent for guns.
I guess you wouldn't have an issue if we put such billboards up by Guard units since they have already been shown to have been used to confiscate guns.
Everyone has their prefered belief system. This one speaks of the concern that our government could become oppressive. Your belief is that tighter restrictions on firearms will make this country a better place. Both you and the people who wrote the article and hired the billboard are using your first amendment rights to share your beliefs. Only time will tell who is right.
Multiple people, including U.S. Senators and state Governors, have mentioned confiscating most or even all guns from good citizens who have no criminal records. This is a simple matter of public record and easy to find in about two minutes of searching on Google.
Human nature never changes. For all recorded history, corrupt governments have butchered citizens. Absolutely nothing stops any government from trying to repeat the cycle.
Go to a nice suburban area in Illinois. Wear nice dress pants, dress shirt, dress shoes, and a tie. Make sure you also wear a revolver in a nice holster plainly visible on your hip. Then stand on the sidewalk along a street with steady traffic, smile, be courteous, and wave to several people. Make sure you never reach for or even near your revolver.
When the police show up, point their guns at you, and demand that you immediately get on the ground face down, tell me what happens if you refuse to comply. Better yet, tell me what happens if you not only refuse to comply, but resist as well.
And remember, as the police are brutally beating you up and possibly killing you for the "crime" of having a revolver (150 year old firearm technology) visibly strapped to your hip in public, that government agents in the U.S. don't "butcher" their citizens.
This is the problem. Government is setting the groundwork to brutalize the citizens based on their identity (firearms owners) or loyalty rather than behavior of attacking other citizens.
Yeah, the US government is going to "butcher" its citizens. Good thing you're armed.
Do you deny that if livestock were armed, and had the proficiency and will to effectively use those arms, that you would have a lot more fellow herbivores?
On a more serious note, if the U.S. government butchers the freshly disarmed, it won't be the first time. Granted, those Sioux were not citizens, but this regime has demonstrated that citizenship is no protection when Obama and his minions want you dead.
Your whole comment smacks of victimism. Haven't you ever seen those videos in which an open-carry fanatic tricks the cops into harassing him and records the whole thing?
But in your world, you guys would be murdered for doing that. Poor, persecuted gun owners, that's what you are.
Haven't you ever seen those videos in which an open-carry fanatic . . .
An "open-carry fanatic"? What is that, exactly? Kind of like an "abolitionist fanatic," or a "women's suffrage fanatic," or a "desegregation fanatic," or an "end capital punishment fanatic," or a "stop the war fanatic"?
. . . tricks the cops into harassing him and records the whole thing?
How does one "trick" cops into harassing them? Are you saying the cops who harass law-abiding, peaceable, openly armed citizens should not be expected to know the law, and to comply with it, rather than trampling the rights of of said law-abiding, peaceable, openly armed citizens, and that making a record of such bullying thuggery is somehow dishonorable?
"Haven't you ever seen those videos in which an open-carry fanatic tricks the cops into harassing him and records the whole thing?
Mike, I've seen the videos yore referring to, and while I agree that the guys are jerks if they open carry just to cause a scene, how exactly do you " trick" someone into harassing them? If the officers behave professionally, then they can't be tricked. The police superintendent of Chicago is on record promising that if citizens are allowed to carry, eventually one of his officers will shoot one. This isn't a very professional attitude, especially since you and Laci always suggest that only the experts in law enforcement can be trusted carrying firearms in public. I suggest that you look at a few more of those videos, you'll see some very professional officer dealing with these types and making them look like fools.
Kurt, that's a comical attempt to paint the poor persecuted gun owners like the Native Americans. It's usually the blacks before civil rights or the gays before they made progress. Now, the persecuted ones of the 21st centure are the gun owners.
The truth, of course, is quite the opposite. You guys, especially the fringe extremist ones like yourself, are the persecuting ones. You are the bullies who try your best to inflict your twisted version of freedom on the rest of us. The results are horrendous, but that won't deter you from your single-minded purpose.
