The more you look at how bad our current government is, the more we have history to reflect on because it will be rough over the next few years for context.  And I must remind everyone why we have the Second Amendment, and for that consideration, the Battle of Wounded Knee serves a lesson we should all reflect on.  Government power unchecked often leads to bad results.  We certainly have seen some of those bad results in Waco, Ruby Ridge, and one that I think is a topic all its own, the assassination of William Cooper in 2001.  I hate to say it, but since COVID-19, I have been expecting a shootout with some tyrannical force in one form or another every day, and that certainly shouldn’t be the case.  That tyrannical force might only be an empowered criminal element driven to boldness by Democrat politics.  But a government out of control will seek to hide its complicity through sheer power and intimidation.  And the Battle of Wounded Knee is one of those times in American history where government power over innocent people evoked disastrous results.  And when pressed, such behavior is the standard foundation of all government activity.  That is why we never want government to get too big, and that they must always have their power checked with at least, equal and opposite ability.  An unarmed population is the foundation of corruption because government types cannot resist the temptation to abuse that power for their own whims and security. The Indians involved in The Battle of Wounded Knee were Americans and had a right to own guns for their own protection.  Sitting Bull had been a member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and was working to assimilate into American culture, so his killing was even more of a tragedy that we should all learn from as we prepare for another phase of government failure where desperation will logically drive their actions.

In August 1890 Daniel F. Royer became head of the Pine Ridge Agency; he arrived at his post in October. Many of the Oglala Lakota on his reservation had become passionate Dancers, and he was both displeased with and fearful of their religion. Whereas some federal agents and officials were more tolerant of the practice, Royer was convinced that the Ghost Dancers were militant and threatened to destroy the U.S. government’s decades-long effort to “civilize” the Lakota. When the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) requested a list of Indian “troublemakers” to be slated for relocation, Royer placed influential Dancers at the top of his list and demanded that the military address the matter.  In November the U.S. Army arrived on Lakota reservations with the goal of stopping the rise of the Ghost Dance. One source indicates that it was the largest deployment of federal troops since the end of the Civil War in 1865. Sitting Bull lived near the Standing Rock Agency, a powerful Hunkpapa Lakota chief and spiritual leader who had led the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne to victory in 1876 against the U.S. Army at the Little Bighorn. Many of his 250 followers were Dancers, and, though he was not a practitioner, he refused to let the federal government repress them any further. Maj. James McLaughlin, the reservation’s agent, resolved to arrest Sitting Bull for his role in permitting the spread of the religion. Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles commanded U.S. Army forces on the Lakota lands and hoped to take a peaceful approach to removing the Hunkpapa leader from the reservation. McLaughlin chose to undermine that plan, instead dispatching 43 tribal police officers to Sitting Bull’s cabin on December 15. Sitting Bull was compliant, but his followers would not relinquish him without protest. A vicious struggle ensued, and roughly 300 Indians were killed; among the dead was Sitting Bull.

Of course, the Indians had a right to fight against a tyrannical government.  The government was abusive and trending in the same direction that many similar personalities are trying to place on Trump supporters today.  What has been happening with the January 6^th protestors is even worse than the infractions at Wounded Knee.  This brings up the question of what you are supposed to do when the government breaks the Constitution and you comply with authority only to be thrown in jail to rot away, against your natural rights.  Julian Assange comes to mind. I remember going to the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2018 to see him, and as I was there, I wondered what he could do if the police and military decided to storm the embassy and take him by force, which essentially is what happened shortly after.  And should he comply and go peacefully because he has lost any rights to a trial and self-defense?  And that was what was intended with Sitting Bull.  Once a powerful government finds that you are keeping it from what it wants, it will abuse that power to protect itself.  So the debate goes: what role does a person have in peace if the attacker is hell-bent on violence and intimidation?  History shows that compliance with such forces ends up in either false imprisonment or death.  So why not fight back?  To my way of thinking, fighting back is the only correct choice because the government has shown time and time again that it is irrational in its processing of risk assessment.  It doesn’t matter if it’s in a historical context or a modern one; the base behavior of government abuse is to cover that abuse with brute force.

For all these reasons and more, the worse that government gets, drunk on its power, the more guns that society must have to take the temptation out of their heads that they can abuse that power.  They restrict their behavior to something more logical when they fear a cost to the engagement.  In the case of Julian Assange, the embassy was just a block down from the east entrance to Harrod’s, the famous department store, which was constantly crawling with tourists.  The fear of a public incident was all that kept them from raiding Julian Assange, and once they peacefully took him, he lost all rights to a defense.  And back to Sitting Bull, he was a national celebrity, and he tried to comply with the authorities, but the trigger-happy military was looking for an excuse, so everyone ended up dead as a result anyway.  We have to think about these things because the Biden government is dripping with criminal conduct that has too much power.  And their only way to keep that power is with force.  They aren’t just going to give it back through a “fair election.”  So we must think about what might happen.  We can hope it doesn’t.  I certainly do.  But also, we must be ready because, as history has taught us, a government with too much power cannot be trusted, and that’s being nice about it.  The only thing that has kept us safe so far has been the Second Amendment, the fear they have of stepping over the line and having power used against them equally.  Otherwise, they would, could, and certainly will abuse our rights at every opportunity, and death or imprisonment is OK with them so long as they get to go home at night and live their lives unimpeded.  They behave civilly when they, too, must fear losing that security.

Rich Hoffman