Buying the Shop 4
Ah, the inevitable meeting shall commence.
Well, no sooner had I posted yesterday’s blurb, than I discovered the standoff had hit a very, very odd note. TL;DR: the BLM had armed Sheriff’s dept folks in a standoff with the protestors. And the LEOs were outnumbered. They gave a direct order for the protesters to stand down, which was, after a moment, ignored.
Let me repeat that: when threatened with the use of deadly force, the protesters ignored the order and brandished weapons of their own.
Outgunned, the SWAT team turned tail and left. They claimed at the time that a deal had been struck with the BLM and Bundy. Turns out that was a load of shit.
The mainstream media has completely buried this story. Sure, the story slowly caught fire on the bloggertrons, but mostly on the really extreme right-wing sites.
And so it begins.
I’ve said before and I’ll say again: the American people are restrained by the THREAT of government action, in the form of actual violence. This is true of many nations. The reality is that in most cases, the threat is a paper tiger. I wrote on this in my blog, at length, a few years back. Put simply, there is NO WAY the Fed Gov could ever successfully declare martial law across America. They can BARELY declare it in one or two places simultaneously. The reality is that we are an armed nation – heavily so – and the federal government straight up does not have the manpower to control the American People, should we decide to revolt.
The threat is maintained through propaganda and lies. The reality is that the citizenry outnumbers Law Enforcement officials by a staggering margin – and in this case, it was proven exactly. When given an order to halt, facing a line of SWAT members pointing guns at them, the resistance refused the order. And, in this standoff, they won.
Pretty big news story, and I can see why the popular media isn’t running with it. I just dislike that it was because of this Bundy douche, and his fucking cows.
No, I don’t like Bundy. I’m not on his side. He’s basically a criminal – a man who has decided he does not want to obey court orders or the law, because, uh, he don’t wanna do that. That’s not the point.
The main reason the Fed Gov has power is because the populace obeys their commands, under the illusion that actual uprising will be met with force that shuts down a revolt. The reality is that the Law Enforcement branches CANNOT enforce widespread Martial Law. Period. They don’t have the numbers. So instead, the myth of the Police State’s Power is passed on through popular media and bullshit.
The reality is that we, the people, still have the power. I don’t for an instant think this was a case of the feds standing down because of a Presidential order, or Harry Reid, or them suddenly (hah!) getting a change of heart about the whole thing and realizing that human life means something. I DO believe they backed down because, according to reports, something between 500 and 1000 armed stupid yahoos showed up this time, and let the feds know that if there was going to be a firefight, the fight would be on both sides.
That’s pretty goddamned important to note. Without rule of law, by definition, anarchy reigns. But my initial blog posts so long ago were also noting that no rule of law has ever lasted longer than a handful of centuries – you can only rule if you have the numbers to enforce it. If the populace outnumbers the rulers, and ANY FACTION, just or not, realizes they have the power to defy the law… shit gets really ugly really fast.
That’s what happened here. And it’s going to happen again. And next time, I think the enforcement forces are going to be encouraged to “make an example.”
Will it end in a threesome?
Can it somehow *not* end in a threesome?
Yes. It can easily not end in a threesome, considering as how one of the two female members is (as far as anyone knows) exclusively heterosexual…and one man trying to please two women simultaneously is typically way too busy to have much fun. 🙂
Which is not to say that the one man and the other woman aren’t going to play with titillating “threesome” memes for a good long while. (Maybe. If Our Author/Artist decides they should.)
Above comment is even better if you assume it’s about the Bundy Ranch situation.
You owe me a new computer screen…
You win an Internet for the day.
The U.S. is indeed a nation of laws, but it’s supposed to be a nation of JUST laws, not any old laws you can get passed. Some things are yours by right, out of the reach of lawmakers, judges, and democratic majorities. We can quibble over some of the fine points of what those things are, but if somebody takes things you see as yours, and the courts won’t protect you, what do you do?