Then, to throw us off the scent, you continually define yourselves as the persecuted ones. It's comical.
Glad I was able to bring a smile into your rage-filled world.
You guys, especially the [uncompromising liberty advocates] like yourself, are the persecuting ones . . .
And whom have we "persecuted"? Advocacy of sane gun laws (another way of saying no gun laws) "persecutes" no one, since no one has the right to prevent free people from acquiring the firearms they wish, without anyone else's permission, or even knowledge.
Then, to throw us off the scent, you continually define yourselves as the persecuted.
Actually, I think I define myself as one who will not be persecuted, despite your efforts.
It's comical.
Again, I'm glad I could provide at least a tiny bit of relief from the bleakness of your existence.
Ah, yes, those people who have recording of harrassment by cops weren't targeted by those cops--They target the COPS and tricked them into violating their rights! It's the Gun owner's fault, not the overreaching officers'.
As for the rest of your screed aimed at Kurt, you sound like various racists I've heard talk about the "poor persecuted blacks" or "poor persecuted jews" etc. You minimize abridgments of our civil liberties (and I'm talking about ones other than the 2nd Amendment rights we disagree on). You blame US for these same abridgments. You constantly insult us as having sub-normal intelligence, sub-standard psychological development, various fetishes, etc. and call us everything from cold bastards to con men to simple liars, yet, like racists, you bristle if we Dare to respond to your venom with some of our own, telling us to keep in line, mind our tongues, and be more like whichever one of us you're patting on the head at the moment--you used to tell Greg to be more like me, but now it's the other way around since I said something you didn't like.
Are gun owners persecuted like blacks were? No, there are differences in the type of treatment. Were blacks persecuted the way Jews were in the Holocaust? Again, no. Only in your mind do we claim that we are subject to the same injustices that blacks were in the past, or Jews in the Holocaust, etc.
Instead, what we keep calling out are the abuses of our civil liberties that are aimed at us because we are gun owners, and at the abuses of civil liberties that are growing in our society as a whole.
No, it's not to the level of Jim Crow, and certainly not of the Holocaust, but that doesn't mean that unequal treatment shouldn't be opposed. It should be, whenever and wherever it is found, for whatever reason it is being imposed. After all, these things tend to grow like a cancer.
The point, which all of you pretend not to have gotten, is although there are many of those videos out there about open-carry guys purposely looking for the cops to hassle them so they can record it, as far as I know, there are no reports of open carry guys being put on the ground and executed (brutally beating you up and possibly killing you, is what they hysterical Anonymous said).
But, far be it from any of you to call him on that exaggerated bullshit. In fact, you guys support what he said.
. . . as far as I know, there are no reports of open carry guys being put on the ground and executed (brutally beating you up and possibly killing you, is what they [sic] [quite reasonable and entirely correct] Anonymous said).
If you had read more carefully, you might have noted that Anon's hypothetical scenario involved resisting the illegal arrest, a situation that as far as I know hasn't happened, since the vast majority of open carry activists have so far been willing to endure a long train of abuses and usurpations, and seek redress afterward, before fighting back.
But even ignoring that, what's your point? That since they're "only" being illegally harassed, sometimes arrested, sometimes subjected to forcible confiscation of their life-saving firepower, they have no legitimate complaint? That the abuse to which they are subjected should not be documented, and the offenders held accountable?
Have we come to the point at which our government is butchering citizens? Not really, although we have seen Obama use drones on Americans overseas and talk about their use here, and there have been other violations from time to time, but the fact that for the most part we haven't seen much more than that shows that our system works. We're trying to keep it working, rather than to allow control freaks to take away our rights.
Even if the audio recordings come from situations where the person carried openly to see if the police would overreact, how does that justify or mollify the police officers' unlawful arrests and other behavior? There are also plenty of police dash cam videos of the same type of abuses happening at traffic stops.
