The Domestic Terrorism Danger: Focus on Unauthorized Private Military Groups

[L. Coyote]

The Domestic Terrorism Danger: Focus on Unauthorized Private Military Groups
By Philip Zelikow -- August 15, 2017

The Charlottesville tragedy came close to home for me because I teach at the University of Virginia and because it signaled the reappearance of a threat I had encountered before: the rise of well-armed private militia groups. For those close to the action, including the law enforcement personnel on duty, hardly any aspect of the Charlottesville confrontation was more menacing than the appearance of organized, often uniformed, private bands of men in military getups, openly brandishing assault rifles and other long guns.

This is an ominous development, but it is not a new one. And it can be—and has been—countered with legal action. I took part in that work.

In 1981 an organization called the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan organized and trained paramilitary groups to harass Vietnamese-American fishermen on the Texas Gulf coast. They, too, wore Army-surplus-style clothes and gear, not white sheets. Working with Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center, David Berg and I represented the fishermen in a federal lawsuit against the Klan. We invoked a Texas law more than a century old that banned “military companies” other than those authorized by the governor. There are similar laws in most states, including Virginia.

We asked the judge to shut down the Klan’s paramilitary activities. Since this law had never been interpreted, we developed a legal standard to define the barred activity—a guideline that would distinguish scouts, hunters and Civil Air Patrol cadets from heavily armed men with assault weapons practicing for violent confrontations. We focused on private efforts to create a military or paramilitary organization that had “command structure, training and discipline so as to function as a combat or combat support unit.”

Expert witnesses explained how the group’s activities met the standard. The Texas attorney general urged the judge to accept our application of the law. The judge, Gabrielle McDonald, granted our request and in 1982 shut down the training activities in Vietnamese Fishermen’s Ass’n v. Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 543 F. Supp. 198 (S.D. Tex. 1982). The order worked.

Our approach was used again in 1985 and 1986 when the Southern Poverty Law Center took legal action against the Carolina Knights of the KKK and its successor, the White Patriots Party. ...................

[MineralMan]

1. This might be a fruitful thing to look into in states that have similar laws.

I'd like to see it get used to test the concept for the current situation.

[Wounded Bear]

2. Many of the RW GRAs tend to skip over the "a well regulated militia" clause in the

2d Amendment. Sounds like this Texas case goes a long ways toward defining that legally. Could be useful in many states.

Nice catch.