Gun Rights and Tea Party Activists Encourage People To Bring Guns To New Mexico Protest

[marmar]

from thinkprogress:



Gun Rights and Tea Party Activists Encourage People To Bring Guns To New Mexico Protest

Nearly 350 right-wing protestors crowded a New Mexico town’s busiest intersection yesterday to protest President Obama’s supposed anti-gun agenda and the “government takeover of our health care system.” While the event mostly looked like any other recent right-wing rally — complete with signs reading “replace the communists in DC” and “the sky is falling! A black man is president!” — what set this protest apart was that there “were plenty of handguns and rifles displayed.”

The local Tea Party and a group called the Second Amendment Task Force (2ATF, a reference to the ATF, which enforces gun laws) encouraged people to bring guns to the event in Alamogordo, NM, in order to “put a positive light on gun ownership,” said 2ATF’s founder Dan Woodruff. While the two protests were technically separate, they were planned together for the same day in adjacent locations. Otero Tea Party Patriots coordinator Don Omey said he was “proud” of the gun-toters. “That’s what we need to turn some minds around,” Omey said. Under New Mexico law, it’s legal for anyone over the age of 19 to open-carry a holstered firearm in most public places.

And while there was no violence during the event, one protestor wearing a Tea Party shirt said his loaded gun was a “very open threat” to anyone who might “try to take over the country completely as a socialist communist (state).” Watch it: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/03/guns-tea-party/


Apart from the obvious danger from introducing fire arms to a crowded, emotionally-charged environment, as Walt Rubel, the editor of the Las Cruces Sun-Times wrote in today’s paper, displaying guns at a rally is counter-productive to the protestors’ goals. “Nothing will ‘put a positive light on gun ownership’ quite like inviting every yahoo with a weapon in southern New Mexico to gather at the busiest intersection in Alamogordo and wave their firearms at the passing traffic,” he wrote.

This was not the first right-wing protest to which people have brought guns or displayed offensive signs, but the hate-filled atmosphere at Tea Party rallies doesn’t seem to bother former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In a guest-column in the Des Moines Register on Friday he wrote, “every American who is not corrupted by the secular-socialist left should be a member of the Tea Party movement.”


http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/03/guns-tea-party/

[MichaelHarris]

1. I've always been

proud to protest without firearms. Fear and intimidation is not a protest, it's a force of bullies. All a protest needs is a good voice.

[rwheeler31]

2. If it against the law arrest these stupid people.

[Euromutt]

20. It's not against the law

Open carry is legal in quite a number of states, and for what it's worth, the open carry movement (which seeks to promote the normalization of open carry) is less than pleased about the phenomenon of armed and apparently angry teabaggers.

[onehandle]

3. Guns are the new sheets. nt

[katandmoon]

17. +1,000,000

[SteveM]

22. Uhh, the Klan favored gun-control laws. For blacks. Read your history (nt)

[SpiralHawk]

4. The 'Enchanters' ain't been the same since the A-bomb fried their brains

When you are 'enchanted' by the nuclear mutant complex, you just living in a wOrlD of imAginAry fEar. These poor fearful mice, all loaded up with their substitute penises. Kinda pitiful.

[SteveM]

23. Hmm, perhaps you and that other poster ought to get together...

I mean, always talking about male sexual organs and everything.

"He who first smelt it, dealt it" -- Jung

[Richard D]

5. It's too bad . . .

. . . rank stupidity isn't illegal.

[sharesunited]

6. Now now. Democrats love guns too. It is an equal opportunity illness.

[rwheeler31]

7. What are these idiots working for?

[RainDog]

8. they look like lynch mobs in training n/t

[DBoon]

9. They look like Black Shirts in training

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9ULP9aVmDsM/Sc5uBVfq15I/AAAAAAAAAnI/XcaXTNnh67I/s400/Mussolini+Black+Shirts.jpg

[PavePusher]

31. Arnolds Law in 9 posts. Excellent work. Sigh.... n/t

[bridgit]

10. What's next: Morans Against Youth In Asia? The John Birch Society? This ain't Love American Style

These teabag people are The Ugly Americans, they're proud of it, and they may never telegraph another punch so directly after this. Imo this is how American Fascism starts - with red faced white bigots with spittle on their lips brandishing their Cialis addled popguns in support of everything *but* the truth while gnawing each others tongues off. They will need to be pushed back on and shown how pointless & petty their intimidations really are

[Bobbieo]

11. We know what has to be done BUT are we strong enough to do it?

[bridgit]

12. They are banking on the same apathetic left with no stomach for opposition that is plenty true...

[SteveM]

25. Good observation. I have spoken about this for years...

When the Democratic Party made peace with corporate America after the McGovern debacle, and essentially dropped economic ideology from its platform, it left the field wide-open to cultural issues; I mean, what's left? As you may have gathered, Democrats are not very good at culture war. The same bogey is paraded out: "straight, white, racist males" -- and around some college towns -- "Liberal, straight, white racist males." This latter caricature not only turn off tens of millions of voters, it isolates the flannel mouthed "left" (it really isn't "left" at all) from anyone near them on the spectrum; I suppose to gain even more purity.

