Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.
Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
The Indian as warrior is one of the most common Native stereotypes. Though most tribes did (and do) have warriors, they also had traders, farmers, healers, craftspersons, storytellers—the whole range of human activity. Describing traditional Indians as warriors when many led peaceful lives as farmers or hunters and gatherers is a gross distortion of the record.
Nevertheless, many people, including Indians themselves, have seized upon the warrior claim to justify their actions. Warriors aren't accountable to society; they don't have to deal with the painstaking work of building an infrastructure or running a government. Like John Wayne, they can shoot first and ask questions later.
America lionizes its warriors, and the Indian warrior is no exception. But consider the downside of this stereotypical image. Indians are warriors...so their religions and governments must consist of grunts, war-whoops, and spear-rattling. Indians are warriors...so they have no place in a modern, techno-savvy, space-age society. Indians are warriors...so we had no choice but to fight them and force them into concentration camps (reservations). We couldn't have those unstoppable killing machines roaming among our helpless women and children—raping and scalping them—could we?
As the title says, this posting examines guns and the warrior mentality as they relate to Native Americans. For more on the "Indian as warrior" stereotype see:
Savage Indians
Fighting Sioux vs. Fighting Irish
A self-proclaimed warrior
As I said, even some Indians perpetuate the warrior mystique. I came across the following article in my inbox. I'm reprinting it in full:
Warriors and Weapons
by David A. Yeagley
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 26, 2001
A YEAR AGO, I had a religious experience. No, I didn't speak in tongues. I didn't see an apparition of Mary. And even though I'm Comanche Indian, I didn't commune with my ancestors or hear the eagles talk. All I did was watch a TV infomercial produced by the National Rifle Association (NRA).
There I was, sitting in my easy chair, eating chicken soup and watching television. Suddenly, I saw an immense pile of guns, thousands of them, being bulldozed into a metal crusher.
The narrator explained. These weapons had been confiscated from law- abiding citizens, and were being destroyed. The government had first required the people to register their firearms, and promised that no confiscation would ever occur. Then the government broke its promise.
According to the voice-over, this happened in Australia, England, and Canada. The United States was next in line. On the screen appeared distraught gun owners, one after another. "They said they would never do this, but they did it! Don't let this happen to you!" they warned Americans.
We Comanches don't usually admit to being scared. But I was terrified. I had a sense that I was losing America (and, as an Indian, it wouldn't be the first time).
I guess I'd always known, in the back of my mind, that there were people out there trying to take our guns. But those faces on TV drove the point home like nothing else had. They were the faces of a people betrayed. Long ago, the government took away the Indian's weapons and put him on reservations. That is history. Indians know all about broken promises. But why would the White Man betray himself? Why would the U.S. government take the weapons away from its own good citizens?
They say they're trying to stop crime. But the more gun laws they pass, the more crime we get. A hundred years ago, we didn't have gun laws and we didn't have much crime either.
In his book, More Guns, Less Crime, Yale Law School economist John Lott shows that, across the United States, over an 18-year period, "states experiencing the greatest reductions in crime are also the ones with the fastest growing percentages of gun ownership."
So why does the government keep pushing gun control?
The warrior in me knows. He who takes my bow is not my friend. He who takes away my ability to defend myself is my enemy.
If the government takes our guns, it's not because they are trying to help us. It's because they are trying to control us.
Since my "religious experience" of watching that documentary, I've found myself wondering why Indians have not played a bigger role in the gun rights debate.
Weapons are an integral part of our culture. In Indian country, it's taken for granted that everyone shoots and hunts. Perhaps the use of arms is so fundamental to us that we don't even think of it as a right that can be lost. Recently, I visited Indian friends of the Salish-Kootenay Reservation in Montana. It was a few days before a funeral. Extra food was needed for the mourners. "I've got to go get a deer," my friend Terry said, as simply as most Americans would say "I've got to go to the store."
Among Indians, the weapon is a symbol of honor. In Comanche tradition, the young man grew up with the bow. Its mastery was a test of manhood. The relationship of man and weapon was intimate and lifelong.
Every Comanche learned to fight and hunt. If you weren't waging war, you were preparing for war. It was the duty of every member of the tribe to be ready, just in case.
