“The nutty notion that a citizen can be heavily enough armed to fight off the government went up in smoke near Big Bear Lake,” George Skelton opines at latimes.com. “This may sound crazy to most normal people, but there are some obsessed gun owners — although a minority, surely — who believe they need to arm themselves to perhaps combat government oppression.” Skelton proceeds to quote readers’ emails to paint gun owners as deranged right wing racists and proto-terrorists. Which doesn’t really matter because they’ve already lost the argument over the Second Amendment, apparently . . .

I’m certainly no constitutional lawyer, but it should be obvious to everyone by now that the right to bear arms can be “infringed.” We’re not allowed to bear bazookas. Or machine guns. No automatic rifles. What’s mainly at issue these days are semi-automatics — so-called assault weapons — and mega-magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.

In Skelton’s humble not-to-say-ill-informed opinion “assault weapons” (all semis?) and “mega-magazines” (standard capacity?) are no damn good when it comes to preventing government tyranny. As Christopher Dorner’s demise proves—despite the fact that he managed to stay alive for so long without any logistical support, forcing police to spend millions in his pursuit.

As of this writing, it’s not clear what suspected killer Christopher Dorner had in his arsenal. But it was enough to hold off law enforcement in Tuesday’s shootout until someone upped the firepower, literally, by lobbying incendiary tear gas into the cabin where the axed cop apparently was making a last stand against the government.”

The government virtually always wins.

And here I was thinking that we the people—armed as we are—ARE the government. Silly me.

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141 COMMENTS

  1. If anything, the Dorner case proves how armed citizens could cause some real trouble.

    That was one guy, and look at everything they expended on him? (Note: I am not defending him nor his actions, merely taking an objective look at tactics) What would happen if every armed American, or even just half of them, got upset enough because of a tyranny too extreme some day? The government wouldn’t be able to hold out.

    The government’s force is overwhelming, but it has to be localized and depends entirely on that overwhelming force. They can’t project that overwhelming force nation wide, all at the same time.

    • “They can’t project that overwhelming force nation wide, all at the same time.”

      This was the idea that originally underlay the Second Amendment.

    • The best part.

      Dorner was one man. Imagine now if we had a few thousand. A few hundred thousand. A couple million. Spread all over the nation.

      Yeah.

    • What is incendiary tear gas???
      The same stuff the Gov. used at Waco?
      How does it differ from regular tear gas?
      Even Rambo didn’t win!
      I’m sure old GW had some of these thought’s at Valley Forge!
      How am I going to beat the best Army in the world, with this bunch of pissed off British Citizens?

      guy22

    • HA HA HA HA HA HA. Stupid evil libtards just dont get the asymetrical/guerrilla warfare game. You dont wait for ‘BIG GOV’ silly.
      You go OFFENSIVE when your neighbors doors are kicked in and start ‘operating’ alone or with a few ‘close friends’ when the sun goes down.
      First the arson, vandalism, noncivil protest, etc…..then, if people start dying, the targeted assassinations. You dont wait for them to come to you, you go to them (when they are off work….at home….with their families).
      Of cource, this picture of tyrannical terror should, could, and I hope will never be, unless we let it happen in the future. Its up to us to make sure things are handled peacefully.

    • Hard to call a 5:1 kill ratio “losing”.

      The guy was a danger and needed to be apprehended, but if anything he demonstrated that a determined, well-trained gunman is not to be taken lightly.

      • *no happy about the captcha – we should have accounts if we need captchas*

        I book marked this yesterday, this LA Times guy is a quack.
        IF anything, like many of you said, it shows how much chaos A SINGLE MAN can cause. 1 guy had the ATF, FBI, LAPD, and SBPD hunting for him. 1 guy…… THEY USED DRONES for christ sakes.

        It blows me away that these morons would rather laydown and die, and allow government to do whatever it wants when ever it wants. Look, if our guns are not strong enough, than we need more of them. It doesn’t mean just give them up because resistance is futile.

        Look at Vietnam…. We threw everything we had at them short of a nuke, and those farmers with AK47’s did quite a number on us.

        Also, if there was all out war, there is (I hope) a percentage of personell who would stand down and refuse to obey unconstitutional orders. The problem being is that they’ll just be relieved of duty and replaced with someone who doesnt want to rock the boat. The orders will be followed by someone . I’m sure of that.

        • what, you think the true Patriots in the military will simply sit back and remain silent once they’re relieved of duty for refusing to follow an unconstitutional order? you have much to learn about Patriots my friend.

        • I’m personally sick of this meme – That is, using past infringement of the 2nd amendment as proof that infringement is OK now. I wasn’t alive in 1934, or 68, and I wasn’t of age in ’86. I think they should repeal all of that crap – Shall Not Infringe, means what it says. If I can afford a damn bazooka, I want to be able to buy a damn bazooka! The responsibility and the laws regarding its misuse are still in play regardless of what I own. So this always comes down to one thing – the government treating me like a child!
          I am sick of it.

        • Indeed. As one of those patriots, I assure you we will turn their own guns against them should they do such an unconstitutional thing.

      • Using Dorners 5:1 kill ratio, a minimum force of 800,000 gun owners is needed to kill all military, police, Federal agents, etc (this includes supervisors, secretaries, FBI psychologists, etc who never touch a gun). There’s a minimum of 80 MILLION gun owners. That means if (using the low end estimate of gun owners, which is acknowledge to be underestimating due to many gun owners lying when asked about gun ownership), if only 1% of gun owners rebelled they could potentially wipe out all government forces.

        And the government thinks they could win a civil war?!