Yeah, but we’re not exactly talking about an unjust law in this case. What happened is yon nutbar (Cliven Bundy) had been paying grazing fees for his cattle to graze on federal land up until 1993. Then, he decided that he didn’t need to pay any more, because reasons. Among his reasons were “my family’s been working this land since 1880”, which would mean something if (a) it hadn’t been federal land before that and (b) that’s never been an acceptable reason. Those reasons were not sufficient to sway a judge in the two court cases that were decided against him in the matter.
Another reason is BLM’s demand that Bundy reduce his herd to a number too small to support his business. That would be a dealbreaker for me, too, being required to pay for the destruction of my livelihood.
But the BLM’s requirements only apply with regard to the use of public land. It’s like if I rent you an apartment with a maximum safe occupancy (for fire code reasons) of 4, and you go and have 8 kids. At first, sure, I’ll look the other way way, be sympathetic, etc, but eventually I’m going to say ‘hey, look, you can’t have 10 people living in this apartment.’ When that happens, responding with ‘Not only are we going to all keep living here, but I’m not paying the rent anymore’ is pure bullshit. That’s more or less what’s happened here. And when the landlord (in this case, the BLM) called the cops to evict the squatters, the squatters got all their squatter friends to show up, armed and looking for an excuse to shoot cops.
Yes, the Federal Government needs to get its head out of its ass in a lot of ways. Yes, the populace is far too vast and far too self-determinant (including w/firearms ownership) to be pacified unless we allow ourselves to be. That doesn’t mean this is the cause célèbre to rally behind. Put bluntly, the guy’s a squatter who is not only stealing the use of arable land from the public trust, but he’s doing it in a way that damages and degrades the property he’s using.
Wow, where to begin.
Let’s fine tune the analogy a little to fit the circumstances and see how it sounds. I am leasing an apartment, one I’ve occupied since before the landlord was born, one I did most of the painting, finish carpentry and maintenance on, with the clear understanding that the legal occupancy limit was 10. My wife and 8 kids and I are quite comfortable here. Then along comes the landlord and says, “you’re endangering the carpet, you are limited to two people here.”
Slightly different tone there. What are you going to do, move? Pretty much anywhere you might go has the same landlord.
Squatters are occupying the land of others unlawfully from the start. The Bundys were using that land lawfully for over a century. Yes, it’s public land, but what do you think it’s held in public trust for? It’s cattle-grazing land.
And, don’t you think if hundreds of armed guys went looking for opportunities to shoot cops, they’d have, ya know, shot one or two? Some of us carry guns to deter others.
Let’s just clear some things up with your analogy (note that this is coming from a native Nevadan).
1. The Bundy clan has not been around longer than the State of Nevada or the Federal government. From everything I have read they settled there in the late 1870s to early 1880s. The State of Nevada was established in 1864 during the American Civil War. The Federal government since 1789 with the acquisition of the land that would become Nevada occurring in 1848. The “landlords” have been there longer.
2. The Bundy’s were never responsible the maintenance of the public land on which they grazed their cattle. That has been the job of various state and federal agencies.
3. They didn’t tell him to destroy his heard, simply that he could no longer have that number of cows on the land at one time.
Simply, Bundy is a self important jackass that picked a fight 20 years ago, lost repatedly and now is strutting around like he won something while blatantly violAting established, tested! and verified law. The government’s response was not as…diplomatic, as it should have been, but after 20 years and being 1 mil in the whole he has no one to blame but himself.
Nope. He just has to reduce the number of cattle on THAT plot of ground. He can move the cattle elsewhere; whether that would be more BLM land, or privately owned land is another discussion.
And frankly, the business model of depending on stupidly cheap grazing on public lands in order to ensure (or maybe just maximize) profits, is probably a really bad idea.
Yeah, the BLM has been busy driving the ranchers out of business for years and from what I’ve heard Bundy”s position was something like “I should pay these mother fuckers to fuck me over?”.
I think the gov will set up another confrontation where the numbers are in their favor and kill some Americans. It’s what government does.
