Gangs Are Foreign Militias

First, A Letter to the Editors:

I am curious how the MSNBC reporters can note the rise of "militias" and entertain people speaking of them with deprecating characterizations.

In case they hadn't noticed, Mara Salvatrucas, 18th Street, Sur-X and a variety of other gangs with membership mostly of foreign nationals, these are also militias.

But these "criminal aliens gangs" are in fact Foreign Criminal Militias, living "off the fat of the land", like any well-trained military incursion group.

The extreme violence in Mexico is erupting into unlikely places here in the USA. The Mexican methedrine distribution organizations are very far reaching and they are very well armed, and murder is a way of life for these gangsters. Many of these groups are better armed, better equipped in terms of communications, and much better financed than the local police.

Further, organizations which may be considered as "agents of foreign powers -- or perhaps as the "legal department of trasnational crime syndicates" or even as the Political Action Committees for transnational crime syndicates -- have been exerting influence on the political process, especially at the local-government level. In many local jurisdictions, citizens feel that they have been invaded, and that the local government has become a puppet of the invaders.

Of course it's much more complex than that, and far more subtle. This subtle complexity leads many people into incorrect interpretation of phenomena or inappropriate attribution of ideology, motivations, or causality.

Yet it is essential to distinguish between the honest citizens who are starting to band together in a "community policing" strategy and those who are trying to exploit honest citizens towards less-honest or revolutionary ends. Some groups are opposed on the basis of racism, and some groups form to defend against known large bands of foreign criminal gangsters.

Keep in mind that there's a difference between "racism" or "nativism" and being opposed to a known violent criminal enemy who comes from another country and operates criminally/militarily using a foreign language.

To summarize, why condemn US "militias" without in the same breath condemning criminal-alien gangsters

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Now, the Astute Reader will of course recall my longstanding work with the County Department of Police's "community policing" operations under the auspices of the Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention's "Collaborative Supervision and Focused Enforcement" ("CSAFE").

This came on the heels of a longstanding campaign by various factions to criminalize private citizen ownership of handguns.

One of the "best" arguments used by these "gun grabbers" was "nobody needs a gun because the police can handle every problem".

Some people would respond by quoting the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

The gun grabbers would promptly spring their rhetorical trap, and declare the person quoting the highest law of the land to be "a fringe gun nut militia wackjob".

Personally, I have to wonder about the sanity of anyone who thinks that anyone who supports the Constitution (as amended) is therefor armed, dangerous, and an unstable psychotic.

Rational students of the Constitution's Second Amendment will point out that the history of the country and the wording of that Amendment support the notion that while one reason that the individual has an unquestioned individual right to keep and bear arms so that they may be ready equipped to respond to a mustering up of militia, there is no rhetorical support to suggest that therefor only militia membership entitles one to keep and bear arms.

This fallacious rhetoric -- that "only militia enrollment confers the right to keep and bear arms" -- was a mainstay of the gun-grabbers.

Thus, by demonizing militias -- not hard to do in the case of some specific persons associated with various militia cadres -- they could demonize the right to keep and bear arms.

Further, people who favor empowerment of the State -- concurrent with disempowerment of the citizen -- did also go so far as to claim that the sole legitimate militia was the State or County police.

US Code 10 §311 utterly denies that assertion.

In any case, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court of the United States decides that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, and further is not subject to restriction by the "militia clause".

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