State Governments top heavy with progressive thinkers have been looking for excuses to pass laws banning “militias.” Vermont, to my geographic and ideological left, used a gun range with a few unpermitted buildings to ban Militias statewide, and Vermont only exists because of a militia. Maine just followed suit.

Vacationland legislators used the rumor that a prominent neo-Nazi and white supremacist, Christopher Pohlhaus, was looking to open a training center as an excuse for the new law. I don’t know who Pohlhaus is or what he believes, but the government thought enough of whatever picture they’d painted of him to ban “paramilitary” “training” statewide. I’ve not read the bill, so I’m not going to pretend to know what they mean by that. Still, according to this reporting, “Without the new law, [Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey] said, he had no way to bring a criminal case against someone using military training to create civil disorder, as authorities say Pohlhaus sought to do.”

Did you catch that?

Polhaus may or may not be a despicable racist, but he has yet to use military training to do anything, let alone create civil disorder. All we have is the presumption that this is his or anyone else’s intention, which is all that is needed to bring a criminal case. If you and some friends like to go to the range to practice gun safety together, the State’s assumption about your intentions might be enough to get you and the range brought up on charges.

Again, I’ve not seen the bill, but it sounds like any gathering of lawfully armed individuals for any purpose has become a breeding ground for anti-second Amendment enforcement. And how does that work? The State gets a tip. They follow up. One of the attendees is discovered to have shared something on social media that the government thinks it can use along with this new law to shut down otherwise law-abiding behavior.

Maybe a few of them show up in the same tee shirts. Is that a uniform? Are they a militia? It doesn’t take much to make law-abiding citizens look like criminals.

You can pretend it won’t happen, but New Hampshire is about as friendly to rights and liberty as you can get in the Northeast. The AG of our Live Free or Die Republican governor has tried to use State and Federal Civil Rights laws to silence free speech because they don’t like the speech. The case, much like with Maine’s new anti-militia law, started with a local white supremacy group which, had the AG succeeded, would have put a chilling hand on all free speech and likely cost millions as lawsuits wound their way to the US Supreme Court where the State would have lost. This fishing expedition was dismissed, but the AG is back from another angle. His office has filed another suit, this time pretending Hate Speech is not protected – they are still fishing, and we’d be right to wonder why. Shouldn’t the AG be protecting speech?

Maine’s new mission is not much different in my head than that, except that its legislature passed a law someone will have to be charged with violating before it can be challenged on the anvil of the constitution by another branch of the government with a spotty record of reading the constitution in ways unpopular with people looking to infringe on rights.

I’m not advocating for military training whose specific purpose is to disrupt public peace, but crafting legislation that allows the police state to decide the intentions of others absent any crime for prosecution, while not new, is fascist and authoritarian.

Mainers deserve better than that.

The post Maine Follows Vermont Down Another Disarmament Rabbit Hole appeared first on Granite Grok.

The votes are tallied, and the readers who voted have crowned our latest comment of the week winner. Congratulations to Publius!

Publius, if you are so inclined, please reach out to me, steve@granitegrok.com, so that I can get a shipping address.

Here is the post, commenter, and winning comment as voted by you!

The Post:  G.E.T. R.E.A.L! – E: Education Reform
The Commenter: Publius

The schools aren’t perfect and share a portion of blame for sure, spending all their spare money on additional useless admin that don’t discipline, don’t give classroom support, don’t do their job of iep compliance, just sit there and try and enforce DEI and useless PD rather than trying to attract the best and brightest teachers with attractive salaries.

But we can’t forget to blame what we know to be the largest driver of student success.

Parents

Parents aren’t reading to their kids anymore, they aren’t fostering a love of learning, a sense of discipline, and a sense of respect

The parents plop their kids down in front of a screen for hours at a time, the almighty tablet has become their one stop shop for entertainment on demand. They then get a smart phone with all the quick-dopamine hits that give them easy highs and terrible lows when comparing themselves to everyone else. This constant connection to everything enables round the clock bullying too, and not to mention how that affects their attention span in the classroom, where they are truly addicted to the screen.

It’s an old comic at this point demonstrating the generational gap where a kid gets bad grades and the older generation asks the child what they did wrong, where the modern generation asks the teacher what they did wrong.

The covid years showed us how many parents don’t even care about the school teaching their kids anything but so many just care about it being free daycare.

As a society we once greatly valued education, but that has slowly been chipped away to ensure a generation of obedient, mindless slaves.

The post Comment of the Week Winner: Publius appeared first on Granite Grok.