Archive for the 'Militia' Category

The future of America:

A North Philly owner says he’s had enough violent crime at his gas station so he’s hired these guys to protect his customers and store.

Does this make you feel safer? Or uncomfortable. pic.twitter.com/ZOXvUxTvyW

— Jason Martinez (@JasonFox29) December 6, 2022

Story at Infowars.

Private security is a fast-growing business in the US. As America becomes a third-world country, one future aspect will be private militia, walled cities, and economic security zones. Many envision a return to the city-state model.

Detriot:

Lima Peru:

Security concerns are increasingly paramount. Government law enforcement continues to devolve into a political tool of oppression to prop up the corrupt regime. Nowhere is this more evident than leftist controlled major cities being evacuated by anybody that has the money to get out.

H/T Ed Driscoll at Instapundit

Source:

Leaders in Benue, Nigeria, are seeking to give Christian farmers AK-47s for self-defense after suspected militant herdsmen killed at least 70 Christians in several days of attacks there.

Militant herdsmen is such an odd moniker. Who actually are they?

“We are standing on our request for the federal government to give us a license for our Volunteer Guards to bear AK-47s and other sophisticated weapons,” Morning Star News on Oct. 25 quoted Anthony Ijohor, a spokesman for Benue Gov. Samuel Ortom. “The security agencies have been overstretched and, that being the case, our people have to defend themselves.”

They are requesting permission from a distant capital to defend themselves. For all of her troubles, America still has some things right.

Gabriel Suswam, an area senator and former Benue governor, also called on Christians to defend themselves.

“Since the federal government has gone to sleep and does not care about the security of the people,” Leadership Nigeria quoted Suswam Oct. 22, “it is time for them to rise up and defend themselves. We cannot continue to allow herdsmen terrorists to keep on killing these peasant farmers and destroying their property.”

“herdsmen terrorists?”

Ijohor and Suswam made the comments following days of attacks during the week of Oct. 16 by terrorists suspected to be militant Fulani herdsmen. More than 70 residents in majority Christian areas of Benue state were killed, more than 100 were injured and thousands were displaced, Morning Star reported.

In 2018, 6,000 Nigerian Christians, mostly women and children, were killed between January and June.

“In just two days, over 70 Christians were killed by Fulani militiamen in Gbeji community in our local government area,” Morning Star quoted Terumbur Kartyo, chairman of the Ukum Local Government Council in Benue. Udei and Yelewata villages were also attacked, Terumbur told Morning Star.

[…]

Elsewhere in Nigeria, a mother and child were killed and others were injured during worship Oct. 16 at Celestial Church in Kogi state, International Christian Concern reported.

Two militants arrived on motorcycles, shot the woman and her daughter, and injured an unknown number of others, ICC said, attributing the report to Jerry Omodara and identifying him as Kogi’s top security official.

“It looked like it was organized against that particular church, because their altar was burned with petrol they went with,” ICC quoted Omodara.

Who would do that, random motorcycle terrorists?

In Nigeria, more Christians are killed for their faith than in any other nation, Christian persecution watchdog Open Doors said in its 2022 World Watch List report. An estimated 4,650 Christians were killed in the 2020-2021 reporting year, Open Doors said, compared to 3,530 the previous year.

Open Doors ranked Nigeria as the seventh most difficult nation for Christians to live.

The Voice of the Martyrs, in its 2022 Global Prayer Guide, designates Nigeria as a hostile nation.

Why won’t the article call them Muslims? Are they Islamo-fascists? Muslim Jehadists? The author and editor seem at pains to avoid calling this what it is. If you won’t directly confront the reality of what’s happening and who and what your enemy is, you will never defeat it.

Are those precious Christian souls being killed for their faith by enemies of Christ or not? Seems like these Christians need to start forming militias. And ChurchLeaders.com needs to hire some editors that are, ahem, Church Leaders.

While Christians are not called to take the world by force of arms, at the same time, we have a duty to God to protect life (Exodus 20:13), especially those weaker (Psalm 82:3, Exodus 22:22)  and particularly of our own family (Exodus 20:12, 1 Timothy 5:8). For history and context, see this short post by Herschel on gun control in Nigeria and the rise of Boko Haram Muslim mass murderers.

History, Leaders, Warfare, Weapons, Strategy, and Tactics, what’s not to like!?!

This podcast, happily, doesn’t cover current events or the news, but we gained a much greater understanding of what’s shaping up in Europe now, because of the definitions and history provided by Mr. Buppert. Americans don’t realize it yet but a regional war has already started in Europe. History books always tell you there were two sides to a war. That’s an oversimplified position based on the post-war moral view of the winner. However, Mr. Buppert’s description of regional conflict being a multiparty and rather messy affair is spot on.

