Apparently the subject of “opening fire in self-defense against violent liberals” has become a heavily discussed subject on various gun debate websites.
Via Rawstory.
A friend writes, “For basically the past six months or so I’ve been trying to tell my lefty friends in so many words, ‘Hey, there are a bunch of people on the Internet who are waiting for someone to tell them it’s okay to start shooting at you.’” He became concerned when a thread at the non-political firearms-enthusiasts website he regularly follows became filled with comments in all caps referring to liberals as enemies who must be shot. Developments both online and off following Donald Trump’s election have caused me to share his concern.
And I share that concern as well.
Even before the election was complete, groups such as the “III% Security Forces” were preparing for violence in retaliation for a win by Hillary Clinton.
Rawstory Cont...
Four days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, a community member on a moderate firearms law site, PAGunBlog, a civil redoubt welcoming “active participation by both firearms enthusiasts and people who hate them,” described his shock from that morning’s web-surf when “a long-time commenter who I recognized as right-leaning but mostly moderate commented that ‘The Jews own and control everything in America…’ Not many months ago no one except a flaming neo-Nazi would have dreamed of expressing such an opinion, but today it seems to have become an acceptable element of our discourse. I noticed that no one replied to or castigated the comment.”
Then came February 1 in Berkeley and things really started getting scary.
The saga of what happened when Milo Yiannopoulos came to speak at the flagship campus of the University of California has since become foundational, not just with the alt-right but with quite nearly the entire right. Alt-right provocateur Yiannopoulos was turned back by violent protests, which culminated in the burning of a portable generator. Stuffed down the wingnut memory hole are the events that preceded the mêlée. The violence was, in fact, preceded by peaceful protests by approximately 1,500 Berkeley students, until they were waylaid by a tiny handful of off-campus “Black Bloc” and “antifa,” or anti-fascist, cadres who believe racist speech licenses violent resistance. It was also preceded, less than two weeks earlier, by the shooting of a Milo protester in Seattle, by a gunman who has yet to be charged with any crime.
The Battle of Berkeley accelerated the construction of a body of mythology: the left has escalated its resistance to Trump into literal war, so Trump supporters must be prepared to resort to violence to oppose it.
Basically, that’s not good.
And it’s not just an idle threat either, as the kind of violence we’re talking about has already occurred during an Anti-Trump protest on the grounds of the California State Capital where several involved were stabbed, although exactly who were the instigators remains unclear.
The white nationalists and skinheads, clad in black, began to arrive a little before noon Sunday for their planned march on the state Capitol grounds. They were met by hundreds of protesters toting signs that denounced “Nazi scum.”
Violence began almost immediately, authorities and witnesses said, and by the time the clashes ended 20 minutes later, at least seven people had been stabbed, nine were hospitalized and many more suffered bruises, scrapes and cuts.
"They attacked each other without hesitation," said counter-protester Chandra Zafra, 50, a member of the Mexica Movement nonprofit. "It was a war zone."
For much of the afternoon, the historic domed Capitol was locked down, with staffers and tourists inside. Police swarmed the park-like grounds, but by Sunday evening there had still been no arrests.
The Sacramento stabbings came several months after another violent confrontation between members of a Ku Klux Klan group and counter-protesters at an Anaheim park.
So there is some reality to this — and I’ll tell you from my own experiences in Northern California when I lived just blocks from the Capital fights between Racist Skinheads and anti-Racist S.H.A.R.P.S. were not that uncommon and have been going on for years.
In October of 2015, Spencer Stone one of the three American vacationers who stopped a terrorist on a train was stabbed during a fight outside a local downtown Sacramento bar, just a few blocks from the Capital, and just one block from the club where I used to handle the sound for rock bands where I witnessed, and sometimes attempted to intervene, in several Skinhead/SHARP battles.
And they seem quite obsessed with what Madonna said during the Women’s March, even if she didn’t mean it “Literally” — y’know the way Trump doesn’t mean anything “Literally.”
Madonna: I want to clarify some very important things. I’m not a violent person. And it’s important that people hear my speech in it’s entirety, rather than one statement taken out of context.
Millions of people came out during the Women’s March to clearly display something besides hate and fear, but solidarity and hope. All that Non-Violence they don’t notice, but Madonna saying she once thought of “Blowing up the White House” even if she clearly was only showing her level of frustration and wasn’t advocating it, that moment seems to be all the righties heard.
Still despite the larger non-violence of that March hasn't stopped those on the right from losing their minds over her comment and gloating that she may get a visit from the Secret Service for her comments — as if Ted Nugent hadn’t also had a visit by the Secret Service from similar comments in 2012.
Going beyond this largely local problem or celebrity outbursts the hype that there are new roving bands of violent anti-fascists anti-Trumpsters banding about ready to pounce on any poor unsuspecting anti-Muslim, anti-Mexican or anti-Woman Trump fans has gained a fairly large head of steam in certain quarters.
