Looks like David Barton enjoys trolling at least one website filled with right-wing hysteria about FEMA concentration camps, President Obama’s complicity in the murder of a U.S. ambassador and an America on the verge of a new civil war. And check out this Twitter post from the religious right’s favorite phony historian and pseudo-constitutional scholar:
“A novel approach to the gun ownership”
That quote is the headline to a blog post on a website for so-called “militia” groups, Well Regulated American Militias (WRAM). The post, which Barton links to, notes how a Vermont lawmaker insists that, the way he reads the Second Amendment, the U.S. Constitution actually requires all Americans to own firearms. So the lawmaker, state Rep. Fred Maslack, has filed a bill to enforce that “requirement”:
Under the bill, adults who choose not to own a firearm would be required to register their name, address, Social Security Number, and driver’s license number with the state. “There is a legitimate government interest in knowing who is not prepared to defend the state should they be asked to do so,” Maslack says.
Folks who choose not to own a firearm would be required to buy a $500 permit from the state.
The blogger goes on to quote approvingly from former WorldNetDaily.com columnist Claire Wolfe‘s book 101 Things to Do ‘Til the Revolution:
“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.” This makes sense! There is no reason why gun owners should have to pay taxes to support police protection for people not wanting to own guns. Let them contribute their fair share and pay their own way. Sounds reasonable to me! Non-gun owners require more police to protect them and this fee should go to paying for their defense!
Read the full blog post for yourself here. Then click around on the WRAM website. Maybe you’ll also find it interesting that Barton spends his time trolling a website with articles that claim the KKK is a left-wing organization and suggesting that the United Nations and U.S. government are involved in a conspiracy to disarm Americans, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is setting up concentration camps, that America is about to erupt in civil war and that President Obama deliberately allowed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans to be murdered in Libya. And pictures like these:
posted on MustReadTexas.com
Ignorance and arrogance are usually a troubling combination. This Vermont representative is but another example. Let sensible citizens be thankful that there are not enough other zealots from safe “red” districts who will get behind such a bill (as well as other dangerous attempts to impose such nonsense on the country) to do damage to the individual freedoms that they so loudly espouse. As a retired professor of U.S. history who has taught graduate courses in the federalist era and the history of the constitution, I am appalled at this display of ignorance .
A racist relative of mine believed that the individual negro, any negro, is the single most powerful civil force in the United States. It appears that this collection of idiots agrees with him.
The funniest part about this is that Fred Fred Maslack hasn’t even been in the Vermont legislature for at least a decade. His gun ownership bill was introduced on January 28th, 2000 and never even got a second reading. David Barton is crowing about something that never happened almost 13 years ago.
http://www.leg.state.vt.us/database/status/summary.cfm?Bill=H.0760&Session=2000
Joe: But Barton is a historian! How could he be wrong?
The militias referenced in the web site name are anything but well-regulated.
While that 2nd Amendment interpretation seems whacko (as described; I didn’t follow the link), and the question of whether it would be a wise exercise of government authority is readily debatable, making gun ownership mandatory looks like it might be a permissible exercise of government power under current precedent. The federal Militia Acts of 1792 made gun ownership mandatory for every “free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years”. In so far as states also have militias, presumably a State could place a similar requirement on its citizens.
If Barton and his friends think it’s a good idea to have no paid police, but instead have everyone tote guns everywhere, there’s a place where this social experiment has been going on for some years now: Somalia.
Anyone want to contribute to a one-way ticket there for Barton?
My first response to the individuals who think that President Obama is a Communist/Socialist/Traitor, is why in the blazes don’t they pack up and LEAVE THE COUNTRY? I would LOVE for them to go to a real Communist/Socialist country to see what those kinds of governments really are.
I just heard today that a large number of Republicans think that ACORN stole the election for Obama. Amazing! They don’t even know that they managed to shut down that organization four years ago?
Another knuckle dragger said that the “underclass” was responsible for Obama’s election. Where do they come off with that kind of stupidity? About the only people who voted for what’s-his-name were senile seniors and white men. That means that the rest of us who voted are all black?
The Republican Party needs to undergo psychological treatment. The fact is that they LOST by eleven points! They lost the electoral college by over 100 points.
I hope they get over their methane poisoning that they suffer from because of their habit of being their own proctologists.
Shooting at people would be a very very bad idea David.Take your medication.Praise the Lord.
Commanding Officer
Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines
“The Walking Dead”
1974-1976
Pacific Fleet Marksmanship Champion