Recognizing Tyranny in Social Movements and Governmental Bodies

Some of the most noteworthy recent events unfolding before our eyes are taking place in the Commonwealth of Virginia where the sitting governor and an elected legislative body have taken drastic steps to overthrow the Constitution. This has brought concern to right thinking citizens of the American Republic. As such The Standard thought it prudent to present various schemes and tactics commonly used by Marxists and tyrants to overthrow a country.

Over the past fifty plus years we have witnessed many events which should cause us concern regarding the direction which our country is going, and governing officials are leading us. Events such as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy; DB Cooper and airplane hijackings; Weathermen, Black Panthers, Patty Hearst, and other violent radical groups; the Gordon Kahl shoot out incident, the Randy Weaver incident, the Branch Davidian burn out at Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, 9-11, school shootings, and others. Following each of these events there was a strong push for firearm registration, limitation, or schemes to ban firearms, or to remove secured and guaranteed liberties enjoyed by law abiding  people. We saw in each case a typical cause and effect scenario with immediate legislation prepared and ready to be voted on.

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The Bill of Rights was created in 1791 at the demand of American patriots like Patrick Henry, George Mason and others known as Anti-Federalist’s. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to ensure that certain unalienable rights were written down so as to guarantee that they would not be overlooked, ignored or neglected. They included the Second Amendment guarantee of firearms to ensure liberty of the people.

The Second Amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

After Georgia passed an Act banning handguns in 1837, the US Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional.

 

A History of Gun Control Measures

Following the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed. The Gun Control Act of 1968 repealed and replaced the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, and updated the National Firearms Act of 1934 which was part of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal for Crime” proclaimed to stop crimes like the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” (Thought Co contributed to the timeline below.)

In 1972, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) was created.

In 1986, the Firearms Protection Act was passed. This act prohibited the private ownership of machine guns and redefined silencers to include parts for manufacture.

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, making it illegal to manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer, or receive any firearm that is not detectable by walk-through metal detectors. The law prohibited guns from not containing enough metal to trigger security screening machines found in airports, courthouses and other secure areas accessible to the public.

In 1993, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was passed which required backgrounds checks be performed prior to sale by licensed dealers. It also established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

The year 1994, brought in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This Act included in a subsection titled Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act a ban on “assault weapons”. The bill outlawed the manufacture, transfer, or ability to possess a semiautomatic assault weapon, unless grandfathered. The Act banned 19 separate firearms and magazines of ten round capacity or greater.

1997
The U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Printz v. United States, declares the background check requirement of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act unconstitutional.

October 1998
New Orleans becomes the first U.S. city to file suit against gunmakers, firearms trade associations, and gun dealers. The city’s suit seeks recovery of costs attributed to gun-related violence.

Nov. 12, 1998
Chicago files a $433 million suit against local gun dealers and makers alleging that oversupplying local markets provided guns to criminals.

Nov. 17, 1998
A negligence suit against gunmaker Beretta brought by the family of a 14-year-old boy killed by another boy with a Beretta handgun is dismissed by a California jury.

Nov. 30, 1998
Permanent provisions of the Brady Act go into effect. Gun dealers are now required to initiate a pre-sale criminal background check of all gun buyers through the newly created National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) computer system.

May 20, 1999
By a 51-50 vote, with the tie-breaker vote cast by Vice President Al Gore, the U.S. Senate passes a bill requiring trigger locks on all newly manufactured handguns and extending waiting period and background check requirements to sales of firearms at gun shows. This vote one month after the Columbine School shootings.

January 2005
California bans the manufacture, sale, distribution or import of the powerful .50-caliber BMG, or Browning machine gun rifle.

October 2005
President Bush signs the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act limiting the ability of victims of crimes in which guns were used to sue firearms manufacturers and dealers. The law includes an amendment requiring all new guns to come with trigger locks.

January 2008
In a move supported by both opponents and advocates of gun control laws, President Bush signs the National Instant Criminal Background Check Improvement Act requiring gun-buyer background checks to screen for legally declared mentally ill individuals, who are ineligible to buy firearms.

June 26, 2008
In its landmark decision in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment affirmed the rights of individuals to own firearms. The ruling also overturns a 32-year-old ban on the sale or possession of handguns in the District of Columbia.

