The acquittal of the four LAPD officers who were caught beating motorist Rodney King may well result in a reversal of traditional roles in the long running debate about gun rights as well as expose the ruling class for all to see as the hypocrites they are.

For decades now it has been the right wing activist who has championed the Right of the People to keep and bear arms. To them, the Second Amendment is sacrosanct, inviolable bulwark of liberty, but only the Libertarian and those who have known oppression actually understand the importance of the ideas of Freedom. The conservative/reactionary may soon be revealed as insincere in his advocacy of gun rights.

The liberal/activist, on the other hand, has always opposed gun freedom on the grounds that a well regulated militia has become an anachronism, a redundancy in the era of secure borders and highly proficient police forces. Why, they wonder, is it necessary to main- tain the dream of the Minutemen more than two centuries after these brave souls helped defeat a tyrant from overseas?

America, to the liberals, is no longer threatened by enemies either foreign or domestic, and the idea of a well regulated militia has been supplanted by the U.S. Armed Forces, the National Guards, and local law enforcement agencies that can be counted on to keep the peace and protect the populace. But who is to protect the populace from the police?

Certainly not the various levels of government. The Rodney King beating proves this.

Elected, appointed and career civil servants have not the courage to stand up to renegade police departments in the teeth of public anger and public fear of ever increasing violent crime. The average American just wants to be safe from the threat of violence and is willing to tolerate extreme police tactics (including, interestingly, violence) and to give up liberties and privacies in exchange for security. But it is a false security, a security that comes with a heavy price tag, and that price is the ultimate triumph of an authoritarian ruling class. We all pay with our freedom.

Private ownership of firearms, say the liberals, leads to violence and bloodshed. What they don't realize, yet, is that it also leads to liberation from a nascent police state.

Twenty-two years ago it was government troops, not the citizenry, that engaged in a Tiananmen style massacre of unarmed students at Kent State, Ohio. The conservatives at the time supported the Guard's action but nobody on either side created the idea that an armed, well regulated student militia was needed to protect the People from the violence of the State.

The liberals of the time did not advocate the formation of a self defense force probably because they did not want to encourage the bad publicity an armed confrontation would bring, and because they felt they already had the moral high ground. Which they did, of course, but no matter how high was the moral ground the four murdered students still had to be buried below it, and many others were intimidated out of confrontational politics altogether. And intimidation is the name of the government's game.

However, had they called for an active self defense they still would have kept this high ground because they would have been backed by the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment, and by the Natural Law inherent in the Declaration of Independence which unequivocally states that it is the absolute Right, indeed duty, to overthrow ANY government (including a Constitutional one) that abuses the basic human rights of the People to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

For a secure free state to survive, We the People NEED an independent extra-governmental militia.Luckily, we still have the Second Amendment. The Framers of the Constitution who insisted on this amendment cared not a whit about hunting deer, or target practice, or burglars climbing in the bedroom window. The SOLE purpose of this amendment was and is to prevent an undemocratic elite from gaining control of the government, the political process, the economy, and the People. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and private ownership of firearms is our ultimate insurance policy.

The militant pro-gun forces have had a slogan for many years, advice to be heeded:

FEAR THE GOVERNMENT THAT FEARS YOUR GUNS!

The police in L.A. (as elsewhere) are obviously not serving the People. The repulsive actions of the LAPD, in which they made Mr. Kings head crack like the Liberty Bell, and that institution's knee-jerk racism and violence as exposed by the Christopher Commission, stand foresquare against such traditional American values as decency and fair play. America is now ripe for a Constitutional crisis that will show the conservatives, (or at least those right-wingers who are less than sincere in their espousal of gun rights,) start spouting a different line and deny the Right of certain People (mostly Blacks) to heed the Constitution and to actually go out and form a well regulated militia to patrol the streets and give their community protection from BOTH the criminals and the police. The ever escalating level of crime has made obvious the inability of the police to do their appointed job, and the continued level of violence by the police against the community cries out for the solution to be the formation of a well regulated People's militia.