In modern America, women seem to have turned against their own men over the gun issue, judging by the polls and the Million Mom March.
Indian women have a different mindset. It was the women who taught Comanche boys how to use their weapons. Long before anyone ever heard of Xena the Warrior Princess, a woman called the "adiva," or governess ran the Comanche training camps.
Americans nowadays seem to be forgetting what it means to be a warrior. They don't value preparedness. They think the government will always be there to defend them from enemies and criminals.
But that's not the Indian way. That's not the way of a man.
I'm glad the NRA is out there spreading this message. It has earned this Indian's blessing for helping to keep the warrior spirit alive.
Rob's reply
If you know me, you know I don't let things like this pass. Let's deconstruct this article and see what it tells us about men and warriors and guns:
>> Long ago, the government took away the Indian's weapons and put him on reservations. That is history. <<
Long ago pioneers, homesteaders, and soldiers used guns to force Indians onto reservations. The government took the Indians' guns away while it corralled them and, especially, after it finished corralling them. The Indians' guns weren't enough to prevent this tragedy.
If no one had had guns, the firepower would've been more even, and subjugating the Indians would've been much harder. It might've been impossible.
That's history, not Yeagley's phony claim that removing the Indians' guns caused their confinement. Anglos with guns overwhelmed Indians with guns, then corralled them and removed their weapons.
>> They say they're trying to stop crime. But the more gun laws they pass, the more crime we get. <<
We can dismiss this claim summarily. Overall, crime rates have dropped for the last decade. If we're passing more gun laws, they seem to be doing the job.
Here are a few more egregious claims like Yeagley's:
None of these linkages is provable. In fact, no linkage is provable when you're dealing with the large-scale chaos of reality. Unless you confine it to a lab, a real-world situation has too many variables to isolate one and say it causes another.
Do gun control laws reduce crime? Does gun ownership reduce crime? You might be able to generate evidence for either claim in a controlled experiment. But in complex and multifaceted reality? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Useful research results
From "Lock and Unload: One Survivor Urges Sanity..." by James S. Brady, former White House press secretary. In the LA Times, 3/30/01:
In 1993, Congress passed the Brady law, which requires background checks to prohibit gun sales to criminals and others, including those with a history of mental illness. Since the law went into effect in February 1994, background checks have stopped more than 600,000 gun sales to prohibited purchasers. Research has shown that these background checks have saved thousands of lives.
Here's more on the research on gun control laws. Note that even if California's results are valid, the expert doesn't expect one law to reduce crime singlehandedly. From the LA Times, 2/28/01:
California's gun control law appears to have had a moderate impact on reducing additional violent crimes by people convicted of gun-related offenses, public health researchers at UC Davis reported in a new study.
The findings, to be published today in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., do not show that gun violence was eliminated or even dramatically reduced by the handgun law, said the study's chief author, Garen J. Wintemute. But they do indicate that the law has had an effect, said Wintemute, an emergency room doctor and public health researcher who heads the university's Violence Prevention Research Program.
Thomas B. Cole, a physician who writes about public health issues for the medical journal, compared gun violence with other injury-related public health problems, such as motor vehicle crashes. No single program has been responsible for the enormous decline in traffic fatalities in the last few decades, but, taken together, vehicle safety standards, seat belts, speed enforcement and drunk driving laws have had a significant effect.
And from the LA Times, 8/30/01:
Gun Laws Effective in Deterring Criminals, Report Finds
Study: Licensing and registration make it much more difficult for them to get firearms, researchers say.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — Laws requiring the licensing and registration of firearms make it much tougher for criminals to get guns and often force them to go out of state to secure weapons, according to a federally funded study that could fuel a gun control debate raging in Sacramento.
The study, which will be released today by Johns Hopkins University researchers, found a dramatic difference in how difficult it is for criminals to get their hands on weapons within states that require gun licensing and registration versus those that do not.
Funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study lends credence to advocacy groups who argue that tougher gun control cuts down on the supply of guns to criminals and forces them to rely on a black market of interstate trafficking from less heavily regulated states.
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.
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The two-year Johns Hopkins study sought to examine for the first time how gun trafficking is influenced by state laws. It looked at data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in 23 states, including California, and analyzed how more than 35,000 guns that were confiscated in crimes had gotten into the hands of criminals.