        • Precisely.

          The ignorant love to rattle on about how the government has tanks, aircraft, nukes and so on but they truly show how little they know about contemporary warfare especially when they broach the subject of a war within our borders. For as smart as they think are they’re sure missing a shitload of reality.

      • In fact, none of them are preceded by a comma, but sometimes they’re preceded by an apostrophe.

        I can be pedantic, too!

      • This William guy must a hoot at parties:

        “No no, you idiot! You’re using the wrong fork! If you hadn’t slept through kindergarten like the mouth-breathing imbecile you are, you’d know to take THIS one and jab it into a wall socket instead. Here, watch me!”

        • Buzzkill, pedantic, yup that William is just crazy. Those antiquated words in the 2A are just for the old fogies. The meaning is different now.

          The same folks who don’t know how to use apostrophes are the ones who tell you the 2A is about the National Guard.

          Sorry, but when I went to public grade school, you didn’t pass 2nd grade if you didn’t learn how to differentiate between plural, possessive, and contraction. Nobody gave you a gold star for failure and ignorance. This misuse of apostrophes is a horrible trend of misapplication, not a typo.

          It may take all of 60 minutes to have an adequate working knowledge of classical French service, and what all those forks and spoons are for. A nice meal is not shoveling pudding at the Ponderrgrossa. A nice meal is an event, and as such, has certain conventions for a reason.

        • Hey, 16V, I need a little help here in figuring out your deal. Are you a traveler from beyond the stars who’s new to our Earthling customs and perhaps unfamiliar with these things we call “jokes,” or are you just a bit of a prick?

        • Lucas, Perhaps I was a bit heavy-handed, Got interrupted mid-sentence, so I just cranked that one out and sent it.

          But I’m also a bit of a prick…

      • It’s not a comma, it’s an apostrophe…any second grader knows that.
        LMAO at the fork in the outlet comment, just LMFAO

      • Maybe you should read up on your grammar before you go shooting your mouth off. A semicolon is not a comma.

  4. Someone needs to tell that to the Syrian Rebels who seem to be slowly taking over a country that has superior fire power. Don’t know what they started with but my guess the rebels kind of borrowed a few tanks and such, probably with some pretty basic weapons at the start.

    • I saw a youtube video last summer that showed a guy who built a tank out of a truck and some scrap metal that could be controlled with a video game controller or driven by hand and had a mounted LMG.

  5. If the government ever gets too powerful for a united people to control it, then we are truly lost. The LA Times seems to relish the end of the American experiment in freedom.

    One man can’t hold back an army, and no one has ever claimed such. But no government can keep the entire population oppressed if we are all united and armed.

    • The point that gun nuts seem to miss entirely is that no government can keep the entire population oppressed if we are all united. PERIOD. Guns are not a necessary part of that equation – no government in history has managed to stay in power for long against the will of the majority, it just isn’t physically possible.

      The most oppressive regime I can think of in the world right now is North Korea, and they would still fall in a day if all the citizens rose up, with or without any guns.

      • Therefore we should just roll over and let it happen, comforted in the solace that someday somehow the will of the majority will put an oppressive government in its place.

      • Maybe the citizens don’t rise up because they don’t have guns? And if unarmed citizens rise up they may prevail, but at what cost? You seem to favor making it as hard as possible on the oppressed.

        But you claim to be British and a large part of your people’s history is about making it hard for the oppressed to rise.

        • Name one territory the British have held on to with force over the will of the local majority. Just one.

          Yeah – I love it when idiots disprove their own position, don’t you?

        • Speaking of idiots, way to miss the point hmmmmmer. I never said that the locals couldn’t rise up, even if unarmed. It just makes it harder and more bloody and allows the oppressors to last longer.

          But you already knew that. Troll.

        • “Name one territory the British have held on to with force over the will of the local majority. Just one.”

          hmmmmmm, lets think.

          The Orange Republic and Transvaal during the Boer Wars???

          what prize do I get?

        • Ill also add: how long did britain control india with force against the wishes of the majority???

          ill leave that up to you.

      • Perhaps, but your much less likely to see a regime get into power in the first place if the citizenry has the means to resist. That’s the point of the 2A.

      • Sure you the majority can revolt against a tyrannical government and win but a hell of a lot more of them DIE if they can’t resist with arms. In countries where unarmed resistance worked it has only worked after the bodies of the innocent piled up so high the tyrants lose their taste for killing or run out of will, or are left with nothing to exploit that is worth the cost.

        • He can barely contain his glee. Make no mistake, this piece of **** would love to see people resisting oppressive government and the Cult of the Total State be killed. It must’ve taken him a lot of willpower to stop masturbating to his sick fantasies so he could finally get around to writing this article.

          I hope this human cancer gets cancer.

      • How utterly simplistic of you to come up with that. As someone who’s actually been to NK I can tell you there is no way they can do what you propose. It is a police State with a Military First policy. It is illegal to say anything bad about the dear leader. The secret police are everywhere and control everything. They have no cell phones, no unrestricted Internet access, and no freedom whatsoever. They aren’t allowed to own guns, to assemble, to protest.

        They will never be able to organize an uprising and are utterly, hopelessly enslaved.

        Try again.

        • If it’s as bad as you say then having guns would be of no help to the people of North Korea either, would it slick.

        • They have no cell phones, no unrestricted Internet access…

          Umm, if you had actually been there you would know that while they are not as absolutely everywhere as they are in say, South Korea, there’s over 1.5MM cell phones up and running right now. And that’s just the legit ones. They now let tourists keep theirs while in country on their staged and managed tours. But you knew that, right?

