by David Edwards and Daniel Tencer

Some 100 new militia groups have formed since the election of President Barack Obama, says the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In a re-run of the phenomenon seen when President Bill Clinton took office, gun-rights advocates, libertarians, survivalists and others are forming militias as a symbol of their resistance to what they see as an administration that threatens to restrict their right to bear arms and expand government control over the lives of private citizens.

“The truth is that these groups are popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a social-justice group that has been tracking the rise of militias over the past year.

Potok’s group put out a report earlier this year raising the alarm about the resurgence of armed militias. Since then, he told CNN, the group has counted about 100 new groups formed across the country.

“There really is this terrible fear mixed with fury about the idea that President Obama is somehow leading a socialistic takeover of America,” Potok said.

A CNN news crew that visited the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia found a group that sees itself as a “deterrent” to any attempts to restrict gun use, and otherwise sees itself as a place to learn survival skills.

“Just the simple fact that we are out here and we are doing this, will give somebody pause, will make them think twice,” said militia member Michael Lackomar, who added that he thought Obama “could be dangerous for the nation.”

“Anytime we get a Democratic president in the office, people become concerned, including myself, and we get a resurgence out here,” said one militia member, identified only as Brian.

But CNN’s Jim Acosta points out that gun control “is unrealistic in many ways, because the Obama administration and the Democrats know that it would be political suicide for them to go after gun control measures. Even the attorney general has indicated he won’t go back to the assault weapons ban enacted in the Clinton administration.”

In its report from August, the Southern Poverty Law Center pointed out that the most recent wave of militia groups differs slightly from the wave seen under President Clinton in one respect.

“A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man,” the report states. “That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate.”

This video is from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast Nov. 16, 2009.

by John Longenecker

Most Americans do not make the connection between American Gun Control and today’s scandals of bank bailouts, corporate takeovers, immense failures, government intrusion and indifference, massive disrespect for the electorate, and other harassment of the sovereign. There is a connection.

For a long time, I have urged the repeal of all gun laws. Since the very inception of gun control in this country, abuses of powers has served the public servants more than the electorate, and few of the promises have ever come true. The fears of liberty purists have all come true, right on schedule it seems. All of this goes without saying, but how do we find our way back home again to a nation of Independence from our own servants?

Gun laws – more than 20,000 of them – serve officials by unwinding natural values and rights of armed defense of the person and permit massive transfers of our wealth to others little by little. How gun control is related to modern crises is in how experiments and trials tested and proven on gun bans, restrictions and regulations give valuable feedback to social engineers as to how far they can go against the electorate. It’s not enough to say that citizens must be disarmed first before any tyranny, it is more: it is a feature-rich test which surrenders up valuable information.

The idea — the experiment – gauges how America’s most vociferous defenders of liberty (gun owners) are actually very tolerant thanks to their respect for due process and faith in the law. This is used against them (and everyone else) in pushing back the borders of how far government can go in
unreasonableness against protest. Get it past gun owners first, and the rest of the nation is easy prey. This is what we are seeing now in scandals seemingly unrelated to gun control. All of the fighting we see in newsmedia every day now between indifferent, stubborn officials and their resentful
constituents is gleaned from what is learned from gun control. They have a very high confidence level in how far they can go thanks to what they know about how far they have been able to go in gun control.

Gun control is Number One on the list of these tests and abuses because it yields up that sort of social engineering information: how far can you push the American people on an issue that means so much to, say, oh.. 80 million? What can you learn about dividing Americans?

This makes it the pressure point to push in unwinding these by the ton. Imagine how neighborhoods will someday soon embrace and thank the average armed citizen for not only helping to regain control of their neighborhoods, but to once again have high expectations of public service and integrity of law enforcement, self-policing and professional integrity in office, and perhaps, just perhaps, fewer laws passed. Much of this would come from respect, respect which the official does not give the electorate at this time.

This is one of the best rewards of the repeal of all gun laws: the idea that so many anti-crime programs costing billions are simply not needed when the citizenry is armed. So many costly programs thrive because they know how little attention non-gun owners will pay and ignore bigger government is a veritable gold mine of data up to now. As it stands today, tens of millions are aroused as some officials have gone too far and aroused the sleeping giant.

After all, they also know form their data that some of the loudest complainers aren’t even registered to vote.

Alright, so the sleeping giant is awake. But, then, what do we do next? How do we get our independence back again?

I write often that the armed citizen does not fight tyranny in eventual shoot-outs with our own American troops, but by every day impeaching the need for so many policies which, themselves tyrannize Americans. Americans are tyrannized by coercive rules and penalties, by sweeping mandates, by takings, by taxations, by abuses of powers, by bankruptcy in defending those cases, by education content, by zero-tolerance in school and workplace, and other paradigms of many who never consult the parent or citizen, but so-called experts. All of these are groomed for success by a blueprint of what is learned from Gun Control. All of these speak only to factions of America such that one cannot count on understanding and support from other Americans. All of these can be unwound for all by the repeal of all gun laws.