If you don’t follow this podcast, though he isn’t covering current events, I suspect you will not understand the war that’s now breaking out in Europe. You must discover the modes of war in terms of the larger human interaction of conflict. Also, when whites war, for some reason beyond me, they all start fighting each other. This war will likely go “global.” If you simply follow the “news” about the fighting, you will be dumber than doing nothing at all.

Instead of writing a review, which we’re tempted to do, it’s enough to say that we enjoyed it and learned plenty, even from this simple introduction. Looking forward to the next installment. Listen to the podcast, or die in ignorance!

Or at least they soon could be.

BREAKING: Defense official reportedly says, if the Oklahoma National Guard doesn't comply with COVID vaccine requirements, they will no longer be "maintaining national recognition," thus, state will no longer have a Nat Guard, but rather a militia – VOA's Pentagon correspondent

— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) November 17, 2021

Hey, this is a great idea, just like the founders intended it to be, back where we started.

And when the FedGov comes and demands possession of your cannon and class 3 weapons, armored vehicles, grenades, and so forth, you can explain to them that, you know … you have cannon and class 3 weapons, and they can’t have them.

How much gall do the Oklahomans have?  Man would I love to be a fly on the wall during that conversation.

NYT:

You saw the militia walking down the street, you would have thought they were an army,” he added. “I was just talking to the State Police upstairs; they had better equipment than our State Police had,” he said, referring to the militia members. “And yet not a shot was fired, zero property damage.”

Good for you.  Good job, boys.

David Codrea:

“As long as the courts back the coup, any Trump supporters who take to the streets and exercise a very literal interpretation of their Second Amendment rights—to form a militia and fight government tyranny—don’t stand much of a chance,” Pearl asserts, just like he knows what he’s talking about. “The federal government is usually hesitant to use force against armed groups like the Bundys, but those groups never pose an existential threat to the dominant regime.”

“If it were really a high-stakes situation where they thought their regime was at risk, they would’ve been toast,” Pearl’s advisor, University of Chicago law professor Tom Ginsburg assures him.

I’m always astonished at the degree of confidence the progressives have in the government, the ability to maintain order, and the viability of the military and LEOs as stability operations in a country as vast as the U.S., and where every citizen must be assumed to be armed with multiple firearms.

These “scholars” don’t understand the concepts of 4th generation warfare.  So let’s pose a thought experiment.  Suppose someone were to destroy the Catskill Aqueduct, the Catskill/Delaware UV disinfection facility, or New York City water tunnels 1, 2 or 3?  Not the entire thing, but just a portion, thus flooding vast portions of land, possibly urban terrain, collapsing interstitial earthen structures, and preventing water to the approximately ten million New York residents who depend on that route for water supply?

It would take the entire U.S. Marine Corps to conduct viable stability operations to New York, and many of the enlisted Marines would refuse to do it.  This is just New York, not every other major urban center or the rural lands of America.  Note well.  I’m not advocating such a thing.  In fact, I specifically advocate against something horrible like that.  But civil wars and insurgencies are ugly things, and if we’ve learned nothing else from Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve learned that the counterinsurgency theorists had it all wrong and vastly overestimated their capabilities.

These “scholars” should be careful what they ask for, and if anyone is investigated for sedition or put on any lists, it should be the progs.  They hate America.  We patriots are the most patient and patriotic people around.  But don’t doubt for a minute that the U.S. government always did and even now governs America because the people themselves keep it in power.  The U.S. government only exists by the permission of the American citizens.  The day that is no longer the case will be hellish for everyone.

Politico Magazine:

It is here in the forest that you leave behind, once and for all, Ukraine’s cosmopolitan present and take a step back into its violent past—as well as glimpse what could become its bloody future. It is here, locals say, where Ukraine’s fate could be decided once again.

The training camp for Ukraine’s new generation of partisans—mostly young people who are signing up to fight the Russians in anticipation of an invasion—sits in a grassy clearing in the forest. A few dilapidated buildings given to the group by a Ukrainian non-governmental organization of mysterious origins, sitting on private land loaned to them by a local businessman, make up the “headquarters.”

An old army mobile kitchen (designed to be pulled by a jeep) is parked up outside the canteen: a long, rectangular room where the partisan trainees break for lunch to eat thick, potato-heavy vegetable soup. A hose resting on a chopped tree trunk provides the drinking water. The people here are preparing to live rough—and, they say, to die fast, if necessary.

