conspiracy peddler Alex Jones. Recall that Alex Jones still claims that the US government killed 20 kids and 6 staff in Newtown Connecticut as a “false flag” operation to start confiscating guns even after being discredited on national television. Yingling’s various Facebook pages promote the normal fringe rightwing bullshit, and in his media interviews he talks about how his followers “feel” that their First and Second Amendment rights are being infringed when, in fact, the opposite is true. He fans the flames of ignorant paranoia, magnifying that paranoia through his motley crew of gun toting weirdos. He makes anti-Muslim claims of violence while ignoring the fact that far more attacks with almost as many victims in the US are caused by white supremacists and anti-government radicals who believe the same nonsense that he peddles on a regular basis.

After literally being run out of Charlottesville last Saturday by local police, Yinling is desperately trying to recast himself and his group as a neutral “peacekeepers” and has now even offered “protection” to Black Lives Matter, even though he has zero record we can find of ever doing anything but promote racist, anti-government and extreme right wing fervor. His group’s appearance in Charlottesville last Saturday to protect the racists and violent neo-Nazis is enough information that normal people need to make a reasoned judgement about their radical ideology. His new revisionist “neutrality” reminds us of CJ Grisham and his merry band of gun nuts of Open Carry Texas who, several years ago threatened women’s lives, harassed anyone who dared to disagree with them, and paraded around with long rifles pushing their radical guns-everywhere ideology. When the threats backfired, Grisham desperately tried to rebrand his group as dewy-eyed good guys collecting school supplies and canned goods for the disadvantaged. No one was fooled then, and no one is fooled now over Yingling’s attempt at rebranding.

Let’s not beat around the bush. These “state militias” are not militias at all. They have no authority from any governmental entity to be “peacekeepers”. They are not sanctioned by any authority other than their own fantasies. Their entire existence is ad hoc and they have no authorized standards of conduct or training. The states don’t want them, and local law enforcement don’t want them. The catastrophe in Charlottesville last week was the textbook example of how these vigilante groups don’t do anything but confuse a volatile situation, delay police response, and INCREASE risk rather than mitigate it. Their mere presence is a threat.

It’s long understood, as intended in the Founding documents, including the Constitution and Bill of Rights, that militias were the new US goverment’s first line of defense against threats to that government. They were organized to PROTECT the government, not threaten it. The militias came under local and state authority except in time of war when they were federalized. Today, the actual state militias are not these self-proclaimed and self-aggrandized collections of screwballs, the state militias are part of the national defense under the National Guard, managed by the states except when activated by the federal government.

Groups like Yingling’s Light Foot (and Small Brained) “militia” need to stay home and just run around in their own woods playing army. They don’t have any goddam business inflaming an already engulfed movement of racists and neo-Nazis that they, and the current administration in the White House, are enabling.

Go home. Stay home. Stop “helping”.

Originally posted on Gun Owners for Reform on Facebook.