No modern government (free or dictator) will tolerate an organized and armed nongovernment paramilitary within their borders. Branch Davidians became a red flag when they owned 200 legal AR-15 rifles, and attempted to create a cohesive military unit. The government will tolerate 200 men, each owning one rifle or one collector with 200 different types of rifles, but never 200 men armed with one type of weapon, organized into a unified cohesive combat unit not under government jurisdiction. Sooner or later, the feds will find something to arrest them. They will send in provacateurs or act on any minute legal violation or complaint in order to initiate the seizure of all the firearms. All governments want internal security in one form or another. Allowing small militias that can potentially grow into large militias will be seen as a potential threat.
No modern government (free or dictator) will tolerate an organized and armed nongovernment paramilitary within their borders. Branch Davidians became a red flag when they owned 200 legal AR-15 rifles, and attempted to create a cohesive military unit. The government will tolerate 200 men, each owning one rifle or one collector with 200 different types of rifles, but never 200 men armed with one type of weapon, organized into a unified cohesive combat unit not under government jurisdiction. Sooner or later, the feds will find something to arrest them. They will send in provacateurs or act on any minute legal violation or complaint in order to initiate the seizure of all the firearms. All governments want internal security in one form or another. Allowing small militias that can potentially grow into large militias will be seen as a potential threat.
17 posted on 02/26/2007 9:06:43 AM MST by Fee
How many guns can a licensed FFL dealer own ?
What is your source for saying that the Davidians "attempted to create a cohesive military unit"?
I have read just about everything published on this subject and hadn't seen that before.
They built rifles from kits and sold them at gun shows to make money. Several of the men did stand guard at night, and many practiced shooting. But I've never seen evidence of them training or fielding a "unified cohesive combat unit."
but you are missing SO MUCH in this story... David Koresh came into town on a regular interval, often at the simple request of the local sherriff.
Why didnt they simply ask him to come down and arrest him then? Why did they burn down their home with children inside?
Answer: Several former clintoon bodyguards were killed at that fiasco- by 'friendly fire' too
Well, that certainly backfired! Waco did more to cause the expansion of the militia movement than any other single incident in the last century.
BTW, the firearms do not have to be identical, only of the same caliber.
Why do you think the liberals are pushing gun bans, especially "assault weapon" bans.
The second amendment was never about hunting, but to safeguard the right of the people to own in sufficient numbers weapons for the purpose of securing their liberty from a government run amok with power. The idea was perfectly in concert with the thoughts of people who had just overthrown the British rule through the force of arms, starting with and often using their private arms in battle. Banning such arms is the opening gambit in a tyrant's game, and I trust no candidate who espouses such a prohibition.
There were not 200 BD men. There may have been 200 AR-15s, although I doubt it. One (or more) of the BD's held a Federal Firearms License, and they constructed and sold the AR's, IOW, most of them were *inventory*.
The BATFers were in ill repute, as usual, and needed some "flash" for budget time. They got it.
The BDs did hand the BATFers a sound thrashing, but not without their own casualties. But that didn't take all that much. They were acting in the defense role, had a better tactical position, and benefited by the utter stupidity of the BATF's storming of the facility, attacking from concealment, but not cover, of canvas covered trailers, over open ground, with some of the defenders in elevated positions on the upper floor of the building. If the BD's had been a "unified cohesive military unit" not a single BATFer would have come out alive after the initial assault. In the event the BD's did allow the BATFers to retreat and gather up their causalities, when they probably could even at that point, killed virtually all of them.
How was Koresh forming a cohesive "unit?" He was dealing guns and licensed to do so. The arms possessed by the people in his cult were not even uniform.
"All governments want internal security in one form or another."
From a historic and Constitutional perspective, for most of America's existance, the assumption was than the militia Was teh guarantor of domestic tranquility be being the ultimate check on an over reaching government.
The normal mind can't really imagine the Branch Davidians attacking anyone.
Alas, the normal mind must now accept the government having burned alive so many of our fellow citizens.
Normal seems to be to an ever increasing extent, a walk in what was once known as the locked ward.