“Many of us are here learning the basics so we don’t get killed in the first minute of the war,” says Tanya, a 38-year old graphic designer and the camp’s coordinator. “Maybe with what we’ve learned we might last one or two days.”

An advisor close to Kyiv’s security establishment told me that dozens of these camps are springing up around the country—with more opening every week—but they are all organized by private citizens working in informal groups without funding or oversight from the state, making reliable information as to their extent almost impossible to find.

What is clear is that the idea of partisan war has taken hold among the people. In the bars of Kyiv, men talk to me about going to east to fight a guerrilla war, while a senior advisor close to Kyiv’s security establishment assures me that Moscow will face widespread partisan resistance if it continues its aggression.

Forgetting for a moment about the loser Obama and how his weakness has catapulted the world in chaos, the upshot of this is watching the Ukrainian unorganized militia become organized and learn to fight and survive – or perish for their cause.

One very important point should be made here.  If they are training this hard for the purpose of lasting a few days to kill the enemy, the Russians are in for a hard time.  While it’s certainly more effective to live for your cause than to die for it, a man who is willing to lose everything is a very dangerous man.

David Codrea passes along a statement from LWRC International where they have told us that they will move their company out of Maryland if the proposed unconstitutional gun ban passes.  I appreciate their patriotism, and I have already weighed in informing Beretta that they must move as well if they wish to survive as a company.

But there’s some fascinating movement in the proposed weapons ban in Maryland.  I must quote at length.

When hunters argued that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s proposed assault-weapons ban would ruin their sport, state lawmakers were not moved. When devotees of the National Rifle Association cried that it would trample on their constitutional rights, lawmakers did not blink.

But then there were the soldiers, who showed up in Annapolis by the dozens this year and quietly became one of the most influential critics of O’Malley’s gun-control plan. Veterans streaming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have argued that freedoms they fought for overseas would be violated at home.

Some also came with a different, more complicated message that has resonated with lawmakers, who are now considering significantly weakening the proposal by O’Malley, a Democrat, by exempting several military-style weapons.

The very guns the veterans used in war — the ones they sang about in boot camp, slept with, cared for, cleaned, prayed with, the guns that led them down dark alleys and through firefights — have now become something altogether different. They are instruments of catharsis more than violence, a postwar release, therapy through the crosshairs.

Since he has returned from Afghanistan, A.J. Wynne, 24, who was a corporal in the Marines, has spent countless hours shooting in the farmland north of Frederick, Md. On a recent Sunday, he picked up his semiautomatic rifle, put down his demons and let muscle memory take over.

Breathe. Focus. Squeeze.

The weapon erupted into a violent cacophony — 30 shots in 11 seconds — and sent the crows in the treesbolting skyward.

The smile made his beard rise. He reloaded.

Wynne knows there are those who would argue that he is perhaps the last person who should be given unfettered access to high-powered, semiautomatic rifles that are designed to emulate the weapons he was trained to use in battle.

For months after coming home, Wynne would lunge to the ground at the sound of a weapon firing or a car backfiring. At night, he would awaken to find himself wrestling an invisible enemy, flailing and slamming the nightstand and leaving his girlfriend, Tara, cowering at the end of the bed.

The nightmares have subsided, but guns have become an ever bigger part of his life. He sells them, trains people how to shoot them, collects them, and has positioned them around his home so they are never more than a few steps away.

As the House of Delegates debates O’Malley’s bill, the veterans’ argument appears to be having an effect. After passing the Senate, the legislation is bogged down in an influential House committee, where lawmakers say they are concerned about the effect of the assault-weapons ban. Members of both parties say they are considering rolling back provisions of O’Malley’s ban, potentially leaving legal for purchase many semiautomatic rifles modeled after military ones.

State Del. Kathleen Dumais, a Montgomery County Democrat and vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said veterans and competitive sportsmen were central factors in her thinking that a total ban may be inappropriate.

“We have problems with soldiers returning from combat and taking their own lives. That’s a big deal, and we need to talk about that overall in this country,” added state Del. Michael McDermott, an Eastern Shore Republican and former member of the U.S. Army Reserve. “But banning these weapons? For some guys, that’s actually therapy …

While he understands that many like to shoot for recreation or even relaxation, Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a colonel in the Army Reserve, said that doesn’t mean you need to have a weapon designed for war.

[ … ]

“I came home and bought an M4 and $1,000 worth of suits at Joseph Banks” to look for a new job, said Obest.

“I want to be able to be an asset to my community if I am needed. If there is a disaster, and the road is blocked and I can’t get to the armory, I want to be able to tell my mayor that, ‘I’ve got this. I’m here. I can help keep order.’ “

First, as for Brown, no one cares what he thinks.