The proprietor of Being Libertarian, a Facebook community with 438,888 likes, wrote of Berkeley, “This was a riot,” and urged liberals to “BE LOUD” and renounce the rioters: “Conservatives are going to have a field day with this. If you just sit there quietly, you’re essentially letting yourself be associated with campus-pillaging barbarians.” He added, “You should consider yourself lucky nobody shot you.”
Clearly, this man knows his audience. The comment, “When someone has set your car on fire and is chasing you around with a blunt object, you get to make an executive decision regarding your continued existence,” got 1,403 likes. The conviction that this would be acting in self-defense was affirmed by the man who wrote, “these riots that have been occurring are what got my ass in gear to get the final steps of my pistol permit application completed. My unrestricted carry permit can’t come soon enough.” Someone reminded him a gun license “is not a license to kill.” His response: “Yes I’m aware. I just refuse to end up a helpless victim when crazy shit like this goes down.”
This relates to the same type of rhetoric we’ve heard from NRA head Wayne Lapierre at CPAC this year as he proclaims there is growing violence from anti-Trump protestors.
LaPeire [speaking as video of violent protestors play] : Just look at inauguration Day. They spit in the faces of Gold Star families. They tomahawk beer bottles at police. Putting multiple police in the hospital. They smash windows while customers cower inside. Ladies and gentleman; have we ever seen such anger in this country?
In California a high-school girl as asked “Do you hate Mexicans?” They said “You support Trump, you hate Mexicans” and then they beat her up.
In San Francisco they attacked a group of Trump supporters, they pelted a woman with eggs. They stole there Trump hats, and then they burned them in the street.
The left’s message is absolutely clear; They want revenge. You’ve got to be punished. They say “You’re what’s wrong with America” and “Now, you’ve got to be purged.”
But maybe it’s time these protestors took advice from Barack Obama, the election has consequences and we won. Folks our long nightmare may not be over, it may only be beginning because face an array of forces that are willing to use violence against us. Think about it, the lefist movement in the country right now is enraged. Among them and behind them are some of the most radical political elements there are. Anarchists. Marxists. Communists. And the whole host of the left-wing socialist brigade. Many of these people literally hate everything America stands for. Democracy. Free Market Capitalism. Representative Government. Individual Freedom. They want to tear down our system and replace it with their collectivst top-down global government know’s best utopia.
Yeah, that’s bullshit.
Look, yes, there have been some violent exchanges between Trump fans and haters. Many would argue these have been fairly rare “isolated incidents” and that as many, if not more, were instigated by the fans more than the haters. Generally speaking Radical White Right-wing Terrorists are a greater danger to Americans than Muslim Terrorist or Violent Leftists. But Lapeirre’s apocalyptic nightmarish vision of violent radical leftists wilding the streets in search of Trumpster to brutalize is deeply, severely over exaggerated. But then again, stoking unfounded paranoia and fear is his, and the NRA’s, stock in trade.
That’s what keeps the gun sales flowing.
It’s a sales pitch. And it’s having an impact.
Bob Owens’s post about the March 4 Trump in Berkeley is entitled “Can Trump Supporters Legally Shoot Left-wing ‘Antifa’ Attackers?” He wrote it in response to a Tweet directed to him, noting a moment where three antifas got in three light kicks at a downed Trump supporter, asking, “Looks like lethal self-defense could be justified. Opinions?” Owens assured his readers this was indubitably not so. He reviewed California’s statute on the use of deadly force, which requires a shooter to “reasonably believe” he or she “was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury,” then to use “no more force than was reasonably necessary to defend against that danger,” and that “belief in future harm is not sufficient, no matter how greatly or how likely the harm is believed to be.” He concluded, “Both sides acted childishly and violently, but there was no violence that came close to justifying the use of firearms to stop a deadly force attack,” Introducing firearms, he wrote, would have been “frankly stupid, as you’re much more likely to hit innocent bystanders downrange than you are likely to hit the person you’re shooting at in such dense crowds.”
To which his commenters replied: to hell with that, we’re shooting anyway. They’re not ashamed. They use their real names, and sometimes list their hometown; and, in one case (a firefighter in a small Florida town), their employment, which I confirmed. Then, they say things like this:
...
It’s far better to be judged by 12, then carried by 6.”
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“If deadly force isn’t reasonable then why do the cops show up armed??”
It seems that the stage is being set, the players are on the board, the lines drawn and the weapons ready to be deployed. I’m certain there will be more violent confrontations such as those we’ve seen on the campus of Berkeley over the speaking appearance of Yiannapolous or on grounds of the California state capital.
Sometimes the best way to combat violence and fear is to not succumb to it. Hopefully most of us on all sides remember that.