U.S. Army veteran Mike Durant, the current frontrunner in Alabama’s U.S. Senate Republican primary race, once suggested applying military philosophy to restore “law and order” in some U.S. cities by disarming the population.
In 2011, Durant discussed the violence initiated by United Nations forces going door to door to seize firearms in a speech before the U.S. Army War College.
As an aside, he speculated about how doing that in “some of our U.S. cities” could be a means to achieving “law and order.”
“[F]rom a military perspective, the first thing that needs to be done is disarm the population,” he said. “Let’s face it, if we could do that in some of our U.S. cities, that would be a pretty good step toward law and order. But you ever ask yourself, why don’t we do it here? Because it’s hard. It can result in rioting and widespread rebellion and you know, making the situation worse than it already is. But for some reason, we sort of hand-wave all that kind of stuff and go head and hand all those missions down to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. And that’s what happens here.”
Scott Stone, a spokesman for the Durant campaign, offered the following statement to Breitbart News on Saturday afternoon in response to a query about the 2011 remarks:
“With new public polls every week confirming the grassroots surge for Mike Durant, it’s no surprise that the career politicians would come up with a new outlandish lie about Mike,” Stone said. “This is a ridiculous fabrication and mischaracterization of a speech Mike Durant gave hundreds of times over the last 20 years about military strategy. No candidate in this race has seen the things Mike Durant has in his life and no one will be a tougher defender of the 2nd Amendment than him.”
Watch the entire one-hour, 18-minute speech here.
Durant is primarily known for his heroic military service in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the Black Hawk Down incident in 1993.
Alabama Republicans will have an opportunity to select their preference for the November ballot later this year on May 24. Durant’s primary competitors are former Business Council of Alabama head Katie Britt and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL). If none of the candidates can secure more than 50% of the vote, a runoff election to determine the nominee will be held on June 22.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor