For all the yammering about a new civil war, Americans don’t seem to realize it’s already begun. It’s not a strictly sectional war like the first one. It’s a modern war, which means it’s being fought by guerrilla and terrorist tactics, and it’s been going on for several years now. Self-styled militias are the guerrilla forces — substitute Idaho for the mountains of Cuba — and these “lone wolf” gun massacres are the equivalent of terrorist bombings the very tactics they condemn Palestinians and other Muslims for. It’s more like The Troubles in Ireland, a constant irritant that right now is spreading and intensifying.
“You don’t want to start a civil war with them, because they have all the guns,” I’m told. I think they believe exactly that, which is why greater numbers of them have decided to start shooting gays, or Hispanics, or Jews or anyone else who isn’t White Like Them. These massacres are mostly not random — gay nightclubs, liberal churches and synagogues, a heavily Latinx festival and a shopping mall in a majority-Latinx city have been among the targets. In some states, mostly in the Northwest, law enforcement personnel are sympathetic to the rebels. That’s why the federal government must be mobilized against this threat from within, and it has to take a firmer stance with than it has with outlaws like the Bundys.
The El Paso killer’s manifesto makes plain his desire to engage in a war to defend the country against immigrants and “race mixing,” and he advocates hitting soft targets — meaning innocent civilians in low-security situations — to further this end. He even tries to preemptively claim that “the media” will identify him as a white supremacist and blame Trump’s rhetoric for radicalizing him. As Josh Marshall says, “The gaslighting is actually baked into the attack itself. He wants to be both the assailant and part of the post-massacre spin and pro-Trump defense.” But except for some garbled passages about genetics, the screed is all too familiar from previous attacks. Given the rhetoric espoused across conservative media, one anti-terrorism expert pointed out that this is precisely how the mullahs inspire suicide attacks in the Middle East.
This isn’t a gun-control issue as much as it is an extremist-control issue, though the two go hand-in-hand. The only use for military-style rifles is shooting people, and how many times have you heard such folks explain that they own them in case they have to overthrow the government? They’re not even hiding their intent.
It’s time not just to ban the sale of these guns but to buy back those in circulation and to ban the sale of ammunition for them. People who need personal security can still buy handguns or shotguns, hunters can still buy rifles and shotguns. Anti-personnel rifles need to be in no hands other than police or military carriers if we hope to avert a lot more blood being spilled in this ongoing, low-grade civil war.