Bryan Malinowski, executive director of Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, was fatally wounded in a shootout as ATF agents tried to serve a search warrant at his home.
Bryan Malinowski, executive director of Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, was fatally wounded in a shootout as ATF agents tried to serve a search warrant at his home.
An executive for the Little Rock, Arkansas, airport who was killed in a shootout with federal agents this week had been under investigation over gun sales, search warrant records unsealed Thursday show.
Bryan Malinowski, 53, who was executive director of Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport, was shot after he opened fire at federal agents who arrived to serve a warrant Tuesday morning, officials said.
They is an important lesson in this. Taking up arms against the government has two possible outcomes.
You end up in prison.
You and up dead.
You are one person with a small number of consumer firearms. The government can show up with a virtually unlimited number of people, with bigger guns, and weapons up to and including tanks, helicopters, and precision guided bombs.
Whatever collective fantasy you have about you and a group of friends overthrowing the government with your AR15s end up with you in prison or dead.
That's not how revolutions work...a large chunk of people will need to be basically homeless, hungry and jobless for everything to kick off. So long as people can still get their chicken nuggets and iPhones and they have a place to sleep, there will be no revolution. It's ignorant to say that small arms can't do anything, it's how we lost Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan. All small arms, because bombs cannot patrol street corners, and if you start killing Americans, you're going to just feed a revolution, remember you probably live right next to one of these so called gun nuts ...and bombs don't give a shit if his house explodes and showers yours with flaming debris.
It's also not what the revolutionaries need. A revolution in America would need to target power actors (owner class, politicians would just get you more politicians paid for by the same billionaires), precisely and relatively quickly.
Bombs and heavy or indiscriminate weapons would only harm that cause by turning the people against you. Honestly small fire arms and poisons would probably be the most effective weapon in a revolution that could actually lead to any real change.
I can't tell if you're joking or not, but no you absolutely do need people with nothing left to live for, we already have armed angry and overconfident people...
You say that but Clive Bundy, who had a stand off with the federal government because he didn't feel like paying grazing fees on land that was not his, had his trial dismissed. His son, anarchist Ammon Bundy, who had an armed standoff against the federal government in Malheur Wildlife Refuge which resulted in a death, was acquitted.
If the government had wanted him and his people dead they would have been dead. The only reason they weren't was that the government showed restraint. If you think they could have won had the government decided to end them you are delusional.
Taking up arms against the government has two possible outcomes.
Dunno, my grand-grandparents ended up old Bolsheviks with party membership since 1919.
You are one person with a small number of consumer firearms. The government can show up with a virtually unlimited number of people, with bigger guns, and weapons up to and including tanks, helicopters, and precision guided bombs.
Which is why taking up arms against the government should be approached like an engineering task and not like some impulsive action from Hollywood movies. But it sometimes happens.
And what you are saying wasn't very different even in 14xx-s, to be frank.
In the 14xxs the balance of power was fairly even. They didn't have B52s dropping ninja bombs or A10s or helicopters with mini guns. Gravy Seals will die if they take on the government.
No, it was absolutely the same. Professional soldiers and knights with good gear and lifetime experience would easily massacre any amateur force and they regularly did.
It was less about technology (though a piece of that gear would cost a few villages with serfs, so technology too) and more about experience, but that's the case now as well.
So you think that the difference between a farm implement and a sword and armour is the same as the difference between an AR15 and a B52 wirh a ninja bombs, an A10, and a helicopter with side mounted mini guns?
Doesn't have to be the same. The distance from Earth to the Moon is not the same order of magnitude as the distance from the Moon to the Sun, but for many purposes could as well be.
That is utterly ridiculous. Literally worthy of ridicule.
The peasant and knight could see each other. They had to be within a few yards of each other. The US government could take you out from an airplane 10 miles up and you would just end without knowing it was coming.
But, as I say, by all means, bring it. The rest of us would like to have it over and get on with our lives.
