Where is the National Guard?

Some armed right wing extremists have broken into a US federal wildlife refuge and are willing to kill to make their point. http://gawker.com/sons-of-noted-racist-vigilante-are-willing-to-kill-in-s-1750764305

Where is the National Guard? When black people protest in the street, the National Guard is called pretty quickly. Why isn't the public behind shooting those right wing extremists? They are breaking the law and are obviously dangerous. The public is always for the shooting of black people who were breaking the law and danerous, even if they were not armed.

The National Guard is sometimes used for crowd control in urban and suburban areas.

The folks at the refuge are not moving through an area. The are sitting still, in a few buildings in a rural area, apparently miles from any real population center. They don't pose a threat to bystanders or property, largely because there aren't any bystanders or property there to threaten. The tactical situation is entirely different. So we should expect different tactics to be used on them, should we not?

And, by the way "the public" is not "always for shooting of black people". Your outrage is oversimplified and overgeneralized.

I am in favor of equal treatment under the law for people of all races, and I agree with you that if they were black or musilms people would be demanding immediate armed intervention. However, I think in this situation that using the national guard might create more problems than it solves.

One of the main reasons for that is "that is what they want." The group that has forcibly occupied the refuge consists of the classic white, rural, armed, militia nuts who desperately want some way to justify their position to at least some of the general public. Probably the most effective way for them to appeal to a certain segment of the general public would be for the federal government to violently enforce the law, which would then be spun as the "government oppression" that the group pretends they were protesting against from the beginning.

Another reason is that the national guard has a history of screwing up domestic issues. Probably one of the most memorable, if for no other reason than there's a song about it, is the Kent State Ohio massacre of four students by the national guard.

Now that's not to say that I'm in favor of doing nothing. You can't just let people with guns walk in and take over whatever they want to. That's a horrible precedent to set. Maybe they should just deliver a couple cases of whiskey to the refuge then wait till the nutjobs are passed out drunk before going in to arrest them.

Umbran said:

The National Guard is sometimes used for crowd control in urban and suburban areas.

The folks at the refuge are not moving through an area. The are sitting still, in a few buildings in a rural area, apparently miles from any real population center. They don't pose a threat to bystanders or property, largely because there aren't any bystanders or property there to threaten. The tactical situation is entirely different. So we should expect different tactics to be used on them, should we not?

And, by the way "the public" is not "always for shooting of black people". Your outrage is oversimplified and overgeneralized.

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Maybe you're taking what I said too literaly. My design what to underline how the response to white people with firearms and black people with firearms (or noweapons for that matter) is different. It could also extent to the different mediatic coverage of both. Heck, I'm wonder if these right wing extremists aren't just terrorists and how the coverage is different from Islamic terrorists.

goldomark said:

Maybe you're taking what I said too literaly.

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I think a non-literal statement about what is going on does a great disservice to all sides and the function of reason. Inflammatory words and over-generalized positions drive wedges between people, rather than drive them to understanding.

So, if you are trying to keep these matters more difficult to deal with, by making people defensive, by all means, continue to be inaccurate.

The coverage of this story on CNBC is moderately hilarious: it shows a photograph of "No. 4 hole at Pacific Dunes course, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Bandon, Oregon" on the west coast of Oregon -- nigh unto three hundred miles* away from Malheur Harney County** in eastern Oregon.

Because, Yeah! A luxurious golf course on the humid west coast is just exactly like a wildfire-burned ranch and federal lands in the arid eastern part of the state -- right? (Sheesh!)

It doesn't matter that the two men on whose behalf the occupiers arrived were not in favor of the intervention, does it?

Personally, I think the National Guard would do just as much good in this case by gathering in Portland and going out for doughnuts, because their showing up in Malheur Harney County** would simply give the attention-seeking Bundy family more of the attention they seek.


* actually closer to 250 - 275 miles as the crow flies; but the roads do wind hither and yon quite a bit.

** The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is in Harney County, not farther east in Malheur County.

tuxgeo said:

Personally, I think the National Guard would do just as much good in this case by gathering in Portland and going out for doughnuts, because their showing up in Malheur County would simply give the attention-seeking Bundy family more of the attention they seek.

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As much as I think that there is a lot of critique with the power of goverment, legislations, the justice system, etc, I have issues when the law isn't applied to everyone equally. Inaction from the government is not a good thing. These extremists are getting away with stuff that no other group would get away with. They are setting precedent and showing the biases of law enforcement. Althought exposing biases ain't necessarely bad, it isn't their intention.

No, it isn't. Stuff is usually burning to the ground before the NG gets called in.

Well, the article states that the armed militia are to come to the refuge & join them....
So maybe wait until all/more of the targets gather together & hit them all at once?

Or maybe just ignore them & only deal with them if they cause actual trouble.

But sure, let's talk double-standards. Why is it that blacks are 12% of the population, but commit more than half of the murders in this country year in, year out, yet this fact is treated like a state secret? It's always couched in euphemism, chiefly by stating the large share of the victims who are black.

If whites had murder rates as high as blacks, you can bet the media would make hay out of that (they certainly make a ton of hay out of phantom "crimes" like "white privilege" and the like). In fact, they do make hay where they can, taking every opportunity to play up the "mass shooter" thing, because that's where you find the most whites and the fewest blacks.