As for incidents where people were shot, there was the guy out west a year or so back who was carrying at Costco when an employee saw his firearm and called the cops. The police claimed that he drew on them, but other witnesses said otherwise, and him drawing on the cops doesn't really fit with him leaving the store when a manager asked him to.
As for what the Anonymous commenter said: he didn't say that you would be shot just for carrying openly. He did suggest that you'd be thrown onto the pavement--something the police chief in Milwaukee said he would have his officers do to anyone carrying there until they could verify that they were abiding by the law--the law which said that non-prohibited persons could carry openly. The shooting suggestion Anonymous made was what would happen if you didn't immediately comply or resisted being thrown down or disarmed. Considering the various police shooting stories in the news, this really doesn't even need to be addressed.
And again, once we beat up your straw man and ask you to argue with what we're saying rather than your distortion of what we're saying, you tell us you're laughing at us, ridicule us, and run off.
In the latest phase of a media campaign putting up “billboards at strategic locations throughout the United States”, the Oath Keepers group “has placed three back-lit signs on the subway platform in the Washington Metro Pentagon Station,” a media release appearing in The Sacramento Bee reported yesterday.
. . .
"The first sign at the Pentagon Station is done in the style of the theater scene from George Orwell's ‘1984’ and features Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, as 'Big Brother,'" Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes stated, explaining “the sign makes it clear that by exposing the NSA spying on Americans, Snowden honored his oath."
A billboard featuring the same “artwork will also be going on a billboard along a major freeway in Maryland, near the NSA headquarters at Ft. Mead within the week," Rhodes added.
Yeah, the Oath Keepers have that old philosophy, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So of course they support Snowden.
I disagree with the notion that the Oath Keepers view the U.S. government as an "enemy." They simply advocate keeping the government on the short leash of the Constitutional limits on its power. Here's an analogy I have used in the past:
Like pit bulls and other powerful breeds of dogs bred for their fighting prowess and combativeness, governments must be made to know who is in charge. They must be constantly reminded that they exist to serve us. They are too dangerous, as President Washington reminds us, for failure to keep them in check to be any more excusable than failing to keep dangerous dogs contained.
They need to be tightly controlled--kept on a short leash, as it were. In the context of the U.S. government, that "short leash" is the Constitution, and the very explicit limits it places on the federal government's power--power, remember, that is borrowed from We the People. We know the consequences of allowing the government to slip that leash.
For that matter, I am far from convinced that Snowden sees the U.S. government as the "enemy," either, although the reverse is clearly true. With his whistleblowing, I would argue that he is trying to stop behavior on the part of the government by which it undermines its own legitimacy. "Friends don't let friends spy on their own citizenry," so to speak.
I've missed you lately. Been on vacation?
I suppose you could call my absence (for the most part) a "vacation"--a vacation from your hate mongering: regional bigotry, misogyny, etc. I guess I've decided that life is too short to be spent granting you the undeserved legitimacy of my frequent engagement with you.
I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did. You know your co-commenters are still arguing that SYG thing? It must have been hard for you to admit what you did and apologize like that. I'm sure that has nothing to do with your abrupt departure, though.
Actually, I'm enjoying the respite from you too although I could never express it as eloquently as you did, "the undeserved legitimacy of my frequent engagement with you."
I see that, as should be expected from enemies of the Oath Keepers, they continue to try to frame liberty advocates with child porn, drawing from, no doubt, the typical anti-Oath Keeper's/anti-gun fanatic's enormous supply of such heinous material.
What, specifically, did you find false about the article?
ReplyDelete"False?" What are you talking about?
DeleteYou called the article paranoid. That means that you believe what is said there to be irrationally fearful. I'm asking you why.
DeleteBecause no one is coming for your guns, least of all the Marines.
DeleteBecause no one is coming for your guns, least of all the Marines.
DeleteNot if there are enough Oath Keepers, anyway. Which, I suspect, explains the forcible citizen disarmament advocates' fear and loathing.