In the five states examined that required both gun registration and owner licensing, fewer than 34% of the guns used in crimes were originally purchased in state, meaning that the majority were imported across state lines, Johns Hopkins researchers found.
In California and five other states that require only registration or licensing but not both, the proportion of "crime guns" originally sold within the state was more than twice as high—73%. And in the 12 states that have neither licensing nor registration, the figure was an even higher 84%.
While researchers did not address the question of whether heavier restrictions actually caused a decline in gun ownership, their study concluded that the regulations in states with licensing and registration made it much more difficult for criminals to get their hands on guns.
"We were very surprised at how dramatic the differences were. The numbers were really striking," said Daniel Webster, co-director of Johns Hopkins' Center for Gun Policy and Research and the lead author of the study.
"If the ultimate objective of gun laws is to make it difficult for criminals to get guns, this study shows quite persuasively that a combination of licensing and registration is a very effective way to do that," Webster said in an interview.
Enacting either licensing or registration requirements, but not both, "is clearly not as effective," he said.
See A Well Regulated Militia... for more evidence on gun control.
Note that proving a certain law has a certain effect is difficult. But a "gun society" is more a philosophical choice than something we need prove is good or bad. Do we want to live in a culture where people think violence is good and aggression is better? Where we admire the biggest and "baddest" guy as the ultimate role model?
We choose to inspect food for harmful bacteria or drugs for harmful effects. We insist home and car manufacturers meet safety standards. We don't do these things because someone has proved them to be statistically sound. We do them because we value people's lives more than some corporation's profits. It's a moral choice, not a scientific one.
Gun control is the same idea. Americans are demanding we curtail our violent gun culture regardless of the statistics. If people feel safer because guns are less available, that's reason enough to pass gun controls.
Like most people, I suspect crime rates will decline as we make it harder for people who shouldn't have guns to get them. Countries with tough gun laws offer evidence of this. But we don't have to prove this case, any more than we have to prove seat belt laws will save X number of lives. In a democracy, the public can do whatever it wants as long as it's consistent with the Constitution.
>> A hundred years ago, we didn't have gun laws and we didn't have much crime either. <<
A hundred years ago, few people had guns. It's a myth that most Americans have always owned guns. See The Myth of American Self-Reliance for more information.
A hundred years ago, we may not have had much crime, but we did have women and children battered...blacks lynched...Indians massacred. Would gun laws have prevented these crimes? It's impossible to say, but Yeagley hasn't even considered the possibility. His argument is lacking.
Why pursue gun control?
>> In his book, More Guns, Less Crime, Yale Law School economist John Lott shows that, across the United States, over an 18-year period, "states experiencing the greatest reductions in crime are also the ones with the fastest growing percentages of gun ownership." <<
Critics have slammed Lott's research for its methodological flaws. Among other shortcomings, it used arrests—not convictions—as a measure of crime rates. As one may imagine, arrest rates can change for a number of reasons having nothing to do with gun availability. Demographics, the economy, and police methods are just some of the variables.
Here's an example of what critics are saying about Lott's work:
So Lott's gun research is suspect at best. As you might expect from someone who's an economist, not a criminologist. It isn't close to being the final word on the subject.
>> So why does the government keep pushing gun control? <<
Uh, because it works? See the latest studies on gun control for the evidence.
It's enough that the people who elected the government want it. A better question is why gun nuts keep pushing guns against the people's wishes.
>> If the government takes our guns, it's not because they are trying to help us. It's because they are trying to control us. <<
Control whom? The people who foster America's culture of violence? The people who shoot others accidentally or in fits of anger? The people who sell guns to former criminals or the mentally ill? The people who give guns to their thoughtless children or who don't keep them locked up safely? The people who commit suicide by shooting themselves?
If this is true, then so what? What's Yeagley's point, exactly? I don't see any problems here. If "the government" takes anybody's guns, it's because the American people are trying to help themselves. That's their right under the Constitution.
>> Weapons are an integral part of our culture. In Indian country, it's taken for granted that everyone shoots and hunts. <<
Maybe so, but this is recognizing the gun as a tool, not as a weapon. The dictionary defines "weapon" as "an instrument of offensive or defensive combat." Unless Bambi's mother puts up one heckuva fight, we're talking about two different things. Hunting is killing for food, not defending one's home or culture.
