Building a paramilitary branch predicated on a right to violence and sedition

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported the Senate has come to an agreement on a gun safety bill that has little to do with gun safety. They left guns out of the title, calling it the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.” McCarter details what is in the bill. There is a good chunk of money for mental health. It is needed but should have been funded by Medicaid expansion rather than tying it to a gun law which connects mental health to violence and further stigmatizes it. There is better background checking and longer wait times for 18-21 year olds, though it sunsets in 10 years. There his help for states to pass red flag laws, in which courts can remove guns from the home of a dangerous person, though states that refuse pass such a law can redirect the money to drug courts and veteran courts. The boyfriend loophole is closed – guns can be taken from a recent dating partner convicted of violence as well as a spouse. All to the good, but not nearly enough. And it hasn’t actually passed yet. New York had a gun law that limited licenses to carry guns outside the home to sportsman and those who could prove a need, such as a messenger carrying cash. Nina Totenberg of NPR reported that had is the right word – today the Supreme Court struck it down. Clarence Thomas wrote the 6-3 majority opinion. He called the right to bear arms not a second class right and, as Totenberg wrote, “just as the First Amendment doesn't allow the banning of unpopular speech, the Second Amendment is not limited to people who can demonstrate a special need to carry a gun in public.” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, “This decision isn't just reckless, it's reprehensible.” The insanity of gun culture has possessed everyone, even the Supreme Court. This is an Originalist view – if a regulation wasn’t around at the time the Bill of Rights was enacted, it isn’t permissible. So since there was no ban on high capacity magazines in 1789 there can’t be one now – except there were no high capacity magazines in 1789. There are limits to the ruling. A state may require a license to own a gun and that may require a background and mental health check. But many states have laws that say if a person asks for a gun license the state “shall issue” one. Unknown yet is what kinds of places can ban guns – stadiums, subways, New Year’s Eve on Times Square, where liquor is served? The ruling is an invitation for a do-over for the NRA. Don’t like a gun law, such as the one before the Senate? Come on back! McCarter wrote about another 6-3 ruling the Supremes issued last week. It was about the way schooling is handled in very rural Maine. If the state pays for students to attend a private school it must also pay for students to attend religious private schools. Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent, calling the ruling “especially perverse” and saying the Constitution does not require this result and that it undermines the separation of church and state. Dartagnan of the Kos community said one of the cases yet to be handed down will likely attack how the Environmental Protection Agency works and may make it extremely difficult for the US to do much about climate change. Dartagnan then discussed the Federalist Society, which selected five of the six conservatives on the Supremes and another 241 federal judges confirmed in the nasty guy years. Their goal is to remake the judiciary into a tool for business. Over the last several years these Federalist Society judges have shifted from litigating individual rules from government agencies to choosing cases that can attack the ways the government does business. Tired of litigating every little rule the EPA hands down? Create a case that guts the EPA. The Federalist Society creates the cases and guides them through the federal court system. The way of doing this in the case now before the Supremes is to say Congress must pass each and every one of the rules developed by the EPA and other federal agencies. But Congress simply doesn’t have the time of expertise for that. The ruling could mean the conservative majority of the Supremes will take for themselves veto power over huge swaths of federal policy and making Biden the weakest president in over 80 years (that’s the number put out by Ian Milhiser – but 1942 was when Franklin Roosevelt was at the height of his powers, maybe he meant 100 years?). This theory that Congress can’t delegate the creation of rules to federal agencies would, as Dartagnan wrote, “automatically render the vast majority of consumer, worker safety, and environmental protection laws invalid.” It would overturn a great deal of court precedence – which this gang appears ready to handle with a machete. Back to guns, the main topic at the start of this section. From a post a couple days ago (before the ruling on guns by the Supremes) Hunter of Kos reported last week a man dressed in a tactical vest and having a semi-automatic rifle and a pistol attempted to enter several buildings in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Of course, just by being there, he terrorized the people around him. There were multiple 911 calls and the courthouse was locked down and store employees were evacuated. But, because of Oklahoma’s open carry laws – and this ruling by the Supremes – a guy can cosplay as a purveyor of violence and the police could do nothing until he pulls a trigger. Wrote Hunter:

It is obviously an asinine situation, the public is obviously right to presume a gunman walking toward a courthouse or store means trouble, because no citizen has a plausible reason to need an assault weapon inside those buildings and no reasonable citizen would try it. Only criminals and assholes parade semi-automatic rifles in public. There aren't exceptions. ... It is perfectly, 100% reasonable for any law enforcement officer to presume a man headed for a grocery store, a public building, a movie theater, or a public school carrying an assault rifle, handgun, ammunition, and other gear intends to do harm. It is transparently obvious that the man ought to be stopped, and with violence if necessary.

The police arrested the guy. Not for the guns or for the terror he caused. But for the brass knuckles he also carried. Hunter wrote that being arrested for having brass knuckles means the Oklahoma legislature can regulate guns – if they wanted to. Or with this ruling, could. Laws like this show contempt for law enforcement. They tip the situation away from police officers and towards vigilantes. Yet, when black Americans protest with banners they are met with a military response. And a black man would not have been allowed to pull the stunt this white guy did.

The practical effect of relaxed "open carry" laws, the erasure of licensing and training requirements, and other legislative promotion not just gun ownership but of guns as public accessories is the creation of a paramilitary force, in America, that is as or more heavily armed than law enforcement; that answers to no one, and is exempt from police harassment; that is almost exclusively conservative; that is almost exclusively conspiratorial and paranoid; and that is self-selecting for those most willing to resort to mass violence. The Republican legislatures are in essence building a paramilitary branch of their own movement predicated on a right to violence and sedition. It is not being hidden. The number of Republican lawmakers who now cite a right of rebellion as the reason for removing gun restrictions far outstrips the number of Republican lawmakers who oppose the seditionist premise.

From a post at the beginning of the month, David Neiwert of Kos reported that Liberty Alliance, a far right group in Missouri, has a website that shows a “Woke Heat Map.” It lists and identifies schools in Missouri allegedly promoting “crazy ideas” such as Critical Race Theory and grooming toddlers with sexually explicit books. Click on a school on the map and content explains why the school is classified as “woke.” The content is, of course, from far right groups. The purpose is to alert residents of the craziness in their own communities. Neiwert wrote:

Stochastic terrorism and the scripted violence that comes with it have become essential features of post-insurrection Trumpism and its unfolding strategy: claim your political opponents are literally satanic pedophiles conspiring to traffic your children and destroy America by replacing white people, and then tell your army of True Believers the names and identities of these fiends. Paint targets on them.

Then wait for the “lone wolf” to show up. A wolf that isn’t so lone because a large number of people have radicalized him, normalized the extremism, and encouraged the violence. That’s a large number of people quite content for the media to not connect from the gunman back to the encouragers.