As a wise horse once said, "No sir... I don' like it!"

So. Us Libertarians and survivalists and preppers and Second Amendment Types are all just a bunch of crazy, conspiracy-addicts who see g-men in black helos behind every bush and have Kool-aid socials with Alex Jones, right? Well, that's what normal folks would have us believe. Hell, "preppers" even autocorrects to preposterous on the phone I'm typing on now so, we must totally out of our freakin gourds.

Wait... what?

You say obscure arms of the federal government, agencies that should have little if anything to do with armed enforcement agents, are stockpiling weapons and ammo at an alarming rate? And those agencies are buying things like 12-gauge shotguns, .40 SW and .357 Sig hollow-points; things that are usually, if not explicitly designed to be, used against people? Now, I'm a fan of the venerable .40 SW (Sig P229, baby. My weapon of Choice!) but, the way I see it, the only reason to buy several million (450 actually, but who's counting...) rounds of it is that you foresee a very pressing need arising to use it.

Wait, you say...

It's DHS, and they have to prep for natural disaster response.  We all saw the violence in the wake of Katrina. They need to protect themselves from crazies that shoot at SAR helicopters. And NOAA's division of fisheries or whatever. Poachers can be downright unpleasant. And Social Security... retirees and disabled folks can be pretty... well... Education! The DOE, now they need a bunch of 12 gauges for... for...

You see what I did there? Stick wit me...

What the actual fuck is going on here? Why are they doing this?

These are agencies that operate exclusively WITHIN the borders of the U.S. and have no military powers and only indirect (or so I thought) law enforcement authority. It seems to me that Somebody at a real high pay grade thinks it prudent for the Fed to guns-and-ammo themselves all to hell and gone for something. Something that they obviously feel will be a Big Bad and that they will be "called on" or "forced" to put a lid on and, frankly, this scares the ever-lovin piss outta me. Again, these are internal agencies so, either they expect to be invaded from without and are prepping to assist in the formation of a militia OR the Big Bad they're expecting for supper...

...is us.

When the SHTF and our orderly, day to day society begins to go south, it might take armed government agents from DHS to enforce curfews and see to orderly distributions of rations and supplies. Or from the DOE to keep our kids in their schools to learn that "everything will be juuust fine". Or from NOAA to keep people from overfishing and taking too much for themselves and their families. Or from the IRS and SSA to make sure you keep paying your fair share and your neighbor uses your share... i mean, his benefits, correctly. Or from the FDA (haven't heard anything about them yet, but it wont surprise me when I do) to make sure you don't drink that unsafe raw milk from your neighbor's cow since you cant afford the "safe", federally approved stuff (that your local Kroger probly won't have anyway) or that your backyard garden doesn't make you not need the DHS rations...

Sinister, ain't it.

Now, I know conspiracyism is a slippery slope and it's easy to go from concerned citizen to tin foil hat model in 2.3 seconds but, people, I beg you to remember the old adage that just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean They ain't after ya.

But, hey. The Mainstream's probly right and it's probably just one big ol' misunderstanding and they really are just buying the expensive, front-line duty ammo to waste on paper-people and those fun Ozombie bin Laden targets. It is the same government that pays four- or five-figure prices for hammers and toilet seats after all...

Still... something's just itching in the back of the ol' brainpan on this one. Think I'll play a little Ask Dr. Google and see what he comes back with. I recommend you grab the nearest convenient web-enabled device and play along at home.

Hey Jonesy,  how's that Kool-Aid coming? The gang's almost here...

dc

The plot sickens...

PM

In regards to the Aurora, CO movie theater shooting:
The American Media has already revved up the Spin Machine and begun the Parade of Experts to wring their hands and explain why this all happened. I've already heard that this was a quest for notoriety or a cry for attention. To me, this cheapens the tragedy a little and lends an air of sanity to the shooter. Sociopathic sanity, to be sure, but it implies that he knew what he was doing was incredibly wrong but did it anyway just to get everyone speaking his name.
 
Here's my armchair analysis... <deep breath>
 
This guy is deeply disturbed and feels, for whatever reason, oppressed by Society. I am not a fan of the Batman comics and therefore not an expert on the character Bane but from what I've read about the movie he is a domestic terrorist who seeks to bring down the oppressive whatever of Gotham City. It looks to me like our boy identified with that character and sought to emulate him to the fullest extent possible in order to make a statement. To me, most all mass shootings like this are statements. These are people who feel powerless. They are, for numerous reasons, ill-equipped to deal with those feelings. You and I may feel powerless from time to time, but generally we sigh and say "What can you do?" and go on about our daily lives (I could go on and on about why that is a direct cause of our current governmental situation... and I will, but not here). To some, however, that same feeling that we shrug off becomes a splinter in their eye. It burns and it festers and it increasingly dominates their thoughts until it becomes all-consuming. As the commercial says, when you feel powerless, you want to take the power back. Now, you or I might get involved with a political organization or a cause/charity, learn a martial art, ...start a blog... but to those who lack that capacity, violence is nearly always the answer.
 
