“Listen, we were just trying to exercise our Second Amendment rights by forming an armed militia, but the next thing we knew, we had half the police force, armed to the teeth, descend on our training camp, arrest everyone and confiscate out guns! It’s an outrageous infringement of our Constitutional rights,” declares fifty two year old East Texas resident LeRoy Claxon, organiser of a local armed self defence group. “We’re the only damn militia around here who have been treated this way, all the others have still got their arsenals – and they are the crazies we formed our group to protect the local black community from! We’re tired of these white right-wing crazies hiding behind the Second Amendment to go around intimidating black folks with their guns!” Claxon’s group – which he describes as a ‘black defence militia’ – is one of a growing number of organisations forming across the US, in the wake of recent school shootings, to try and take advantage of the much vaunted Second Amendment to back up their radical agendas with firepower. “The right have had it their own way here in the US for too long,” opines George Hailer, Chairman of the Rifles for Revolution militia based in Pittsburgh. “That’s the only reason they’ve been able to gain political hegemony – they can back up their crazy agendas with the threat of firepower! Well, if we can’t disarm them, then we’ll just have to arm ourselves!”
Hailer and his fellow left of centre militias have taken inspiration from insurgent groups worldwide. “History has shown that the left only succeeds against left-wing bullies when it takes up the gunfor those itself, and forgets about using reasoned argument and the democratic process,” he says. “Just look at Fidel Castro – he didn’t bother trying to talk to that right wing bastard Batista and his Mafia cronies! He understood that the only arguments they’d understand came from the barrel of a gun! And look at the results: to this day Cuba has a better health care system than the US!” Despite his organisation’s reference to revolution in its name, Hailer is at pains to emphasise that their aim isn’t to overthrow the US government by force. Nonetheless, he is adamant that they are aiming to create a revolution in the way US politics is conducted. “Our primary aim is to use our Second Amendment rights to protect our First Amendment rights,” he declares. “All too often we see the authorities, whether they be the Federal Government, State Governors, intelligence agencies or the police, try to repress our rights to free speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, as enshrined in the First Amendment. Well, we on the left are just as prepared as those right wing crazies to take up arms to defend the Constitution!”
Unsurprisingly, the emergence of these new left wing militias has been met with hostility from the political right, the traditional gun lobby and the authorities, both local and Federal. “Now look, everybody knows that the Founding Fathers didn’t create the Second Amendment to allow a bunch of long haired hippie socialists to go around waving guns and preaching their dangerous ideas about ‘freedom’, universal health care and education,” explains Bert Trumpett, a leading member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in Fuckle County, Tennessee. “As for these blacks and their so called militia, well I seem to remember they tried that once before – that bunch of damned terrorists, the Black Panthers. We had to crack down on them hard, I recall – those boys just don’t know how to handles guns properly, a danger to themselves and every decent white citizen. Fact is that when the Second Amendment was framed, the coloured people weren’t free citizens, so obviously they were never intended to be covered by it!” Whilst the NRA’s national leadership have distanced themselves from Trunpett’s comments, they have reiterated the idea that the Second Amendment is about ensuring the ‘right’ people in the US have free access to firearms in order to protect themselves and the Constitution from the ‘wrong’ people. “Obviously, being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ has nothing to do with race,” an NRA spokesperson told a press conference. “It’s all to do with outlook. Clearly, only red blooded Americans who like to spend their time drinking beer, saluting the flag and slaughtering wildlife are safe to handle guns. Everyone knows that leftists and liberals are just too limp wristed and namby pamby to be trusted with firearms. It’s the same with the First Amendment they claim to be defending: it is meant to guarantee free speech for the right sort of people who hold the right sorts of views, not all that foreign inspired unAmerican nonsense about equality and all that.”
The likes of Trumpett are unimpressed by the arguments of the US gun lobby. “They might not like what we’re defending with our guns, but at least we know what we want to defend,” he says. “Those right wing crazy militias keep on about how they need their guns to defend the US, but defend it against who? Or what? The King of England? Because that’s who the people who wrote the Second Amendment were afraid was going to come and disarm them. But if not him, then who else? The United Nations? Or some other vague conspiracy involving Jews, militant Islam and shape shifting reptiles? Maybe it’s the ‘Deep State’? Nobody seems to know! Perhaps they just think that citizens need to defend themselves against their own government? A government that they elected!” He also takes issue with the idea that those on the left are somehow unfit to be allowed to own guns. “What are the righties afraid of? Do they think that us unstable snowflakes will get so offended by political incorrectness that we’ll crack up and start mowing down innocent people with our legally owned guns?” he muses. “I don’t know what they are worried about – they are always boasting that one of them with a legally owned gun could stop a crazy gunman, so surely they’ve nothing to fear?”
Trumpett also points out that armed minority group militias have, in some cities, resulted in a reduction in the rate of certain crimes. “Rapes are definitely down in Arkansas, since that feminist militia shot a redneck rapist in the balls,” he says. “Not to mention the drop in homophobic hate crime in the Dakotas after that gay militia shot some queer basher up the ass.” He believes that the arming of the left could prove a turning point in the battle over gun control in the US. “For too long the right and the gun lobby have relied on the fact that we are generally reasonable, peace loving people they can intimidate with their guns while hiding behind the Second Amendment, no matter how heinous the atrocities committed by crazies with guns were,” he contends. “But by embracing the gun, we’ve turned the tables. Maybe the pro gun lobby will finally start modifying their stance and accept the need for gun control if they find themselves facing an anti-gun lobby who are armed to the teeth!”