There’s even a word for it- http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM
If they are fucking you over you file a claim in court. You don’t refuse to pay, ignore three different court orders, and then invite known armed (and in many cases known insane) people to come help you when the Feds show up to do what they told you they would do 6 months ago.
If you think it’s worthwhile to make your appeal to referees who all work for the other team, be my guest.
Because the courts have never once ruled against the government ever…
Let me make you an analogy:
The street charlatan running 3 card monte loses ALL THE TIME…
Just… never when the stakes are high.
I know many people have trouble remembering 20 years ago, but the “claim” that the Bundy ranch are criminals smacks of the “claims” that the Branch Davidians were doing any number of things, all of which were proven false except the ones which were physically impossible to disprove due to fire > evidence strength.
Depending on virtual government charity (the difference in cost between public- and private-land grazing) is probably a bad business model.
In my county there are something like 250 citizens to every police officer. Here’s the thing though. About 240 of those citizens are going to side with the police and not the nut job wackadoos waving their Glasden flags if a confrontation leads to a sworn police officer getting shot in a confrontation.
You’re forgetting about one or two little things when declaring martial law. One: the National Guard. Two: The military. The president (no, I know I am supposed to capitalize the word but fuck it) is authorized to use the NG and the military in a limited capacity to restore order and to keep order, and I really wouldn’t put it past the jank to do so. LEOs can’t enforce the laws we have on the books, with their current pussification, so when this really bites the big one, and it will, eventually, you’ll see the NG being pulled in in a “support” role. Augmentation. A show of force the protesters can’t ignore. Then come the cries of the POLICE STATE and FASCISM and what do you have? Several hundred dead after one idiot “has had all he could stands, and he can’t stands no more” and tries to show everyone how big his balls are. Clampdown. Obamination calls for martial law in that area to “deal with the situation”, followed by bipartisan support for “the innocent victims of the needless slaughter” and “the need for more gun control laws”, which will not work. As you mentioned previously, gun laws favor the criminals. They can get guns. Making it harder for you and me to get a gun legally will do nothing but empower the gang bangers and drug lords and make it impossible for us to defend ourselves against a crack/meth head who breaks into my house. Or to defend against stupidity in the form of “martial law”. I don’t see this ending any other way than bad. I don’t even want to get into WHY these people are protesting. I think they’re pissing into the wind myself. I think this is going to be a litmus test for all those sheeple who are waiting for an opportunity like this.
Are you seriously that paranoid? Take a step back and look at the crazy you’re talking.
> You’re forgetting about one or two little things when declaring martial law. One: the National Guard. Two: The military.
Negative. They were part of the math.
313 million Americans. Now, let’s figure that, ehn, 25% of those are incapable of fighting. Kids, elderly, crippled, etc. So we have 234,750,000 fighting citizens.
Now let’s look at the possible opposition:
DHS: 250,000 people.
Nat’l Guard & Reserves: 851,000
Enlisted, Active Military: 1,430,000
Law Enforcement: 1,300,500
That leaves us only 230,918,500 citizens, vs. 3,831,500 opfor.
In other words, worst case scenario: we outnumber them at least 60 to 1. And that’s if everyone in our military, IN THE WORLD, sided with the government and was recalled back here. (Hint – that ain’t happening.)
No. National martial law is a fucking fairy tale. It’s a boogums that only the extremely paranoid would believe. It cannot happen in America, unless we let it.
“Unless we let it.”
Key phrase there. And most often, the puyblic WILL let it happen – Eiother becaue they believe the government (doesn’t matter if the government is telling teh truth or not), doesn’t care, or is intimidated. And face facts, the government CAN produce locally *very* high levels of intimidation. Which, if ‘sold’ correctly can do a very good job of intimidating more people not immediately present.
The government is *very* good at selling shit. Mostly, they sell bullshit. But if enough people buy the bullshit, it becomes as if it’s NOT bullshit.
But mostly, martial law CAN happen simply because most people are insufficiently motivated to do anything about it. It takes ANGER or FEAR (which leads to anger) to get people motivated. Hell, in a very safe activity like an election, it’s hard to get above a 50% participation – You think armed resistance is going to get even remotely that kind of show-up, abesnt a bloody shirt?