(Side note, to those who say violence never solves anything, read history. It's generally solved everything for those who supplied it. Not advocating, just being honest.)
 
Columbine, Virginia Tech, any bombing undertaken by Al Qaeda et al, now this. Pick a mass murder and you'll find someone trying to exert power over those they view as oppressively In Power either directly, as in Columbine, or indirectly. It's not about notoriety or Getting on TV, but the people we "trust" to report on news stories such as this have long ago become unable to keep their thirst for popularity and desire to be on camera from coloring their analysis and therefore everything like this is reported through that prism. As George Carlin said, always doubt the offered story and seek your own answers.
 
Now to the main reason I brought this up.
 
Gun Control.
 
I am a Strict-Constructionalist Libertarian. I think the Constitution was a Pretty Neat Idea until they added the 2nd Amendment, then it became the Greatest Thing to Ever Happen in The History of the Governance of Free People. The fact that our founders built a republic with the built-in safety valve against tyranny that is the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms speaks volumes about how focused those men were on the concept of Liberty. Let's put it this way: You start a business and hire people. You promise your new employees that they will have a say in the running of your business and you then give them the means to remove you and install new leadership should you ever become a tyrannical boss and deny them their voice in the company. That's what the Founders did. They guaranteed the right, and more importantly the ability, of the people to remove from power the very government they set up if it ever became an impediment to the Liberty of the People. Our current ruling class is very aware of the danger the 2nd amendment poses to them. If the People ever fully realize the extent to which their Liberty has been eroded and becomes fully aware of their on legal and physical ability to take the power back then our elected "leaders" are truly up a certain well-known watercourse without a means of propulsion. 
(Granted, we would have a much tougher row to hoe than our founders did, given the disparity between the people's arms and those of the government but, again we'll talk later...) This awareness, shared by every despotic regime ever (read history, they nearly all banned the private ownership of weapons), has led our current administration to subterfuge to push the Anti-2nd Agenda. Fast and Furious, for those who haven't heard, put high-powered, high-capacity firearms almost directly into the hands of Mexican drug cartels (who, way the by, make Pol Pot and Idi Amin look like grade school bullies in terms of violence) in an effort to "track their movements across the border".
 
Pardon my French, but bullshit.
 
There are only two reasons to enact such a program. Either A: their telling the truth and they are so incompetent as to think that might actually work without getting American citizens killed or, B: to use it as a political banner to say "Look! These evil guns were sold by evil gun shop owners to these evil drug lords who came back and killed a bunch of Americans! We must BAN ALL PRIVATELY OWNED GUNS!!! DOWN WITH THE 2ND AMENDMENT!!!". I may be exaggerating a little and of course they would never be that clear about their intentions but, again, read history. Every time there is a major, national-news level incident involving guns, every Anti-2nd nut in Congress, the Media, and the General Population leaps from the woodwork demanding more and stricter controls on the private ownership of guns. Now, before those who think folks like me are all tin-foil-hat conspiracy junkies start in on me, I do not think that today's shooting was planned or even expected in any way to push the agenda (...or was it?). I just think that, if the Obama Regime, and specifically its Department of "Justice", were willing to green-light something as monumentally stupid as Fast and Furious to push this agenda, who in their right mind would think they would not try to use this massive tragedy (12 dead, 50 injured!) to their political advantage. 
 
I know, I know, you say "How could they accomplish that? It's in the Constitution that Congress shall make no law..."
 
Here's where I would interrupt you.
 
Exactly!, I'd say. CONGRESS shall make no law. Doesn't say anything about executive orders.
 
Admittedly, the Constitution does lay some pretty heavy limits on the powers of the executive branch and that type of thing is technically illegal. Problem is, those limits have to be enforced by Congress, and Congress, hell, all of D.C., is full of lawyers.
 
Lawyers (pl. noun): people who make livings wringing every possible nuance of meaning from any set of words in order to justify damn near any action. see also: Liar 
 
This President (also a lawyer) has already shown that he is more than willing to circumvent the will of Congress and enact policy on his own and the current crop of miscreants in congress, especially the ruling party of the Senate, have also shown that they are willing to let him circumvent them in the name of Party Solidarity (hmmm... that sounds suspiciously Soviet. Is My Freudian slip showing?). Now I will admit that as I type this, Mr. Obama is using the TV coverage of one of his campaign stops in FL to make his Official Presidential Statement on the shooting and, to his credit, he made not one mention of the guns involved. 
 
Don't worry, he will.
 
Or Biden will. Or Pelosi or Reid. It's coming folks. There will come a day, fairly soon, I think-before the people wake up and grab their boots, when these people will try to bring their Anti-2nd Agenda to its logical conclusion. These leeches and ghouls will use anything, any event no matter how tragic, to their political advantage. 
 
The plot sickens...
 
till next time, 
dc.    
 
P.s., since writing this, it has come to light that Mr. Holmes identified with The Joker and not Bane.