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Maybe It’s Time for Gun Owners to Step Up
If you recognize the name of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, you might be remembering that the Aryan Nation marched through its streets twenty years ago. It also has a colorful history and is named after an American Indian tribe. Most recently, though, it has gained 
attention as it takes up arms against Black Lives Matter.
When BLM decided to organize protestors in the town in June, the locals wanted to be sure that the town was protected. One resident shared the following impressions from June 2:
We just drove downtown Coeur d’Alene. It is packed with armed citizens. I’ve never seen so many AR-15s in my life. There’s at least one thousand armed citizens walking on the sidewalks and the streets are packed with cars and trucks with guys in the back with AR-15 and American flags everywhere. We saw two protesters wearing their little black clothing and black masks and sitting on a step quietly with their little poster board sign saying ‘our system sucks!’ Guess why they’re being so polite.
As many as 300 armed citizens at a time arrived to discourage looting and violence.
In spite of the small number of black people in the town, white citizens showed up to support BLM after the hoopla about George Floyd. Some activists claimed to be intimidated by the armed residents, while others were relieved to know that they would be protected if violence broke out.
* * * * *
A number of thoughts came up for me when I read this story. First, Black Lives Matter is bringing in many of its protestors from the outside to several rural towns; BLM is becoming ubiquitous. Second, there were no reports of problems with the armed citizens who were there; Idaho is an open-carry state. Third, in doing my research, I discovered a surprising number of states allow open carry, ranging from no requirements to apply for a permit or license, to states that had some restrictions. For lists of those states and requirements, you can go here and here.
As I look around at the relentless, illegal and unconstitutional actions of BLM and Antifa, and the tepid response of state and community leaders, if any response at all, a demonstration of force might be appropriate. If some of these officials see that citizens are willing to push back, maybe they would start to take action, like arresting rioters, empowering and supporting their police departments, and holding others accountable for their disruptions and violence. Gun carriers would need to be coached on the best ways to engage (or not engage) the protestors to minimize the possibility of triggering an event.
I realize that encouraging citizens to take up arms is a risky proposition. My goal would be to shame officials into acting and that after an initial demonstration of force, government officials would do their jobs. At that point, I might be satisfied in encouraging the armed citizens to stand down.
What do you think? Is it time to take up arms?
Published in Guns
Elections don’t help. I keep voting for the right people and don’t get good results.
Over and over and over.
I see too many people supporting BLM. It is the virtue thing to do. I see it. Statues are coming down. No on in power in either party is fighting it. The Republic is being sold to the Mob.
It is not just the riots, it is the cancel mob, the twitter mobs, the general mob that gets to say what the rest of can say, what we can do, what we can think. Maybe you feel safe from those mobs. I don’t. It is the monster that runs our nation now. Not votes.
The people who believe in the Old Values are at war with the new and we are losing. You have said nothing to address that.
You are focusing on the wrong mob. The thugs in the streets are nothing compared to cancel culture.
But hey, I am not a pundt, I am just an ordinary guy no one in power thinks is worth listening too.
More to the point, the next (national) election isn’t until November, and the winners won’t take office until January. A lot can happen in six months.
Local elections are even farther away.
That’s what sets us apart from the
animalsactivists, Susan. ;)You are correct. However, when civil society doesn’t work, you have a choice – either give in to anarchy, or fight back with force greater than that of the anarchists and restore civility . . .
Protests are now (and perhaps have always been) a complex game of chicken; the protesters dare the protested to attack (or defend, but close enough for the press) through increasingly threatening displays of pseudo- and non-s0-pseudo assault, and dare each other to do illegal things.
Our police are incredibly tolerant, which is what we demand of them. I don’t know that I could take that kind of crap regardless of salary, though it probably helps that you have other police who have your back.
Sadly, the police no longer have the backing of their weasel bosses or the sensationalist press.
This is not a time for amateur hour. We should absolutely be armed and ready, but if our police cannot reliably manage these situations due to the gamesmanship, the politics, and the muck-rakers, what chance will ‘civilians’ have? Any group of gun bearers showing the tiniest whiff of organization will be vilified faster than you can say ‘white supremacist’.
Citizens who act likely won’t even have the support of the police.
