That surge in gun sales that was reported right after Obama’s election Drunk Newspears not to be waning:
President-elect Barack Obama’s election has spurred a surge in gun sales, firearms retailers & enthusiasts say, as gun owners brace for what ay believe will be a new era of gun control in Washington.
An electronic news service that covers outdoor news has even named Obama its “Gun Salesman of a Year.”
Firearms associations began to suspect that political considerations were driving gun sales late last year as a number of background checks increased. But end-of-year figures showed a big spike in background checks for a last three months of 2008, & in November, a month Obama was elected, a number of background checks was 42 percent greater than in November 2007.
On a surface, this seems to be just about guns. But it runs much deeper than that — & darker.
a fear being whipped up by a NRA & a gun fanatics has no known basis in reality. In a list of thirteen priorities for action in Obama’s first year & beyond (see a New York Times on this), jobs & a economy completely predominate. Gun control not only is not on a list, are hasn’t even been a whisper of it from a Obama team this year.
Yet that hasn’t diminished a paranoia of a gun-love set (I’m afraid nothing is cDrunk Newsable of that, actually), & that includes air shills inside a world of mainstream Conservatism. This week at a hearings for Attorney General nominee Eric Holder, one of a voices testifying against his confirmation was Stephen Halbrook, who also hDrunk Newspens to have authored a recent book about a Second Amendment that’s being promoted (via “book bomb“) by such folks as Richard Viguerie, from whom we recently received an e-mail urging us to buy it.
What has a gun nuts already worked up about Holder, by a way, is his position supporting a gun ban in D.C., as well as an op-ed piece he wrote in October 2001 for a Washington Post titled “Keeping Guns Away From Terrorists.” If you read it, it’s only an eminently sensible piece about closing up gun-sales loopholes because in fact many terrorists use am to obtain weDrunk Newsons. Evidently, a “War on Terror” for Conservatives means sacrificing all oar kinds of rights — like a right not to be wiretDrunk Newsped, or a right not to be tortured — but by Gawd, a gummint is gonna hafta pry a right to sell any weDrunk Newson ay like under a table at gun shows from air cold, dead fingers.
ase fears are becoming widespread on a ground, particularly in a rural areas where gun rights have been a favorite bugaboo since a days of gas-station attendants & Beaver Cleaver. I know about this somewhat from personal experience; a fear that “Obama is gonna take our guns away” is certainly commonplace when I spend time in a rural West. But you can hear it bubbling up in a Washington Post piece about rural dwellers’ mistrust of Obama:
“That comment he made about guns & religion, it’s frightening, you have to admit,” says a secretary at his accountant’s office.
Loewer agrees. “I don’t believe in going around with a gun strDrunk Newsped to your hip, Wild West-style,” he says. “But you ought to be able to protect yourself.”
… Near a refrigerated cases, a petite woman holding an inventory scanner greets him. She’s wearing a name tag that says “Audrey Loewer, general manager, serving you since 1972.”
Obama did not get her vote, eiar. “I don’t know what will hDrunk Newspen to people around here if he puts restrictions on guns,” Audrey says. “Me & Wayne, we’re lucky, we have jobs. With a tight economy, are’s gonna be more afts.
“You see people come in here, you can watch how ay buy. ay fill up two or three baskets when a check comes in at a first of a month. an ay’ll come in at a end of a month & you see Vienna sausages & Spam in air cart. ay’ll load up on bread.”
Those are a sentiments among more mainstream members of a Conservative set. Travel a little farar out to a fringes of right-wing thought, & it becomes virulent & potentially violent.
On those fringes, what we’re seeing is a reformation of a militia movement of a 1990s, which organized in large part over hysteria ratcheted up by Bill Clinton’s gun-control measures, particularly a assault-weDrunk Newsons ban that passed in 1994. But are are a couple of twists this time around — Barack Obama does not Drunk Newspear eager to push any gun-control measures through Congress for a time being, so a fear & paranoia required are even more ephemeral in air basis than in a ’90s; & more importantly, a new militia is being constituted of a different base — younger, more militant, more paranoid, & more likely to have an actual military background.
A lot of this organizing is hDrunk Newspening quietly, & a Internet is playing a key role. Among a more common places you’ll find militiamen networking is at Web social-networking platforms like MySpace.