It’s beginning to look like just the UNEMPLOYED armed “unorganized militia” who could stick around for a few days STILL managed to outnumber by an order or two of magnitude the active forces of state who were called upon to show up.
Let’s put that in a different context: The people who did this FOR FREE breezily overpower those who had to be PAID to represent the government in opposition.
And I’m not going to be convinced the Bundy folks are guilty of anything unless there’s SOME way to provide a court who isn’t in the pocket of the folks threatening him with violence and/or prison. Not sure what sort of venue that entails, and I don’t care if it’s Judge Judy, just NOT a judge paid by the funds of, say, a selloff of confiscated cattle and acreage.
Meh. It’s realistic, however unlikely. Paranoid, maybe. This topic gets my blood pressure up anyway and it can sound like paranoid raving at times. Realistically, I am a very pro-2nd amendment guy, very pro military but also very pro-not having my ass handed to me by a bunch of panty-waist liberals bent on taking away my civil rights one by one while I bend over. Wow, I do sound like a raving paranoid…
More realistically, 1/3rd of the civilian population is capable of “militarily useful activity” (others incapable due to age, infirmity, essential occupation, etc.), which is still 30:1 odds against the government, roughly.
1/3rd of the population is likely to care enough to be part of the opposition, and in a stand off like this, they are precisely the ones who are most likely to be capable of that militarily useful activity and essential support activites. (The 1/3rd most likely to support the government are also the LEAST likely to have any value as counterrevolutionary forces. That’s a sociological constraint of how modern, liberal [in the classic sense], democratically based, Western societies are put together – the “pro-government” types tend towards conformists and tend away from the personalities, beliefs, and skills of the militant individualists who make good Direct Action revolutionaries.)
So, only counting shooters, still 10:1 odds, in the revolutionaries favor. (And this presumes that _all_ official government forces stay loyal and neither defect nor engage in sabotage and espionage. or simply stand down and stand aside. Again, anywhere from 10%-30% of those government forces will either bail out or join the revolutionaries — troops and cops are people, too., have family and community loyalties, and political, ethical, and social philosophies of their own. Some simply will not engage a large segment of the American population under almost ANY circumstances, some will sympathize, etc.)
Gnerally speaking, decentralized insurgents can tie up AT LEAST six government troops for every insurgent (unless there is a huge countervailing force multiplier in favor of the government; and no, strategic weapons, supersonic fighters, Aegis cruisers,specialty weapons intended for stopping mass armor attacks, etc., – those government systems so beloved as strawmen for anti-gun folks – are pretty near irrelevant in this kind of action). That leaves a metric butt-ton of unengaged insurgents.
No, I didn;t just pull these numbers out of thin air. It’s Basic Counterinsurgency 101, which I learned courtesy of your tax dollars.
The reason we are unlikely to NEED the Second Amendment as the “Final Bastion of Freedom” is precisely because we HAVE the Second Amendment — as long as we _can_ revolt with pretty fair odds (if even 1/3rd of the population firmly agrees) of success, it is highly improbable we would ever have a government that would push things far enough to trigger that kind of response by the population. (Yup, the “Threepers” are off by almost exactly an order of magnitude.)
Think of it like a state with BOTh strong union protection laws AND strong “Right to Work” laws. The _threat_ of a popular unionization can prevent the _need_ to form the union to get a decent contract from management. (Yes, I’ve worked in a place where it worked just like that – management agreed to certain concessions in exchange for labor NOT forming a union, and workers got the same bennies, more take-home pay, AND management got lower total labor costs than if they had done the standard union contract for our industry. Everyone won, _except_ the union officials.)
While I’m glad that someone stood up against the government, I have to agree, the reason behind WHY was stupid. The government and LE aren’t completely evil, they just need to be put back in line.
I hate to sound like a crank, but read http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM and then we’ll talk about how evil the fed had become.
Putting them back in line is not a trivial task.