Is That Tyranny?

Jon Roland, writing on the blog Constitution.org had many ideas worth mentioning. Roland wrote:

The methods used to overthrow a constitutional order and establish a tyranny are well-known. However, despite this awareness, it is surprising how those who have no intention of perpetrating a tyranny can slip into these methods and bring about a tyranny despite their best intentions. Tyranny does not have to be deliberate. Tyrants can fool themselves as thoroughly as they fool everyone else.

Control of public information and opinion
It begins with withholding information, and leads to putting out false or misleading information. A government can develop ministries of propaganda under many guises. They typically call it “public information” or “marketing”.

Vote fraud 
It doesn’t matter which of the two major party candidates are elected if no real reformer can get nominated, and when news services start knowing the outcomes of elections before it is possible for them to know, then the votes are not being honestly counted. used to prevent the election of reformers

Undue official influence on trials and juries
Nonrandom selection of jury panels, exclusion of those opposed to the law, exclusion of the jury from hearing argument on the law, exclusion of private prosecutors from access to the grand jury, and prevention of parties and their counsels from making effective arguments or challenging the government.

Usurpation of undelegated powers
This is usually done with popular support for solving some problem, or to redistribute wealth to the advantage of the supporters of the dominant faction, but it soon leads to the deprivation of rights of minorities and individuals.

Seeking a government monopoly on the capability and use of armed force
The first signs are efforts to register or restrict the possession and use of firearms, initially under the guise of “protecting” the public, which, when it actually results in increased crime, provides a basis for further disarmament efforts affecting more people and more weapons.

Militarization of law enforcement
Declaring a “war on crime” that becomes a war on civil liberties. Preparation of military forces for internal policing duties.

Infiltration and subversion of citizen groups that could be forces for reform
Internal spying and surveillance is the beginning. A sign is false prosecutions of their leaders.

Suppression of investigators and whistleblowers
When people who try to uncover high level wrongdoing are threatened, that is a sign the system is not only riddled with corruption, but that the corruption has passed the threshold into active tyranny.

Use of the law for competition suppression
It begins with the dominant faction winning support by paying off their supporters and suppressing their supporters’ competitors, but leads to public officials themselves engaging in illegal activities and using the law to suppress independent competitors. A good example of this is narcotics trafficking.

Subversion of internal checks and balances
This involves the appointment to key positions of persons who can be controlled by their sponsors, and who are then induced to do illegal things. The worst way in which this occurs is in the appointment of judges that will go along with unconstitutional acts by the other branches.

The Virginia Flag with the state motto ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’ — Thus forever to Tyrants, is a reminder of the temper of Virginians.

Creation of a class of officials who are above the law
This is indicated by dismissal of charges for wrongdoing against persons who are “following orders”.
Increasing dependency of the people on government
The classic approach to domination of the people is to first take everything they have away from them, then make them compliant with the demands of the rulers to get anything back again.

Increasing public ignorance of their civic duties and reluctance to perform them
When the people avoid doing things like voting and serving in militias and juries, tyranny is not far behind.

Use of staged events to produce popular support — False Flags
Acts of terrorism, blamed on political opponents, followed immediately with well-prepared proposals for increased powers and budgets for suppressive agencies. Sometimes called a Reichstag plot.

Conversion of rights into privileges
Requiring licenses and permits for doing things that the government does not have the delegated power to restrict, except by due process in which the burden of proof is on the petitioner.

Political correctness
Many if not most people are susceptible to being recruited to engage in repressive actions against disfavored views or behaviors, and led to pave the way for the dominance of tyrannical government.

Avoiding tyranny
The key is always to detect tendencies toward tyranny and suppress them before they go too far or become too firmly established. The people must never acquiesce in any violation of the Constitution. Failure to take corrective action early will only mean that more severe measures will have to be taken later, perhaps with the loss of life and the disruption of the society in ways from which recovery may take centuries.

 

Observers only need look to the Commonwealth of Virginia and recent events there to see drastic moves toward a potentially oppressive government rising with large outside money flowing from billionaire money sources to buy elections. Large numbers of registered voters stayed home and allowed a block agenda crowd to assume elected office who in all appearances seek to overthrow the order long established.

 

 

Michael Reed is Editor of The Standard.