Weird story alert from Audrey
Idaho town asks residents to own guns
By JESSE HARLAN ALDERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Nov 16, 5:26 PM ET
After seeing the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, a city councilor in this tiny Idaho town founded by pacifist Quakers came up with a novel idea.
Ordinance 208, passed by the City Council on Tuesday, asks Greenleaf’s 862 residents who do not object on religious or other grounds to keep a gun at home in case they are overrun by refugees from disasters like Katrina.
“This is not an ‘it’ll never happen here kind of thing,’” said Steven Jett, the ordinance’s sponsor. “We could get refugees.”
In this town about 35 miles west of Boise near the Oregon line — where an estimated 80 percent of the adults already own guns — the proposal hardly caused a stir: It went through weeks of public hearings and drew only mild criticism from the pastor of the town’s Quaker meeting house.
But in the six weeks since Jett first introduced the ordinance, national media have flocked to the story.
Jay Leno ribbed Greenleaf in his monologue. Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” telephoned, no doubt to exploit Idaho’s reputation as wild woodland where mountain men shop for groceries with a rifle slung over a camouflage jacket.
Jett, whose father died in a hunting accident, said the ordinance is designed to enable residents to protect themselves, but it also gives the city a better platform from which to promote gun safety.
“The fact that Greenleaf supports the Second Amendment, we’ll be able to keep the crime rate down,” he said.
The thing is, Greenleaf doesn’t really have crime. At least as most cities define it. The most violent offense reported in the past two years was a fist fight.
Still, Jett insists, the menace of high crime may be on the horizon.
Greenleaf is on the western fringe of Canyon County, a fast-growing suburb of Boise. As developers turn alfalfa rows into tract housing and hay bales into big box stores, Jett wants newcomers to know that criminals will not be “comfortable” in Greenleaf.
“We don’t have a crime problem,” he said. “But this area is going to grow and we’re going to keep it that way.”
Pastor Alan Weinacht originally opposed the ordinance because it conflicted with the Quaker teaching of nonviolence. Based on an unenforced 1982 law in Kennesaw, Ga., it originally require all homeowners to own and “maintain a firearm.”
“It made owning a gun a basis of good citizenship,” Weinacht said. “I don’t know. It just seems we’re slipping as a society into a culture of fear.”
But then Weinacht, who owns several shotguns and rifles for hunting and target shooting, discussed the law with Jett. Jett softened the language and allowed for personal or religious exemptions.
On Tuesday, Weinacht, one of four residents to attend the council meeting, announced his support. “I want to be a team player,” he told the mayor and four council members.
With that, the council approved the ordinance, with Councilor Clovis Strange joking that it had become “gutless.”
Mayor Brad Holton, who owns about 25 rifles, laughed at the fact that Greenleaf’s gun law had been put the town into the national media spotlight.
“It’s been a wild ride,” he said.
Yolanda Carrington:
A gun law motivated by fear of “refugees.” Great.
30 November 2006, 1:04 pmaudrey:
I sent this to Stan in response to his Doctrine piece, in a meandering disorganized email about how bonds are formed between people, and at what levels. I don’t know that it qualifies as a “weird†story. At its core, it’s not substantially different than the Minute Men, forming their own armed guard along our border to protect us from people who want food and shelter and a way to survive.
If it feels different, it’s only because the definition of us and them has been altered. “We’re arming ourselves against old people.†“We’re arming ourselves against infants.†Change any part of how groups are defined, present them without the benefit of years of training in “us†and “them,†and people become uncomfortable.
30 November 2006, 4:05 pmRandy Morris:
I said the same thing when I read this, Yolanda. It’s truly disgusting. The only way I could see a similar ordinance sitting ok with me is if they had said something like, “We need guns just in case there is a natural disaster and FEMA sends in mercenaries to pacify our community.”
But in reality, the entire thing is just another example of typical northern Rocky Mountain white-supremecist, male “gun-ism”.
Randy
30 November 2006, 4:16 pmDeAnander:
and they probably call themselves Christians, too.
30 November 2006, 5:37 pmJohn Irvine aka Sololeum:
As an Australian such a story seems very weird, and extremely disturbing as the natural disaster that will happen is peak oil, peak energy and the decline of the western economic (dis)order. I am here looking for more information on Stans new (anarchist) vision to face up to the current world paradigm of poised collapse.
Cheers,
Sololeum
NOTE: I am not an anarchist. (-:
30 November 2006, 8:21 pmNil:
I don’t even think the definition of ‘us’ and ‘them’ has been altered that much, Audrey.