Second, let’s deal with the lawmakers.  I am generally opposed to treatment of veterans which differs from treatment of the balance of U.S. citizens.  The idiot Feinstein wants to ban combat veterans from having firearms.  As I said, she is an idiot and so her ideas are idiotic.  On the other hand, I am uninterested in the cathartic affect of firearms for veterans if civilians cannot have them.

So naturally, I see the actions of lawmakers who insist of being Fascists, but who back down because they might be seen as opposing the voice of veterans as cowardly.  But then again, saying that politicians are cowardly is redundant in most cases.

Veterans mostly just want you to see them as normal people, and for you to fulfill your contractual obligations to them (involving the GI bill, etc.).  I know because my son is a Marine Corps veteran … a veteran of a combat tour in Fallujah in 2007, MOS 0311.  So I’ve put in my time standing at the doorway to my home at 0200 hours looking out into the driveway and wondering if a Marine Corps officer and a Chaplain were going to show up any minute.

Third, speaking of Marines and veterans and guns and what you do stateside, you have made a serious blunder, Mr. Obest, and it is this blunder where I want to spend the rest of our time together.

You’ve made it easy on yourself.  Listen to me, boy.  Take it from someone who is more than twice your age.  God has placed a thousand unexpected things in my path over my lifetime.  You cannot prepare for the unexpected, but what you can do is train your body, mind and soul.  The mind and soul are the most important.

You need to have a set of incorrigible beliefs – a worldview – a set of irreducible axioms – upon which to base your life.  This way, when you face the unexpected you will have some moral moorings upon which to lean.

It’s too easy to imagine that a natural disaster occurs and you are called upon to “keep order,” whatever that means.  Frankly, you’re better off just ensuring that your family and loved ones are cared for and protected.

It’s much more likely that you will be called upon in darker circumstances, and it is these conditions you must consider.  I have asked my own son what he would do if ordered to bear arms against American citizens, and the answer is not only no, but “No, and I will prevent others from doing so.  Not a single one of my old unit would do such a thing.”

So you see, I’m not impressed with the felt need to shoot, although I certainly have that and like to do that.  I would be much more impressed if you would simply cite the constitution and demand rights for not only yourself, but your fellow citizens in the broader context of the intention of the second amendment.

So Obest, listen to me, son.  Heed my counsel (Leviticus 19:32).  Life’s vicissitudes are hard and complicated, and you haven’t seen anywhere near the worst of it, regardless of what you saw in Egypt.

You need to ask yourself some very hard questions regarding world view, morality, and basic commitment to liberty.  Suppose that you are called upon to “keep order” while the statists confiscate weapons, or confiscate wealth, or confiscate children?  Will you fire upon American citizens if ordered to?  I know my son’s answer.  How about yours?

UPDATE: Thanks to Mike and David for the attention.

Poor Bob Bettilyon tries but doesn’t get it quite right.

Since the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791, and many believe in the original-intent interpretation of the Constitution, perhaps only guns with the technology that existed in 1791 should be allowed, i.e., muskets.

I would be OK with a “concealed musket law” or a “stand your ground musket law.”

Carrying gun powder and 30 lead balls for a musket seems more reasonable than 30-round magazines. Drive-by musket shootouts, or lunatics going to a school armed with a musket and 30 lead balls, don’t seem quite as scary.

The National Rifle Association could say “only a good guy with a musket can stop a bad guy with a musket.”

So, I propose banning all guns not originally available in 1791, except for real militias such as a police department.

The first paragraph quoted sets the stage for the misadventure since it contains false assumptions.  The argument ends in disaster, when he says that police departments are the real militia.

Using the colonialists as a reference point, they couldn’t have been referring to police departments as the militia, because the constabulary existed in colonial times.

… the constabulary in North Carolina resembled the office of petty constable in the mother country, though in the colony it lacked the “almost infinite variations of methods [found] in [the] shires and hundreds and parishes” of England that emanated from centuries of “custom and practice.” Fundamentally distinguishing the English petty constable from his colonial counterpart was the former’s role as a spokesman for his village. In the hierarchical schema of English polity and society, the petty constable served as an intermediary between local inhabitants and politico-judicial authority. In North Carolina, however, local justices of the peace and sheriffs stayed more closely attuned to the people, obviating a mediatory role for the colonial constable.

And do you notice one of the differences pointed out between British and American constables?  We don’t need or want an intermediary.  In fact, we don’t want a “hierarchical schema” at all.

Don’t tread on me.