Militias and Despotism: Who is fooling whom?

Although I have never owned a gun, I am not against private gun ownership. There are however attitudes held by many gun owners that are completely ridiculous, and it is time that these be addressed.

A gun owner in rural Virginia once responded to Washington Post that "guns are power." Really? They may be power to intimidate your teenage daughter, and they may be power to keep your neighbor from pissing on your truck, but real power? All it takes is one water compression bomb, and you, your family, your town, and everyone and everything in your town, will be vaporized. They wouldn't even be able to find the bodies. And the only reason that the American government, which has many of these and even more powerful weapons in its arsenal, has not done something like this to people who believe that guns are power, is that American government has the good habit not to do such things to its citizens, however ridiculous their beliefs may be.

This refutes the claims made by many gun owners under Clinton administration - and now under the Obama administration - that such administrations are despotic. A despotic government would not tolerate such attitudes at all. If a despotic government gets a whiff of such nonsense, they will shoot you full of neurotixins and you'll be a vegetable. Or it will send you to mine uranium in horrible conditions until you die of hypothermia. Or they'll shoot you, gas you, bomb you, and nobody would know that you have died or even that you have lived.

The criterion of second Amendment, that few politicians mention, is "a well-regulated militia necessary for the protection of free state." I ask this: Which armed people in America outside the military fit this criterion? There are individual gun owners who use their guns for hunting or self-defense or intimidation of wives and children; there are gun owners who are part of criminal groups; and there are gun owners who are part of militias. I ask this again: Are any of these groups necessary or adequate for the defense of the United States? You, militia people. What are you up against People's Liberation Army of China? What are you up against North Korea or Iran? You wouldn't be able to defend America even from Al Quaeda or Taliban, much less a real army.

How ridiculous is it indeed that these gunslinger groups really think that they are doing America a favor. You want to defend America? Fine, join the military, join homeland security, join CIA, but don't think that running around in forests shooting at trees does anything for you or your country except make you and your countrymen look like a bunch of retards.

Enough people made fools of themselves in late 1990s as part of the survivalist movement; but it does not look like the lesson has been learned. With a Democratic President again in the White House, the people who think that only Republicans - whether actually elected like Reagan or put in place through fraud like Bush Jr. - belong there, are again acting as if America has been taken over by USSR. So we are seeing again the same militia nonsense all over again, now on a much larger scale. And my response is simply this. If the Obama government was at all like the government of the USSR to which these people compare it, all of these people would presently be dead or in labor camps. Period.

So it's time that things be put into perspective. A government that actually is despotic, or Communist, or totalitarian, would not allow any of the people who are claiming such things now about the present American government to exist. That the Obama government has not taken any such action shows that it is neither despotic nor Communist nor un-American, and that it has maintained the noble tradition of American government of not using its real power against its citizens, however ridiculous these citizens' beliefs may be and however threatening their intent. Which makes it a far steadier hand and far clearer head to guard American democracy than the people who think that guns are power and nuclear bombs aren't, and that they by running around in forests shooting at trees are preserving America's liberty and adding to its greatness.