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Government-R-J-Rummel/dp/1560009276
First read that about a decade ago. Scary shit. Also read:
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/0674076087/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397577462&sr=1-1&keywords=black+book+of+communism
Maybe I’m missing it, but I don’t see anything about the United States Federal Government in the parts covering the last, oh, 150 years.
Human nature is the same everywhere. The lust for power is the same everywhere. It’s been restrained here, in part due to an armed populace, but there’s no magic spell protecting this country. I will guarantee that there are people in government today, some quite high up, who would govern just that way I they thought they could get away with it. So far the circumstances haven’t favored them. That might not be true down the road.
You missed Waco and Ruby Ridge because they’re buried deeply in the footnotes, due to not involving enough digits in the death-count. Mostly we’ve taken the rich-nation route and outsourced our murder though, usually to places like Iraq, or Vietnam.
Damn, they left out the Civil War again!
But hey, you can say that about every important cause. The fight for the right of secession was dirtied by the issue of slavery. You have your rights read to you whenever you are arrested because we had to let go of some rapist named Miranda. To win the Revolutionary War, we had to hire German mercenaries; to win WWII, we had to get in bed with Commies; then afterward, we imported and employed a number of our enemies’ war criminals. The BATF got taken down a few rungs because they harassed and killed folks who were following one white separatist and another alleged child molester. Ed Snowdon leaked a raft of “national security” secrets directly related to government spying on its own citizens, but he also leaked a few that had nothing to do with that. If you will only back causes draped in white and led by archangels, you won’t find any.
I agree with your general point, but have to take issue with your first example. The Civil War wasn’t about secession with slavery as a side issue, or even about states’ rights in general; it was about slavery with secession as a result of that fight. The most solid evidence of this is Mississippi’s declaration of secession – it makes it very clear that Mississippi’s fundamental reason for seceding is because staying in the United States would risk their ability to keep slaves. (…which they describe as “property worth four billions of money,” a description which, at least to this 21st-century Yankee, is fucking terrifying.) Other states’ declarations of secession also make that point, although they generally include other reasons as well; Mississippi’s essentially doesn’t.
Like I said, I agree with your overall point; I just had to call you out on that particular example.
And as another aside, we didn’t hire German mercs, that was the British. We convinced the French to come in on our side (and the Spanish, as it happens), and sell us lots of weapons and material cheap.
Uh, no, we hired some European mercs, too. The difference is, we hired them as trainers and senior officers, not as line grunts.
Mercenaries come in different flavors, and include both when you go for quality versus quantity and when there is also an idealogical motivation in addition to straight pay. By the way, mercenary activities of the Cold War era almost _ALWAYS_ were of this model — small numbers of relatively high quality troops (by comparison to the average run of troops in the conflict – Mad Mike Hoare’s forces in the Congo were freaking Delta Force led by crack officers in comparison to the locals, even though his line dogs were rabble and most of his officer corps second tier at best in comparison to US or British regular forces), with a set of idealogical motivations (in the Congo it was a combination of anticommunist beliefs, defense of civilized people against savages, and straight up European racial supremacy, in varying combinations and ratios depending on the indivdual) in addition to just money.
It ain’t over yet. They’ll be back with more troops and a better plan. The S is about to HTF down there.
There’s some history here that isn’t coming out. IIRC, the land Bundy ran cattle on was state land until 1993. At that time, the feds took it from the state citing the ‘endangered’ desert tortoise, in order to ‘protect’ it. They then ran the ranchers in that area out of business. Bundy did not sign any agreement with the feds, and attempted to pay the state as he always had. The million+ the feds claim Bundy owes them is 95% fines for ignoring them.
The reason I put the quotes around ‘endangered’ and ‘protect’ is that the feds have killed thousands of those tortoises since they took the land from the state, in the areas that Bundy wasn’t running cattle. It seems that without cows (since the antelope is long gone from the area) the tortoises had a problem with food and were starving to death. Rather than letting them all starve, the feds killed off most of them so the rest had enough food to survive. Ecology, it’s a complex system.