          There’s lots of illegal cell use that happens in the informal economy near the Chinese border. Which includes lots of internet access on them thar smarty phones. You’ve heard of them, right? Dey can access da interwebz on them thangs. On Chinese networks no less.

          If you want to claim that you’ve been somewhere, it’s more believable when it concurs with what everybody who actually has been has known for the last 10 years.

      • if if if if if if

        How many decades or centuries does it take before the oppressed unarmed masses to rise up fearing life more than death to overthrow an armed regime? Did the masses of Soviet or Chinese citizens rise up? Before you refer to others as idiots go look in your mirror.

        • Thank you hmmmm for being the poster child for everyone who completely and utterly misses the point of disarmament.

          * clap clap clap.

      • “The point that gun nuts seem to miss entirely is that no government can keep the entire population oppressed if we are all united. PERIOD. Guns are not a necessary part of that equation”

        I somewhat agree with the first part even though the Roman Empire demonstrated a rather “unique” talent for counter insurgency that kept majorities opposed to them oppressed for a number of decades and centuries.

        Moving to the age of gunpowder and into the modern era, you are correct that revolutions dont necessarily have to be violent to enact change (such as Ghandi’s India even though there were other variables such as the decline of the British Empire), but nevertheless the case for the 2nd amendment is still a compelling one. Most revolutions in history have been instigated with force, meaning at the end of a barrel.

        your contention that guns are irrelevant if a majority wants a power to stop controlling them is simply incorrect and contradictory to historical fact. A armed population to fight against tyranny is relevant even today.

      • This Chinese poster would like to remind you of that time when you people started a war with another country so you could sell drugs to them.

        And then you decided that wasn’t enough and decided to just up and take Hong Kong over too.

        Hypocrite.

        You are right about one thing though. It is pretty awesome when idiots disprove their own position.

        • Umm, wow. Obviously you are unaware this is a USA website, not a UK website.

          Not sure what they taught you in “work for $2 day as a slave university”, but it was the Brits that did that little ‘Opium War’ thing on your people. Not the US. They’re the guys with some islands in the Atlantic Ocean.

          Although knowing the pathetic quality of education in your country, you might have a history doctorate.

        • The Falklands? Ireland? Did your mother drink a lot during pregnancy? You might want to check real quick as to who actually lives on the Falklands – but trust me that they very much want to remain British, and identify as British.

          As for Ireland, perhaps you don’t keep up with current events but they haven’t been ruled by the British for decades now. Northern Ireland still is, but again the majority wish it to be that way.

          Do you want another try? Pro tip though, if you do, Canada, Australia and the USA also wouldn’t be valid examples.

  6. Dorner was 1 lone nutjob and he tied southern california in knotts. Think of 1,000 plus nutjobs organised and fighting in units. Or 10,000. Or several million with defecting cops and servicemen. Surely we can do what the Syrians and the Libyans and the Egyptians can do. We did it once before in 1776.

    • Rather think of just 100 nut jobs spread around the country working individually with no connection but a belief in the Constitution, picking off targets of opportunity when they arise.

      The key here is that potential oppressors are also our neighbors. People know where they live, what their cars look like, where they shop for groceries, etc. This has been a theme in fiction more than once.

      • Without leadership or organization 100 lone nutjobs can do a lot of damage. But the point is to end the oppression. Not just create a body count.

        • Those that negotiate victory should have deniability relative to the patriots taking more, ahem, direct action. That way they’ll be better able to accomplish their objectives of bringing things to a successful ending.

        • But the point is to end the oppression. Not just create a body count.

          Rack up a high enough body count and it’ll end. It takes them time to train new thugs and as the body count grows, you inspire more people to join your cause because the better you do, the fewer people see it as a “lost cause”.

  7. He had an entire state crapping it’s pants, and that was one crazy dude… Imagine 100 crazy dudes, or 1000 crazy dudes, or 1,000,000 unified people…

    • There’s been a lot of comments about potential conflict between patriots and the military and police. That’s exactly the way George Skelton framed the discussion in his oped.

      He’s wrong.

      Many of those military and police are patriots too. If there is ever to be an enemy, it will be the elites like George Skelton who want to take away inalienable Constitutional rights. These will be people in positions like politicians, bureaucrats, and their media and crony capitalist lap dogs. Really, any enabler, promoter or supporter of oppression will be fair game.

      George Skelton and his ilk would love to frame conflict as only between patriots and the police and military. Such an approach would be stupid, and the smart ones would go after the real enemy, not their metaphorical fist and shield.

    • There’s been a lot of comments about potential conflict between patriots and the military and police. That’s exactly the way George Skelton framed the discussion in his oped.

      George is wrong.

      Many of those military and police are patriots too. If there is ever to be an enemy, it will be the elites like George Skelton who want to take away inalienable Constitutional rights. These will be people in positions like politicians, bureaucrats, and their media and crony capitalist lap dogs. Really, any enabler, promoter or supporter of oppression will be fair game.

      George Skelton and his ilk would love to frame conflict as only between patriots and the police and military. Such an approach would be stupid, and the smart ones would go after the real enemy, not their metaphorical fist and shield.

      • I agree. Hypothetically speaking, and I do NOT use the term sarcastically, if the media ever supported the rise a a truly tyrannical government, those media figures would be fair game for termination by the people.

  8. yeah, I would say the opposite, they needed the resources of a whole state and displayed gross misconduct to catch one guy. What would have happened if an organized group started popping the cops (or random civilians, but the LAPD seem to have that market cornered)? I’ll bet that the anti’s will suddenly wish they had spent a little time on the range and had a gun or 2.

