Private militia activity foreshadowed Jan. 6. They continue to do Trump’s bidding

During 2020 violent invasions of state capitol buildings instigated by President Trump to protest coronavirus restrictions served as dress rehearsals for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Kentucky provided an early foreshadowing of the threat to state capitols. On Jan. 31, 2020, over one hundred heavily armed guns rights activists, many wearing masks, entered the state capitol building in Frankfort and posed for pictures in the rotunda. Kentucky State Police, who provide security, directed them to step around metal detectors carrying their firearms.

They came to oppose any limits on guns. Eleven days earlier in Richmond, Virginia, a peaceful crowd of twenty-six thousand had gathered to protest new gun-control laws proposed by the state’s Democratic governor.

In March, President Trump denounced Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s tough covid restrictions and orders to close businesses. On April 15 dozens of cars drove to the state capitol building and tied up traffic to protest Whitmer’s orders.

The next day Trump tweeted “Liberate Michigan.”

Five days later hundreds of angry demonstrators, some with assault weapons, showed up outside the capitol, were allowed by police to enter, and inside ttried to get access to the House floor chanting, “Our House, Let us In.” State police and House sergeants at arms blocked the door, while above the chamber men with rifles stood in the gallery yelling down at terrified legislators.

On May 20 in Montana, armed men mingled on the capitol grounds among sixty people, including families with children, to protest Governor Bullock’s coronavirus restrictions.

In August in Boise on the first day of a special legislative session dozens of protesters, some armed, most unmasked, shattered a glass door, overpowered state troopers, and jammed the gallery overlooking the House chamber. They flooded committee rooms, stripped chairs of paper indicating social distancing and occupied every seat. The mob included far-right militia, and anti-vaccine opponents.

In Oregon, on Dec. 21, fifteen days before the insurrection at the Capitol in D.C., a mob led by Patriot Prayer, a far-right pro-gun and pro-Trump group, did not need to force entry into the capitol. As police ordered the crowd to disperse, a Republican state legislator opened a side door through which dozens of rioters streamed into the building, broke windows, assaulted a reporter, and attacked police with chemical agents. Police made four arrests, including a man who sprayed bear mace on officers.

Many states have steadily expanded gun rights, emboldening the heavily armed men and some women involved in these riots. The open carry of guns is legal in all but five states. Forty-four states allow open carry of long guns, and just seven states bar firearms at rallies. Thirty-six states have even prohibited local districts from placing restrictions on firearms.

The triumph of gun culture armed and energized the insurrectionists of January 6.

The rioters at state capitols faced few consequences. In Michigan, Idaho, and Oregon, police made few arrests, encouraging political violence.

No wonder Capitol insurrectionists came from around the country to heed Trump’s call to invade the Capitol on January 6 and did so with a sense of entitlement, expecting little resistance from law enforcement.

But the federal government and the states have constitutional grounds for enacting laws, or to enforce existing but ignored laws, to limit interventions in civic and public events by unauthorized militias.

Paramilitary groups and gun rights extremists erroneously believe they are protected by the Second Amendment. But a conservative Supreme Court majority ruled otherwise. In D.C. v. Heller (2008) the Court predictably struck down a D.C. ban on owning guns in the home and affirmed individuals’ rights to bear arms.

But the Court also described the Second Amendment right as “not unlimited.” Justice Antonin Scalia stated that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions… forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings….” Nor is there “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever.” The Amendment referred to weapons “in common use at the time” [therefore] the historical tradition prohibited “the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.”

Twenty-five states already criminalize paramilitary activities. Twenty-nine prohibit parading or conducting drills in public with firearms, and seventeen forbid policing by self-appointed groups dressing in uniforms.

Private paramilitary organizations are illegal in all fifty states. And all fifty states prohibit “unorganized militias” from holding training sessions and military exercises t outside of state power.

The heavily armed Oath Keepers, Patriot Prayer, and Proud Boys who throughout 2020 provided “security” at white supremacist rallies, Black Lives Matter Protests, and Trump rallies, illegally assumed police duties banned by most states.

But the relevant laws and constitutional provisions are often obscure and not known to authorities responsible for keeping order. Whether knowing the laws or not, local authorities and police often share the politics of armed groups and give them free passage.

If the will to enforce the laws is present, states and the federal government have constitutional sanction and tools to limit the activities of self-described militias that acted as spearpoints of Trumpian assaults on state capitols and the Capitol.

Threats of violence are now routine among a significant segment of the Republican Party. With 30 to 40 percent of Republicans saying they favor violence for political ends, its critical that illegal militias be reined in.

Ron Formisano is the author of American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class (U Illinois, 2017)

This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 8:30 AM.