What about them?
Posted on 05/21/2012 10:22:31 AM PDT by blam
Rawles: “It Would Be Impossible To Disarm The People Of This Country”
Mac Slavo
May 21st, 2012
How likely is it that we will actually experience a disaster that brings down our national power grid?
Will the government seize all guns in the United States?
If Continuity of Government response plans are initiated, will they be able to effectively lock down every major city and the country as a whole under a martial law scenario?
Is an economic collapse in our near future?
These and a host of other critical topics are covered in the latest interview from SGT Report with Survival Blog editor James Rawles.
Rawles on Gun Confiscation:
I think it would be impossible to disarm the people of this country. Along with Yemen we’re the most heavily armed society on the planet. It would be absolutely impossible to disarm the citizenry.
There might be an attempt to do it incremently over the course of generations. I think that’s the only way that would happen.
There are so many guns being produced each year – a couple of million guns each year – it’s just mathematically impossible, if not socially impossible, to even envision the logisitics of trying to disarm the American citizenry. It just can’t happen. There’s too many guns in circulation and they’re essentially the final guarantor of our freedom.
The next phase of the financial collapse:
I think that given the financial situation globally – if you look at what’s happening in Italy, Spain, Greece and the most recent election in France – we’re very likely to see a lot of financial turmoil in the coming months.
A lot of it will spill over into American markets. I think there is likely to be another global credit crisis like in 2008, and it could get very, very ugly very quickly.
I think it’s prudent for people to prepare. I think that if you look at it in terms of the clock face approach, we’re probably just minutes from midnight in terms of where we should be in terms of our preparedness.
Rawles on the probability of a grid-down worst-case scenario collapse:
In all of my writings I’ve stressed that the North American power grids – and there’re three of them – are the real lynch pin of our modern technological society.
If the grids go down, all bets are off.
It’s important that people plan for the worst case. The worst case would, of course, be grid down. The chances of that happening are fairly small, but if you’re prepared for the worst case you can take anything lesser in stride.
…
In terms of the power grid, if they knock that leg out from underneath society they can create a cascade of events that will be completely beyond their control.
Martial law is not going to restore order if the power grid goes down and does not come back up within a few days.
On martial law:
I think the whole rhetoric about martial law tends to be overblown, because the logistics of implementing martial law would be daunting. Even in the United States, where we have a fairly sophisticated military, the numbers just don’t add up for martial law being instituted for more than just a very short period of time.
We have a military that’s primarily deployed overseas right now. The military here in the United States, active and reserve components, don’t even have enough vehicles for training much less live operations. The majority of the rolling stock for the US military right now is in places like Bosnia and Afghanistan.
How do you institute martial law if you can’t even get troops from point A to point B?
Obsessing on martial is probably not productive, but we do need to be on guard to guard our liberty, and we do need to speak up when there are abuses of our Constitutional Rights, especially the first amendment.
SGT Report with James Wesley Rawles (Part 1 of 2):
(Click to the site to view the video)
SGT Report with James Wesley Rawles (Part 2 of 2):
(Click to site to view the video)
On a small scale, taking guns from a drug dealer here or a guy without a permit there, could be rationalized -- "its for our own protection," "this guy was bad news," "there is a warrant on this guy." But if they realize that it is part of a diabolical master plan, if they are handed a map of an entire county and told to ignore paperwork, ignore permits, ignore the constitution on a national scale, I think a lot of them would rebel.
I have had some friends who were US Army EOD, Explosive Ordnance Demolition, that most people think of as “bomb disposal”. However, to dispose of strange bombs, an expert needs to learn everything there is to know about bombs and their use.
So at least in this EOD unit, they had a running competition of the thought problem, “How to neutralize a major city for under $500.”
This was very good training, as they would learn where a “hostile” bomber, if he knew what he was doing, would plant his bombs. Thus they would know where to look to disarm them.
But I mention this because this would also be the means used by a hostile government to gain martial law control over one of its own cities, if it chose to do so.
Cut off the water, power, communications, access, food, fuel, etc. Starve the people out. And those that wanted to leave would be outprocessed a small group at a time, to insure that they were “acceptable”, by whatever criteria that government wanted.
This would be the vast majority. The remaining minority would be much easier to deal with through force of arms.
But, most of us had “boating accidents” (here we go!) and lost all our firearms in the lake last summer!
What about them?
I agree with Rawles. The thing to be really worried about is the grid going down. That is likely to happen sometime soon. If you are not actively working toward an alternative energy system you will be sitting in the dark crying in your cold beans. Your life will be a misery and probably short.
On second thought maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to disarm Americans as we thought. If the DHS went about it the right way, they just might get by with it. I mean after all we allow them to fondle and molest our Mothers, Wives, Daughters, all women for that matter as well as children everyday and we don’t say or do a thing to stop it.
We play by the rules and trust them to do the same. Problem is, they don't and won't.
Target practice. Every American with a deer rifle fires off one round and goes home and has a beer.
Consider that they would need two very important chess pieces in place:
1). A government “Lockdown” on when or where you can sell or buy a gun.
[From the gun-grabber propaganda mill, this is know as the “Gun-Show loophole”]
2) Firearms registration – this coupled with total government control over transfers would –over time – yield them a database on who has the guns.
The key word is “Over time” – they need this in order to build the database AND to lull people into a false sense of security that we can trust the gun-grabbers not to do what they are dedicated to doing.
Then of course they could always try the ‘Brute force’ method – bully everyone into registering their weapons and snitching on others who don’t.
They may think that this would provide a big enough net to get enough of our guns in order to ‘Pacify’ the country.
I disagree. These disarmaments on a small scale are for the very purpose of training them to not question disarmaments on a larger scale.