Does the government just bombing poor farmers ever work though? Recent history indicates a handful of determined fighters stand a really good chance against the U.S. military. Actually, has a conventional force ever won against a local insurgency?
It depends on what victory is and what defeat is. You can't dictate terms of your victory to people who don't understand them and don't coordinate with each other as a whole entity. You also sometimes are not prepared to engage in full-blown genocide. And getting the bombs to the place may cost you much more than for those people to get their AKs. And bombs don't control territory. And you may be willing to spend some amount of lives, and they may be willing to spend a different amount of lives.
We're not taking about our farmers. We're taking about christofascist Gravy Seals. The vast majority of the population don't want the US to become a fascist theocratic dictatorship.
Flipped on its head your argument boils down to: If the GOP keeps winning and the country sinks further into fascism we should just give up because we won't be able to resist the might of the military anyway no matter how many of us don't want a theocracy.
There's a distinct difference between 400 million people who don't want to live under a christofascist dictatorship and 30 million do think they do. The reality is that there are a very small number of people who are willing to continue to live out their collective fantasy after they see someone standing beside them lose their head to a 7.62 bullet. Everything changes when you're on a two way range. The attack on congress was ended when a single bullet ripped through the chest of a single traitor and everyone thought, "Holy fucking shitballs! They're shooting white people! They're going to fucking kill us! "
The problem with collective fantasies in echo chambers is that no one ever says, "They're going to be shooting back with more powerful weapons. How many of us are going to die and what will happen if we lose?"
That is utterly ridiculous. Literally worthy of ridicule.
I think you're the only thing here worth of ridicule.
The pleasant and knight could see each other. They had to be within a few yards of each other. The US government could take you out from an airplane 10 miles up and you would just end without knowing it was coming.
A cat and a mouse too, but I haven't head of a mouse killing a cat.
The rest of us would like to have it over and get on with our lives.
That's a good point, wasted enough of my time on a modern equivalent of that peasant.
I understood what you are trying to say here only now, so answering now.
I don't see how the world you are describing is scarier than the one I'm describing.
For me the opposite seemed true - that like somebody enthusiastic about fantasy novels or something like that, you imagine Middle Ages to be some time where taking on an army for a bunch of random blokes was easier than now.
I also think you have some problems internalizing the fact that other people say things different from what you expect, and keep arguing with what you'd imagined. I suggest therapy.
Beyond your point, I always felt that the Second Amendment, ostensibly for the purpose of overthrowing the government, is completely redundant. That is to say, if you’re plotting to overthrow the government by force of arms, whether your firearm is constitutionally protected is kind of moot by that point. Ergo, the 2A should have no relevance with regards to holding government tyranny in check.
2A for overthrow purposes means you and your militia buddies can build up an armory that the government can't take away. Pre-overthrow you're lawful citizens doing perfectly fine civilian stuff. It's a just in case, probably not even going to be used. Once you're rebels, sure, laws don't matter, but if they make preparing yourself to be credible rebels illegal, then the rebellion never gets off the ground.
There is literally zero evidence for that. In armed insurrections around the world where firearms are supposedly illegal for civilians to hold, rebels have never had trouble getting a hold of guns.
2A is all about government tyranny - it was a concession to the slave states so they could have local organizations (militias) to prevent/eliminate slave uprisings and to pursue runaway slaves.
The balance of power is dramatically different now.
Then the people had long sticks with sharp points, the government had long sticks with sharp points.
Now the people have AR15s, the government had B52s that can drop Ninja bombs from 40,000 feet and kill you while you're having a cigarette on your balcony.
But by all means, get out your AR15s and give it a go.
You're not even comparing apples and oranges here; it's more like apples and Apple computers.
He wasn't part of a revolutionary army, he was an untrained lone gunman who was seriously outnumbered.
Also, pretty much every successful revolution has had some outside force bearing down on the Establishment. Washington had the French Navy; the Viet Cong had Russia and China; Lenin had WW1 chaos on his side.