What’s the payoff for the social engineers? How do officials gain from the tragedy of seemingly intractable violent crime? Moving America from a values system and personal dignity of Independence into a nation of utter dependency with all exits closed is the payday for officials. It is the old Hegelian model of governance in presiding over continuing crisis instead of presiding over prosperity and independence from servants, and nothing rouses cooperation better than violence.

But there is more to freedom that waiting for government to chase away thugs. Superb data works both ways: Lynch v. NC DOJ remarked that “Police have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others.” Lynch went on to say that their duties lie elsewhere in keeping the peace, in enforcement of the law. This means after-the-fact, friends. Dependency is a terrible thing.

How many have to die before the sleeping giant has his coffee and make the connection of gun control to dependency on our servants?

Repeal all gun laws as the beginning of getting out from under bigger government and away from dependency on our very own public servants.

by Eileen Sullivan, AP

Militia groups with gripes against the government are regrouping across the country and could grow rapidly, according to an organization that tracks such trends.The stress of a poor economy and a liberal administration led by a black president are among the causes for the recent rise, the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center says. Conspiracy theories about a secret Mexican plan to reclaim the Southwest are also growing amid the public debate about illegal immigration.

Bart McEntire, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told SPLC researchers that this is the most growth he’s seen in more than a decade.

“All it’s lacking is a spark,” McEntire said in the report.

It’s reminiscent of what was seen in the 1990s—right-wing militias, people ideologically against paying taxes and so-called “sovereign citizens” are popping up in large numbers, according to the report to be released Wednesday. The SPLC is a nonprofit civil rights group that, among other activities, investigates hate groups.

Last October, someone from the Ohio Militia posted a recruiting video on YouTube, billed as a “wake-up call” for America. It’s been viewed more than 60,000 times.

“Things are bad, things are real bad, and it’s going to be a lot worse,” said the man on the video, who did not give his name. “Our country is in peril.”

The man is holding an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, and he encourages viewers to buy one.

While anti-government sentiment has been on the rise over the last two years, there aren’t as many threats and violent acts at this point as there were in the 1990s, according to the report. That movement bore the likes of Timothy McVeigh, who in 1995 blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 people.

But McEntire fears it’s only a matter of time.

These militias are concentrated in the Midwest, Pacific Northwest and the Deep South, according to Mark Potok, an SPLC staff director who co-wrote the report. Recruiting videos and other outreach on the Internet are on the rise, he said, and researchers from his center found at least 50 new groups in the last few months.

The militia movement of the 1990s gained traction with growing concerns about gun control, environmental laws and anything perceived as liberal government meddling.

The spark for that movement came in 1992 with an FBI standoff with white separatist Randall Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Weaver’s wife and son were killed by an FBI sniper. And in 1993, a 52-day standoff between federal agents and the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, resulted in nearly 80 deaths. These events rallied more people who became convinced that the government would murder its own citizens to promote its liberal agenda.

Now officials are seeing a new generation of activists, according to the report. The law center spotlights Edward Koernke, a Michigan man who hosts an Internet radio show about militias. His father, Mark, was a major figure in the 1990s militia movement and served six years in prison for charges including assaulting police.

Last year, officials warned about an increase in activity from militias in a five-year threat projection by the Homeland Security Department.

“White supremacists and militias are more violent and thus more likely to conduct mass-casualty attacks on the scale of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing,” the threat projection said.

A series of domestic terrorism incidents over the past year have not been directly tied to organized militias, but the rhetoric behind some of the crimes are similar with that of the militia movement. For instance, the man charged with the April killings of three Pittsburgh police officers posted some of his views online. Richard Andrew Poplawski wrote that U.S. troops could be used against American citizens, and he thinks a gun ban could be coming.

The FBI’s assistant director for counterterrorism, Michael Heimbach, said that law enforcement officials need to identify people who go beyond hateful rhetoric and decide to commit violent acts and crimes. Heimbach said one of the bigger challenges is identifying the lone-wolf offenders.

One alleged example of a lone-wolf offender is the 88-year-old man charged in the June shooting death of a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Dale’s Notes: notice how they categorize “militias” with “domestic terrorists” and “racists.”  As I’ve pointed out many times, most of the white supremacist/Nazi groups in the U.S. are made up almost entirely of undercover federal agents.  Note also the tenuous tie this writer attempts to make with “recent domestic terrorism” events and the militia movement.

This is the kind of brainwashed thinking we’re up against, folks.  I’m sure Ms. Sullivan’s AP handlers were more than happy with the mis-characterization and misrepresentation that she input into this “reporting.”

Great little video on the blow out kit (BOK) that should always be a part of your gear:

by David Calderwood

My recent column that references OSHA’s silly grouping of firearm ammunition with true explosives, equating to a potential ban on ammunition sales, elicited quite a few comments (apologies for misrepresenting the possibly apocryphal story about Bush 41’s encounter with a supermarket scanner). One strain within this motivates me to clarify my own views of the role guns play in the current and future battle for liberty.