  9. I’ve never understood the “resistance is futile” argument. Maybe he should tell his (assumingly) beloved Lakers they should forfeit the rest of the season then…

  10. One person with a gun going up against the police/military/government doesn’t stand a chance, the same way if one Syrian rebel tried to overthrow their government or a single colonist decided to try to take on the British redcoats by himself.

    Overcoming oppression and tyranny by an armed citizenry was never meant to be a one-person job. When a sufficiently armed population bands together under a common goal, nothing short of nuking everyone could stop them.

    • Excellent points. Look how those little guys in black pajamas in Vietnam gave the mighty U. S. military a (metaphorical) bloody nose. Dorner was just one man, there are millions of freedom-loving American patriots.

  11. Talk about someone writing an article with a closed mind, this case showed us that one well trained, armed man can resist.

    It took all of the resources the LEO’s in the area could bring to bare to track down this one guy and he still killed or wounded 4 LEO’s.

    What would have happened if it wasn’t just one guy..but two..or four…or fourty?

    What would happen if you have 100 Chris Dorners running around in the area right around L.A.? At some point the manpower runs out and while you might get some of them, others will remain well hidden. at some point choices are made to protect and secure this area and not that area. We see it with our street gangs. While 100% of shootings may be solved in Beverly Hills , what precentage are solved in south central?

    As was pointed out, if only 10% of gun owners in America decided to resist the Government the combined Army, Marine Core and Reserve troops + leos would be outnumbered by many times. Yet one man has shown that he can tie down massive amounts of resources.

    • Better yet, what happens when the uprising resorts to IEDs and ambush tactics rather than stand up fights? Hit and run raids? Real guerrilla warfare was something Dorner could never pull off. A hundred Dorners, however, would almost certainly require Martial Law to suppress.

  12. wow, and apples to orange comparison. That was only 1 murderous man versus a militant police organization and what was the final score – 1 dead murderer to 2 dead officers and 3 seriously wounded officers. Not that I am condoning what he did but that was one mane working alone against an adversary that had many more resources available to them. They could also still go to the store and get food without having to worry about the clerk reporting them. Armed resistance to tyranny, if only 0.5% of the gun owners do it will still be larger than the forces that the tyrants will have. That is because there will be many people who will sympathize and support those resisting (including those in Law Enforcement and the military). Dorner had no such support.

  13. If there were ten Christopher Dorners, southern California would be living under martial law at the moment.
    What if there were a thousand?
    Ten thousand?

  14. Mr. Skelton fails to realize that a guarantee of success is irrelevant to a group desperate enough to take up arms in resistance of tyranny. His advice to the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto would have been to get in the cattle cars. While I greatly disagree with his theat evaluation of a mass uprising by even a tiny handful of gun owners (something in the neighborhood of 100,000 men or so), the evaluation is irrelevant. There are times when tyranny becomes so pervasive and so intollerable that a quixotic attempt to usurp that tyranny is preferable to continued life under it. The second amendment guarantees is the right to the tools we would need to make the attempt.

  15. George Skelton must have been drinking the kool-aid a tad too long. One dude tied up pretty much the entirety of the southern Kalifornia law enforcement agencies, as well as garnered some federal assistance. One guy cost them millions of dollars. One guy was able to elude them for days. If anything, this shows rational people that the govt is not the superior, overwhelming power they want you to think they are.

  16. Dorner was just one man. And he tied up thousands of dollars in the hunt for him, as well as countless man-hours in the search for him for the better part of a week. His reign of terror resulted in armed guards being placed in front of the homes of the families of the LAPD. Officers and their families felt sniper’s crosshairs on their backs when they were outside.

    Now imagine if there were two guys, or five guys, or ten guys, or more, with an actual plan to start shooting police officers from a distance, maybe while they’re sitting in the cars catching up on their paperwork, and plans to shoot their families, maybe following them around discreetly, to find out where their kids go to school, or where their wives go to work, or just their home addresses, and those groups had numerous escape routes ready to go, all planned out in detail to avoid rush hour traffic, and to avoid the main highways and traffic routes.

    Note: I have no plans to do any of the above myself at all. I’m just stating an obvious conclusion that the criminal elements in our society are undoubtedly thinking about after watching this who Dorner fiasco.

  17. Uh…last time I checked. Dorner had CA law enforcement pissing themselves, so badly they lit up a blue toyota tundra carrying innocent people instead of Droner’s black nissan titan. Most of SOCAL LE was tied up looking for one, angry overweight guy with a rifle.

    It would be a mistake to underestimate a nation full of gunowners that are willing to resist tyranny.

    • They lit up TWO trucks driven by innocents. They rammed a pickup and shot a few rounds into it. The driver, a white guy who bore no physical resemblance to Dorner, was injured in the collision.

  18. Yeah, or exactly the opposite.

    And +1 on the “we the people are the government” sentiment. In the stereotypical leftist world view the government is a separate authoritarian entity, and in the stereotypical rightist world view the government is ALSO looked at as a separate authoritarian entity. Both are compelled to look at the government as separate by the desire to abdicate personal responsibility toward a variety of objectives. The stereotypical leftist want’s not to participate in doing things FOR themselves, as is their personal duty and the stereotypical rightist wants not to participate in doing things FOR society, as is their civic duty.

    We ALL need to get some skin on the reigns again and be committed to that idea, because through either stereotypical extremist world view we are CREATING that authoritarian entity by separating ourselves from it. What we have now is not “left” and “right”, but “in” and “out” of the governing class, and we’re all “out”.

