{"id":40524,"date":"2013-12-16T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=40524"},"modified":"2013-12-15T10:00:06","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T16:00:06","slug":"the-peril-of-the-standing-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=40524","title":{"rendered":"The Peril Of The Standing Army"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was going to write about the case of Army Lt. Colonel Robert Bateman, who’s become a bit of a mini-celebrity on the left for coming out espousing a very draconian raft of gun control laws.<\/p>\n

But Joe Doakes beat me to it, and did it with style.<\/p>\n

Joe’s piece is below the jump.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an American Army officer stationed in England explaining why the American\u00a0<\/a><\/span>government should disarm its citizens<\/a>. This is a perfect example of why coups always start with\u00a0the colonels \u2013 they think they know so damned much but inevitably, know so very, very little.<\/div>\n

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Where to start? First, let\u2019s get rid of the \u201cmilitia\u201d idea. Lt. Col. Bateman thinks The Founding\u00a0<\/span>Fathers wanted state militias to have weapons, not individual people, and that weapons should\u00a0be used solely in defense of the nation or hunting. In other words, the Founders never intended\u00a0citizens should have a right to use arms to throw off an oppressive government. That would\u00a0come as a surprise to Patrick \u201cGive me liberty or give me death\u201d Henry, a Founding Father who\u00a0wrote and spoke at length on this very subject. Bateman\u2019s analysis is directly at odds with the\u00a0historical record.<\/div>\n

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Second, Bateman says the \u201cmilitia\u201d is the National Guard belonging to each state, so only they\u00a0<\/span>can have weapons. Except the National Guard was nationalized by Richard Nixon and now is\u00a0part of the federal military. Every 9th \u00a0grader knows the Founders proposed the Bill of Rights to\u00a0\u00a0limit the power of federal government over the lives of citizens. If Bateman\u2019s analysis is correct,\u00a0the Founders must have believed that giving all weapons to the federal military while disarming\u00a0citizens somehow would restrain the Federal government?<\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
No, Colonel, the Founders weren\u2019t insane, they knew from first-hand experience that notion was\u00a0<\/span>idiocy. British General Gage ordered his troops to confiscate weapons owned by colonists living\u00a0in Lexington and Concord, which is why Paul Revere was riding around warning his neighbors\u00a0\u201cThe British are coming!\u201d The battle between government troops and armed citizens at North\u00a0Bridge was The Shot Heard Round The World that kicked off the American Revolution . . . a\u00a0battle fought precisely, intentionally and explicitly to prevent the colonial government from\u00a0enacting the very citizen disarmament policies Bateman now says the Founding Fathers intended\u00a0the Constitution to impose on us. That\u2019s utter nonsense.<\/div>\n

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Third, Bateman relies on the Cruikshank court\u2019s 1876 interpretation of the Second Amendment\u00a0<\/span>without mentioning that case predated the Incorporation Doctrine and its reasoning was set aside\u00a0in Heller in 2008. He also wants to limit arms to muskets and shotguns which ignores the Miller\u00a0holding in 1939 that the right to keep and bear arms extends to military grade arms. Basically,\u00a0Bateman wants to set aside 150 years of development in the law since the Civil War. No, worse\u00a0than that, Bateman wants to set aside the Founding Fathers\u2019 own words and revert to Colonial\u00a0English law, where only government armies could have firearms to suppress citizen protests.\u00a0He\u2019s a modern-day Redcoat. I have no doubt Lt. Col. Bateman would order American troops to\u00a0fire on American citizens gathered to protest the government, as did his intellectual predecessor,\u00a0King George III, and calmly explain that he needed to destroy the village in order to save it.<\/div>\n

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Fourth point: Bateman\u2019s ideas might make sense if we could eventually make America one\u00a0<\/span>giant gun-free zone. But how are we going to keep out foreign guns if we can\u2019t keep out tons\u00a0of narcotics and millions of illegal immigrants each year? Replacing legal domestic guns with\u00a0illegal foreign guns doesn\u2019t seem like much of an improvement and I can\u2019t see how it will result in less gun violence. A ban only works if you can enforce it. Can we?<\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Is it politically possible to create a truly gun-free zone within this country? Say you start at\u00a0<\/span>Snelling and University in St. Paul. Send troops with metal-detectors and explosive sniffing\u00a0dogs to search every building on that block and confiscate every firearm. Now you\u2019re ready to\u00a0move to the next block moving toward Hamline University but wait \u2013 what prevents a guy living\u00a0on the just-cleared block from bringing in a replacement gun?<\/div>\n

