This article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer talks about a community’s dispute surrounding a “live fire exercise” that was to be put on by a militia group.
Lacey Fair, who lives next to the training site, was concerned for the safety of her daughters, ages 4 and 12.
She said Brandon Drabek, who owns the site and identifies himself as the public-relations person for the Home Guard, could not give her adequate assurances.
Her home is about 120 yards from his land. Fair said that when she asked what to do while the training was going on, he told her, “That’s a good question. Keep your dogs and children inside.”
I wouldn’t exactly feel to reassured by this statement even if it were me. It’s one thing to shoot in the middle of nowhere, or at a properly engineered firing range, but while this area is rural, it’s not exactly desolate. Is it good community relations to distribute leaflets informing everyone that you plan to shoot up the neighborhood in a live fire exercise? I’ve also never honestly understood the need for militia groups to claim some kind of legitimacy.
Fair said Drabek told her the group would be using automatic weapons; he denies that. Fair also said Drabek claimed the group had been endorsed by Geauga County Sheriff Dan McClelland.
McClelland said that he extended no such endorsement and would not because he does not know enough about the Home Guard or the Ohio Defense Force.
I have no issues with grown men getting together and playing army, and I’ve never believed all militia groups to be hate groups, or radical outfits, even though I don’t pretend to understand the motive behind it:
Eckhart said the Ohio Defense Force is about 10 years old, and many of its founders were disenchanted with the state-run Ohio Military Reserve, in part because it no longer trains with firearms.
But is the motivation to serve the community, which you can apparently do in the Ohio Military Reserve, or to train with firearms? If the purpose is to train with firearms, why all the grasping for legitimacy, and the origanizing into platoon sized battalions and whatnot? Can’t a couple of fellas get together and teach each other to shoot without all the pomp and circumstance?
The only thing I can figure is that a lot of these guys are looking for ways to relate to their government, and serve communities that they feel increasingly isolated from, and have a hard time relating to. Government has become cold, impersonal, and with an agenda all its own, even at the local levels. I don’t think the existence of these groups says as much about the men who join them as it says about the governments they don’t feel like they could be a part of.