  19. I dont condone what Dorner did but I would think that Dorners escapades would prove that the people can effectively fight tyranny through attrition. The man killed multiple police and forced the government to spend tons of money while he spent little to none.

  20. I am glad the tories are making it so easy to spot them. The same thing was said in the 1770’s. One battle does not make a war and one man does not make an army. Does anyone really expect one man, no matter how well armed, to take on a professionally army?

    The 2A secures both an individual right and a collective one. A militia can defeat the weight of the DoD. However, it will need foreign help and time; guns in hand help to secure both.

  21. Yes. silly you.

    “…–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,…”

    And opinion writers like George wonder where these “nutty notion(s)” originate.

    George is correct though is his assertion that “…the right to bear arms can be ‘infringed.’ ” It clearly can be and currently is being infringed. The question to ask though is not, “Can it be infringed”, and not even, “Is it being infringed?” But rather the issue is, “Should it be infringed?”, in contradiction of the constitution and, ” For how much longer or by how much will the governed Citizens allow it to be infringed?”

    Not only do elections have consequences (for us), the actions of our legislators have consequences (for them)

  22. Wow, yeah this guy really missed the boat. Like many others have said above: It took millions of dollars in resources, every LEO in the area looking for him and then when they finally found him, it took hundreds of heavily armed LEOs to keep him pinned down. 100 patriots fighting tyranny in a guerrilla fashion would likely cripple most states and their infrastructure rapidly. MOST OF ALL it’s important to note that if patriots must rise up against tyranny, “to die” does NOT equal “to lose.” If every dead patriot took just 5 jackboots with them liberty would soon win out. Heck, even a 1-to-1 ratio would take its toll!

  24. Following is my email yesterday to Mr. Skelton:

    [email protected]

    Re: The Los Angeles Times, George Skelton, “Dorner Case Shows Folly of Arming Oneself to Combat Government”, February 14, 2013.

    Dear Mr. Skelton,

    The sophomoric premise of your article, it is a “nutty notion” that “a [single] citizen can be heavily armed enough to fight off the government”, is completely irrelevant to your ensuing implication that Mr. Dorner’s conduct invalidates or undermines the foundations of the Second Amendment. To attempt to link Mr. Dorner’s demise to abolishing gun rights demonstrates a callous, immeasurable ignorance regarding the purpose, context and practical application of the “right to keep and bear arms.” The fact that the overwhelming militarism of a modern day government is sufficient to overcome asingle armed individual is adequately understood, punctuated, and obviouswithout resort your article. Indeed, your main point is immaterial, a myopic attack on the Second Amendment, and another useless example of unsupported supposition attempting to legitimize civil disarmament.

    It is unimaginably sad that someone so naïve, narrow-minded, and so lacking in basic understanding of fundamental constitutional principles, has been given such an unbridled voice for opinions masquerading as “news” or “commentary”. Your World War II analogies are both unconscionable and miss the mark by a margin that suggests the most basic disconnect from historical fact. Our own American history, modern 19th and 20th century world history, and the world history being written as we speak tells us that not a single individual, but an armed civilian populace is capable of breaking the chains of tyranny. From our Founding Fathers to present day Syria, examples of armed citizen rebellion overthrowing dictators and despots permeate grade school history books.

    Your argument related to a government’s overwhelming military arsenal should rightfully fall on deaf ears. I suspect that not many of the folks advancing on the Syrian international airport in Aleppo share your view that “the government … always wins”, or that “[g]uns to overthrow tyranny, irrational.” Look around George; broaden your mind a little. Committed people, driven by purpose and principle overthrow tyrants and despots. Not unlike our Founding Fathers. Neither Syrian rebels today, the citizen resistance of occupied Europe in WWII, nor our Founding Fathers fighting for freedom against the tyranny of King George, would put any credence in your biased and prejudiced opinions.

    Looking most objectively at your hypothesis regarding overwhelming firepower and its use by the government: at last count, in all the gunfire by southern California law enforcement during the hunt for Christopher Dorner, the only person hit by police fire was 47 year old Maggie Caranza, driving a blue Toyota pick-up, delivering newspapers with her 71 year old mother. If this is in fact standard training for LAPD, at a minimum you would think the 2nd Amendment should be interpreted to also protect us against anincompetent government, as well as a tyrannical one.

    A quick lesson in American history. Your acknowledgment that “[y]es, the 2ndAmendment was written by patriots who did successfully rebel against the tyranny of aforeign power” is a tad bit off the target. You may want to consult your handy pocket edition of the Declaration of Independence. No worries George, you don’t have to read the whole thing, the clue is right in the first sentence: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” I’ve underlined the really relevant part to help you out. The British government, led by the monarchy of King George was not a foreigngovernment. It was the government that ruled the Colonies at the time of the American Revolution. Our Founding Fathers rebelled against the government that ruled them, that promulgated laws, and that enforced those laws in an arbitrary and capricious manner to the detriment of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. That is the basic premise of our Constitution, amplified in the “Bill of Rights”. It protects us, its law-abiding citizens, against the tyranny of ourgovernment; not “against the tyranny of aforeign power”. This is a critical distinction; and a basic principle that someone entrusted to inform our public should readily be familiar with. A friendly nudge; you may want to think about that distinction in the context of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 13th, and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers did, as well as their distinguished “descendants” following in their footsteps. By the way, they didn’t attach a “sunset clause” to any of them.