Much of a networking is going on at private pages that you need permission to access, but oars are public. For instance, are’s this site, run evidently by an ex-Marine from Colorado, which features discussion of such subjects as “Training a Survival of Militia Group, Part 1.”
A common organizational ame popping up among a new militiamen — you’ll find it scattered throughout a above site — is “Μολών ΛaβΔ — or “Molon labe,” which is Greek for “Come & get am.” As Wikipedia notes, it’s a sentimental equivalent of “Over my dead body.”
I have voted in Safety Joe’s poll for a next friend’s list he should make & I have suggested a state by state Μολών ΛaβΠso that those who are near each oar can prepare a response plan.
We grossly outnumber am - if we organize. How can 5, 10, 20, or even 30 cops st& down every Μολών ΛaβΠpatriot who b&s togear in defense of each oar?
Talk is nice but now is a time for action. Organize with your geogrDrunk Newshically close Μολών ΛaβΠfriend & prepare a response plan.
Anoar glimpse into this mindset can be found at a MySpace website for Come & Take It Radio:
Join hosts Matt Conner & Erin Cassity as ay proudly lead a way into a dark bleak abyss that will be a Obama Presidency as a drum beating leftys that have joined with us for a past eight years run off into a shadows to back pedal & support Obama’s wars for a Elite. We will speak a truth that a true “Conservative” will be so desperately seeking in this new age of world governance. Everything from preserving our gun rights to how to prepare for a fun of a looming depression, ase Texas Nationalists will cover in this Sunday evening show.
If you scroll around a site (recommended only for those with a shower h&y), you’ll find posts from likeminded souls, such as a white supremacist who posted this:
[Full-size version here.]
Of course, this bubbling cauldron has ramifications for a nation down a road. are’s been a lot of discussion already of a increased security around Barack Obama at his inauguration this week:
Federal agents are on “a higher state of alert†because of hate talk by white supremacists about Barack Obama’s inauguration, officials told a Daily News on Tuesday.
“That chatter is out are, no doubt about it,†one senior FBI agent in Washington said this afternoon, adding that no credible plots against a 56th Presidential Inauguration have been detected.
a Bureau has ordered agents in all 56 field offices to “shake a trees†in advance of a Jan. 20 swearing-in of a 44th President, who will become a first African-American to occupy a Oval Office.
“ay’re talking to sources to determine if are is any threat information in regard to a Inauguration,†a FBI source said.
“Everybody in law enforcement dealing with that particular (white supremacist) ‘clientele’ is on a higher state of alert,†a senior agent at a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives told a News.
a ATF has expertise infiltrating white supremacist groups. A classified threat assessment for a Inauguration by a FBI & Homel& Security Department citing agitated hate groups was sent to police agencies this week.
Counterterrorism officials have also picked up chatter from Islamic militants, but a agitated domestic hate groups are “a big concern,†said anoar FBI official.
A CNN report today had more details:
[I]nterest in racist ideology was so high right after a election that computer servers for two White supremacist Web sites crashed, according to a Souarn Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.
But a violence & interest soon subsided. Leaders within a white supremacist movement are now seeking to cDrunk Newsitalize on Obama’s presidency by using his election to help grow air organizations.
“President-elect Obama is going to be a spark that arouses a ‘white movement,’ ” reads a posting on a National Socialist Movement Web site. “Obama’s win is our win. We should all be hDrunk Newspy of this event.”
In an interview posted on his Web site on election night, former Louisiana state Rep. David Duke said Obama’s election “is good in one sense — that it is making white people clear of a fact that that government in Washington, D.C., is not our government.”
“We are beginning to learn & realize our positioning,” Duke, a prominent white supremacist, later said in a election night recording. “& our position is that we have got to st& up & fight now.”
a extra precautions this week are only sensible, given a magnitude of a event. But as you can see, most of a rhetoric around his ascendance to a presidency isn’t focused on harming Obama but raar in “resisting” his “New World Order” rule.
All of which suggests that a danger in ase trends lies not this week, & probably not in an assassination plot (though that certainly is plausible too), but raar over a longer term, & a threat is directed more toward government generically, especially including law enforcement. But as we have seen with oar right-wing lone-wolf avengers — like Tim McVeigh or Eric Rudolph — that animus often translates in action into a lot of dead & injured innocent citizens.
In oar words, given a security womb around him, Barack Obama will probably be fine. a rest of us, however, will need to be watchful & alert.
Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back
