Guns, Democracy, And The Insurrectionist Idea

[SecularMotion]

On April 19, 1995, a truck bomb parked in front of a federal office building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was detonated, obliterating much of the building, and killing 168 people. The man convicted as the chief architect of the attack, Timothy McVeigh, had decided in the months before the attack that he was going to commit “a major act of violence against the government” (Michel and Herbeck 2001, 161), settling on the attack against the Murrah Federal Office Building because it housed regional offices of federal agencies including the ATF, DEA, and the Secret Service. In his own words, those who “betray or subvert the Constitution . . . should and will be punished accordingly” (Ibid., 153). The final straw for him was the looming enactment of new gun laws. The American government was edging toward tyranny, McVeigh felt, and it was up to him to strike back.

McVeigh was, to most, a dangerous criminal. But to some, he was a patriot, committing an act of insurrection against a tyrannical American government. What is most astonishing about the McVeigh case is not that he believed the government’s actions justified his violence against it, but that the theory he was invoking – insurrectionism – has met with increasing approval and legitimacy in otherwise serious circles. That this claim is no exaggeration is the basis for Joshua Horwitz’ and Casey Anderson’s disturbing and important book on this subject. As the authors note, insurrectionist theory has won legitimacy not only in public debate and in the pages of law reviews, but from the highest court in the land. In the 2008 Supreme Court case of D.C. v. HELLER, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote with apparent approval (and certainly not with disapproval) that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms is an important right in part because men with guns and training “are better able to resist tyranny” (at 2801) and as a “safeguard against tyranny” (at 2802). More about that later.

Horwitz and Anderson note that the insurrectionist perspective argues not only that the government is to be viewed with the greatest suspicion, but that citizens should be “prepared to resist it with force” (p.4). As groups like the National Rifle Association insist, guns mean freedom; more guns mean more freedom; any government-enacted restriction of guns is, ipso facto, an infringement on freedom; and the threat of armed force by citizens against their government is beneficial, not corrosive; healthy, not harmful to freedom. The book begins by defining insurrectionism, noting that the insurrectionist sloganeering is largely detached from societal reality. They note one of many ironies of insurrectionism: it asserts that [*391] the “government is too weak to protect its citizens yet too strong to be trusted” (p.26). More than any other individual or group, the NRA bears primary responsibility for promoting and legitimizing the idea that the threat of political violence (and what is the point of the threat if it is not backed by the prospect of action?) is not only a good thing, but protected under the Second Amendment. The tipping point came in 1977 when hard-liners within the NRA took control of the organization at its annual convention. Since then, the organization’s direction has been ever more political, strident, and radical.

http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/lpbr/subpages/reviews/horwitz-anderson0609.htm

[SkatmanRoth]

1. Great Lakes mariners get new NOAA nautical chart for St. Mary’s River

Great Lakes mariners get new NOAA nautical chart for St. Mary’s River

Vessel operators transiting St. Mary’s River, between Lake Superior and the lower Great Lakes, have a new nautical chart to help lessen the dangers inherent in this narrow and complicated waterway. The first edition of Chart 14887 (St. Marys River – Vicinity of Neebish Island) is available this week as a paper print-on-demand chart, PDF, and raster navigational chart. The electronic navigational chart will be available by March, in time for the beginning of the shipping season.

Coast Survey has built the chart from original sources, providing the highest standard of accuracy for hydrographical and topographical features and aids to navigation. The chart provides large-scale (1:15,000) coverage of the up bound and down bound channels of the St. Mary’s River – one of the busiest waterways in the nation. Over 4,100 transits of commercial and government vessels move about 75 million tons of cargo through the 300-day shipping season.

Chart 14887 uses updated shoreline data, collected with NOAA’s high tech remote sensing planes. (See National Geodetic Survey’s shoreline data viewer.) At the 1:15,000 scale, the positions of many of the features were corrected an average of ten meters from positions in prior charts, a vital correction for precision navigation by vessels that can exceed a thousand feet long.

Coast Survey also plans to issue new editions of the current four largest scale charts of the St. Mary’s River in late January. Charts 14882, 14883, 14884 and 14962 will have all new shoreline, updating the locations of features and aids to navigation. These updates for the St. Mary’s River follow 21 new editions for Great Lakes charts from Buffalo to Thunder Bay Island, around the Lower Peninsula to Milwaukee Harbor and Ludington. More updates are slated for 2014 and 2015.

http://noaacoastsurvey.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/new-noaa-nautical-chart-for-st-marys-river/

[SecularMotion]

4. Did you post in the right thread?

[SkatmanRoth]

6. Oh Look!

The drive by poster comes back to read one of his hit and run threads.

[gejohnston]

2. best Amazon review

Preaching to the Choir June 26, 2009
By AK Luis
Format aperback
This book will be loved by the anti-gun crowd and hated by the pro-gun crowd. That is the general nature of books of this type. To be fair, I have a stong opinion on this subject, and am less that unbiased. However, It is not a proper scholarly work, and cites multiple sources that have been discredited in academia. I would hope someone would attempt to challenge my believes using this book, as it would be easy to deflect the criticisms with facts. Truth be told, you can make any argument sound good by picking facts. This book didn't even bother with picking solid facts.

