Clearing away the remaining tatters of what's left of the Posse Comitatus Act and allowing the military to operate as law enforcement against American citizens would be a very bad idea, I think; but your essential concept is sound.Rod said:
We need throngs of armed citizens, just going about their regular business wherever the sniper might strike--police are too scarce, too expensive, too obvious, and too incompetent. The next time a gunshot is heard, a dozen people need to instantly start converging on the area from which it was heard to come. If he shoots again, he'll pinpoint his position and be overwhelmed immediately thereafter; if he doesn't, he'll either be forced to make a conspicuous escape or be eventually rooted out.
(More likely, of course, if it becomes known that citizens are armed, the sniper will be smart enough to cease operations in Washington--and either retire or set up shop somewhere else people aren't allowed to be armed, like Chicago or California.)
The government can't protect us--it has never been able to. The current crisis serves only to make people wonder a little more consciously exactly what they're paying police for. The only people who can protect us are ourselves. This is a problem for the citizen militia, not for the police or the standing army.
The government won't permit this, of course, for two reasons. First, where citizens commonly go armed, crime is nearly unheard of, making law enforcement an expensive irrelevancy; second, if the sniper is taken down by ordinary citizens after the clueless police have taken their best shot, that irrelevancy will become searingly obvious even to Democrats and Republicans.
