Posted on 10/02/2010 5:18:24 AM PDT by marktwain
L
All I'm saying is that I prefer Rosa Parks' approach instead, and it was far more effective. Why are you having such a hard time with that?
Rosa Parks exercised her rights in a public place on a public conveyance. These people in California are doing exactly the same thing. She exercised her right to sit wherever she damn well pleased on a public bus and dared the police to arrest her.
These people are exercising their 2nd Amendment rights in a public place and daring the police to arrest them.
I don't see a dimes worth of difference between them.
No, they are not. Considering the several distinctions I've drawn already, to argue that they are exactly the same is plainly false. Rosa Parks needed to ride the bus and took the same bus she takes every day. She wasn't part of an organized demonstration of five to ten people boarding the bus at once.
Hence, she did that which any of us would normally do, she got on the bus and sat down on the first available seat. That is why her action was so much more effective than if it had been an organized demonstration, because most people would easily identify with what she did. Had ten people got on the bus in the first instance, the average third party reading about it would detect a belligerent purpose. That identification would then have been lost, regardless of how predisposed to be sympathetic the reader might be.
This is a political battle. Best that we act in the most effective manner. Building upon natural sympathies is a more intelligent and effective than group assertions. Better to stage the group effort in support of a "Rosa Parks" trial.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one I guess.
I bid you a pleasant evening.
L
But let us not lose sight of the fact that the good guys won this round.
As far as the law is concerned, of course. As far as politics from which laws, illegitimate or otherwise, develop, of course not.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one I guess.
Yup. It's a difference in tactics, not strategy.
I bid you a pleasant evening.
Thank you. You too.
LOL, I would see it as a victory legally, but a Pyrrhic victory politically. If five guys were there and one or two had weapons, it would have been perfect. The presence of mixed group helps communicate the "normalcy" of the circumstances leading to a LEO response that would then be perceived justifiably as disproportionate.
You do think tactically. I'm rather impressed.
I’m looking at getting out of CA myself.
I was born here almost 38 years ago and I love my state but not enough to ignore the obvious.
I want what both of us want, which is the freedom to possess the means to defend myself, my family, or my community for that matter. I want liberty. I can't stand the police model.
"Professionalized" law enforcement is too much power for the control freaks of this world and permits WAY too many operant constraints on procedure derived from the fevered imaginations of VERY expensive lawyers, judges, psychologists, prison guards, parole counselors... It takes the law out of the hands of the people and removes the constraints by which common sense and natural law would otherwise bind its construction. Fewer simpler laws are indeed better; let juries decide the gray areas.
The problem is, "How do we get there?" It is my belief that creating a culture that accepts bearing arms as commonplace and law enforcement as the responsibility of the people is the only truly effective means of getting "there." That takes public education, because let's face it, stupid people need control. Hence, unless our tactics appeal to their common sense by which to engage and educate them, our efforts will fail.
Accordingly, creating an artificial environment for the public to observe, in which the unarmed people among those carrying are comfortable and at ease, allows the observer to subtly take the cue from those unarmed people that those observably carrying are no threat. It would be even better if, within that group, those armed were little tiny women among those great big burly guys.
By contrast, let's examine the scenario above. Somebody gets uncomfortable with a group that is armed to the teeth, even if they are sitting there peaceably. They call the robocops because there are five big guys sitting there, with guns!!! In comes the SWAT unit (the union needs the overtime). Those five big guys with guns could argue the law all they want with the police, but all the observer will see is those five big guys cuffed and led away, leaving them to make the conclusion, "they must be bad people." In come the mediots, with an ax to grind. They'll find some communist law professor to pontificate an "expert" opinion. Even if the cops were sued, the people would read it in the papers, and think, "we'll just have to change that law; those people were clearly dangerous."
I just think that's a bad way to win a political war. However illegitimate and abhorrent such an infringement of individual civil rights may be, believe me, collective power is sufficient to inculcate and institute the means to violate them. Individual liberty truly is in the hands of the people as a whole, a social contract in which we all understand our individual stake in crushing the siren song of collective control. The only way that desire for collective control is instituted, is if the individual believes he or she NEEDS protection beyond his means as an individual (which is why we have a military). Hence, I am opposed to those political means which invoke that perception.
I'm out to win this war the easy way. Creating a way for the public to be comfortable with weapons around, to learn to feel comfortable to trust their fellow citizens to provide the common defense, THAT is the way to win. Getting into an unnecessary confrontation, is a waste of energy we cannot afford.
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