Can We Please Stop Celebrating Domestic Terrorists?
By: Walter Rhein
Tags: Race, BlackLivesMatter, Politics, Terrorism, Guns

Can We Please Stop Celebrating Domestic Terrorists?

Photo by Jay Heike on Unsplash

On August 25th, two men who were protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake were shot and killed by a 17 year old with a rifle. The incident is still under investigation, but several chilling cell phone videos exist that document the situation (The video is disturbing, use viewer discretion, here is the link).

No matter how the investigation turns out, one thing is clear: we can’t have this.

We can’t have people marching around our streets with high-powered weapons shooting their fellow American citizens. We can’t have it. This should be a non-partisan position. Unfortunately, for years, right wing politics and media have been doing everything they can to push us into the disastrous position we find ourselves today. The Kenosha shooting is a step too far and we can only speculate on the upcoming horrors if the trend isn’t reversed.

We need zero police related deaths

Our police already kill far too many people. In fact, there should be zero police rated deaths in our country. Other countries don’t tolerate police related deaths and neither should we. But with the Kenosha shooting, the United States has descended to a whole new depth of insanity. It’s come to the point where private citizens feel they are empowered to pick up a rifle and hit the streets to assassinate bad guys.

But riddle me this, what if the guys they assassinate aren’t bad guys? And also, why isn’t every journalist, thought leader, television news reporter, and politician denouncing this development? Their silence, even encouragement in some cases, emboldens and empowers further murders.

It’s been a long time coming

Make no mistake, it’s not members of the left that are picking up weapons and walking around shooting people. It’s not members of the left that are assembling small armies and taking over government buildings by force. It’s not members of the left that are driving their vehicles through peaceful protests.

The right is doing that.

But the infuriating thing is that alt-right pundits will turn around after the latest slaying and work themselves up to hysterical levels as they justify their actions. When the crowd that just got plowed into by a man in a semi-truck pulls the driver from behind the wheel and beats him unconscious, alt-right lunatics will point and say, “See! See how violent the left is?” Never mind that the driver just killed multiple peaceful protesters.

The right always believes that they are the victims. They always believe that their violence is a response rather than an initiating action.

Looking for a fight

You don’t load your AR-15, put on surgical gloves, sling the rifle over your shoulder and hit the streets because you’re anticipating you might NOT have to shoot somebody. If you’re looking for violence, you’ll find it. To quote Johnny Cash, “Don’t take your guns to town son, leave your guns at home.”

This philosophy amounts to murder by self-defense. These people are grabbing their guns, marching into a highly tense situation, and looking for a person to shoot. That’s premeditated murder. It doesn’t matter who throws the first punch or rock in that circumstance.

Those people bring those guns to those situations with the intent to kill.

The Bundy standoff

We’ve been descending towards this moment for years. Back in 2014 when the Bundy standoff happened, I couldn’t figure out why Obama didn’t order the military to go in and eliminate those domestic terrorists. Instead, they were interviewing those guys on TV like they were celebrities instead of repugnant criminals.

As a nation, we simply can’t allow private citizens to pick up weapons and storm government property. It makes us look weak. It puts our citizens at risk. If these people have a gripe, they can do what everybody else does. They can vote. Grabbing a gun and forcing a change is terrorism.

To this day, people defend the repugnant behavior of armed protesters. Only a few months ago, armed protesters took over the Capitol in Michigan to protest the mask mandate. The media gleefully showed photos and videos of these idiots standing around holding their weapons in defiance of the orders of a democratically elected governor.

These protests need to be broken up. The people involved need to be arrested. When politicians and law enforcement allow this kind of behavior, it only emboldens further action. What we’ve seen is that this tacit encouragement has led to the loss of lives in a shooting in Kenosha that never should have happened.

You can’t walk around shooting people

I can’t believe that I actually have to type this. No, you can’t walk around shooting people. If you want to have a gun in your home that’s one thing, but if you take your gun to the streets you become a threat to all law-abiding citizens.

