I've been hearing a lot about how citizen observers should refrain from "interfering" with law enforcement [View all]
and more startlingly, that if the law enforcement officers decide that they are "interfering," then those citizens have nobody but themselves to blame if they are shot dead in the street.
I thought it might be instructive to remember how the people who are now cheering on the murder of U.S. citizens by federal agents -- citizens who are exercising their First and Second Amendment rights by simply filming agents in the street, or legally carrying a firearm with a permit -- were behaving when Barack Obama was president.
In 2014, the Bureau of Land Management finally decided to crack down on Cliven Bundy's illegal cattle-grazing in Nevada. He had been allowing his cattle to graze on federal land, which is against the law, for 20 years. Here's what happened, according to the SPLC:
(snip)
The scariest incident happened in Utah, where two men pointed a handgun at a BLM worker in a marked federal vehicle while holding up a sign that said, “You need to die.”
(snip)
For those harboring deep hatred of the federal government, the BLM pullout was seen as a dramatic victory, one instance where the armed radicals of the right stared through their own gunsights at the gun barrels of law enforcement officials and won. Rather than being condemned, their actions garnered the support of numerous politicians, including the governor of Nevada and commentators like Fox News’ Sean Hannity — a truly repulsive spectacle.
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/war-west-bundy-ranch-standoff-and-american-radical-right/
Renee Good was shot in the face for trying to get away from an ICE agent who was attempting to violently force open the door of her car. At the time, she was committing a minor traffic offense. Alex Pretti was pepper sprayed and assaulted for filming ICE agents and trying to help up a woman who had been shoved to the ground. When ICE agents found that he was carrying a firearm -- for which he had a permit, and which he never brandished -- they removed it from him and then shot him in the back.
For this, both Good and Pretti were branded domestic terrorists by high-ranking members of the U.S. government.
Meanwhile, Cliven Bundy was in the process of committing a crime, and the Bureau of Land Management officers had come to stop him. The people at Bundy Ranch were not bystanders protesting, or filming the proceedings -- they were friends of Bundy who directly prevented law enforcement from carrying out their duties. They did this by pointing loaded weapons at the officers, some from sniper positions, and making threatening statements.
For this, the people brandishing their weapons and threatening federal agents were celebrated by the same people who support the current regime.
Do we really need any more proof that these so-called freedom-lovers have always just been rank hypocrites who care less about the country than they do about inflicting violence on people who disagree with them politically?
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