>> In modern America, women seem to have turned against their own men over the gun issue, judging by the polls and the Million Mom March. <<
Right, which is why Yeagley's claim that "the government" is out to take his weapon is another half-truth. In this case the government reflects the will of the American people, who support sensible gun controls. It's called majority rule, and if Yeagley doesn't like it, he can go back where he came from. (Just kidding, of course.)
And don't get me started on the Second Amendment. The courts have ruled consistently that it does not permit an unqualified right to bear arms. The amendment itself is qualified by the phrase "a well-regulated militia." This phrase explicitly tells us the Constitution permits armed Americans (i.e., militias) to be well-regulated.
The right to bear arms shall not be infringed...as long as militias are well-regulated. Or to translate for those who aren't constitutional scholars, the guv'mint can regulate your guns but not take them away.
What being a warrior means
>> Americans nowadays seem to be forgetting what it means to be a warrior. <<
The Americans are certainly hero-worshippers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes.
Oscar Wilde, letter, April 19, 1882
Tell it to those who love Eminem, heavy metal, sports stars (who are routinely called warriors or gladiators), pro wrestlers, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Colin Powell, or "President" Bush. Even Yeagley mentioned Xena, a fictional warrior along with the Ninja Turtles, the Power Rangers, the Punisher, Gladiator, Pokémon trainers, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Our society continues to glorify warriors as much as ever.
Warriors are who we mythologize in our culture. Knights in shining armor, Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, Zorro, Natty "Hawkeye" Bummpo, the Minutemen, Daniel Boone, Andrew Jackson, Civil War generals (Grant, Lee, Stonewall Jackson), Col. Custer, Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley, Sgt. York, the Untouchables, WW II generals (Patton, McArthur, Eisenhower)...the list goes on and on. If a non-military hero refuses to fight, as with Charles Lindbergh and his isolationist views, America turns on him with a vengeance.
A book review in the LA Times, 1/7/01, notes our myth-making tendency:
Why have so many violent but otherwise marginal figures from the frontier—James Bowie and his knife, the Indian-killing Kit Carson, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, John Henry "Doc" Holliday, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Calamity Jane, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—entered into American folklore and been celebrated in numerous films, even musical comedies, while the governors, the senators, the entrepreneurs, the founders of cities and towns from the same time lie in their graves forgotten?...Why do we remember the 1920s and 1930s in terms of Al Capone, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Bonnie and Clyde, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Ma Barker, Dutch Schultz and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel when we would be hard-pressed to name a roster of brain trusters from the New Deal?
The answer is obvious. We define ourselves as warriors—warriors for truth, justice, and the American way. Warriors for peace, even, if that isn't a stupid contradiction. It's been that way since the first European saw the first Indian and decided he needed smiting in the name of God.
Far from forgetting what it means to be a warrior, we've enshrined the notion. Our warrior history—the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, Honest Abe and the Civil War, the "greatest generation" and World War II—is the subject of countless books, movies, and reenactments. Our national "tragedy" occurred in Vietnam, where we learned we weren't the invincible warriors we thought we were.
From the first Indian wars with the Pequots to the latest assaults on Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia, we've always used war as the final solution. Some of these wars were necessary, but many weren't. The point isn't that we fight wars, but that we revel in them. We're proud of, not disgusted by, how bellicose we are.
The following is an expanded version of my Indian Comics Irregular mini-essay in Terrorism: US Against Them. As we embark on the 21st century, as the world's military-industrial superpower, it's clear we haven't forgotten how to be warriors. If anything, we're too steeped in our warrior mentality.
America, the warrior society
In 2001, George W. Bush cast the battle against terrorism in comic-book terms: good vs. evil. He and others said we must be strong, like John Wayne or Superman. But some examples suggest we may be "strong" enough already:
This chest-pounding machismo is central to the American mindset. Bush proclaimed us the "brightest beacon of freedom and opportunity" after the devastation, once again touting our superiority to everyone else. Sadly, he doesn't get that our capitalist, cultural aggression is exactly what anti-Americans are protesting.
When will we learn that a starving baby in a developing country doesn't need abstractions like freedom or opportunity? It needs a roof overhead and food on the table—i.e., security, not "freedom." How hard is that to understand?