Folks, at the risk of offending a lot of LRC readers, I have to admit that I think guns will play no direct role in this battle whatsoever. In the age of overwhelming government power where no habitable place on the globe is free from domination by one nation-state or another, it is simply impossible that armed men are going to secede and then win an ensuing firefight with government minions.

In every case where old forms of government are cast off, sometimes to the accompaniment of gunfire, there is always an undercurrent of ideas that creates the necessary commitment of residents to the new paradigm. These ideas may be good or evil, but it is the ideas, not the bullets, that are the necessary ingredient for change.

In today’s America we are on the fast track toward the Total State where no element of human existence is free from the suffocating influence of government employees. In some respects we’re already there, since who among us would give our child a swat on the rump in public without immediately worrying about someone calling the local “Child Protection Agency,” and as we know today’s government employees even dictate how much water a flush toilet can use.

This fast track exists because our friends, neighbors, and co-workers accept the premises on which the Total State is built. They accept the notion, without thought, that by aggregating tax money and the power to direct human choice in the hands of a few elected and (far more commonly) appointed persons the whole product of government will be greater than the sum of its parts. They believe that the United States government and all its vassals at the state and local levels are institutions that produce more than they consume; they see the government as the sole exception in the universe to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

People almost universally see things this way despite the daily litany and lifetime experience of waste, corruption, and sleaze that accompany every level of government. Even government employees whose daily work immerses them in waste and resource misallocation hold faith that there’s no alternative to this massive institution that early in the twenty-first century has crowded out or co-opted nearly all other lawful forms of human organization.

Against this backdrop we still are occasionally treated to exhortations to stock up on battle rifles and case quantities of ammo in preparation for the Second American Revolution. To me this creates a dangerous notion and understandably makes our neighbors (the ones that read such things without understanding the underlying philosophy) nervous.

Acquiring skill with a rifle or pistol is great sport. Unlike golf (also a game of concentration and self-control more than physical strength or stamina), shooting has a side-benefit of having a practical application in self-defense. Sometimes, however, people get carried away with this.

First, since the state is our neighbors’ only real source of acceptable violence, any effort to employ violence against the state’s employees will always be interpreted badly by the neighbors. Nobody fights the law without the law winning because the neighbors identify with the law. Violence against the state in any form simply becomes a rationalization for repression. As long as the state is seen by a plurality of our neighbors as Mother, Father, Protector, and Provider, all violence simply strengthens those who rule. What could set the cause of liberty back further than the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing or the events of 9/11? People who employ violence against government facilities or employees are the identical twins of totalitarians everywhere.

Second, since the state monopoly on violence rests on popular belief, even violence employed in self-defense against freelance criminals will always be viewed in the most negative light possible. This makes employment of even “justified” violence quite risky from a legal standpoint. Violence employed in self-defense is thus a very last resort and nothing to be joked about or taken lightly.

Guns do matter. They matter philosophically because free men and women do not depend on the state’s minions for their own personal safety. They are thus an indicator of citizen power versus government power at the moral level. I carry a spare tire and a jack in my car, but I still try to avoid conditions that might cause a flat, and even if I get a flat there’s a decent chance I’ll call AAA to get a professional to change the tire. The jack and the spare simply give me the option to change the tire should circumstances warrant and avoid my being wholly dependent upon tow-truck businesses.

Given that in this case the government analogy to the tow truck industry is a tax-supported police monopoly, it’s no stretch of imagination to suspect that complete and total citizen dependence on the police for crime suppression would be the Gift that Keeps on Giving to police unions engaged in collective bargaining. Only a cynic would suggest the cops might become scarce in middle class residential areas during negotiations…right?

Guns also matter practically by providing deterrence to freelance criminals. America has always been a relatively violent place and we know from other western countries that removing the threat of potential violence from the hands of average citizens creates nothing more than a free-fire range where Joe Citizen is trapped between the (armed) cops and the (armed) robbers. In this sense privately owned guns deter by their potential employment, not by the body count of criminals shot by victims.

Guns in private citizens’ hands increase the cost of victimizing people; elementary economics tells us to expect that reducing or eliminating this cost should make the quantity of violent crime “provided” increase. This appears to be consistent with experience in the UK, Jamaica, and other places enforcing a legal monopoly of government gun ownership.

In sum, gun ownership is very important but the real war is one of ideas.

You are on the front lines with General Lew, parrying the lies, myths, and obfuscations of the enemy with rhetorical jabs and penetrating questions. We win some battles and we lose others as the pendulum of dominant ideas swings between power and liberty in a never-ending war. The level of liberty our children and we enjoy depends on our persuasiveness and on the tenor of the public’s openness to truth and reality (which changes over time).

We who live relatively free of the dogma surrounding the institution called “government” have little choice. We cannot through reason, and especially not through violence, force an idea whose time has not yet come. We can only be persistent, good-humoredly repeating the truth while patiently awaiting the time when conditions evolve to provide a more fertile soil for liberty’s growth. In the meantime we gain enough defectors from the other side to keep things interesting.