Yes, the opportunities for constructive action like Coeur d’Alene are very limited. They made a show of force which they knew would expose render the revolutionists’ agit-prop impotent, with little risk of violence. The enemy wasn’t expecting us to be able to act.
Once the element of surprise is eliminated, they will adjust their tactics to create planned situations where their intended propaganda results are obtained. They’ll want to get Americans to put armed people in place, move their gunmen in, shoot a few of the Americans’ eyes out, pull the gunmen back out of camera range, start the CNN cameras rolling, and then get one of the protestor’s children killed in the reaction and have it on the news at six.
This whole bizarre incident you mentioned is an example of how things have improved in the United States. For a long time, free black citizens were rightly afeared to protest because of police and white-terrorist violence against them. While I wish that many of our citizens would protest for causes that weren’t so stupid, I am happy that knuckle heads of all hues can express themselves non-violently.
Also, if the history of BLM is anything to go by. The conservative white guys with guns (it all Idaho after all) probably protected some minority-owned businesses from being burned down.
Supposing that he is in within his legal right. Is it really a good idea to go after a guy like that? Couldn’t he have told the cops that his property was stolen?
Henry,
This is not a laissez-faire thing. This is not an accident. Nor is it a spontaneous incidental ground-swell of juvenile anger. Nor is it due to lax educational standards. But it was long planned and now executed.
I myself have not taken the warnings, due to a vague feeling of naivete and patient political impotence.
But now I see that in the 80s KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov said that the twenty-five year plan of “brainwashing” the US population had been satisfactorily completed. “Social justice” was an aspect of this brainwashing even then.
And in 1956 Douglas Hyde a life-long communist and the news editor of London’s Daily Worker from 1938 to 1948 resigned from the Communist Party and published Dedication and Leadership through University of Notre Dame Press (there is a 1992 edition), in which he cataloged the means that communists used to convert, inspire, discipline and employ communists world-wide including in the US. The means communists used were impressive and, if I may characterize it, they provided an ideological meaning to life, including to people whom the church failed to inspire.
My point is that the leaders — young, middle-aged and older — have taken in this drive and ambition as a core part of themselves; and perhaps the majority of the US population has been culturally steeped in leftist, specifically communist, thinking for all our lives. And it is my guess that at least some of this thinking has been implanted in the 40-50% of the US population that opposes communism; and this portion has been to some perhaps significant extent subtly indoctrinated as well.
It is no coincidence that the Academy and most college graduates and entertainment industry, and the tech industry, and I suppose the banking industry, and now it seems, the military, are at the higher levels permissive of BLM and anti-fa: it was always the plan.
To reindoctrinate half the country to conservative thinking would require a massive cultural program; and I suspect that most of the present corporate CEOs and cultural leaders would strongly “resist”.
What form would this re acculturation take? Well, it would most likely require respected and celebrity personalities to push for it, and mostly likely as an organized “change of mind” witnessing a crumbling society.
Or we could have a hot civil war.
Otherwise, one man was able to stop the rain for 3 1/2 years, through fervent prayer. Perhaps prayer and a call for national repentance. This seems the best and most efficacious course.
Whether or not I happen to agree with most of that, I don’t think any or all of that contradicts my point, which is that our twin challenges are to re-establish good governance (throw the bums out) and enlighten the large population of normal people who don’t understand just how bad BLM and Antifa are.
The one thing you said with which I don’t agree and about which our difference of opinion is critical to my argument is this:
I think most of the country rarely hears a conservative thought expressed competently. I don’t think it takes a massive cultural program to reach normal people. I think it takes exposure to ideas that already resonate with most people — or that would, if they only heard them.
Most people don’t like what’s going on right now, or wouldn’t if they knew what was going on right now.
Then let it be as you say! :) (By the way, I added a sentence or two to my closing.)
Ha! I wish everyone responded that way.
[ Standard disclaimer: Of course, this is all only my opinion. I could be wrong. ]
You can always tell the cops your property was stolen. They’ll probably even write it down somewhere.
Ugh. I get your point TBA but I would like to avoid Wild West justice if possible.
This isn’t relevant to to the criminal charges against the McMichaels.
