firing a high-powered combat rifle in an airport could domoreharm than good

Steve Furlong sfurlong at acmenet.net
Fri Oct 5 16:37:19 PDT 2001


Steve Furlong wrote:

> > The recent deployments in airports are of the National Guard. These
> > units are under controls of _governors_ of states, and are not covered
> > by Posse Comitatus. "Calling in the National Guard" has been common for
> > many decades.
> 
> Legally, you're right. But since the Guard units are partially trained
> and equipped with federal money and operate under federal strictures, I
> don't generally distinguish between state and federal military forces.

Damn, sent that by mistake while editing.

I'm also concerned about the effect of "routinely" having uniformed
soldiers out standing guard or running patrols or whatever. Even if
they're National Guard rather than federal troops, it accustoms the
public to seeing soldiers on the streets, on the borders, in the
airports, everywhere. That makes the next step, federal troops
everywhere, more likely and less noticeable.


-- 
Steve Furlong    Computer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel
  617-670-3793

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly
while bad people will find a way around the laws." -- Plato





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