Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 28, 2010

The ATF is attempting to link a Michigan gun dealer to the Hutaree “militia,” the group charged with plotting to kill local police. “A Michigan-based firearms dealer indicted this week on an unrelated federal gun charge had sold about a half dozen weapons to members of the extremist Hutaree militia group that was plotting to assassinate police,” writes Michael Isikoff for Newsweek.

	The government and its corporate media are attempting to link entirely legal gun dealers and shows to “hate groups” that support and defend the Second Amendment.

The FBI-infiltrated Hutaree was not a militia. The group was denounced by real militias in Michigan and across the country.

Isikoff reports the government has zero evidence that Walter Priest, owner of Gun Outfitters in Adrian, Michigan, “was in any way involved or even aware of the Hutarees’ bizarre plans — as alleged by federal prosecutors — to ‘wage war’ against the U.S. government,” he writes.

The case against Priest, Newsweek and Isikoff argue, “sheds new light on the Hutarees’ scary antigovernment passions (shared by more than a few militia groups), particularly their hatred of the beleaguered federal agency that enforces the country’s gun laws: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).”

Militias, however, are not alone in their contempt for the ATF and its ongoing effort to nibble away at the edges of the Second Amendment — millions of Americans not associated with the militia movement are outraged over federal efforts to trash the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Fear and loathing of the agency, according to Newsweek, “helped fuel the militia movement” and the NRA “egged on” the anti-government militia movement by characterizing the ATF as “jackbooted government thugs.”

“Now, some watchdog and gun-control groups fear, those passions may be returning, helping to stoke an apparent resurgence of extremist militia and patriot groups united in their zealous opposition to any firearms enforcement,” writes Isikoff.

In the 1990s, the government and the corporate media created the myth of dangerous and seditious militia groups gunning for the government. The alleged Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was in fact a government operative. He was not associated with any militia group and was denounced by many of them.

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Since the appointment of Obama, the government and corporate media (using fallacious figures provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center) have hysterically claimed there is a “resurgence of extremist militia and patriot groups.”

In fact, since at least 2006, there has been a “resurgence” of opposition to a federal government in violation of the Constitution. Isikoff, Newsweek, and the rest of the Mockingbird corporate media are tasked with portraying this growing “antigovernment” movement as extremist gun nuts who share the ideology of the FBI-infiltrated Hutaree and pose a threat.

According to the ATF Walter Priest sold a Remington rifle with the serial number altered or obliterated. The ATF conducted an “inspection” (harassment) of Gun Outfitters in November 2008, well before the Hutaree appeared on the government’s radar screen. “Looks like the ATF enforcers are looking for a reason to start a firefight,” David Brian Stone, called “Captain Hutaree” by the corporate media, allegedly wrote in an email. “And we will answer the call.” The email was read in court by a federal prosecutor, according to the Detroit News.

The government now claims Priest and the Hutaree “knew each other” and that Gun Outfitters had sold members of the group about five handguns and one semiautomatic rifle — all legal under the Second Amendment.

In other words, according to the government, “extremist militia and patriot groups” are in league with entirely legal gun dealers and this may result in the death of police officers and government officials. Isikoff and Newsweek do not say this but the allusion is there.

Isikoff admits the story about Priest and his supposed connection to the Hutaree has so far “received no national attention… because there is no evidence that he was in any way involved or even aware of the Hutarees’ bizarre plans.”

The Newsweek article is an attempt to change that.

The story is part of an ongoing process to demonize gun dealers and in particular gun shows and fallaciously link them to fanciful “right-wing extremists” and white supremacist groups miniscule in number and not only riddled with agents provocateurs but in many instances created by the government, as the Hal Turner case demonstrated.

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