When Tyranny Really Comes into Town, the NRA Goes into Hiding

I grew up around reclusive Cascadian hill folk who lived in fear of phantom black helicopters piloted by agents of the New World Order. Some of these guys, true to the stereotype of bunker-digging preppers, stockpiled outrageous quantities of firearms in preparation for what they believed was an inevitable confrontation with an authoritarian force on domestic soil. This was in the mid-1990s, long before CNN took Alex Jones seriously, before reality-TV crews transformed backwoods survivalists into petit celebrities, and before this particular brand of obsessive paranoia rose from the ashes of the Confederacy to seize the heart of the zeitgeist.

This past week, in Ferguson, MO, police phalanxes armed like counterinsurgency troops have been firing flash grenades and tear gas canisters at Americans on their own front lawns, shooting rubber bullets into crowds, locking up reporters, and restricting civilian airspace in a vain effort to control the narrative. One stunning Reuters photo shows an armored personnel carrier, flanked by riot police, rolling down what looks like a typical middle American boulevard. Atop this tank sits a marksman with his gun drawn, and behind him looms the golden arches of McDonald’s. The juxtaposition eerily recalls this iconic still from that Reaganite fever dream of my childhood, Red Dawn.

Ferguson is under government siege, a brutal echo of the localized martial law that followed the Boston Marathon bombing. Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News calls what has been happening in Ferguson a “police coup.” The governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, was until recently conspicuously aloof, along with President Obama.

As we watch these scenes, which seem to track closely with the paranoiac fantasists’ Hollywood spec script, who among us can’t help but marvel at another conspicuous absence: the well-regulated militia?


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http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/the-guns-of-ferguson/