What happens if a guy like that comes across a person who accidentally locked himself out of his house? What if he sees a man prying open a car door and opens fire?

Stealing a car or breaking into a house isn’t a transgression that warrants the death penalty. It’s a big problem when private citizens who failed the psych exam to become an actual police officer take it upon themselves to act as judge, jury, and executioner on our city streets.

There’s no bigger issue than this

Something has to be said, unfortunately media personalities like the odious Tucker Carlson actually feel emboldened to praise the Kenosha shooter. The only result of that is that every other frustrated incel lunatic sitting in his mother’s basement polishing his weapon is going to see it as encouragement to strap on his body armor and do the same.

We can also rely on Trump to provide tacit encouragement of murderers. From his “there are good people on both sides” comment to his “white power” tweet, Trump is always soft on real and present threats to law abiding citizens.

On the Kenosha issue, Trump said he’s waiting for the investigation. Why do our media personalities and politicians refuse to denounce it when private citizens take up weapons and shoot each other? Just say, “Don’t walk around shooting people.”

Show the consequences

If this were any other news story, we’d see the grieving families, we’d see endless interviews with sobbing individuals who can’t believe the loss they’ve endured. They’d also show the shooter dressed in an orange jumpsuit and being escorted around in chains. It’s important to show that there are real consequences to murdering citizens.

Instead, we get none of that. The Kenosha shooter wasn’t even arrested at first. All we see is Tucker Carlson sneering at the screen encouraging others to go out and do the same.

Hey, Americans, you can’t kill each other! Why is that so hard to say?

Vigilante justice is not justice

If people want to be involved in police work then they have to go through the proper channels. They need to receive training. They need to be held accountable for their actions and work under the authority of a governing body.

Walking around shooting people is abhorrent. You’re not Batman. You’re the Joker!

If an individual demonstrates that he or she does not have the psychological or physical capacity to work in law enforcement, then s/he should not feel armed vigilantism is the next best thing. Why aren’t people saying this?

This isn’t gun-control, it’s anti-terrorism

The alt-right pundits are sitting in the wings, ready to warp this argument as an assault on gun rights. In my home state of Wisconsin, there are ceaseless political ads about non-existent proposals to steal the firearms of law-abiding citizens. These advertisements are nothing more than lies and propaganda, but they’re repeated with such frequency that they program the citizens.

All we can do is say that allowing people to walk the streets shooting their fellow citizens is a pro-terrorism stance. When a terrorist murders you without cause, s/he takes away all of your rights.

The right has a fundamental advantage in this conflict because the overwhelming majority of the time it’s members of the right assassinating members of the left. The politicians and the alt-right pundits don’t care if the life of a shooter is ruined by an act of domestic terrorism. They’re just happy at the net gain that comes with a conservative shooter manages to take out two liberal voters.

Speak out

This has got to stop. If we take the same approach to the Kenosha shooting that we took to the Bundy standoff or the Michigan occupation then I shudder to think what form the next transgression will take. If you diagram all these incidents on a graph, you get a trend of steadily increasing, pre-mediated violence.

Perhaps the next time an armed militia takes over a Capitol building, they’ll feel emboldened to open fire. For the life of me, I can’t comprehend why our politicians don’t recognize the existent threat to their personal safety. They have to do something to put an end to this insanity.

Stop domestic terrorism

It’s time that we labeled the alt-right as the domestic terrorists that they have become. When they sit on the sidelines and cheer as our citizens are slaughtered, they are just as guilty as the individuals pulling the trigger. American citizens have rights. We can’t stand silent and watch as all of those rights are indiscriminately stripped away.

Armed vigilantes and armed protests are terrorists. Spread the word. Ask the president why he supports domestic terrorism. Denounce media personalities that refuse to label these terrorists for what they are. We can’t have citizens marching down the street and shooting each other. That’s insane. Americans deserve better than that. We can’t allow this violence to continue.