Traditional Indian societies offered a balance between communal security and individual freedom. So do most of the planet's cultures today. America is alone at the "freedom" extreme, imagining "the individual as solitary gunslinger and society as a hostile frontier."
See War Song of America the Strong for more on being strong.
Who wants to be a warrior?
If we've forgotten our warrior past as Yeagley claimed—which we haven't—would that be bad? The American warrior mentality, as embodied in John Wayne and other gunslingers, is exactly what led to the continent's colonization and Native people's confinement. Might a less warlike attitude have led to more humane results?
Comanches—or at least this Comanche—seem to be forgetting that not all Indians were warriors. The Hopi, or "people of peace," are a prime example. They fought fiercely when enemies attacked, but seldom instigated battles. More often they "fought" by retreating to their mesa tops or asking allies to protect them. When the US came to take their children to boarding school, they "fought" with passive resistance. They went to jail rather than "fight or die."
The Hopi also enlisted in greater-than-average numbers to tackle our foes in World War I and II. Afterward they returned to their quiet lives as farmers and ranchers. They've survived this way for at least 800 years without being confined or relocated by any government. That's a record no Comanche group can match.
We can find plenty of Indians in the historical record who made peace, not war. From Pocahontas, Massasoit, and Squanto early on to Black Kettle, Little Raven, and Kicking Bird during the Indian Wars, many Natives cooperated with Euro-Americans and sought peaceful coexistence. Warriors from Tecumseh to Red Cloud embraced peace when war failed to achieve their goals. When compelled to move to a reservation, the famed Nez Perce Chief Joseph didn't throw his people into suicidal battle; he sensibly tried to escape to Canada. By the time Chief Seattle encountered white men, notes a Post-Intelligencer article, he was "was a venerable leader respected for his peaceful ways, not his prowess at war."
Indians without guns
Even today, many Native people disagree that being Indian means being a gun-toting warrior. For example:
I am anti-guns, the fewer guns in this world, the safer I feel. What are guns used for? Defense? Security? Sport? Ultimately, they are designed to kill. Perhaps these people will feel differently when guns somehow touch their lives or the lives of someone they love.
Anne Thundercloud (Ho-Chunk), e-mail
We will win this war. Not with arrow or bow or knife, nor with club or our bare hands, but with the strength that has always been within us, the strength of this land, the strength of our peoples who you can never kill.
Svhyeyi Aga aka Evening Rain, Web posting
This information is so valuable, this is the weapon—it's not guns or rocks, it's information. It empowers us.
Victor Rocha (Pechanga), article
DJ Vanas (Odawa), a motivational speaker and author, describes the difference between a "warrior" who's ready to shoot and one who's ready to fight in his essay 21st Century Warrior. Warriors are people who battle for what they believe in without necessarily using fists or guns. As Vanas puts it:
In the Sun Dance, I learned what the warrior path was truly about. It had nothing to do with what I had seen in movies, heard in music, or read in books. It wasn’t about being destructive, being the toughest person in the neighborhood, or any media-stained image....The warrior concept is simply taking our own talent and ability and developing it so we can serve and defend others. The warrior’s goal was to become an asset to the village they served. The warriors of the past like Pontiac, Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph, and Osceola were warriors not only because of their exploits in battle, but because they served their people the best way they knew how and spent their lifetimes becoming assets to their village. Today, your “village” could be your family, community, country, clients, or any other group you serve.
So what does this tell us? That one can be brave and heroic without wielding a weapon? That the warrior's way isn't the only way, even for Indians? That peace, not war, is the path to long life? All of the above?
Except for Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., Americans would have trouble naming someone who advocated peace. But these peacemakers proved there's more to being a man than brandishing a phallic substitute. They succeeded where weapons wielders arguably failed, and inspired nations to change.
So let's not glorify "might makes right" too much, shall we? In the long run, to put it bluntly, the pacifist kicks the warrior's butt. Or as Robbie Robertson (Mohawk) and the Red Road Ensemble sing in their song "Ghost Dance":
You don't stand a chance against my prayers
You don't stand a chance against my love
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
But we shall live again, we shall live again
"Real men" carry "big sticks"
>> They think the government will always be there to defend them from enemies and criminals. <<
Is the US government in some sort of danger? I hadn't heard. With the USSR defunct and China still a Third-World country, what force could possibly threaten the United States government? Martians?