The police have for too long literally gotten away with murder. Police routinely cover up and commit perjury about their questionable activities, (they even have a word for it- "testilying,") rationalizing that this is their "perk" as they are targets on the front line against crime, and they get plenty of nods and winks from the powers that be to continue that behavior. They know from experience their superiors on the force and the politicians above will back them up. Police in every city have, with the slightest pretext, killed suspects who were merely disoriented or only vaguely threatening, and gotten away with it.

For years, virtually every time a case of police brutality was brought by a victim against his tormentors the investigative agency (usually a wholly owned subsidiary of the police department) weighed the cop's word against the victim's and almost always decided in favor of the badge and the gun.

Perhaps if the People were to empower themselves to carry their own badges and guns as stipulated in the Second Amendment, American justice would become truly fair and impartial, and the neo-gestapo will fall by the wayside.

Things began to change with the new technology of videotaping in the able hands of private citizens reaping dividends such as the definitive taping of the destruction of Rodney King who, apparently, had been driving erratically. Some twenty of L.A.'s finest witnessed this crime but raised not a finger to stop it. Must we now raise a finger, perhaps a trigger finger, and tell the police they no longer have carte blanche to abuse the People?

The Christopher Commission concluded this behavior was so typical, widespread and "normal" that the officers believed they could get away with it despite the many (Black) witnesses. They had gotten away with it for years so what would they have to worry about this time?

A video cam. A video cam that recorded the truth and sent waves of revulsion across the land and nauseated millions of decent Americans and shocked many others who had turned a blind eye to police misconduct because they believed the police represented a thin blue line between civilization and anarchy.

But now the police have been exposed as sadistic criminals, and the rulers in L.A., particularly LAPD Chief Darryl Gates have been revealed to be out of touch, big time. The new fascists are counting on the short attention been span of the American middle class to take the heat off them. They are waiting for the firestorm to die down and for the People to forget their outrage. They know all the driveby shootings and other problems will soon distract everyone's attention. Then the police will be free (they think) to continue their reign of terror and keep on wielding their vast and violent authority.

But Gates and his supporters would never dream in a thousand years that significant numbers of the citizenry would take literally their Right to self defense and form a "well regulated militia" and begin an armed patrolling of the streets of L.A. Confronted with this prospect Gates and his cronies will blanche and grudgingly mumble something about well MAYBE the sheer size of the LAPD and the seriousness of L.A.'s crime problem perhaps does after all warrant some sort of independent civilian review establishment with teeth to oversee the inevitable necessity to discipline the occasional overzealous police officer.

Chances are the people of L.A., long the victims of their police, as well as victims in other cities will band together and march carrying assault rifles (American made, of course) shotguns and handguns to demonstrate to the powers of oppression that they are just as angry, just as patriotic and just as liberty loving as the original Minutemen and will not suffer abuse any more.

Nobody, liberal or conservative, can deny that the sight of thousands of armed Blacks, Hispanics, working class whites and Libertarians marching from LAPD headquarters to City Hall will cause extreme consternation straight across the political spectrum. The liberals will likely snicker and watch with concealed glee as the conservatives go ballistic.

The conservatives will be faced with a stark and pointed challenge to their integrity. For decades now the chief reason they opposed all attempts at gun control was the fear that social unrest and crime would spread to the white suburbs and threaten their lives and property. Many people facing little actual physical threat have armed themselves, often to the teeth, and have taken additional measures such as living in guarded, gated and alarmed enclaves all the while exerting extreme political pressure to allocate greater funding, resources and power to the police departments, (often to the exclusion of the truly needy of society for these limited resources.) As a matter of fact, the conservatives have been guilty of the very lunacy of which they have been accusing liberals these many years. They are merely throwing money, without rhyme or reason, at the problem as if yet another bloated bureaucracy would be the answer.

Police forces, of course, love all this attention and respect as they are, in essence, just another money hungry government entity filled with and led by power grubbing demagogues. The conservatives, in their zeal to wall themselves off from the realities of modern life, have fallen into the very trap that grabbed the liberals years ago, the knee-jerk reaction of throwing money at a social problem and hoping it goes away. The conservatives have proved unable to learn from the mistakes of the past and are content to attack the manifestations of a problem instead of its root cause.

