In advance of the next legislative session and in response to the armed violence in El Paso and Midland, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has issued eight executive orders calling for increasing the number and the power of fusion centers in the Lone Star State.
Abbott’s office released a statement explaining that the executive orders were designed to “help prevent further mass shootings by enhancing reporting requirements and ensuring law enforcement and the public have the training, tools, and resources they need to provide and respond to Suspicious Activity Reports.”
Governor Abbott apparently believes that legislating from the governor’s office and requiring citizens of Texas to report anything they believe to be suspicious is the way to reduce gun violence.
Of course, the events that took place at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, seem to evince that an armed populace is a safe populace, as the assailant in that case was stopped when Jack Wilson, the head of the church’s volunteer security team and a firearms instructor, fatally shot him after only seconds.
Abbott, apparently, sees taking federal funds and the statewide proliferation of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Fusion Centers as a better response to the acts of crazy people pointing guns at innocent people.
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As of now, Texas has eight fusion centers, each of which share data and process reports of suspicious activity. Abbott’s executive orders would increase that number, seeing these outposts of the federal surveillance state established all over the Lone Star State.
According to a local media report on the fusion centers, “state data shows nearly 13-thousand suspicious activity reports poured into the state’s network in the past five years. State leaders say they depend on people sharing information.”
“Every person has got to be aware of their surroundings, and be able and be willing to report suspicious activity when they see it,” explained Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
I think Jack Wilson was very aware of his surroundings and took care of the “suspicious activity.”
No matter. Governor Abbott is determined to let DHS expand its federal footprint in Texas.
Read what the governor promises to do to reduce armed violence in his state: “Texas must achieve several objectives to better protect our communities and our residents from mass shootings,” said Governor Abbott. “One of those objectives is to marshal law enforcement resources to stop violent criminals before they commit mass murders.”
And there you have it. Another Republican politician promising pre-crime programs. For those unaware of this type of “crime fighting,” pre-crime programs basically target people based on some factor that government agents believe would likely lead that person to commit a crime … someday … maybe … or not.
Earlier this year, U.S. Attorney General William Barr appeared in Memphis to announce Project Guardian, a federal program aimed at preventing people who might move toward violence from being able to purchase firearms or ammunition.
It seems Governor Abbott wants to be at the vanguard of the operation to disarm people based on their perceived proclivity to commit crime. That is to say, based on the government’s desire to disarm them.
Our Founding Fathers very well intended that every American be armed, believing that such was the only way to avoid being enslaved by tyrants. They knew from their study of history that a tyrant’s first move was always to disarm the people, and generally to claim it was for the people’s safety, and to establish a standing army so as to convince the people that they didn’t need arms to protect themselves, for the tyrant and his professional soldiers would do it for them.
In ancient Greece, Aristotle reported that the tyrant Pisistratus, after winning the battle of Pallenis, “seized the government and disarmed the people.” Then, when the people were finally fed up with the taxes and the tyranny, they had to turn to Sparta for relief, for their own weapons were long ago surrendered to a despot promising to be “kindly and mild.”
When the citizens of Athens regretted allowing themselves to be disarmed in the name of safety, they went to Solon — their beloved lawgiver — who was by then a very old man, asking him how they could stop Pisistratus and get their weapons back. Solon responded ruefully:
If now ye suffer grievously through cowardice all your own,
Cherish no wrath against the gods for this, for they are good,
For you yourselves increased the tyrant’s power by putting your arms into his hands,
And now, therefore, as his servants, you must do as he commands.
Fusion centers are the federal government’s favorite way of converting local police into local outposts of the federal police and surveillance state.
In 2012, a special white paper was submitted to the House of Representatives wherein the DHS was encouraged to embark on an “evolving mission” away from its ostensible purpose of fighting terrorism, toward becoming the administrator of an enormous domestic intelligence agency resulting from an integration of the country’s local and state law-enforcement agencies.
This report was written by the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, co-chaired by former DHS chief Michael Chertoff. The blueprint promoted in the White Paper pushes Congress toward green-lighting the growth of the DHS and the dissolution of local police and sheriffs.
The organization described in the paper, entitled “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission,” is reminiscent of more draconian governments. For example, one section of the report calls for a transition in the mission of DHS away from protecting the country from the “terrorism” of foreign militants and toward “more specific homeward focused areas.” Additional sections of the report lay out the plans for building a DHS/police hybrid agency that can monitor Americans in any town and prevent threats from fellow citizens.
In order to achieve their ultimate aim, the globalists demand that the DHS or some other federal agency take control of the personnel decisions currently made by local police chiefs and county sheriffs. “As the threat grows more localized,” the report claims, “the federal government’s need to train, and even staff, local agencies, such as major city police departments, will grow.” Put another way: The federal government will run your local police department and sheriff’s office.
The establishment of fusion centers is a key component of this plan.
It seems, then, that Texas Governor Greg Abbott is turning over law enforcement to the federal government for help in fighting crime when events of recent days proved that the good men and women of the Lone Star State are capable of controlling crazy people with guns. Should the governor’s fusion centers be established, those same good people might find themselves reported and disarmed as part of the state’s “see something, say something” strategy.
Photo: AP Images