Maybe Yeagley was thinking of anti-Americans like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. On 9/11/01, terrorists managed to kill 3,000 Americans after years of planning. Roughly the same number die of asthma every year. Does asthma threaten the US government?
Hearing a gun supporter worrying about our government being too weak and powerless is a real side-splitter. These people bitch and moan when government is too big...and also when it may shrink too small. Apparently these people have no agenda except to bitch and moan.
>> But that's not the Indian way. That's not the way of a man. <<
And if you're not a man, you must be a woman, right? Or should I say a squaw? I've knocked this manhood argument before. See X-Men: All-New or Same-Old? for one example.
Some postings shed light on Yeagley's attitude. First, an excerpt from an op-ed column by Robert S. McElvaine, professor of history at Millsaps College. From the LA Times, 2/21/01:
Insecure masculinity has...been a major force in history. Sexually insecure men often seek validation of their manhood by pursuing power. "But he was a man!" a trembling Richard M. Nixon affirmed of Theodore Roosevelt as Nixon concluded his rambling talk to the White House staff at the time of his resignation in 1974. There can be little doubt that the disgraced president had himself in mind as he referred to this particular predecessor.
Insecure masculinity was a major motivation for several other 20th century presidents, from Teddy Roosevelt at the century's beginning to Bill Clinton at its end. The Republican Roosevelt is a prime example. One reason for Roosevelt's concern about proving his manhood was his feeling of shame that his father had paid for a substitute to fight in his place during the Civil War. Roosevelt spoke of almost everything in sexual terms. He said war was a necessary arena for the display of "manly virtues" and frequently referred to adversaries as "eunuchs" or "impotent." And it does not take a Freudian imagination to understand why Roosevelt used the "big stick" as his metaphor for military might.
Similar anxieties appear to have driven John F. Kennedy and his disciple Clinton to try to show their manhood by treating women as disposable playthings. And it could be argued that Lyndon B. Johnson took the nation into a war that he knew would be disastrous partly out of a desire to prove his manhood. "There's not anything that'll destroy you as quick as pulling out," Johnson told Sen. Richard Russell in 1964. "They'll forgive you anything except being weak. We've got to conduct ourselves like men." As had Roosevelt, Johnson often described male opponents of his war policy by names that indicated they were like women.
From Robert Scheer's column in the LA Times, 10/29/02:
The macho mouths whose combat experience most often consists of battles for talk-show ratings would have you believe that it takes great courage to bang the drums of war, whereas it is cowardly to speak the language of peace and diplomacy. "I'm sick and tired of those old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in," [George] McGovern said in an interview. "You know that [Vice President] Dick Cheney, [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and [Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz have not been in a war and will not fight in this one they are planning."
George W. Bush hasn't been in a war either, of course. He dodged Vietnam by enlisting for a cushy stateside position in the National Guard. So much for America's brave and bold leaders as the new century unfolds.
Perhaps a less macho mentality might serve the world better. From a letter in the LA Times, 1/3/03:
I agree the violent world needs a woman's touch. I suggest an approach that might actually create real change in this world rather than continue this cycle of violence. Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) in her Mother's Day Proclamation calls for women to arise: "Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
>> I'm glad the NRA is out there spreading this message. <<
I'm sorry the NRA is out there spreading this manure. I hope I've highlighted its foolishness. What America doesn't need is more people touting guns as the solution.
As Yeagley admits, he was watching nothing more than a propaganda piece from the NRA. Like most NRA "information," it undoubtedly was riddled with lies and distortions. When the NRA says "the government is coming for your guns," what it usually means is "the government is imposing a harmless background check so a three-time felon can't legally buy a gun," or "the government is closing a blatant gun-show loophole so a three-time psych-ward patient can't legally buy a gun."
In short, there's nothing to be scared of here, folks. Give Yeagley's screed the respect it deserves and laugh out loud.
Yeagley exposed
Harjo: One Small and Unworthy Man
Related links
Yeagley: "I declare war"
A well regulated militia...
Right-wing extremists: the enemy within
Winning through nonviolence
America's cultural mindset