Mike,
DeleteOne thing the article talks about is how the National Guard was tasked with taking up guns after Katrina. This is a verifiable fact, so I don't see how it is paranoid to say, "Look at what can happen in the confusion of a crisis--lets try to take actions to prevent this happening in the future."
Kurt, you flatter your buddies in the 3% movement to say it's because of them.
DeleteT., for one thing, the National Guard is not The Marines. For another, your verifiable fact is an exaggerated bit of pro-gun propaganda. That's why they played the video of the old lady over and over - because there wasn't all that much to it.
Kurt, you flatter your buddies in the 3% movement to say it's because of them.
DeleteUm . . . if you don't know that the Oath Keepers and the 3% are two entirely distinct entities (with, I'll grant, some overlap), the effort of trying to foster any understanding in that strange, strange mind of yours is probably wasted.
Mikeb, I do sincerely hope that you never are made to suffer for your trust in the government, but don't ask me to share it.
DeleteSo, because the media didn't cover the full extent of it, and because it only happened in a limited area, it's all good huh?
DeleteIt happened, and it could happen again. Yes, it was the Guard the one time it already happened--why does that mean that it's not legitimate to ask others not to comply with similar unconstitutional orders if they are given at some time in the future?
No, of course it's not all good. No abuse is good, but it was extremely limited and unlikely to ever occur on a large scale like you guys keep pretending.
Delete. . . unlikely to ever occur . . .
DeleteWithout conceding on the (unsupported) notion of the supposed "unlikelihood" of mass gun confiscation, I have to ask: are you arguing that there's something wrong with protecting against unlikely catastrophes? Unlikely things occur--that's why language makes a distinction between "unlikely" and "impossible."
. . . on a large scale . . .
So we should not take steps to prevent small scale abuses?
Like all other decent people, I utterly reject that.
Kurt sums it up well.
Delete"Like all other decent people, I utterly reject that."
DeleteNo, like all other paranoid and biased gun fetishists, you utterly reject that. Most gun owners, being reasonable, think the possibility of the MARINES coming to take your guns away is so unlikely that they might call it impossible.
No, like all other paranoid and biased gun fetishists . . .
DeleteI wouldn't know--I've never encountered one.
Most gun owners, being reasonable . . .
If "most gun owners" are "reasonable," why do you want half of us forcibly disarmed? Oh, and who is going to do that forcible disarming? Do you think there are enough cops to do it?
Or do you think they'll need some help from the military--perhaps--oh, I don't know . . . the Marines?
How are most of us reasonable, and yet most of us are also compensating for tiny penises, unqualified to own weapons, etc.?
DeleteIt's also interesting to me that you are saying that the issue is that the suggestion was that the Marines would be sent for guns.
I guess you wouldn't have an issue if we put such billboards up by Guard units since they have already been shown to have been used to confiscate guns.
You call it "hysterically paranoid", right after calling the second amendment "bullshit". That's a good one,
ReplyDeleteMike,
ReplyDeleteEveryone has their prefered belief system. This one speaks of the concern that our government could become oppressive. Your belief is that tighter restrictions on firearms will make this country a better place. Both you and the people who wrote the article and hired the billboard are using your first amendment rights to share your beliefs.
Only time will tell who is right.
He didn't find anything false, he just thinks that it's paranoid to acknowledge the truth. I can't say anything more or I'll be censored.
ReplyDeleteIf it bothers Mikeb, it's gotta be good!
ReplyDeleteMike B...Soggiorno in Italia, potrai essere più sicuri.
ReplyDeleteStay in Italy, you'll be safer.
(Yes, I looked it up. Figured it would make you feel right at home.)
Multiple people, including U.S. Senators and state Governors, have mentioned confiscating most or even all guns from good citizens who have no criminal records. This is a simple matter of public record and easy to find in about two minutes of searching on Google.
ReplyDeleteHuman nature never changes. For all recorded history, corrupt governments have butchered citizens. Absolutely nothing stops any government from trying to repeat the cycle.
Yeah, the US government is going to "butcher" its citizens. Good thing you're armed.
