WWMLKD?

Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald reports on a planned act of armed civil disobedience from the gunners:

Libertarian activist and radio host Adam Kokesh is hoping to get 1,000 people to march on Washington on July 4 -- armed with loaded rifles. The plan, launched with a Facebook group today, is to gather on the Virginia side of the Potomac, where gun laws are lax, and then march across the bridge with loaded rifles slung over their shoulders into the District, where openly carrying weapons is generally prohibited.

"This will be a non-violent event," the Facebook group warns, "unless the government chooses to make it violent."

That's probably true. If the police allow this to happen, it probably will be peaceful -- right-wingers who engage in dominance challenges like this tend not to get violent, basically because the dominance challenge itself satisfies the desire for violence. In other words, these folks get off sufficiently on the notion that they're hurting and frightening us and we're afraid to stop them.

If this takes place and is successful, there'll be more and more demonstrations like this -- until the Overton window on guns moves that much farther to the right and more and more people question laws forbidding open carry. And so a few more of those laws will fall, and the gunners' insane notions will become more and more mainstream.

Misermix calls this demo a "dress rehearsal for the coming revolution." I disagree. This will just help the gunners get what they want working within the system.

If this takes place -- there are questions about whether it will -- I hope the authorities will turn it back with force but zero violence. The organizer claims his troops won't resist:

This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.

I'd like to see this march met by a King-like group dedicated to nonviolence. Imagine if, as the marchers crossed the bridge, they were faced with a group of D.C. residents -- unarmed, serious, dignified, young and middle-aged and old, maybe even dressed in their Sunday best, and determined to block the marchers' progress without force, merely by standing in place.

Yes, if we're talking D.C. residents, it's likely that the vast majority of them will be African-American. It's likely that the vast majority of the marchers will, um, not be African-American. I think that would tell a story right there about who the gunners are and what war they think they're fighting.

I don't think the gunners will stop winning every fight until some of us literally start facing them down. The Newtown victims have begun that process. But I think more of us are going to have to treat the gunners as if they're the Tiananmen tanks. Because, really, they don't need a revolution -- on their issue, they have government power on their side.