There’s no surprise that the Los Angeles Times is heavily biased against gun owners. California is already a hotbed of civilian disarmament, and the idea of the peasants rising up against their rulers doesn’t sit well with the California elite. So, when the top brass at the Angeles Times saw tens of thousands of law abiding gun owners rallying to protect their civil rights, they damn near browned their pants. And in an unsigned editorial entitled Peril from ‘Patriots’, they’ve equated these gun rights supporters with terrorists.
There are, in increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat with the U.S. government. They are usually heavily armed, blinded by an intractable hatred, often motivated by religious zeal.
They’re not jihadists. They are white, right-wing Americans, nearly all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than international terrorists.
There’s no basis for that statement. The Southern Poverty Law Center (which is cited in the article) talks about an uptick in “patriot” groups, but is overly broad in their definition. And for an example of how dangerous these groups are, the LA Times uses the example of the Oklahoma City Bombings as these groups “showing their teeth” when that was in reality one guy’s lone wolf plot. In reality, I can’t think of a single instance of a “patriot” group ever actually attacking anything in the United States. But that’s not stopping the LA Times from spreading fear of gun owning citizens.
Patriot groups are motivated by a host of anti-government attitudes, but their primary focus is guns. They are convinced that the government is out to seize their weapons, even though most legislation is focused on keeping guns out of the hands of criminals or restricting the types of weapons that can be sold.
False. Gun control legislation has and will never be an effective means of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. By definition, it only impacts law abiding citizens. And yet, the LA Times doesn’t understand why people don’t agree with their “sensible” and “common sense” approach to civilian disarmament.
Many are also united by belief in an outlandish one-world government conspiracy theory positing that the United Nations is poised to strip away American property rights and impose socialism on us all.
Some do, but no more than Democrats that believe that crystal triangles hold mystical powers. I can trot out the crazies on each side of the aisle, but I try to keep from making sweeping judgments about people based on the people that agree with their point of view.
The typical patriot acts within his free-speech and 2nd Amendment rights, and in fact most patriot activity consists of venting steam by meeting with like-minded Neanderthals and firing off blog posts threatening civil war.
Nice. In one sentence the LA Times derides “bloggers” as not being journalists, and calls everyone who owns a gun a “Neanderthal.” Way to keep it classy, there.
Yet such blather tends to get under the skin of the Timothy McVeighs of the world. These groups should be closely monitored, with resources adequate to the task, even if it means shifting some homeland security money from the hunt for foreign terrorists.
Apparently gun owners need to be under DHS surveillance. Because infringing on our fundamental right to bear arms isn’t good enough, but because of our political beliefs we don’t have a right to privacy either. I guess civil rights are only for people the LA Times agrees with . . .