Kids Surviving in a Survivalist World

"You feel a moment. I’m not certain if it’s a second lost or a second gained, but in that moment the Earth stops. It’s the moment you watch a child, a young girl in purple shoes, pull a loaded AK-47 assault rifle from the cab of a pick-up truck."

Brianna, 9, getting AK-47 out of truck during training session.

As I read and viewed Brian Blanco's remarkable photo essay "An Amendment Revisited" I was deeply and profoundly upset. There was this acute visceral reaction that went way beyond being merely alarmed or even repulsed. I was certainly all of those things but there was much, much more. Whatever it was kicked me in the gut.

Last December Blanco photographed a training session of the North Florida Survival Group (NFSG) led by Jim Foster, a former cop. “The government is trying to disarm us,” said Jim. “There weren’t enough dead bodies to do it before, but now they’ve got the bodies of 26 dead kids and I’m afraid that’s enough for them to get what they want.”

The purpose of the NFSG is to teach children and adults how to handle weapons and how to survive in the wild. Big Jim refers to it as a "militia" because, you see, he and his fellow members are willing to die to defend the Constitution, especially the Second Amendment. I prefer to call them what they really are: "domestic terrorists" and abusive parents.

Waiting to join others in enemy contact drills.

There is so much that comes through in these brilliantly colored photos besides how silly these sick clowns look playing war games in all their paranoid fantasies  Look closely at the faces of these children. Do they look like your average happy and well adjusted kids? And this little girl - at 9 years old with dyed hair already. This is beyond sick. Beyond disturbing. Beyond depressing.

While the government isn't likely to take away their guns (unfortunately) maybe the children can still be saved from growing up paranoid, screwed up and angry. After going through the main article be sure to link to the photo gallery appropriately called Training Child Survivalists. If you wonder when was the last time these kids were hugged, I don't think you'll be alone.

White Militia Goups: A Double Standard?

Liberal bloggers have often asked, "What if?" What if African American militia groups had increased their numbers after the inauguration of George W. Bush? What if they had armed themselves and held training exercises all over the country? What if they started planning military tactics to "take their country back" from what they believed to be a subversive president?

Do you think Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would have reacted to a black militaristic buildup as coolly as President Obama has to the phenomenal growth of white militias?

Since Obama took office last year, the number of white militias has shot up from about 170 to more than 500, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups in the United States. Armed with enough firepower to take on a police department, some of these groups are honing their sniper skills using photographs of Obama for target practice.

As Mark Potock, director of SPLC said, "If the people we saw running around armed to the teeth were black, I think their organization would be destroyed in a matter of hours. . . . If people saw on their TV screens photos of black militia members shooting at images of a white president, I don't think they would last."

Michael Lackomar, a spokesman for the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia said, "Five areas that we focus on are crime, disaster, invasion, tyranny and terrorism."

Domestice terrorists fighting terrorism?

Lackomar's group has close ties to the Hutaree, whose members were arrested last March by the FBI and charged with plotting to kill a police officer and then setting off a bomb at the future, killing the mourners.
Their ultimate goal was to trigger an uprising against the federal government. Lackomar's group was one of several who helped the Hutarees train.

And yet the southeastern Michigan militia continues to operate with impunity, as if it were some latter-day Army of the Potomac.

Obama supported a U.S. Supreme Court decision crippling D.C.'s gun control law and then signed a bill that allows visitors to national parks to carry guns.

Still, gun advocates keep him in their sights. They show up outside presidential town hall meetings brandishing firearms. When a young black man, identified only as Chris, showed up at one such event with a rifle strapped to his back, white protesters cited him as proof that race had nothing to do with their contempt for Obama.

Had the black rifleman showed up for, say, Ronald Reagan's "states' rights" speech in Philadelphia, Miss., back in 1980, they might still be dredging the Pearl River for his remains.

What domestic terrorists do.