You also don’t round up cattle in the spring when the calves are spawning, and you definitely don’t use helicopters to do it. This was going to be a slaughter. Unintentional, of course. Cough.
Add in that Senator Reid’s former top assistant is now running BLM and that there’s a Chinese company wanting to get US solar subsidies by building there, and the stink becomes almost palpable. Reid has become a multi-millionaire by being a mostly honest politician, he stays bought most of the time. There will be another try and it will go in much faster this time.
“There’s some history here that isn’t coming out.”
That’s brcause it isn’t actually true. The land has been – and has always been – federal land. Mexico gave it to the US, and it has been federal land ever since.
The “1993 something changed” is in 1993 a portion of the part of land was set aside as part of the habitat of the desert tortoise. Bundy was asked (or told, at this point it doesn’t matter) to not graze there. Instead, Bundy opted to not renew his permit to graze the land. Many years passed, the BLM having long since assumed the permit was abandoned, and during a helicopter survey they saw a bunch of fucking cows.
Lawsuits are files, injunctions granted and ignored, and eventually in October of 2013 the BLM gets explicit permission to seize cattle on the land.
As much as I dislike the feds, Bundy is 100% in the wrong.
I wouldn’t say 100% wrong, but he’s not exactly clean in this. Basically, he was told that he had to shrink his herd down from 600 head to 200. Which if you’re in the cattle ranching biz makes it far less profitable. Since they had been driving cattle ranchers out for decades, and he’s the last one left it seems as if they simply want the land to no longer be grazing lands. If the land is no longer grazing land, that will allow Reid’s buddies to come in and do what they want with the land.
In 1993, they shrank the grazing land to increase the habitat for the same desert tortoise that BLM had been slaughtering for budgetary reasons. At best this is suspect. He refused to pay the same fees to have BLM tell him he can’t graze his cattle there, as the permit was no longer being granted(since the land was now protected habitat for the aforementioned tortoise). They didn’t want him grazing cattle there, and they won that fight in the courts, because, while it was shady, it was all legal.
Of course, legal doesn’t mean right. At one time it was perfectly legal to own another human being.
“At one time it was perfectly legal to own another human being.”. Just about the dumbest argument there is. Are you invalidating every single law, or just the ones you don’t like? Think fast, which is it? Who gets to decide?
The solution to laws you disagree with or think are unjust is to work to change them. Our system was set up specifically to give the people the opportunity and ability to do that, rather than resorting yet again to violence and revolution to effect change. And if you decide that breaking them is the only way to make that happen, you accept the consequences. Or you are saying that law is simply a matter of might and power, and that it should be that way. Of course, that also means that if might and power come down on your head, you already said that was ok.
The solution to stupid laws is often to reduce them to the concepts that spawned the CREATION of laws: Protection of an injured party who may, on occasion, be unable to appear in its own defense. This would cause all “malum prohibitum” laws to be discarded, lacking any party who COULD come to the stand to claim injury. Claiming that removing slavery is equal to removing other laws CAUSING victims would be just. To equate it to other laws PROTECTING victims would not.
Although, all else being equal, the founding fathers were aware of the various boxes of freedom: Soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. Clearly the first two are sucking in the current context, and people are now making sure nobody gets murdered before they see the folks in the jury box.
We’re seeing people in New York and Connecticut breaking the law now that they feel is stupid. Are they as wrong as Bundy? According to the law they are. When faced with either compliance with the law, or keeping his ranch above water, he chose to no longer be in compliance. He realized these same policies by the federal government were the ones that drove out the other 50+ ranchers that USED to be there. Now, he’s the only one. He’s the last ranch standing, and the only one left in the way of the developers.
When did it become federal land, and what manner of claim did they make that gave them the right of ownership? Philosophically, there are only two ways one can come into ownership of land. One is if it’s sold to you by the prior owner, the second is if you homestead it. The Bundy family performed a homesteading a loooong time ago. Did government?
