as you know, the posse comitatus act, essentially a Reconstruction Era law which prohibited the US professional military from acting on US soil without permission of congress or constitutional authorization, is pretty much null and void today, having been modified in 1981 to allow the military to provide "assistance" to civilian law enforcement as part of the "war" on drugs, etc. the military still wasn't allowed direct participation, except there appears proof that special forces were directly involved in the Branch Davidian incident in Waco. which took 51 days, by the way, only for PR purposes.
a well regulated militia is a fantasy. as usual, we're up against the problem of who does the regulating, a serious issue when you take a good look at who's running the USA today. what's well regulated in mississippi and alabama would not necessarily be regarded as well regulated in california or new york .... or would it?
now that the national guard is mixed with regular army, it doesn't take a leap of imagination to see how chickens could easily come home to roost. however, local police are generally so well militarized and armed, i doubt the professional military is necessary to subdue the ordinarily placid-to- a-fault american population. there are "non violent" weapons both developed and under development that are undreamt of in most of our philosophies. you'd be immobilized before your fingers reached your firearm, or while the nerve impulses were traveling from your brain to your trigger finger.
the second amendment doesn't protect us from a govt like the one we've got.
R
----- Original Message ----- From: "jared" <unended at houston.rr.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 12:30 PM Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] The Glock 9mm is your friend, he said...
: Dwayne said:
:
: "I've heard the argument that we need to maintain
: weapons to protect ourselves from government abuses
: (as the Constitution essentially says) and it
: certainly sounds okay in theory. The problem is, in a
: contest between a "well ordered militia" and the 82nd
: Airborne division, the militia is likely to find
: itself reduced, in fairly short order, to a fine, red
: mist of decaying biological material spread over the
: ground. Or, if it's lucky and the US Air Force comes
: a calling to convince the wayward of their error,
: carbonized chunks of matter smoking on the blackened
: earth.
:
: "And all of this is possible without resorting to
: tactical nukes.
:
: "So keeping a weapon in the house just in case
: Washington goes completely off-kilter may help you
: sleep a little better (maybe) but is more or less
: useless."
:
:
: I would disagree. I think this position simplifies too much and
: overlooks the dynamics involved in a U.S. military attack on a real
: militia, which is, after all, a citizen army. The 82nd Airborne is
: composed of young American men and women. Obeying an order to attack
: Iraqis is quite a different matter for them than obeying an order to
: attack Americans. Consider that it took a 51 day standoff for the
: federal government to defeat Koresh's "army" of 80, 25 of which were
: children. Consider the implications for a more mainstream and broad
: citizen army. The U.S. government's power to inflict violence depends