I am not supposed to link in this review, so for a source I will give you the following citation: JIAFM, 2007 - 29(4); ISSN: 0971-0973

Women who employ:
-Non-forceful verbal resistance strategies (i.e. pleading) were associated with completion of the raped in 96% of instances.
-Forceful verbal resistance (i.e. screaming) was associated with completion of rape in 45-55% of instances.
-Attempted flight was associated with completion of the rape in 15% of instances. (Only a fraction of women were even in a postion to consider flight, i.e. not thrown to the ground).
-Forceful physical resistance was associated with completed rape in 14% of instances.
-Weapons use in forceful physical resistance(knives/guns)were associated with completed rape in <1% of instances.

http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Democracy-Insurrectionist-Joshua-Horwitz/dp/0472033700

Go to a gun shop and ask them to look up FFL number 1-54-000-01-8C-00725

[ileus]

3. Another great reason progressives should support the 2A

[AtheistCrusader]

8. +1

[sarisataka]

5. 1977- interesting year for Gun Control

At the meeting May 21-22 in Cincinnati a hard line group of activists successfully stage a coup taking control of the NRA from the "old guard" of sportsmen oriented leaders.

Later that year the NRA-ILA is founded as a new lobbying group on the concept 'No Compromise. No gun legislation'

By the end of 1980 NRA membership has tripled.


How did this happen? There are a myriad of reasons. Polarization within NRA ranks. A motivated group who knew how to use the voting system to its advantage. Moderates abstaining as they felt represented by neither faction and some outside factors-

1968 Gun Control Act

The NRA didn’t like the 1968 law, viewing it as overly restrictive, but also didn’t see it as a slide toward tyranny. The top NRA officer, Franklin Orth, wrote in the association’s publication American Rifleman that “the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”

1972 ATF founded

In 1972, a new federal agency charged with enforcing the gun laws came into being: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Lawmakers raged against the terror of cheap handguns known as Saturday-night specials.

Feb. 5, 1977 The Firearms Control Act of 1975

The law banned residents from owning handguns, automatic firearms, or high-capacity semi-automatic firearms, as well as prohibited possession of unregistered firearms. Exceptions to the ban were allowed for police officers and guns registered before 1976. The law also required firearms kept in the home to be "unloaded, disassembled, or bound by a trigger lock or similar device"; this was deemed to be a prohibition on the use of firearms for self-defense in the home.

So is the modern, extremist NRA a bastard child of an aggressive gun control movement? I suppose it depends on ones perspective. Yet literally overnight an organization that for over a century had been relatively quiet and content to promote the sporting aspect of gun use transformed into arguably the strongest, most feared lobbying group in DC.

[MicaelS]

9. The NRA didn't become as powerful as it is today until ...

Gun Prohibitionists started advocating the Prohibition of Handguns, then Semi-Automatics, and for some Gun Prohibitionists, all guns. Gun Prohibitionists sowed the wind, and reaped the whirlwind. Gun Prohibition Advocates have no one to blame but themselves. You do not attempt to take people rights and freedoms away, and then claim it's their fault when they react.

Another factor contributing to the change in the NRA was the realization that the "Fudds" (those who believe the only purpose of owning guns was to hunt) would be perfectly willing to sell out other guns owners as long as they were allowed to keep their hunting guns. And since fewer gun owners hunt these days, the non-hunters were not about to let themselves be sold out.

The rise of organizations seeking to strictly limit or ban handguns.

Mark Borinsky founded the National Council to Control Handguns in 1974

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Campaign

Also involved was Nelson T. (Pete) Shields III whose son, Nelson 4th, was shot and killed in San Francisco in 1975, a victim in a series of racially motivated killings of whites by four blacks that came to be known as the Zebra killings.
"We'll take one step at a time, and the first is necessarily - given the political realities - very modest. We'll have to start working again to strengthen the law, and then again to strengthen the next law and again and again. Our ultimate goal, total control of handguns, is going to take time. The first problem is to slow down production and sales. Next is to get registration. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and ammunition (with a few exceptions) totally illegal.

National Coalition to Ban Handguns, later the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_to_Stop_Gun_Violence

In 1974, the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society formed the National Coalition to Ban Handguns, a group of thirty religious, labor, and nonprofit organizations with the goal of addressing "the high rates of gun-related crime and death in American society" by licensing gun owners, registering firearms, and banning private ownership of handguns with "reasonable limited exceptions" for “police, military, licensed security guards, antique dealers who have guns in unfireable condition, and licensed pistol clubs where firearms are kept on the premises.” In the 1980s and 1990s, the coalition grew to 44 member groups. In 1989, the National Coalition to Ban Handguns changed its name to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, in part because the group felt that "assault rifles" as well as handguns, should be outlawed.

The Cincinnati Revolt was an outgrowth of organizations like the two mentioned above.

[Eleanors38]

7. Hippopotamus Fightin Ritual Explained in report of Upper Nile River Authority.