Who do you think they are worried about when they worry about these “refugees from disasters like Katrina”? What does such a ‘refugee from disasters like Katrina’ look like? What do the residents of that town look like?
1 December 2006, 8:50 pmMarilyn Farhat:
Even among the refugees of New Orleans, there was fear of certain segments of the refugee population. If you remember, the refugees came in 2 main waves; one wave before the hurricane and one after. Those who came to the shelters before the storm were terrified that the new wave of refugees would be living among them because of problems with drugs and violence. There were a number of people going through withdrawal symptoms and who had to be watched and talked to because they were starting to accost the women in the sleeping areas.
Another main concern was the safety of the teenage girls in the absence of proper family supervision and the outward display of sexuality, whether in scantiness of clothing or over use of makeup that many of the young girls exhibited (absence of supervision was a common problem within the families for a number of reasons). Protecting vulnerable people is difficult to do in a shelter that houses over 4,000 and thousands more volunteers (who also can be perverts) roaming around inside the place.
Many in the second group opted to stay back for the purpose of criminal activity (a common occurrence in war and disasters). Most poor and working class people are concerned about protecting their children and providing for them and the fears stem from that.
I think there are certain aspects of fear that are based in reality. The challenge is to figure out what is true and what is not and deal with it, and protect the helpless from those who will prey upon them.
There are, however, blatant racists who will use fear to justify their behavior.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: People from the area find the term “refugees” applied to them offensive.
5 December 2006, 1:21 pmMarilyn Farhat:
I am sure that many “refugee” or “displaced” people will find the term offensive, after all, even among refugees in the United States there is the perception than somehow they are “better” or “different” from the refugees of other nations. It is all a matter of perception. It goes to show how this culture has set itself above the rest of the world historically.
As far as practicality is concerned, all people who are “forced” out of their homes are refugees. They are seeking “refuge” from whatever is threatening them, whether it is nature or a man-made act of war. Refugees can stay within their national boundaries or leave to other nations.
I was raised in a society of “refugees.” In fact, after this current Israeli bombardment, half the Lebanese population (2 million people) became refugees in their own land, many remain living in tents to this day. In the Middle East it is a political statement and an existential one as well. In fact, all people of the world agree on the definition, except in the United States and why? Because there is still the perception in this country, even among the downtrodden, deprived, and homeless that somehow they are “better” than a refugee.
Is that racism?
8 December 2006, 3:55 pmpeggy:
It’s interesting that they find the term “refugees” offensive. But I know other refugees from other countries who also do not like the term as applied to themselves, even when the movements they worked for back in the countries from which they ultimately fled sympathized with IDPs and were supported by what might be called EDPs I guess it’s hard to be stripped of all your dignity, your sense that you are in control of your own life and can take care of yourself. But what did the people who had been rendered homeless by Katrina say about why they did not want to be called refugees?
8 December 2006, 11:03 pmspook:
ASIL Insight
Hurricane Katrina and Internally Displaced Persons
By Frederic L. Kirgis September 21 , 2005
Victims of hurricane Katrina are internally displaced persons, not refugees
Excerpt:
In widely circulated media reports in the days following the disaster of hurricane Katrina, victims of the hurricane were labeled “refugees.â€[1] Other reports had victims rejecting such classifications and insisting on their status as American citizens. As a matter of international law, it is clear that persons who were forced to flee the hurricane and the subsequent disasters on the Gulf coast are not refugees. Rather, the international community refers to such persons as internally displaced. A particular set of international standards applies to them.
Refugees are persons who flee abroad because their own government denies them human rights protection either by persecuting them actively or by not helping them against dangers emanating from third parties. International law protects such persons by means of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol[2] and regional instruments such as the 1969 Refugee Convention of the Organization of the American States (OAS) and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration.
The victims of hurricane Katrina who had to flee their homes have neither left the United States nor lost any of their human rights vis-Ã -vis the U.S. government. However, they have left their homes involuntarily and thus are internally displaced persons within the meaning of the 1998 Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.
cont….
8 December 2006, 11:20 pmCurt:
Most of the 2,000 species of Mantids worldwide are foung in Asia. 20 species are native to the US. Others Mantids have been introduced in the U.S. to control other insects.
26 March 2012, 10:18 amThe European Mantis is the official state insect of Conneticut. The earlies Mantis fossiles are from the Oligocene era. Some people spell it Preying Mantis others insist that it is the Praying Mantis. Either way they are really cool.