DeleteMike,
DeleteGo to a nice suburban area in Illinois. Wear nice dress pants, dress shirt, dress shoes, and a tie. Make sure you also wear a revolver in a nice holster plainly visible on your hip. Then stand on the sidewalk along a street with steady traffic, smile, be courteous, and wave to several people. Make sure you never reach for or even near your revolver.
When the police show up, point their guns at you, and demand that you immediately get on the ground face down, tell me what happens if you refuse to comply. Better yet, tell me what happens if you not only refuse to comply, but resist as well.
And remember, as the police are brutally beating you up and possibly killing you for the "crime" of having a revolver (150 year old firearm technology) visibly strapped to your hip in public, that government agents in the U.S. don't "butcher" their citizens.
This is the problem. Government is setting the groundwork to brutalize the citizens based on their identity (firearms owners) or loyalty rather than behavior of attacking other citizens.
Yeah, the US government is going to "butcher" its citizens. Good thing you're armed.
DeleteDo you deny that if livestock were armed, and had the proficiency and will to effectively use those arms, that you would have a lot more fellow herbivores?
On a more serious note, if the U.S. government butchers the freshly disarmed, it won't be the first time. Granted, those Sioux were not citizens, but this regime has demonstrated that citizenship is no protection when Obama and his minions want you dead.
I'm glad to see you accept our position, Mikeb.
Delete"Go to a nice suburban area in Illinois."
DeleteYour whole comment smacks of victimism. Haven't you ever seen those videos in which an open-carry fanatic tricks the cops into harassing him and records the whole thing?
But in your world, you guys would be murdered for doing that. Poor, persecuted gun owners, that's what you are.
Haven't you ever seen those videos in which an open-carry fanatic . . .
DeleteAn "open-carry fanatic"? What is that, exactly? Kind of like an "abolitionist fanatic," or a "women's suffrage fanatic," or a "desegregation fanatic," or an "end capital punishment fanatic," or a "stop the war fanatic"?
. . . tricks the cops into harassing him and records the whole thing?
How does one "trick" cops into harassing them? Are you saying the cops who harass law-abiding, peaceable, openly armed citizens should not be expected to know the law, and to comply with it, rather than trampling the rights of of said law-abiding, peaceable, openly armed citizens, and that making a record of such bullying thuggery is somehow dishonorable?
"Haven't you ever seen those videos in which an open-carry fanatic tricks the cops into harassing him and records the whole thing?
DeleteMike,
I've seen the videos yore referring to, and while I agree that the guys are jerks if they open carry just to cause a scene, how exactly do you " trick" someone into harassing them? If the officers behave professionally, then they can't be tricked.
The police superintendent of Chicago is on record promising that if citizens are allowed to carry, eventually one of his officers will shoot one. This isn't a very professional attitude, especially since you and Laci always suggest that only the experts in law enforcement can be trusted carrying firearms in public.
I suggest that you look at a few more of those videos, you'll see some very professional officer dealing with these types and making them look like fools.
Kurt, that's a comical attempt to paint the poor persecuted gun owners like the Native Americans. It's usually the blacks before civil rights or the gays before they made progress. Now, the persecuted ones of the 21st centure are the gun owners.
DeleteThe truth, of course, is quite the opposite. You guys, especially the fringe extremist ones like yourself, are the persecuting ones. You are the bullies who try your best to inflict your twisted version of freedom on the rest of us. The results are horrendous, but that won't deter you from your single-minded purpose.
Then, to throw us off the scent, you continually define yourselves as the persecuted ones. It's comical.
Kurt, that's a comical attempt . . .
DeleteGlad I was able to bring a smile into your rage-filled world.
You guys, especially the [uncompromising liberty advocates] like yourself, are the persecuting ones . . .
And whom have we "persecuted"? Advocacy of sane gun laws (another way of saying no gun laws) "persecutes" no one, since no one has the right to prevent free people from acquiring the firearms they wish, without anyone else's permission, or even knowledge.
