RJ comments on the recent Oklahoma Highway Patrol and EMT incident

End Police Brutality: Reassert our right to be armed! By RJ Harris

I grow weary hearing about how the officers involved in incidents, like Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) and the EMT incident, are merely examples of "the few rotten apples." The fact is these incidents occur so often that we are not even shocked by them anymore. It might be easy to point at the police and say that they are to blame but in actuality it is “We the People” who have allowed these incidents to grow out of control through our consent to the trade-off of our freedom for "security." Even after this video has received widespread publication, there will still be many who say the police are the only ones among us who can be trusted to keep the peace while armed. Taking ourselves out of our outrage for a moment, we should ask this question, 'if everyone in that video had been armed…not just the OHP…would the events we witnessed have unfolded differently?' Before you say that indeed there would have been a mass shoot out…consider the mental disposition of the officer as he approaches the now armed EMTs. Even if things had been a little too heated, consider the officer's disposition as more and more armed citizens arrive to find out that he is detaining a patient and being belligerent with one of their neighbors. I dare say that, considering these hypothetical circumstances, the events on that day would have been radically different beginning with the politeness level of the officer right from the start.

We then must face this hard truth that we have allowed our government to disarm us under the false delusion that government will provide the security that we are too timid to provide for ourselves. The hypothetical above was reality in our founders’ time because they envisioned and built legal protections to allow for an armed society to provide for the first line of "security." Elected sheriffs, answerable to the people, were the second line of defense and they needed the support of the people to use their police powers. In such a society the citizens police themselves, not out of control Constables with a badge and a gun. Until we take back our Second Amendment rights from the legislatures that have stolen them from us, we will continue to suffer under the oppression of "jack-booted thugs" like the officer in the OHP assaults EMT video. The fastest way for us to restore the largest part of our erstwhile lost liberties would be for each and every state to follow Montana's recent example blocking all federal fire-arms legislation at their borders and staunchly upholding their citizen’s second amendment rights.