Steve Ranson / LVN photo
This year’s annual Tea Party at Millennium Park tackled a host of topics ranging from the hot issue of gun control to background checks to the federal government’s administration of public lands in Nevada.
More than 100 people attended the afternoon rally that coincides with the April 15 deadline for income tax filing.
District Attorney Art Mallory began the rally with an overview of historical events and how they relate to protection. He said based on the provisions of the Magna Carta, for example, every English household was entitled to have at least a weapon. Moving ahead hundreds of years to the plight of the American colonists before the Revolutionary War, he said the head of every household in each of the 13 colonies was required to be armed.
“It (the fight for American independence) started when the British attempted to seize weapons and ammo from the colonists,” Mallory said.
Mallory then drew the discussion to 2013 in regards to police protection and gun rights. Although police provide a presence in the community to ensure safety, he said the police — as a rule — respond after a crime has been committed.
“Who’s going to take care of you folks?” Mallory rhetorically asked, adding the next step is people need to be ready to protect themselves and families.
Mallory discussed the concealed weapons laws in Nevada and said organizations such as Stillwater Firearms Association provides special classes.
“Once you carry a weapon, you are more responsible for your conduct,” Mallory said. “With rights comes responsibilities.”
He reminded the audience to keep an eye on gun-related legislation at both the state and federal levels and stressed that 300 sheriffs are against Second Amendment restrictions.
Juanita Cox, a speaker from Reno, talked to the audience about Agenda 21, an action plan for sustainable development drafted in 1992 to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all education, all information, and all human beings in the world.
Cox said the U.S. Senate has not ratified Agenda 21, but she said the Obama Administration favors it.
“Today, we can’t necessarily see the enemies like in the Revolutionary War with the Redcoats,” she said. “Now, they’re disguised as one of us.”
She claimed that Agenda 21 would gradually take peoples rights away and handed over to the United Nations. She issued a caution.
“You need to do something now, You need to be at home on the computer and dial into the Legislature, listed to committee hearings and scream as loud as me,” she said.
She added the common person is the resistance.
“Those who forgot tyranny are bound to relive it, and that’s where we are,” she said.
Floyd Rathbun, who has been associated with the Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies while working with ranchers and farmers, said the federal control of lands is causing a loss in money for local governments. Rathbun would like to see a limitation in federal government intervention on the people’s or public land.
“We live in a country based on the will of the people, not the will of the government,” he added.
He said the main goal is to keep both public officials and the residents educated on the federal government’s control of land.
Tom Riggins, a Fallon appraiser, commended the late Margaret Thatcher, Great Britain’s prime minister from 1979-1991 for what she did for her country’s economic and personal freedom.
Riggins, though, sees freedoms eroding in the United States.
“We have a country in trouble,” he said. “This administration is issuing 16 new regulations a day ... and that does not count the state Legislature,” Riggins pointed out.
According to Riggins, the moral compass in the U.S. is being directed by emotion rather than common sense.