Then, to throw us off the scent, you continually define yourselves as the persecuted.
Actually, I think I define myself as one who will not be persecuted, despite your efforts.
It's comical.
Again, I'm glad I could provide at least a tiny bit of relief from the bleakness of your existence.
Ah, yes, those people who have recording of harrassment by cops weren't targeted by those cops--They target the COPS and tricked them into violating their rights! It's the Gun owner's fault, not the overreaching officers'.
DeleteAs for the rest of your screed aimed at Kurt, you sound like various racists I've heard talk about the "poor persecuted blacks" or "poor persecuted jews" etc. You minimize abridgments of our civil liberties (and I'm talking about ones other than the 2nd Amendment rights we disagree on). You blame US for these same abridgments. You constantly insult us as having sub-normal intelligence, sub-standard psychological development, various fetishes, etc. and call us everything from cold bastards to con men to simple liars, yet, like racists, you bristle if we Dare to respond to your venom with some of our own, telling us to keep in line, mind our tongues, and be more like whichever one of us you're patting on the head at the moment--you used to tell Greg to be more like me, but now it's the other way around since I said something you didn't like.
Are gun owners persecuted like blacks were? No, there are differences in the type of treatment. Were blacks persecuted the way Jews were in the Holocaust? Again, no. Only in your mind do we claim that we are subject to the same injustices that blacks were in the past, or Jews in the Holocaust, etc.
Instead, what we keep calling out are the abuses of our civil liberties that are aimed at us because we are gun owners, and at the abuses of civil liberties that are growing in our society as a whole.
No, it's not to the level of Jim Crow, and certainly not of the Holocaust, but that doesn't mean that unequal treatment shouldn't be opposed. It should be, whenever and wherever it is found, for whatever reason it is being imposed. After all, these things tend to grow like a cancer.
The point, which all of you pretend not to have gotten, is although there are many of those videos out there about open-carry guys purposely looking for the cops to hassle them so they can record it, as far as I know, there are no reports of open carry guys being put on the ground and executed (brutally beating you up and possibly killing you, is what they hysterical Anonymous said).
DeleteBut, far be it from any of you to call him on that exaggerated bullshit. In fact, you guys support what he said.
. . . as far as I know, there are no reports of open carry guys being put on the ground and executed (brutally beating you up and possibly killing you, is what they [sic] [quite reasonable and entirely correct] Anonymous said).
DeleteIf you had read more carefully, you might have noted that Anon's hypothetical scenario involved resisting the illegal arrest, a situation that as far as I know hasn't happened, since the vast majority of open carry activists have so far been willing to endure a long train of abuses and usurpations, and seek redress afterward, before fighting back.
But even ignoring that, what's your point? That since they're "only" being illegally harassed, sometimes arrested, sometimes subjected to forcible confiscation of their life-saving firepower, they have no legitimate complaint? That the abuse to which they are subjected should not be documented, and the offenders held accountable?
Bullshit.
Have we come to the point at which our government is butchering citizens? Not really, although we have seen Obama use drones on Americans overseas and talk about their use here, and there have been other violations from time to time, but the fact that for the most part we haven't seen much more than that shows that our system works. We're trying to keep it working, rather than to allow control freaks to take away our rights.
DeleteEven if the audio recordings come from situations where the person carried openly to see if the police would overreact, how does that justify or mollify the police officers' unlawful arrests and other behavior? There are also plenty of police dash cam videos of the same type of abuses happening at traffic stops.
DeleteAs for incidents where people were shot, there was the guy out west a year or so back who was carrying at Costco when an employee saw his firearm and called the cops. The police claimed that he drew on them, but other witnesses said otherwise, and him drawing on the cops doesn't really fit with him leaving the store when a manager asked him to.