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Are you going to station troops all around the block to search every person, every car coming\u00a0<\/span>in? Stop and Frisk all Black men and college girls living in the neighborhood? Where is Jesse\u00a0Jackson while this is going on? Where are the sexual harassment lawyers?\u00a0So you\u2019ve cleared two blocks, or ten, or a hundred, or maybe the entire city of St. Paul \u2013 how\u00a0many troops are tied up in keeping the sterile zone sterile?<\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Suppose you cleared all illegal guns from all of Minnesota and want to keep replacement guns\u00a0<\/span>out. We have 1,500 miles of border, none of it fenced. A guy carrying a backpack full of pistols\u00a0could walk across the border anywhere. How many troops do you need to station along all four\u00a0borders to keep Minnesota sterile while you\u2019re clearing Wisconsin, figuring one sentry every\u00a0how many yards, and how many sentries working shifts to provide round-the-clock coverage,\u00a0plus backup personnel for sick days? How will you provide MREs and drinking water to all\u00a0of them, and how many latrines must you dig? The wind chill today is -22F and you need\u00a0thousands of troops standing guard along the state border. Pup tents? Camp fires?<\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Who\u2019s going to inspect every car and truck coming into the state?\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Seriously, Colonel, have you never met a logistics officer or a quartermaster? It\u2019s completely\u00a0<\/span>impossible to impose a sterile zone on an entire liberal democracy the size of America. The\u00a0airport, the elementary school, the courthouse \u2013 those are annoying enough and cost enough.<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s no way you can expand that to cover an entire nation. We lack the people, the money\u00a0<\/span>and the political will. And that fact guarantees the day after your disarmament law takes effect,\u00a0it starts to lose effect, as legal arms are replaced with illegal arms used by illegal owners to\u00a0commit illegal acts of gun violence. And that guarantees your plan will be as big a failure as\u00a0Prohibition, the war on drugs and the war on illegal immigration.<\/div>\n

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Fifth point: Bateman is willing to take my gun from my cold, dead hand by making it impossible\u00a0<\/span>for my sons to inherit. Plainly, Colonel, you\u2019ve never worked as a Probate Lawyer. Heirs\u00a0don\u2019t report cash in the underwear drawer, Mom\u2019s wedding ring, or Dad\u2019s hunting rifle, they\u00a0simply walk off with them. The only time you see those items in a probate proceeding is\u00a0when there\u2019s a dispute between heirs. Bateman makes the same mistake that Prof. Bellesiles\u00a0made \u2013 he assumed pioneers reported assets as we would. Since nobody in pioneer days listed\u00a0Daddy\u2019s hunting rifle as a probate asset, Bellesiles concluded nobody owned hunting rifles.<\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
The correct conclusion is exactly the opposite: so many people had hunting rifles they weren\u2019t\u00a0<\/span>considered significant enough assets to list. Instead, everybody in the family knew Daddy\u2019s rifle\u00a0was promised to someone and that person simply took it from the house after Daddy\u2019s death.<\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Depending on inheritance law to prevent private transfers is guaranteed to fail.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
If you\u2019re going to get my gun, Colonel, you\u2019re going to have to go House to House to do it (see\u00a0<\/span>David Bellavia\u2019s book of the same name). The Army and Marines had a hell of a time taking\u00a0Fallujah, one pissant city in one pissant country where good ole boys dislike Americans only\u00a0because we disrupt the Sunni-Shia killing. You start sending American troops to kick down\u00a0American doors in American cities and I suspect the dead National Guardsmen will begin to pile\u00a0up in a hurry. Your profession is violence, Colonel? Good, because you\u2019re heading to a war\u00a0zone: Detroit. Chicago. East St. Louis. New York City. Los Angeles. Lotta doors to kick,\u00a0Colonel. Lotta unhappy people who already live in a culture of violence, know the geography\u00a0and are used to surviving there. Watch your backs, troops.<\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Sixth point \u2013 if you treat ordinary citizens as the enemy, you turn them into guerillas. Bateman\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>plan allows Jim Bob Redneck to keep a hunting rifle with 5 rounds while Bateman\u2019s National\u00a0Guardsman has an M-4 with 100 rounds. But suddenly the National Guardsman has a hole in his\u00a0forehead and Jim Bob has a hunting rifle with 4 rounds plus an M-4 with 100 rounds. And now\u00a0every National Guardsman becomes a mobile sporting goods delivery person wearing a great big\u00a0target, same thing that happens in any guerilla war. Plan on assigning even more troops to guard\u00a0your supply depots and supply lines, Colonel, and plan to lose plenty of them when citizens band\u00a0together for raids, all foreseeable consequences of your plan to save our freedom by destroying\u00a0it.<\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
It\u2019s plain to me that Lt. Col. Bateman hasn\u2019t thought his plan through completely. It\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>impossible to implement and that makes it guaranteed to fail. The scary thing is wondering\u00a0whether he\u2019s too stupid to understand the defects in his plan, or even ask if they exist.<\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
The Founders understood that a standing army was a great threat to a free people. They\u2019re\u00a0<\/span>talking about you, Colonel. And this article is why.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to write about the case of Army Lt. Colonel Robert Bateman, who’s become a bit of a mini-celebrity on the left for coming out espousing a very draconian raft of gun control laws. But Joe Doakes beat me to it, and did it with style. Joe’s piece is below the jump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40525,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40524\/revisions\/40525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}