  25. Apart from Dorner’s anti-gun politics, just imagine what 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 committed citizens like him could do. Imagine what 100,000 or a 1,000,000 could accomplish. The Continental Army and George Washington lost the vast majority of battles against the British on the conventional battlefield. I once read that Washington won only about one in ten battles. I was 10 years old when South Vietnam fell. Based on what I’ve read of the conflict the US never lost a major fight. Yet, over time and through the willingness to incur loss and wear down their opponent the corrupt South Vietnamese elitist government the North Vietnamese and remnants of the Viet Cong won.

    BTW, it cracks me up when the gun-grabbing pro police-nanny state anti-liberty journalists use an event completely out of context to try and prove some point they want people to believe.

    • You seem to get it. It is VERY doable – so much so that the prospect scares many people. If America had a full blown insurrection on its hand it would rock the world politically and most importantly financially. It would only take about 10% of the current population . . . Not alot for changing the world 🙂

      • Thanks for your reply. Only about one-third of Americans supported the Revolution with equal numbers neutral and supporting the British. Far less than one-third were actually involved in fighting or supporting the fighters. The Soviets came to power with only about 3% of the Russian population active in the revolution. Sure, our situation is very different now yet the propaganda mouth pieces of the mass media are wrong in their assessments of the situation.

        One last thing, if the police and feds are chasing patriots then crime will explode in the inner cities and probably elsewhere. There would be a federal call-up to arms to quash the trouble makers.

        • That’s the biggest thing that scares me, how many lemmings will put on the uniform and join the oppressors? Or just turn informant.

          I truly hope I never really need to worry about such things.

    • As i understand it, Aharon. George Washington kept loosing battles but the one thing he did was keep the continental army intact and viable even though he rarely won. The Brits could never seem to land a knock out punch or force his surrender.

      Washington lasted long enough for the French to come into the war on our side, which changed the whole outcome. There’s something to be said for enduring.

      • The more the government violently cracks down the more they will end up harming people members of their own forces care about. The USG could close down all communications yet our social-economic system and the perception of the strength of our fiat currency — the FRN which are not US dollars — relies upon it to keep moving. If unemployment goes sky high in an environment of hyper inflation and hyper-deflation it will become a chaotic situation.

  26. Situation 1.
    Dorner was the initiator, he killed people, he was an individual. He needed to be captured (or killed) for the safty of others. The police were and should have been highly motivated to eliminate the threat. Done.
    Situation 2.
    Law abiding peaceful citizens are keeping and bearing arms and if the police or military are ordered to violently disarmed them then the police will be the initiator. Those potentialy being disarmed would be the highly motivated actors. Some but not all of governments agents are robots. There will be a hesitation to send brother against brother and brother to kill brother.
    A police officer has the right and voluntarily acts in others defence. He has to be ordered to raid and kill an otherwise peaceful gun owner. That is a large moral threshold to cross.
    There is no moral dilemmae in the capture of Dorner. We have to make sure that the military and the police know the difference between protecting and attacking the citizens of this country.
    It is obvious that the knob in the article above thinks that the order givers and takers can’t nor wont see a difference. I hope that is so untrue.

  27. Even if civilians couldn’t go up against the government(though I think we could if it came to that), that sure as hell is no reason to just lay down and become subjects before a revolution even starts. It means that we need to roll back the infringements on the second amendment so that we could overthrow them if necessary. Then they’d think twice about backing us into a corner in the fist place.

  28. Something else that Mr.Skelton forgot to mention: LAPD knew exactly who was doing the shooting – they had his photo, his fingerprints (hey, he WORKED for them!), his family members, his friends, his methods and his thoughts on how he would operate – all provided by the killer himself on the internet.

    What would it have taken for the LAPD to deal with 10 or 20 people who were doing this anonymously, with no convenient internet manifesto? How long did it take the Feds to catch up with that nutcase Kaczynski, the Unabomber? 18 years? How well would the LAPD do dealing with 25,000 people doing this?

    Law enforcement really does depend on the consent and support of the general public. Even as large an organization as the LAPD is heavily outnumbered by just the drug gangs in SoCal – imagine the anarchy if all of those gang members decided to forgo their profit motive and start trying to take over the city. Anyone remember how well the LAPD dealt with the Rodney King riots?

    • The only reason the feds got Kaczynski was because his family had to hire a private investigator, do all the hard work, and harrass the feds in to investigating him. If they didnt Kaczynski would still be a free man.

  29. About 200 IRA soldiers did s pretty good job holding the British Government at bay. Plus most true asymmetric warfare would likely be a bit trickier for our government to combat. The gov knew whom to hunt in this case. That’s not usually the case.

  30. First off let me be absolutely clear that I do not support Dorner’s actions and I’m not interested in modeling any part of my life after his.

    Having said that, he brought a sh**storm of attention to his complaints and, ultimately, escaped tyranny (via the grave but for some people that’s better than being under the thumb).

    Not the sort of outcome I have any interest in but I suspect that might be considered a “win” by some people.

  31. The cops who fried Dorner weren’t taking rounds in the back plate.

    There is a difference between on armed psycho-cop, and a limitless number of armed Americans is a general struggle.

  32. Interesting – because I got the completely opposite message from the Dorner incident. A single guy essentially froze multiple MAJOR jurisdiction’s police departments for several days. The resources he locked up were insane and he set the stage for the LAPD to erode the public’s confidence by attempting to murder three citizens who did not match Dorner’s description in any way (we’ll likely never hear anything about those shootings again, they’ll be brushed aside).