See the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Some peace officers will refuse, I’m sure; their law enforcement “brethren” will retaliate, and some patriots will lose their lives when that happen.
If they aren’t balking now, most of them will not balk later. They will be told it’s too late; they already took the federal funding; they had better follow orders if they want to remain on the federal teat.
It would be easier than you think to disarm most Americans.
Here is how:
1. A guy from the city water department, probably someone you have known for years, shows up to take your water meter.
2, A woman from the electric company, perhaps your children go to school with hers, shows up to take the electric meter.
3. A guy from the gas company comes to take your gas meter.
4. The cell phone company cuts off your account.
5. Bank and credit card accounts are frozen.
Of course you can get all this back if your bring your guns out to the curb where a committee of citizens will collect them and then do a search of your property. No police needed because everyone is operating under the same kind of threat that you are.
Hopefully I am wrong.
” We are not well regulated meaning trained, we are just a bunch of guys with guns, which will be taken out one at a time for the most part “
That’s why “counting guns” (and typing dire warnings on FR) is a false comfort — Organization (especially logistics), and to a lesser extent, training, is *the* great force multiplier...
Sure, a lot of us are veterans, and have had at some time in our lives some level of training - and some of us even have had combat experience — but, for the most part, that’s long in the past..
Most of us are older, overweight, (or at least out of ‘fighting shape’ - be honest, now...) and responsible for the well-being and safety of family members in immediate proximity - and more importantly, too many of us have become too darned independent to accept some upstart telling us what to do and when to do it - so any kind of *real* organized resistance will be difficult-to-impossible..
I’m watching for signs of any movement that could/would provide centralized command/control and logistics sufficient to field a resistance army with any chance of defeating a superbly organized, blooded and battle-hardened, national military.... (Maybe, hopefully, there is such a thing going on, so far underground that no indicators make it this close to the surface - but I pay pretty close attention, and it’s really difficult to keep a total lid on something of this magnitude... “
You touched upon a potential major danger - citizens snitching on their neighbors for either fear or reward. It’s been done here already in both WW1 & WW2, against those suspected of being “German spies” in the former, and “food hoarders” in the later conflict. In both cases, the authorities came swooping in.
Food for thought. Not that there’s any comparison just yet, but during the Third Reich the Gestapo had no lack of volunteer snitches, while under communism the Stasi used coercion & blackmail to force citizens into spying on their own.
Government forces using informers to sow fear and distrust and therefore disunity amongst the citizenry, employ a weapon just as powerful as battalions of jackboots kicking in doors.
The other point you alluded to is that we have something to risk right now so we will comply with govt under the illusion that we get to keep our wealth. When we don't have anything to risk, then things change.
There is a lot to learn from history.....................
It is only impossible if every minion sent out to collect the firearms is shot.
A National Guard unit refused to confiscate weapons during Katrina. Nothing was done to them. They should all get awards.
Because our govt does not fear the population, there will be no deterrence or backing away, there will have to be a fight? It could still be a political fight instead of the other, our fore fathers were wise in what they designed but it would be a big surprise for me.
There are some that are exceptions who are quietly grouping up now, I suppose but you know the govt is looking for and aware of most of these endeavors. The good news is we will group up when we have to, the wise ones will do it before. We have the potential to become a well regulated militia just like our revolutionary start and with the same hard learning curve.
I often think that if I were in Germany in the late 30’s what would I do. Even with the hind site of 70 years, I don't see anything you could have done. In many cases the only wise move was to leave your wealth and get out with only your life if you could. There was/is no safe port in the storm.
I go through scenarios again and again and the answer that floats to the top is God. Do we really believe what we say we believe? Been reading the Bible more.................
Great post.
I agree on two points, especially:
1. Too hard to prepare an organized resistance at this time.
2. I ain’t gonna go on no ops more more - couldn’t if I wanted to.
That having been said, Total Resistance is a great book to inspire and educate for what CAN be done, and what can be done is no small factor.
Here is one of the references to troops refusing to confiscate guns during Katrina:
http://www.examiner.com/article/oath-keeping-national-guardsmen-refused-katrina-gun-confiscation
” There is a lot to learn from history..................... “
Sadly, it seems to be an innate part of human nature, that, instead of learning from history, we, as a species, repeat its mistakes, under the delusional mantra of “This time it will be different!!”
Without unifying organization, our Resistance will consist of ad hoc local guerilla groups, independent, and each with its own agendas and goals.. If you study “Le Resistance” in WWII France, beyond the romanticized ‘heroic’ version, you will see how effective of a revolution they were able to mount... (Cliff’s notes answer: Not very - they spent as much energy bickering and fighting among themselves as they did fighting the Germans..)
The First American Revolution would not have been possible without Generals and Lieutenants and Sergeants and Privates, and a central government (of sorts, at least) to arrange and provide necessary support - and that was only possible because they were able to organize in an environment where the ‘establishment’ didn’t have even 1/10,000th of the intel capability that our Masters in the ‘home of the free and the land of the brave’ can bring to bear.. (If a conspiracy consists of three people, it’s even odds that one of them is an informer.. virtually all reports in the past ten years about ‘busted’ Al Qaeda/terrorist attacks or cells have featured FBI infiltrators — these guys are *good*...)
By now, you’re probably getting ready to burn my screen up with a charge of “Defeatist” (or worse), and that’s not true — I’m old enough and have studied history enough. to have seen the patterns and pitfalls, and I’m just not interested in romanticism and chest-beating.. I’m more interested in the hard questions that somebody - and I mean somebody higher up the food chain than I am - had better be considering pretty darned soon, and pretty darned seriously, if we are to have any chance of preserving our Republic, when we need to...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.