Posted on 01/21/2020 3:48:53 PM PST by Kaslin
On the holiday set aside in 2020 to honor Martin Luther King, the premier advocate of nonviolent Gandhian civil disobedience, thousands of gun owners gathered in Richmond to petition peacefully for their rights.
King had preached that there was a higher law that justified breaking existing laws that mandated racial segregation.
When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the front of the bus in Montgomery, when Freedom Riders integrated bus terminals, when black students sat at segregated lunch counters in North Carolina, they challenged state law in the name of what they said was a higher law.
And Virginia gun owners believe their moral obligation to protect families, friends and themselves in a violent society justifies their right to keep and carry firearms, no matter what the Virginia legislature says.
Americans have a long history of breaching laws in the name of a higher law or God-given rights.
The patriots of Boston gathered an arsenal at Concord in defiance of the British. To protest a tea tax imposed by parliament, they dressed as American Indians and threw shiploads of imported tea into Boston Harbor.
Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts, to protest debt collections in 1786-87, and the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania, to protest a tax, both had to be crushed with force.
Abolitionists supported the violation of fugitive slave laws, the enforcement of which Lincoln endorsed in his first inaugural as a national necessity to restore and preserve the Union.
A constitutional prohibition of the sale of beer, wine and liquor in the U.S., following the enactment of the 18th Amendment, led to massive civil disobedience in the Roaring '20s, before it was repealed in 1933 by the 21st Amendment.
During Vietnam, burning draft cards was a regular feature of anti-war rallies.
Historians may describe the racial riots of the 1960s -- Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit, and 100 U.S. cities including Washington, D.C., after King's assassination -- as popular uprisings, but many required National Guard and federal troops to stop the looting, shooting and arson.
By the late 1960s, LBJ, who had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, could not visit a college campus without a violent demonstration.
This week, Washington hosts the 46th annual March for Life to commemorate the 60 million unborn killed in the abortion mills of America since Roe v. Wade in 1973.
In conservative states, restrictions imposed on abortion facilities have put some out of business. The legislators and governors who have done so believe the right to life trumps the Warren Court ruling in Roe v. Wade.
Perhaps the greatest manifestation of civil disobedience today is the illegal presence of between 12 million and 20 million immigrants who broke into our country or are breaking the law by being here after their visas expired.
Their collaborators are the business owners who hire them and the public officials who refuse to treat them as lawbreakers.
"Sanctuary cities" have been created where local and state authorities refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement.
Now, towns, cities and counties are creating "Second Amendment sanctuaries," where laws restricting gun rights will not be enforced.
If state and local police, themselves gun owners, stand with those who defy the new state laws on guns, who enforces the new laws?
The Virginia Senate has begun to move bills requiring background checks for gun purchasers including red flag laws to disarm individuals deemed at risk to themselves or others, and bills granting permission for locales to restrict the carrying of arms in government buildings and confining the purchases of handguns to one a month.
There are other restrictions the Democratic legislature in Richmond and governor are ready to move, including restricting the number of bullets in clips and magazines and halting sales of rifles like the AR-15.
Gun owners see these as the onset of an all-out assault on gun rights.
For a republic to endure, there has to be a common consent on the rule of law and what constitutes a good society. But these seem to be at issue again in America.
Is abortion the killing of an innocent human being? Do Americans have a constitutional and human right to keep and carry firearms to protect themselves and their loved ones?
Who is and who is not a rightful resident of our national home?
Do illegal migrants have a right to come here and stay here? Or do their numbers imperil our national identity and existence as "one nation and one people"?
Violent crime was greater in America in the early 1990s. Urban riots were far more common in the 1960s. And there is nothing today comparable to the bloodletting of the 1861-65 War Between the States.
Still, Americans seem to disagree with each other more and to dislike each other more than they have in the lifetime of most of us.
One wonders: How does it all stay together? And for how long?
If there is only one side commands the fire power.
The CIA Black Book of Predicts says we are in for a rough ride till 2030...
Hope so!I got a shtload of older ammo to recycle.
Yeah, the government.
Wouldn't be pretty.
Ok. I gotta ask, “What happens 2030?” Or thereafter
LOL! Pat, I love you, but are you going senile?
Ok. I gotta ask, “What happens 2030?” Or thereafter
AOC says time’s up!
bttt
That totally depends on democrats!
That was the Burger Court--and Burger voted with the majority.
Nonpayment of taxes will be the thing that brings down the government.
The question is when we will have the second ‘shistol pot’ heard round the world?
Bloomberg wants it to be Virginians.
Hey, it could be worse?
The government doesn’t know which citizen owns which guns. They can only guess.
Government can pass all the confiscatory laws it wants. But rounding them up will require kicking in doors, and none of this talk of seizing one’s children or freezing bank accounts. Government is powerful but not omnipotent. This isn’t East Germany.
One solon has already given away the game when he said his goal is “to end the anonymous ownership of guns!”
The Richmond rally was a quiet victory. Babykiller Northam will threaten & pass confiscation.
And every cop in VA will really look forward to becoming a door kicker as every citizen regards him as the enemy (sheriffs & deputies excepted).
Commanded to risk his life by the little baldheaded nerd in Richmond.
Is mass civil disobedience our future? That or serfdom.
The choice is ours.
I am not at all religious, yet I firmly believe that we’re not dealing with just bad people. I believe a lot of what we are fighting is genuine evil. I don’t think that being religious is a prerequisite for acknowledging the existence of evil in this world.
Example of short list of people that I believe not simply bad people, which they are, but they are people who are evil:
Hillary Clinton
Chuck Schumer
Nancy Pelosi
The squad
Gavin Newsom
Andrew Coumo
Bernie Sanders, if you think that communism is evil, which it is.
I haven’t decided whether Elizabeth “lies all the time” is just super corrupt and disgusting, or a dyed-in-the-wool evil person. Either way she’s a disgusting human being.
“Violent crime was greater in America in the early 1990s. Urban riots were far more common in the 1960s. And there is nothing today comparable to the bloodletting of the 1861-65 War Between the States.”
The poorest people are now the most likely to be obese, and generally all age brackets and income levels are fatter than they used to be. And everyone is the most entertained they have ever been, while doing the least hard physical labor outdoors than in any era. Most are now used to being cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
I’m not saying it’s absolutely impossible with these conditions to have some sort of sustained and widespread civil unrest, but it’s very, very hard for me to imagine.
“Still, Americans seem to disagree with each other more and to dislike each other more than they have in the lifetime of most of us.”
I think that is the effect of social media and the 24 hour news cycle. It makes people that care about politics and culture vastly overestimate the number of people that care as much as they do about it. Anyone can look at the eligible voter turnout for the last 100+ years and realize there is a huge swath of Americans that don’t care, at least enough to deign to vote about it either way.
I think a solid real world indicator of any sort of possible civil unrest would be if the 2020 eligible voter turnout gets a 10-20% bump. That would put it around 70-80%.
Freegards
Even in my State, where there’s no talk of confiscation, groups of citizens are gathering regularly. Every gathering sees new friends and neighbors.
Any 9mm, .45, .380 or 10mm you want to get rid of, I'm headed for the range this weekend to do some practice shooting. I'll take it off your hands. :-)
One 10 Million Patriots March on DC and problem solved for good..
'Dem be's da FBEyes!! d;^)
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