When was the last time you were rebuked?

I agree with you, Slarti.
I can't help feeling hopelessly sad when I see those massacres on the news -
even worse when I see the increasing frequency and severity.
It seems to me that at least the semi-automatic guns should be banned.

But one former Mugger - Nimmitz, I think - once explained to me why he thought
a massive armoury was necessary for every citizen.
He was quite serious - and not the least bit stupid - a Marxist Anarchist Gnostic Christian prepper.
He pointed out the times in history when the American government has used military force on its own people.

In the years after the French Revolution and before the Federation of the United States, local state government frequently attacked citizens whose loyalties and policies they disagreed with. It was one of the reasons why the Constitution was written to include freedom of speech and faith. The Constitution enshrines the right of citizens to defend themselves against their own government if they perceive it as unjust.

Breaking up Bonus Army protests, 1932 - In the midst of the Great Depression, thousands of World War I veterans gathered in Washington, D.C. to demand the government pay the service certificate bonuses the veterans received after the war. The veterans, known as the Bonus Army, set up an Army-style camp in vacant lots and refused to leave even after a bill to pay out their bonuses was squashed in the Senate. A D.C. police effort to evict the veterans turned violent and two protestors were shot. After the failed police effort, President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army, led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, to clear out the camps. The Army shot tear gas and torched the camp as veterans fled. 

Forced segregation, Little Rock, 1957 - President Eisenhower used an executive order to send troops to Little Rock. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had deployed the Arkansas National Guard to uphold racial segregation and block nine African American students from entering the school. So Eisenhower sent troops to defeat the Arkensas guard.
Thankfully that one - we all know the benefits that come from desegregation.

Bloody Sunday, 1965 - After a civil rights activist was fatally shot by Alabama state troopers, civil rights leaders organized a march from Selma to Montgomery, led by Hosea Williams and John Lewis, now a Georgia congressman. After crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers met a wall of state troopers, who attacked the marchers with clubs and tear gas in an incident known as Bloody Sunday.

The Waco Siege, 1993 - Federal and Texas law enforcement, suspecting a religious sect, the Branch Davidians, of stockpiling illegal weapons, obtained a search warrant for the compound and arrest warrants for Koresh and a select few of the group's members. An intense gun battle erupted, resulting in ten deaths, then a siege lasting 51 days, ended when the FBI launched a tear gas assault. During the attack, a fire engulfed Mount Carmel Center. 76 Branch Davidians burned to death including David Koresh. 
Looking at the film, experienced ex-Vietnam campaigners allege that it was not tear gas but Napalm.
The events of the siege and attack are disputed by various sources. A particular controversy ensued over the origin of the fire; an internal Justice Department investigation concluded in 2000 that sect members had started the fire.  Hard to believe so many people would willingly immolate themselves - although individual examples elsewhere in the world are not unusual.

Anyway, Nimmitz believed all of this was enough to justify being a collector of serious armaments and practising with them.

This kind of thing worries me.
I think there are more skilful ways to deal with governments.

It seems, however, that there are many varieties of Nimmitz's in the States.
Despite his claimed Marxism, his absolutist views on guns and liberty put him more in harmony with the variations on extreme right-wing conservatism.

I wish, I wish profoundly, that it was possible to spread the word on how to cultivate peace through skilled communications.
But the word is already there, in America, widely dispersed, free of charge and easy to access.

It is for us to watch from a distance, and hope that our friends will be okay.

This post was edited by inky at August 8, 2019 11:16 AM MDT

Bloody Sunday happened in Ireland in 1972. Two of my O'Neill cousins were in it. This post was edited by Slartibartfast at August 8, 2019 11:16 AM MDT

I'm with you.  It is called BEING AWARE and not BEING STUPID.  I AGREE.

I think voting should be a privilege.  You need to prove you can put two and two together first, for starters.  Maybe take a class or two about what democracy is all about and who represents your party and what they stand for.  Maybe something like that where we EARN the right to vote our conscience when we learn what the heck a conscience is.  

How do you learn and grow without it? 

Don't worry... I rebuke myself plenty! :)