    As a totally theoretical question for the author of the LA Times piece – what would have happened if Dorner wasn’t one guy? What if he was 10 or 20 guys who worked loosely in concert? What if it was an unknown number of shooters? It’s obvious that the police can’t effectively deal with such threats and it’s even more obvious that such a threat would cause them to commit so many illegal actions that the public would yank the rug from underneath them.

  34. Just looking at the numbers this guy’s assertion is very incorrect.

    Dorner by himself killed 4 LEO and injured 4 more.

    There are said to be around 800,000 federal and state and local police in the united states. Assuming naively that there is no force multiplication provided by resistance acting in groups rather than singly and that every LEO would take orders from some hypothetical authoritarian dictator, it would take only 200,000 Dorners to kill all of the LEO in the country.

    If you are just concerned with taking them out of commission, then 1 Dorner is worth 8 LEO’s taken out of combat, so it would only take 100,000 Dorners to incapacitate all the LE in the country.

    If you are looking at how many Dorners to fully occupy the attention of LE, 1 Dorner is worth about 10,000 LE (the size of the LAPD). So it would take about 80 Dorners to fully tie up the attention of all of the LE in the country.

    There are about 4,500,000 NRA members. This number of people could fully occupy the attention of 45,000,000,000 people, or approximately 5x the population of the Earth (7 billion).

    875,000,000 Dorners could put out of commission the entire population of Earth.

    Again, this is assuming no force multiplication in acting in groups vs. singly, no gains from multiple fronts, ambushes, coordination, etc. All pretty naive assumptions in favor of the LA times thesis.

  35. One thing the execution of Dorner proved to me is that the government can trample our rights and due process and the people will sit back and do nothing. The LAPD did not want to apprehend him, they wanted to kill him. It was evident when the shot at two different trucks without giving orders or allowing the passengers to surrender. The you hear the police audio of the incident at Big Bear and it is obvious they lit that place up on fire on purpose. WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE? Dorner was an alleged murder. Where was his due process? Dorner was only one guy and created havoc. try 50,000 well armed are organized citizens and that is a complete different story. Remember 1776!

  36. So we should just give up? FU!!! I guess resistance if futile because 100 cops can surround your house and burn it down with you in it? And riddle you with FULL AUTO FIRE if you try to escape. $hit on that. And the drones haven’t been implemented yet! Something evil this way comes. Some of you who voted for these subversives should be ashamed of your selves, to put it mildly. This is your doing.

  38. Based on the comments to his article at the LA Times site, it appears as if his readership thinks Mr. Skelton is an idiot.

    *applauds*

  39. “The government virtually always wins.” Not just virtually. Doubt is doubleplusungood. The government is always right…right?

    Nod your head yes, and make sure you’re super enthusiastic when the daily Two Minutes of Hate comes around. Big Brother is watching.

  40. So, they managed to get Donner after several days, a million dollar reward, a general idea of his location (i.e., region), committing hundreds of state a federal officers to the task and, literally, straining the resources of law enforcment to the breaking point. Well done. Now, let’s see how the government does against a couple dozen equally well-armed and trained people when they do not even know who or where they are. A couple hundred? A couple thousand?

  41. The fact that he is okay about the govt always winning is beyond scary. However, we wonder why people refer to us as nuts. It is because we (gun owners as a whole) are misrepresented by those of us that make Dorner a hero. Pathetic writer. Pathetic responses

  42. If dorner had support,neighbors,friends,family his resistance would have proven embarrassing for the people your article very obviously supports. As long as corrupt injustices are perpetrated against citizens you will be creating dormers all across america. And when they organize your really going to have to use your creative writing skills to keep the truth from the people.

    • Are you talking to Skelton, or TTAG?

      Because if it’s the latter, there’s a slight chance that you’re crazy.

  43. Let us hope and pray we dont have to try some of the above theories!

    The deterrent factor is what we hope for, that the idiots restricting our freedoms might stop to think they are pushing a bridge too far.

    The second amendment allows the first amendment to exist, ie in demonstrations and protests, if these are harshly put down, then the second amendment is appropriate to exercise to support the first.

    Syria, Egypt and Libya do prove it can happen today.

  44. It is interesting to note that some historians estimate that fewer than 10% of the American population actively supported the Revolutionary War against the British. Despite the Royals deploying the largest army ever in North American history (up to that point), they never had control over much more than one of the former colonies at a time. If 10% of today’s estimated 100 million gun owners decided to actively resist the federal government (which I certainly hope never proves necessary), the feds would have an impossible task on their hands. Maybe it’s lucky for us that liberals in general are historically illiterate.

  46. Most armed citizens if we where at war against a Fascist Government (if) would not stay home or in town to be found by government forces. Most would melt away when the government attacks and attack when enemy doesn’t expect it. Forget guerrilla wars are not a one man war and from Vietnam to Afghanistan superior numbers and firepower do not work to crush a rebel movement.

    Liberal ignore history again

  47. Those doubters might want to look at how successful a bunch of ill-trained, loosely organized Afghans kept the Soviet, US, and NATO forces at bay for decades, often with .303 Lee-Enfield bolt actions. It’s got a little something to do with motivation and patriotism, not just equipment configuration.

  48. Others have lived under much worse conditions, for far longer and still won their freedom without resorting to armed uprisings. The key is to win over the public. The civil rights leaders knew they had to be the better people, to suffer the beatings by police with grace, and to have the courage to stand up and continue marching. That clearly painted one side as good and the other bad. So if the 2nd Amendment supporters believe armed insurrection is necessary, and keep speaking about it as such, they are going to lose the public.