I will answer the question. You don’t have the facts right. The McMichaels allegedly witnessed a break-in at someone else’s property. Travis McMichael has a gun stolen previously, out of his car, which he had reported (I think).
I do not think that it was wise for the McMichaels to stop their truck, or for Travis to get out of the truck. It would have been better to simply follow Arbery, and direct the cops to him. They did call the cops, and the cops were on the way, apparently (I conclude this because it was reported that the cops heard the shots).
What the McMichaels were and weren’t allowed to do within the law is, obviously, a legal question. I don’t know what the law actually says about making a so-called “citizen’s arrest.” As always, I’d like the law to be dispensed competently in this case.
However, if the law is such that what the McMichaels did falls within its confines, then I think the law should be changed. I don’t think normal citizens should be empowered to stop a person on the street and hold him at gunpoint based on a suspicion that the person might have previously been involved in a property crime.
If Mr. Arbery was in fact innocent of the alleged crime, and if the McMichaels’ encounter with Mr. Arbery carried a clear implication that they intended to detain him at gunpoint, then that encounter would be indistinguishable, to Mr. Arbery, from what was essentially a kidnapping. In that case, it seems to me that Mr. Arbery would be entirely within his rights to try to escape by whatever means seemed necessary. (That doesn’t mean he acted prudently.)
If the law is such that the McMichaels can be incarcerated for the shooting, I’m quite comfortable with that outcome.
I agree with your points, Hank. They shouldn’t have arrested him on assumptions they made. If they actually saw him break in (which I doubt), they still should have called the police, rather than act.
My area has a web site you can fill out for insurance purposes. If you are politically connected you may get a bit of attention from a cop on their way to the coffee shop.
The McMichaels should have stayed home and not engaged a protected class. Any contact with the protected class was guaranteed to go against them. Being non member of a protected class, they will most likely be jailed after their assets are extracted.
Even if you don’t always “get it,” sometimes it’s good to pretend not to. It tends to keep us in line.
To make a citizens arrest in Georgia you are required to have direct knowledge of a crime. These men did not. And while they could exercise their right to be armed, as soon as they threatened someone they committed a felony.
They saw this guy trespass, did they not?
This is simple, the guys in Georgia are white and thus wrong, the other guy was black and thus unquestionable. There was no way this situation was not going to end poorly for the whites. For them not to understand this shows enough stupidity that they need to be jailed.
I would characterize it differently.
My impression, based on what I’ve read, is that the guys in Georgia overstepped their authority, trod on the rights of another, threatened him with lethal force, attempted to wrongfully detain him against his will, and killed him when he tried to free himself from what was effectively a kidnapping.
I’d rather that people who think like these two guys apparently think not walk around with guns.
I suspect you would. But it does not change the matters. The whites shot a black are destined to jail for it. The rest are stuff that will be spun so those results are palatable to all in hopes to keep blacks from
riotingpeacefully protesting and make lives easier for those in power.“The whites shot a black are destined for jail for it.”
I think that’s true. But I don’t understand why you felt it necessary to mention the colors of the individuals involved, unless it’s to suggest that there’s a causal link between the color and the consequence — that is, jail.
I don’t think there’s a causal link between the color and the appropriate or likely consequence. It seems likely that a man was murdered; his murderers should go to jail.
If the races in this situation was reversed we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. The black shooters would be in the right defending themselves from white racist / whatever that would be dead and it would be a local story at best.
Similarly, if the killers had been acting in self-defense, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
But they weren’t acting in self-defense. They were being vigilantes, and they killed a man. They deserve their day in court; I think they deserve jail as well.
They were acting in self-defense, just as Arbery was; the issue is whether their actions up to that point a.) were against Georgia law and b.) make them legally liable for the death.
Whether or not it was manslaughter (not murder) or some tragic gray area in the law, the race of the accused and the victim has everything to do with why this is a national story rather than a ‘local crime story,’ and why they may not get a fair trail (if Georgia law warrants it) on appropriate charges. Its why the Left and their enablers are chanting ‘Black Lives Matter’ instead of ‘All Lives Matter’. Politicians and justice system personal have a noticeable lack of principled heirs to John Adams among them (to be fair, so does every institution).