California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and more were ceded to the US government in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1849), at the end of the Mexican-American War. Nevada was a territory of the federal government until it became a state in 1863. It was the governments’ land first, also the land being grazed upon is not the land currently owned or previously homesteaded by the Bundys.
Thing is, if the article JL linked to yesterday is right, when a territory achieves statehood, the Constitution presumes that all “federal land” becomes state land; by default, the only federal land in a state is land the feds bought from that state. But I didn’t go to read the relevant articles in the Constitution to double check.
I’d like to think someone somewhere is kicking themselves, thinking “Shit, we should’ve armed the Occupy movement.”
If someone had armed the Occupods, they’d have shot themselves in their collective ass.
It’s so cute when people assume liberals don’t have guns.
Yeah, California Senator Lee had plenty of them.
I know, rite? I’m a moderate liberal, and I have more firearms than most of my Conservative friends.
To be fair, the people that took part in the occupy movement were not exactly the kind of people that screamed safe and knowledgable gun owners.
I don’t think it was so much “Liberals” as it was “Occupy Wall Street” folks. Rape, prostitution, dropping deuces on cop cars. general destructive behavior, immaturity in itself. You may not like the TEA partiers, but their protests have been mostly peaceful and clean(I know the ones around here actually left the area CLEANER than before they were there). Occupy atmosphere was more of a party, with lots and lots of alcohol flowing. DEFINITELY not the place to have firearms.
Yup. I have several fairly liberal lifelong Democrat buddies, who are also shooters and who I’ve been shooting with and handled and used large amounts of (legal) pyrotechnics. I’d trust my former in-laws (all but one EXTREMELY left wing liberals) with guns and wouldn’t feel unsafe if they were armed around me.
But NONE of them are the sorts to do the “Occupy” BS — because they actually work, didn’t run up tens of thousands of dollars of student and credit card debt for a worthless degree in Socialist Art Deconstruction or some similar twaddle, and the think it’s everyone’s fault in the world but their own that no one wants to pay them to sit around and quote Chomsky for $75K.
I wouldn’t trust your average Occupy moron with a Nerf gun even in some Bizarro World inversion where they voted a straight Republican or Libertarian ticket, and waved copies of Ayn Rand at Tea Party rallies. Stupid people, with ZERO sense of self-responsibility, a HUGE sense of entitlement, NO practical life experience, little self control, and no awareness of consequences simply are dangers to themselves and others around guns, power tools, heavy machinery, flammable fluids, and voting booths. My eight year old daughter has better self-control, more pragmatism, a better understanding of risk, and more sense of responsibility.
Bundy’s a criminal? Of course he is. And so are you, and so am I.
The stack of rules, regulations and laws–just Federal laws, let alone state, county, etc.–is so enormous, it’s been estimated that every single American commits an average of three felonies a day, knowingly or not. Remember, “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” even if the sheer amount of them would take more than a lifetime to read.
When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. Can anyone honestly say that the law has a damn thing to do with justice any more?
I read somewhere (can’t find it now of course) that the Bundy family bought the grazing rights back in the late 1800’s. If so I’d think that would be pertinent information. Wouldn’t be the first time the govt went back on a deal.
It drives me nuts that it’s so hard to get reliable information on situations like this.
I don’t think “bought” as there was literally no prior owner to buy them from. They were homesteaded: Original ownership. He(they?) should have had a deed/claim notarized back in those days as soon as there was anyone who could have shown up to recognize it… Western Union? Wells Fargo? The army scouting corps?
So what about the whole Harry Reid/Solar farm thing?
In this we’re going to present you with evidence of blatant corruption and criminal activities that anyone, including law enforcement, can easily verify. Googlecache FTW!
http://scgnews.com/bundy-ranch-what-youre-not-being-told
I am by no means a fan of big government, but in this instance the oath keepers and the rest of them got it wrong. Bundy is not the guy they should be rallying to in support of putting a check on government power. The guy is a criminal plain and simple with numerous judgements against him in support of the governments actions.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in the “cops were outgunned” theory. This is more or less ALWAYS the case with any kind of public unrest, but the police have the advantage of dispatchers, command hierarchy, communications, mutual aid agencies, etc. They could easily have backed off and returned in two hours with the National Guard’s tanks if they just wanted to guarantee they would be unhurt and they would still win a gunfight, IF they were willing to kill humans over a civil tax issue.