A note: "apathy" of late comes from a war without a draft, and from a Democratic Party which can't abide anyone to the "left" of Eisenhower. Who wants to confront a well-financed, well-thought-out ideology of great brevity and clarity when none is offered to replace it?

If you have any insight as to what "needs to be done" (as per the poster above), could you fill in everyone. I respect your one-line analysis and welcome the opportunity to discuss matters.

Incidentally, I am strongly pro-2a. With the kinds of ideology spewed out lately, one would be a fool not to be. But don't let that stop you.

[Euromutt]

19. I don't know what you think needs to be done...

..though I myself would lean towards ceasing giving any attention to these jokers, and ignoring them for the irrelevancies they are. Hell, most of why they really open carry is because it makes them more likely to get onto the NBC and CBS news shows.

So are we strong enough to resist the lure of sensationalism? I've found the most obvious way of doing do is to stop watching broadcast television, or at least "news" shows.

[SteveM]

24. You "know what has to be done"? What is that, respectfully?

[rwheeler31]

13. These people need help they are sick and scared.

Guns are the problem.

[Euromutt]

21. How does that follow?

By what mechanism does possession of a firearm cause inability to distinguish between socialized health insurance and communism? You're right enough these people are scared: they have health insurance, and they're scared that a system that extends coverage to the currently uninsured is going to negatively affect their own coverage. They might even be right, though frankly, their concerns of mounting public debt ring more than a little hollow after six years of American involvement in Iraq under Bush racked up a massive amount of "emergency spending."

You can plausibly argue that avarice is the problem, or a "fuck you, I'm all right" attitude, but I really don't see how possession of a firearm makes one a teabagger. There are an estimated 80 million gun owners in this country (myself included), and the gun-toting teabaggers are a tiny fraction of them at best.

[SteveM]

27. Respectfully, you are playing their game. I posted elsewhere in...

this thread about what constitutes the real problems confronting progressive change. Guns are not the problem. The real problem is you have a well-funded, highly intelligent and educated political party with a platform of brevity and clarity (the Republicans) up against a non-party which has -- all by itself -- dumped economic issues (because they threaten corporate power), and relies on special interest groups (like the gun-controllers) to substitute for any meaningful stands and policies. This often leads to culture war, which Democrats are very poor at. The Teabaggers and such have something to fight for; we don't.

It is a mark of success for the GOP that they can have folks look at this country and say "Guns are the problem."

(Though a topic like this should be in another forum, I welcome the opportunity to discuss the far more fundamental problem of why we have a one-party government, and what those who are essentially disenfranchised should do.)

[Bitwit1234]

14. They are just itching for someone to shoot and cause mayhem

AND then they can blame democrats.

[bridgit]

16. That's true, which is why 5 to 7 boys between 8 & 12 with a garden hose and a bag of balloons...

would have them talking in tongues in nothing flat :kick:

[SteveM]

26. Hey, try it! BTW, why do they have to be boys? (nt)

[Tim01]

15. Just because they can, does not mean they should. nt

[DainBramaged]

18. Maybe these scumbags can scare up some real criminals if they have their 'firepower' on display.

Stupid gun bunnies.

[rusty_rebar]

28. I don't agree with this kind of thing.

I have no problem with open carry. I do have a bit of a problem with open carrying to a protest.

I am at a bit of a loss to really justify this point of view, but open carrying to a protest does not seem productive to me.

[Euromutt]

29. Well put

I feel pretty much the same way. I'm not inclined to openly carry a sidearm myself, though I have no issue with people who do, but when you make a point of OCing at a protest that isn't specifically about OC, you're sending a message: "look, I own at least one gun, and if I don't get my way, I might be inclined to use it." In other words, the old argumentum ad baculum (http://fallacyfiles.org/adbacula.html).

That said, just because I don't like it doesn't mean I think it should be outlawed. And to be honest, after several months of this crap, I'm not sure the message isn't morphing into "look at me, I have a gun!" and not much else, and if the best the teabaggers have to offer by way of argument is that they have the means to possibly becomes violent (whether they have the will is a different matter, I suspect), then we know we don't have to take them seriously. And honestly, the last thing we need to do is anything that will feed the myth that they're being oppressed.

At the same time, I don't think it's helping anything when certain people, on this forum and elsewhere, make denigrating comments about the teabaggers in terms that apply to gun owners in general.

[PavePusher]

30. I open carry everywhere I legally can.

Why should I change my legal habit for a political rally?

[PavePusher]

32. Reasoning here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=280076&mesg_id=280076

See posts 18, 57 & 59.