From Reason:
Last week, we saw an awful truth in New Orleans: A disaster can bring out predators ready to loot, rampage, and pillage the moment that they have the opportunity. Now we are seeing another awful truth: There is no shortage of police officers and National Guardsmen who will obey illegal orders to threaten peaceful citizens at gunpoint and confiscate their firearms.
Is it necessary for Americans to rethink this whole idea of “supporting the troops” after all? If the US military is perfectly willing to violate their oaths to the Constitution and use force to disarm the American people, then the more of them that are killed and incapacitated in Iraq, the better off Americans as a whole will be.
After all, you can’t claim to be fighting in defense of American freedoms abroad when you are simultaneously violating them at home. No soldier gets a free pass for simply taking the oath to the Constitution, he has to uphold it as well.
However, I have read that the federal authorities involved have declared that they have not and will not issue any orders to seize private firearms. I’d be a little more concerned about Louisiana’s cretin of a governor issuing orders violating both the national and state constitutions except for the fact that her demonstrably epic ineptitude tends to reduce the likelihood of these orders being a cunning anticonstitutional conspiracy.
Still, it is no small matter of concern that the Louisiana police and National Guard have been so willing to accede to these illegal and totalitarian orders.