Paramilitary Training Should Be Outlawed
Since the Oklahoma City bombing, we all are asking what can be done to help prevent such an atrocity from happening again. What tools do law enforcement agencies need to monitor and counter extremist groups while ensuring that our civil liberties still are protected?
There are useful and effective measures to be taken.
Today’s so-called militias, which may have spawned the Oklahoma City bombers, are a case in point. Tracking the militia movement through published material, speeches, videotapes, radio programs and computer bulletin boards, the AntiDefamation League determined last fall that the militias’ growth, activities and bellicose message needed to be exposed.
An ADL report released last October detailed the groups’ paramilitary activities, their weapons stockpiling and their fanatical hatred of the federal government. It posed the problem of “what, exactly, the militias intend to do with their guns.”
Surely, our law enforcement agencies ought to have the necessary authority and resources to answer that question.
Furthermore, there should be improved coordination among the various agencies involved. In this regard, President Clinton’s call for creation of an interagency domestic counterterrorism center headed by the FBI is welcome.
Another step also can be taken. ADL research on extremist groups has convinced it that paramilitary training by organizations intent on fostering civil disorder should be outlawed altogether. The Anti-Defamation League sees no reason why our society, which affords every opportunity for freedom of expression and peaceful change, should permit any group to acquire, and train its members to use, lethal weapons for the purpose of getting its way.
The ADL recognizes that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression and association and the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. However, nothing in those amendments or anywhere else in the Constitution guarantees any American the right to conspire or to use weapons against federal institutions or to engage in any criminal conduct.
When the last wave of paramilitary activity occurred in the late ‘70s, the Anti-Defamation League produced a report that documented the proliferation of training centers operated by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas. Using such names as the White Patriot Party and the Christian Patriots Defense League, these organizations were found to be seedbeds of violence and lawlessness.
As a response, we drafted model state legislation making it illegal to conduct such training. The bill, carefully drafted to withstand constitutional challenge, imposed criminal penalties for weapons instructors and participants in paramilitary training camps.
The bill’s subsequent adoption by 24 states contributed to a decline in such paramilitary activity. The law was applied successfully, for example, in Florida, where it resulted in the conviction in 1985 of members of the United Klans of America, who were training for terrorist actions against minorities.
The Anti-Defamation League believes that today’s discussion of how to reduce the possibility of more atrocities is healthy and necessary. Solutions ought to include measures at both the federal and state levels. The ADL urges the 26 states that have not enacted laws patterned after ADL’s model bill to do so.
This country had a tragic wake-up call in February 1993 when the World Trade Center was bombed in New York City. Many Americans, for the first time, realized our vulnerability to international terrorism. Two years later, we see that home-grown terrorists can be even more deadly.
While there are no guarantees that it won’t happen again, Americans must be reassured that their law enforcement agencies, functioning within constitutional limits, are working to deter such events from happening again.
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