Daniel Almond, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, is ready to "muster outside D.C." on Monday with several dozen other self-proclaimed patriots, all of them armed. They intend to make history as the first people to take their guns to a demonstration in a national park, and the Virginia rally is deliberately being held just a few miles from the Capitol and the White House.There is zero mistaking the symbolism of both the day, the lineup of the speakers and what they have said in the past, and the open display of firearms just a few miles from DC. The "citizenry has to be reminded" of the number of people who crawl out of the woodwork whenever a Democrat is in charge of the country, and that the Democrat in question needs to be afraid.
Almond plans to have his pistol loaded and openly carried, his rifle unloaded and slung to the rear, a bandoleer of magazines containing ammunition draped over his polo-shirted shoulder. The Atlanta area real estate agent organized the rally because he is upset about health-care reform, climate control, bank bailouts, drug laws and what he sees as President Obama's insistence on and the Democratic Congress's capitulation to a "totalitarian socialism" that tramples individual rights.
A member of several heretofore little-known groups, including Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and Oath Keepers -- former and active military and law enforcement officials who have vowed to resist laws they deem unconstitutional -- Almond, 31, considers packing heat on the doorstep of the federal government within the mainstream of political speech.
Others consider it an alarming escalation of paranoia and anger in the age of Obama.
"What I think is important to note is that many of the speakers have really threatened violence, and it's a real threat to the rule of law," Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said of the program for the armed rally. "They are calling health care and taxes that have been duly enacted by a democratically elected Congress tyrannical, and they feel they have a right to confront that individually."
On the lineup are several heroes of the militia movement, including Mike Vanderboegh, who advocated throwing bricks through the windows of Democrats who voted for the health-care bill; Tom Fernandez, who has established a nationwide call tree to mobilize an armed resistance to any government order to seize firearms; and former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who refused to enforce the Brady law and then won a Supreme Court verdict that weakened its background-check provisions.
Those coming to the "Restore the Constitution" rally give Obama no quarter for signing the law that permits them to bring their guns to Fort Hunt, run by the National Park Service, and to Gravelly Point on the banks of the Potomac River. Nor are they comforted by a broad expansion of gun rights in several states since his election.
The brandishing of weapons is "not just an impotent symbol" but "a reminder of who we are," said Almond. "The founders knew that it is the tendency of government to expand itself and embrace its own power, and they knew the citizenry had to be reminded of that."
This is bullying, plain and simple. A group of people who feel politically powerless after just 16 months are now taking to an open rally of armed Americans with the message that they will not fear the government, but that the government should fear them, on a day where 15 years ago, 168 Americans were killed by a truck bomb.
Daniel Almond, it seems, has no problem with the symbolism of invoking the deadliest act of US domestic terrorism in the 20th century to send a message to the President in the 21st.
The message is unmistakable. After the OKC bombing, dozens of additional militia plots were foiled, and one, the Olympic Park Bombing in Atlanta in 1996, was successful. The door is now opened again on this era of bloody lunacy, only now it's far worse. Now, rallies like this one are daring the government to try to stop them.
Who will hear the message spoken today at this rally and decide now is the time for action?
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