Edging Toward Civil War II: Democrats Want Your Guns

The Washington Times reporting on Beto O'Rourke's comments at last night's debate:

“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” he said, on television, on the Democratic Party debate stage, for all to hear and see. “We’re not going to allow them to be used against fellow Americans anymore.”

Except by law enforcement and the military, that is. And the gangs. As Peter Grant has noted about socialist and communists coming to power:

When you see people and groups whose aims include some or most of the aims of the ideologies mentioned in the previous paragraph, you may be sure that the implementation of those aims will - I repeat, will - involve the same measures those ideologies and their adherents have used in the past, including violence, mass incarceration, torture, genocide, democide, and crimes against humanity. The number of examples from the 20th century is legion. To name just a few:

• The Soviet Red Terror;

• The Soviet Holodomor;

• The Soviet Gulags;

• The Nazi Holocaust;

• The Chinese Campaign to Suppress Counter-Revolutionaries;

• The Great Chinese Famine;

• The Chinese Cultural Revolution;

• The Cambodian Genocide;

• The Ethiopian Red Terror;

• Socialist death squads in Venezuela (from this week's headlines);

• and far too many more to list here (see this list as one example, or here's another one).

      We've been increasingly hearing this message from Democrats, most likely to test the waters. But now it's been said on live TV, this will probably increasingly become the message from the Left. Once they have disarmed the populace, the next steps will lead inexorably to this:

Source: "What the Progressive Socialist Liberals have in store for Conservatives (part 6)"

The Left will turn on the "enemy of the people," which we now know are those that benefit from "white privilege", to-wit:

• White people.

• Anyone who is friends with white people.

• Climate change deniers.

• Traditionally-minded people.

• Gun owners.

• People from a predominantly “red” state.

• Religious people (with the exception of Muslims).

• Heterosexual people and traditional marriages.

• Anyone or anything associated with traditional America

Peter Grant recommends this series of articles on "What the Progressive Socialist Liberals have in store for Conservatives," (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6).

       And if you think law enforcement will refuse to carry out orders, think again. First, events will escalate over time, desensitizing law enforcement to what they are doing. Watch some old procedural police dramas, like Adam-12, that tried to accurately portray police procedure and policy, and compare that to what goes on today. Particularly the no-knock raid. From a 2015 Newsmax article:

1. Police are authorized to conduct more than 20,000 no-knock raids a year. "In theory, no-knock raids are supposed to be used in only the most dangerous situations … In reality, though, no-knock raids are a common tactic, even in less-than-dangerous circumstances," Vox reported.

2. Judges approve them far more often than not. A 2000 investigation by The Denver Post found local judges routinely issued no-knock warrants even when police didn't ask for them, and simply converted regular warrants into no-knock with a signature.

3. An ACLU study of more than 800 SWAT team deployments in 2011-2012 found 79 percent were to execute a search warrant, usually in a drug investigation, while 7 percent were to deal with hostage crises, barricades, or active shooters – the scenarios for which SWAT teams were originally invented.

4. The same ACLU study reported, "Of the cases we studied, in 36 percent of SWAT deployments for drug searches, and possibly in as many as 65 percent of such deployments, no contraband of any sort was found."

5. In 2003, then-NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly estimated that 10 percent of the more than 450 no-knock raids his officers carried out every month went to the wrong address. "That estimate came after a wrong-door raid resulted in the homeowner's death: when police broke into the home of 57-year-old Alberta Spruill and threw in a flash-bang grenade, the shock gave her a fatal heart attack," Vox reported.

What was the exceptional 30 or 40 years ago is relatively common now.

     Another example, from the Bravo Delta Charlie blog, in which the author relates his participation in a no-knock raid about 20 years ago to confiscate firearms.

       I was Number 1 on the stack, with the responsibility to ram the door immediately to clear the way for the rest of the team to enter and apprehend the suspect. To make a long story short(er), we knocked this guy’s door down, tackled and cuffed him, and took his guns…based on a single complaint from a single witness. No criminal history. No psychological evaluation. No judge. No warrant.

      I don’t recall exactly how things were resolved post-incident, except for some generalities. I remember that the man ended up being released, perhaps after agreeing to a psychological evaluation. I honestly don’t remember, except that he got to go home in fairly short order. I don’t even think he was criminally charged with anything. The 14 guns we confiscated from him were eventually returned; I think it took about a week or so. Basically, it ended up being a big nothingburger.

      What I do remember is that we heard no ranting coming from his apartment before we went in, and he was genuinely surprised when his door came down that night; I remember him standing in his apartment with his hands up saying, “What’s going on, fellas?” as our team sergeant tackled him.

     But the overriding memory is of how easily our police department leaders…based on the uncorroborated statement of a single witness…made the decision to enter this man’s home without a warrant, to deprive him of his freedom, and to seize his property. If police conduct of this sort bothers you, then consider what will happen when police departments are given a virtual green light* with red flag laws.

Like the Sherlock Holmes story involving the dog that didn't bark in the night, what is significant here is that no-one, including the author and a higher ranking officer with a law degree, voiced any concerns or objections to conducting the raid. Nor will there be any objections to seizures based on red flag laws, arrests of persons alleged to be violating new weapon restrictions, or even, if it should come to this point, taking people into a "protective custody" in order to relocated them to "safe zones".