The election of Democratic presidents traditionally results in increased sales of firearms and ammunition, but now it may have triggered a movement of petitions advocating states’ peaceful secession from the United States.
According to CNN, citizens in all 50 states have started petitions to allow for their peaceful secession from the United States.
The All State has only been able to independently verify unique petitions for 45 individual states, with some states, such as Ohio, Georgia, Alaska and Virginia having multiple petitions requesting secession.
One petition, for Texas’s secession from the union, has gathered over 117,000 digital signatures on the White House website.
“The possibility of a state seceding is practically zero,” said David Kanervo, professor of political science. “This is … a publicity stunt, I think, for the purpose of trying to send a message of dissatisfaction. I think this whole issue really is overblown because there’s just no way that a state is going to be able to secede from the union.”
According to Kanervo, for a state to secede, it would require a vote by Congress, just as admitting a state into the union would, and there is probably very little support in the federal government for any state to secede.
“I think it is people who are particularly conservative who are perhaps upset by the election outcome, or they’re concerned about some specific policy, such as … Obamacare and the tax burdens that it might create for each state, and, also, I think they’re worried about the federal budget deficit.”
The White House website states that a petition must reach 25,000 signatures within 30 days in order to “require a response” from the administration. Related issues may be grouped into a single response. So far, seven states – Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Texas – have achieved this threshold amount.
According to one petition on the White House website, “Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it’s citizens’ standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government.”
However, some consider this to be more than just an economic issue or a matter of disagreeing with federal policy.
“There would be no movement if a white man was sitting in the Oval Office,” said Huffington Post blogger and former White House senior policy analyst, Jeff Schweitzer. “The economy continues to recover in all sectors, unemployment continues to inch down, the auto industry is healthy and the stock market is 65 percent higher now than when Obama took office,” yet the push to secede surfaces despite these positive developments.
Other petitions filed on the White House website include proposals for the repeal of Obamacare, the impeachment of President Obama and the legalization of marijuana, as well as one advocating the deportation of anyone who signed a petition for secession.
