Aiming at Obama
Can anyone remember what happened the last time a left-winger brought a loaded assault rifle to display in public within sight of a George W. Bush presidential event?
No, we can't, because college kids with backpacks sporting John Kerry stickers got thrown in jail for their menacing presence at Bush rallies. Anyone more threatening than that was already in lockdown days before the band struck up "Hail to Chief."
That was back in the good old days when conservative American gun enthusiasts felt "secure" about their "rights."
That was back when progressive Americans set the tone for national dissent.
Now that the right wing feels its "values" threatened by a lawfully elected progressive administration that is attempting to bring America up to the global standard in terms of sane foreign policy and morally right social services, and their heroes on Wall Street have left them to fester with rage in the dying church of new cars and new television sets, the true face of American fascism is emerging. Not very pretty is it?
It remains to be seen to what limits these armed and concerned citizens will test their supposedly threatened Constitutional freedoms, but I put my money on seeing more menace and outright violence as they come to terms with losing political power and the economy in the same year.
The First Amendment allows a level of verbal violence in public debate -- and perhaps the founding fathers meant that to include actual violence at health care reform forums these last weeks. And perhaps they intended that the Second Amendment would require local police (not to mention the Secret Service) in certain states to allow menacing men to carry loaded weapons in the vicinity of the American president.
It's only a matter of time before those guns are outside the doors of those health care debates.
Thank God we live in the U.S.A., folks!
Due to the vicissitudes of Facebook, I know a woman who, since Obama's election, and between diaper changes and trips to Walmart, has taken to heading out to the firing range to practice sharpshooting, just in case the progressives try to come to her house and take her stuff, as she's heard they will on the radio and Fox News. She invited me to "friend" a group calling itself "George Tiller is a Douchebag" -- two days after the doctor was shot to death in his own church.
She's not unusual. According to Facebook's helpful auto-tally, the group already had tens of thousands of "friends."
Guns are America's malaria, a sickness of the soul so deep we don't even recognize it for what it is anymore. If you want to go out in a bloody blaze of glory these days, you have to kill dozens of people at once to make the national front pages. Simply going postal and taking five or ten souls out with you just gets you on the local news.
If this were Africa, and people were faced with a spreading infection that has so menaced the health and stability of the nation, Doctors without Borders and other NGOs would be rushing in to help, and Tom Brokaw would be headlining fundraisers for them at the Waldorf. Where is the Bill Gates Foundation that is ready to step in and buy America the inoculations it needs to ward off this malady?
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Sigh, more empty headed nonsense.
So far every armed protester outside the Obama townhall meetings has been in full compliance with the law. No one is "testing the limits". They are doing everything they can to stay within them. There is nothing "menacing" about holding a protest sign with a holstered pistol on your hip while you are outside a building where the president is speaking.
If you don't like the laws for open carry, you should try to change them. That you would rather denounce the people that follow the law then try to change the laws shows who the "undemocratic" person really is.
Actually there was one guy at one meeting who was carrying illegally and he was promptly arrested.
Nina, you have bought into misinformation. Despite what the MSM has been telling people, the rifle in question was NOT an assault rifle.
Assault rifles are full-auto. They fire multiple shots per trigger pull. They are a class of machine gun and are very strictly controlled by the federal government
The firearm being carried is a semi-auto. It fires a single shot per trigger pull.
The press is confusing assault RIFLE with assault WEAPON.
Assault weapon was defined by federal law as certain semi-auto firearms.
Odie:
You ever notice how a lot of people call certain toll roads The Turnpike ? But the term turnpike dates back to when the swiveling, pike-shaped gate was placed across the road and swung away after the toll was paid. I take issue with people who apply the term to the roadway system and not the gate. But I have no intention of making my life's work an obsessive effort to change the use of the term turnpike in the common vernacular.
Why ? Because there's nothing I could do to change it.
You know what they say about doing the same thing over & over but expecting a different result each time ... right, Odie?
Did you read about the Black Panthers who were intimidating voters outside the polling station? At least the LEGALLY armed Repubs aren't threatening voters.
I never read that black panthers were intimidating voters outside polling places. Can you provide a link? Where would that happen?
In the inner cities , where over 90% had voted for Kerry 4 years before and where it was likely Obama would do even better? That seems more likely to be counterproductive than helpful, likely driving away more Obama than McCain voters.
In the mostly white suburbs? There I would assume they here actors, paid for by the RW dirty tricksters. It certainly would not move people to vote for Obama.
When this amendment was created, it was for a standing militia of 1,000 men with black powder, single shot muskets. Our forefathers, in their great wisdom, who created the Bill of Rights, could not have possibly even imagined the incredible firepower available today, that is easily attainable by even children. If they had been able to, they would not have created this amendment as it is.
Last week saw the arrival of the annual Wayne County Fair in Honesdale, PA. 4A, rides, corndogs, games of skill. One game, designed for toddlers, had plastic wading pools filled with brightly colored rubber duckies. The child pulls a duck from the water, and discovers her prize written on the duck's underside. Among her prizes: inflatable machine guns designed as the American flag, medieval swords and mace ball balloons. (Poor Ernie was nowhere to be found.) That infection you speak of Nina, is passed on early. And it's insidious. There's no stopping it.
...the corndogs WERE good though.
America is sick and getting sicker.
Maybe she'll recover and survive, I'm beginning to have my doubts.
Nina your articles closes with an interest question:
"Where is the Bill Gates Foundation that is ready to step in and buy America the inoculations it needs to ward off this malady?"
But not just the Bill Gates Foundation, where is anyone who is willing to confront the protections afforded by the Second Amendment when it comes to insuring the protection of a sitting United States President? Anyone who would bear arms at the site of a presidential gathering is sending a threaten message to the Head of State. We who do nothing will only have ourselves to blame if the unspeakable occurs.
While getting my car service yesterday, I overheard a mechanic rejoicing as he told his co-worker about another nut who appeared at a presidential venue bearing arms. No one should be armed remotely close to the president but members of the secret service.
The framers of the Constitution did not intend to make a duly elected president hostage to those who oppose his or her policies.
Yes, I agree. Bush would never have put up with this gun-toting. At the Republican convention, he had people arrested for wearing the wrong T-shirts, he had reporters arrested for taking pictures.
He didn't wimp out and put put up with so-called "rights" such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right to privacy, freedom from illegal search and seizure, right to bear arms.
Sorry, but those 'tens of thousands' who joined a Facebook page dedicated to a man who was just murdered in cold blood by one of their own makes my belief and support of a woman's right to abort even stronger..
Social media can be wonderful, but bringing these cretins together to feel like they belong and justified is one of the sickening byproducts of a culture that unfortunately often lends the loudest voices to our most ignorant and dangerous.
History will not be kind to these people.
"If this were Africa and people were faced with a spreading infeciton [of CRAZINESS] Doctors Without Borders etc.. etc. Well, the US has lost a lot if not all the moral credibility that would encourage any one from outside our borders to try to help stave off the disaster "we" are causing "our"selves
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