    • This only works if the oppressors are limited in some way. It might be their consciences or it might be a higher level of government. In the case of the British in India and Palestine after WW2, it was conscience. In the case of civil rights demonstrators in the US, it was a combination of conscience and the threat of federal intervention. In WW2 Germany, peaceful protests by Jews and other targets of extermination programs would have been futile because there was nothing to restrain the Nazis. The most recent example of genocide motivated by political ideology is Cambodia under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

  49. Dorner’s skills were highly under rated. He sealed his own doom when he holed up in the cabin. If he had been prepared to live rough and keep moving he might have lasted for years.

    • Actually, in the media they were over-rated. He was skilled but he saw no action, he basically guarded ports and commanded people in that arena. He was not a commando, seal or any type of true special forces member.

  50. IS ANYONE ELSE GETTING FRUSTRATED WITH THE AUTO PLAY VIDEO ADVERTISMENTS IN THE RIGHT HAND COLUMN? I am…:)

  51. Sir, the feds will not allow themselves be removed from power. Were the case you describe to come to pass, they would stop at nothing, to maintain their positions. They would sooner turn this country into a petri dish than give up authority.

  52. Dorner was psychotic, easy to identify, alone and had an entire state/nation after him. I thought he did pretty good lasting as long as he did although I do not condone his killings and am getting pretty sick of Dorner being compared to all of us gun enthusiasts. Dorner was a god sent for liberal media, it helped kept the anti-gun debate going and fresh in everyone’s mind while at the same time the media projected Dorner as one of us.
    But when a group, small or large, of well trained and prepared folks decide to take on the law or whoever, the outcome will be nothing like this. Just think if only a few more Dorner’s came out of the woodwork and began their campaign while Dorner was on the run, it would of changed the outcome greatly. Isolating a single man to a specific region who wishes to be killed anyway really isn’t a good example of how fighting tyranny is impossible, it’s a good example of how people like Dorner who wish to die will go out. This wasn’t some epic battle, it was a murderer who snapped because life shafted him and the largest and most militarized law enforcement agency declared war on him. Who honestly thought he had any change of surviving more then a week?
    Most of us are not like Dorner. Even though the media and law made it out that he was some special forces guy, which he was not, he guarded ports for some time and saw no action, they still attempted and succeeded to some degree, to make it look as if we all support this type of behavior.
    Liberal media and politicians love people like Dorner.
    The real sad thing, Dorner was actually a good person until the LAPD incident. He once found and returned $8,000 in cash he found in a bag. Who of us would even do this? When asked why he said the military and his mother taught him honesty and integrity. And now the media and others are bashing his mother for his actions.
    They used Dorner the same way they used all those innocent dead children from Newtown. We are dealing with some very sick people who want to disarm us all.

  53. Reading trash like this makes me afraid that he’s not even doing something as benign as wrongly proving a point- that article reads like a challenge. “Hey gun-nuts! Don’t even try it, the Guv’ment will f**k you up! USA! USA!”

    So the next prick that goes off the rails and tries to one up this? That blood’s on your hands, jackass.

  54. I can’t understand why there are not riots in the streets over the loose cannon actions of the LAPD, what with all the random shootings and whatnot.

  55. One (freakish, devilish, obama-loving liberal) man disrupted and terrorized the entire state and multiple law enforcement agencies so much that the cops TWICE opened fire on innocents purely out of fear and had to set fire to the building he was in to stop him.

    One man.

    Molan Labe George Skelton

  56. I hate that argument: “The government will always win. It’s futile to fight them.”
    Even if that were true (it’s not), it wouldn’t matter.
    Some of us were raised with principles. Some of us still find certain things worth dying for.

  57. The argument is a non-starter.

    If there was a federal push on the states to enforce a nationwide law, several states would rebel. If confiscation was on a state by state level, there would be enough insurrection that those states would ask for federal help, other states would oppose it, and once again, rebellion. Unlike the Civil War, the south would win this war fast and decapitate D.C.

    I’m not too worried.

    • Except this time a Civil War wouldn’t be North vs South, it would be South and most of the West and Mid-West against the West Coast and the North East. Not only would we literally split their country in half, but they’d have almost no food supplies since almost all food is grown in the Mid-West / Western States.

  58. Not only do these statist window-lickers think that American citizens don’t stand a chance against the government, they like it that way.

    If what he’s saying is true, and the Federal Government in its current state could easily quash any resistance, that would be good reason to LOOSEN gun restrictions, not tighten them. Deregulate NFA items, perhaps?

  59. His whole shoddy premise is built on the fallacious notion that citizens rising up against a government would do like the villains in bad 1980s kung-fu movies, lining up to fight one at a time. Like many of others here have already noted, the amount of resources that were used to stop one guy with some training above the rudimentary level (definitely not elite, as many media outlets try to claim) shows how much trouble there would be in some sort of mass uprising scenario.

  60. It was way up in the thread but I have two territories the English kept by force against the will of the natives, Wales and Scotland.
    England today might be included since there seems to be broad dissatisfaction with their government and a policy in place to keep the peasants from having weapons.

  61. So idiots like this want to persuade those of us that believe that we actually can and should resist tyranny, that we had better just give in and lye down for the despots and their supporters like him. Let them take all your property, murder your sons, rape your daughters and do nothing to resist it now before it ever starts. That’s my take here. And, by the way, the government’s ability to hunt down and eliminate ONE man (and a racist criminal at that)proves absolutely nothing of the kind. We who follow the founder’s advice and philosophies know that divided we are defeated, but united against the forces of tyranny, we prevail!

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