With great success the conservatives portrayed the liberals as goofy idealists totally out of touch in their beliefs that mere cash could solve the ills of society. With repugnant hypocrisy the conservatives have parroted the liberals by demanding year after year after year after year increases in the police budgets with little or no appreciation that despite this effort crime continues to grow. The only discernible change is that now there are even more billy clubs and stun guns to deal with the Rodney Kings of America.

The conservatives have failed to exhibit the traits of idealism, intelligence and creative thinking needed to stem the tide of crime. They still cling to the belief that drug legalization will not result in vastly cheaper drugs and thus less crime by users and fewer shoot-outs between competing dealers. Instead they advocate and countenance the escalating brutality of police forces everywhere, using the drug problem as a potent symbol and convenient excuse.

Conservatives have generally been pictured as reactionaries, but Moby Dick, the Whale, was a reactionary too. You stick someone with a harpoon (or a taser) and he is going to fight back, and so are his friends. The police assault on Rodney King may well cause the transformation of the Black/liberal coalition into a Patriotic reactionary militia that, aligned with the libertarian and moral right, will retake the streets from the forces of fascism and the usurpers of the common good. Soon American governments will no longer be "of the ruling class, by the ruling class and for the ruling class."

The millionaires of the ruling class, (as the British colonialists before them,) believe they will always be safe in their high rise offices, their isolated country clubs, their fancy downtown restaurants, their luxury cars cruising up the freeways, and their palatial homes in exclusive suburbs, but once they see the oppressed of the city finally arm themselves and organize for self defense, you can bet that serious police reforms will soon follow and the carnage on the streets will stop.

The threat of possible violence to redress the oppression of the People is the single most powerful tool for social justice. The embattled farmer of 1775 has become the embattled urban dweller of today.

Many politicians will find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having advocated the very tactics that are now being turned against them: A person who supports the Right to keep and bear arms has traditionally been considered a great patriot while he who would restrict that Right, a traitor.

How will the cookie crumble in this scenario? How many conservatives are so sincere and intellectually honest that they will affirm the basic Right of all People, including Blacks, to enjoy the benefits and powers of the Second Amendment? Many conservatives will be aghast at the prospect of the very People they most fear and most desire to control, suddenly declaring their independence and freedom from police abuse. There surely will be agitation from the racist right to restrict the Right of certain People to keep and bear arms, a situation that may lead to a split in conservative ranks.

You can imagine the can of worms this will open in the Federal Courts. Which way will the powerful gun lobby go? And how will the Wall Street/Bush wing of the Republican Party react?

They will probably engage in a precarious balancing act in which they will try to keep and mollify their "Willie Horton" constituency with dire predictions of anarchy and pandemonium in our urban areas while simultaneously supporting "law abiding" (ie white) citizens in their love affair with the gun. Hence, some sort of limited gun control patterned after the red-lining policy so favored by the banking and insurance industries.

With a little luck a truly honest politician will come forth and lead on the issue of equal rights for all and no gun control EVER, and attract many otherwise disparate Americans. If he's a Democrat he can run on the theme that free ownership of guns is vital to the survival of a free state and outflank the Republicans on the right, of all places. Many Republicans, unwilling to see their friendly local gestapo get roughed up, will change their minds about gun control and thus be exposed as hypocrites without the moral fiber necessary to lead our country.

Quite possibly, Republican strategists will try to nip this problem in the bud and have Republican officeholders admit that (like the FBI and ATF) the police departments of many cities are out of control big time and that independent civilian review boards with real powers are needed to ensure justice, and that the Justice Department will have a major new function: the monitoring of all police forces to see that they comply with all laws and do not conspire to cover-up illegal police activity.

The times they have changed. The American People are about to realize that it is pointless to let petty differences and disagreements divert their attention and energy away from our real problems. We the People will soon unite against a common enemy, a ruling class that seeks to divide us and keep us weak. Our new slogan will be:

DON'T TREAD ON WE THE PEOPLE!

Now that communism has fallen our chief enemy is no longer foreign but domestic. The bad manners and anti-social conduct of the ruling class and their police can no longer be tolerated. America is a democracy and we must put the fascists in their place: right under our collective thumb.