As for what the Anonymous commenter said: he didn't say that you would be shot just for carrying openly. He did suggest that you'd be thrown onto the pavement--something the police chief in Milwaukee said he would have his officers do to anyone carrying there until they could verify that they were abiding by the law--the law which said that non-prohibited persons could carry openly. The shooting suggestion Anonymous made was what would happen if you didn't immediately comply or resisted being thrown down or disarmed. Considering the various police shooting stories in the news, this really doesn't even need to be addressed.
I'm laughing at your combined effort to describe the oppressive persecution you guys have to suffer. I don't know how you go on.
DeleteI don't know how you go on.
DeleteWe go on because we know that we shall overcome.
What's more difficult to understand is how your side goes on.
Mikeb, laughing at people who stand up for rights shows your quality.
DeleteAnd again, once we beat up your straw man and ask you to argue with what we're saying rather than your distortion of what we're saying, you tell us you're laughing at us, ridicule us, and run off.
DeleteBad form.
"Mikeb, laughing at people who stand up for rights shows your quality."
DeleteWhich right is that, Greg, the right to pretend the MARINES are coming for your guns? I'm laughing.
Um, no, and you know what I was talking about. Mikeb, you don't have to play ignorant.
DeleteWow--the Oath Keepers must have a pretty impressive budget--this latest campaign truly makes me proud to support them:
ReplyDeleteIn the latest phase of a media campaign putting up “billboards at strategic locations throughout the United States”, the Oath Keepers group “has placed three back-lit signs on the subway platform in the Washington Metro Pentagon Station,” a media release appearing in The Sacramento Bee reported yesterday.
. . .
"The first sign at the Pentagon Station is done in the style of the theater scene from George Orwell's ‘1984’ and features Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, as 'Big Brother,'" Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes stated, explaining “the sign makes it clear that by exposing the NSA spying on Americans, Snowden honored his oath."
A billboard featuring the same “artwork will also be going on a billboard along a major freeway in Maryland, near the NSA headquarters at Ft. Mead within the week," Rhodes added.
Yeah, the Oath Keepers have that old philosophy, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So of course they support Snowden.
DeleteI've missed you lately. Been on vacation?
Yeah, the Oath Keepers have that old philosophy, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So of course they support Snowden.
DeleteI disagree with the notion that the Oath Keepers view the U.S. government as an "enemy." They simply advocate keeping the government on the short leash of the Constitutional limits on its power. Here's an analogy I have used in the past:
Like pit bulls and other powerful breeds of dogs bred for their fighting prowess and combativeness, governments must be made to know who is in charge. They must be constantly reminded that they exist to serve us. They are too dangerous, as President Washington reminds us, for failure to keep them in check to be any more excusable than failing to keep dangerous dogs contained.
They need to be tightly controlled--kept on a short leash, as it were. In the context of the U.S. government, that "short leash" is the Constitution, and the very explicit limits it places on the federal government's power--power, remember, that is borrowed from We the People. We know the consequences of allowing the government to slip that leash.
For that matter, I am far from convinced that Snowden sees the U.S. government as the "enemy," either, although the reverse is clearly true. With his whistleblowing, I would argue that he is trying to stop behavior on the part of the government by which it undermines its own legitimacy. "Friends don't let friends spy on their own citizenry," so to speak.
I've missed you lately. Been on vacation?
I suppose you could call my absence (for the most part) a "vacation"--a vacation from your hate mongering: regional bigotry, misogyny, etc. I guess I've decided that life is too short to be spent granting you the undeserved legitimacy of my frequent engagement with you.
I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did. You know your co-commenters are still arguing that SYG thing? It must have been hard for you to admit what you did and apologize like that. I'm sure that has nothing to do with your abrupt departure, though.
DeleteActually, I'm enjoying the respite from you too although I could never express it as eloquently as you did, "the undeserved legitimacy of my frequent engagement with you."
That incredible word-smithing I do miss.
I see that, as should be expected from enemies of the Oath Keepers, they continue to try to frame liberty advocates with child porn, drawing from, no doubt, the typical anti-Oath Keeper's/anti-gun fanatic's enormous supply of such heinous material.
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