Cowardice doesn’t fit the facts and resources available, self-restraint does.
Don’t be so sure that some of these whack-job militias don’t have heavier weapons than rifles. I wouldn’t necessarily put my faith in ‘tanks’ if I were a federal agent up there.
Wow, now THAT’S paranoia.
Considering that the “whack jobs” were all out in the open with nowhere to hide 6 foot long anti tank weapons (that would have killed dozens of their buddies had they fired them with the backblast — _doctrine_ for antitank missile crews was to use the backblast alone to engage infantry if their position was being overrun – literally turn the launchers AWAY from teh enemy, and fire the tubes vore your own rear areas, letting the backblast act like a giant shotgun). . .
Contrary to Hollywood, antitank misslies and rockets (about the minimum you would need to realistically take out armor in an open field environment like this) are effectively unknown in the US, outside of military bases.
And contrary to your typical lying leftist antiright’s bigots like Bloomberg, Schumer, and Feinstein, .50 caliber rifles (about the heaviest weapon any private civilian would have) not only are not capable of taking out tanks (the .50BMG was BARELY able to take out WWI tanks), but they cost several thousand dollars, fire ammo that costs a lot of money for each shot, and are generally also about 6 feet long, and so are easily countered in THIS type of engagement with marksmen equipped with scope mounted rifles (that are basically deer rifles). (Yeah, a military sniper with a .50 rifle can hit targets at amazingly long range. Two problems: 1. Even with military grade saboted armor piercing ammo that is effectively unknown on the private market, even penetrating the armor of the lightest APC is very range limited — like well within the effective range of a cop with a .30 bolt action rifle or AR10. 2. Very few people are capable of using a precision rifle beyond a few hundred yards, because it’s a HELL of a lot more than just holding steady, knowing the elevation, and squeezing the trigger once you get past a few hundred yards, and you _cannot_ develop those skills except by firing hundreds of very expensive rounds at those ranges, under varying weather and light conditions.)
Depends on the engagement range. Not sure I’d count on a wad of Composition C (which is easy to find recipes for) taking out a modern main battle tank, but I doubt a lighter armored vehicle would stand up to it all that well, and a wad of plastic explosive is generally not 6 feet long. Just depends on whether you could get somebody close enough. Not going to help if you get an M1 opening up with the coax, of course, but see below…
Personally, I think the #1 reason not to bring in the National Guard for a firefight would be the political nightmare that would result, especially if armored vehicles are involved. Even aside from the question of whether you could legally deploy them in this situation (a legal argument which would be decided far too late to help the Bundy crew, of course) – and the instant end of the governor’s chances of reelection – that sort of footage going out (and it would go out) would spark protests at least, rioting probably, and possibly even open rebellion (although I suspect it would be scattered rather than widespread).
Complacency is as foolish as paranoia. But sure, everyone should just relax, the feds have it all under control.
Google “anti-tank weapons”. I watched a couple of Youtube videos just last night. “Effectively unknown”, Ok… 😀
And because there were no AT weapons in sight at the confrontation there were therefore none available? There were no “tanks” there, either, so why would anyone have brought an AT weapon out?
Again, even discounting actual anti armor weapons, and counting .50 rifles as “heavy” weapons the way the anti gunners do, where were any of those guys going to stash and how were they going to hide anything larger than a standard hunting caliber rifle?
So your fear of “TEh EVEIL MILITIA” bringing “heavy” weapons _IS_ paranoia.
What’s worse than “Meet The Parents Night”?
“Meet The Other Girlfriend Night”……
I think this is relevant, for those looking to excuse the stand being made in Nevada as a poor cause:
http://offgridsurvival.com/blm-attempting-to-steal-another-ranchers-land-in-texas/
This isn’t just happening in one place folks.