End the War on Freedom

Surveys indicate that gun ownership is not spread evenly across U.S. households. In fact, chances are that a substantial proportion of U.S. gun owners have more than one weapon, so it's quite possible that fewer than 200 million Americans own those 260 million guns. That means there may be more than 100 million citizens left unprotected against their gun-owning fellow citizens.

Surely everyone can agree that this is an outrage. Moreover, it is an outrage that Congress can easily fix, without months of committee meetings, town halls or tea parties. All that is required is a bipartisan, pro-constitutional bill to extend the Second Amendment's protection of gun ownership to all Americans, whether they like it or not.

Eric, it doesn't take a social scientist to understand that things are quickly going to get out of hand unless somebody pulls back from the brink.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Eric, but that somebody is you. YOU are the nation’s highest-ranking law enorcement official. YOU must restrain your employees from illegal actions. YOU must get a handle on not only out-of-control agencies like the ATF, but the entire panoply of Federal law enforcement agencies. And, most importantly, YOU must reassure us that you will return these agencies to the rule of law and the constitutional restraints that the Founders put in place.

You must understand that as firearms owners we are done backing up. For 75 years, since the National Firearms Act of 1934, the federal government has encroached upon our tradional rights to liberty and property and each time we backed up, grumbling.

No more.

It is YOU who need to consider backing YOUR employees out of OUR faces.

...

When the spasm you initiate by attacking some innocent has escalated to the point that you wish it to stop, you should understand that this can only mean your unconditional surrender to the forces of restoration of the constitutional republic.

Enclosed, then, is the battle flag of the Three Percent. Your analysts will certainly have explained to you by now who we are. In any case, when you sincerely desire the shooting to stop and you wish to indicate your unconditional surrender, take this flag and run it up the pole at Main Justice. Your tormentors will see it, and understand, and the firing will taper off, then stop. Then you will have to take your chances with the war crimes trials, but as I expect to be dead by that point, I can't make you any promises.

Actually, carrying in Wyoming is almost unneeded, because so little crime is there (gee, I wonder why—it couldn't be because Wyoming has the highest per capita gun ownership, or something along those lines, could it?) But one still needs a gun now and then. I did just have to put a goat out of its misery, and old lame horses need shooting too. Some fella I know shoots deer off his back porch with his pistol, during hunting season of course (heaven forbid we offend the hunting bureaucrats). Got to keep that family fed. I should upgrade to my Smith 629 (.44 Magnum) for all those damn bears, though. Had a grizzly on the back porch once.

The main reason though, is tourists, who abound in the Cody area where I live. When tourists see ordinary folks walking around with guns, there are two possible mental reactions. If a gun lover, it is "Wyoming looks like a good place to live!" If a gun hater, it is "I could never live here!" This suits me fine.

Maybe I'm not such a good ambassador; I admit it. People don't seem to mind though, so I guess I won't either. Maybe it's more important to be an ambassador where cops stop anyone (other than other cops) for carrying; but that's not Wyoming. It's not like it never ever happens, but those new hires from out of state usually get sorted out pretty quickly.

By the way, there are no permits for open carry. There is no law at all. Freedom—it does happen now and then. Quite a rush.

To all who would point out the many fascinating and useful features of a different gun I say “fantastic!” as long as you don’t have to retrieve it from your gun safe when you need it. Because . . .

“The features of a gun you don’t have with you don’t matter.”

I believe we each carry with us a "me-shaped bubble" of our own personal property. That personal property bubble remains intact no matter where we are. It consists of your body, your clothing, and the space between the two. No one can claim ownership of me and eliminate my property by posting a sign. Property rights don't overlap, and no one, under any circumstance, can trump your right to your own body, and that includes what is inside your clothing, as long as it doesn't make an appearance or "leak" out (like radiation or viruses).

I am not going to, nor should I, ask every property owner if I am allowed to enter his property "whole" when the property is open to the public or if I get an invitation. Do I also need to ask if my private thoughts are acceptable? My underwear? My brand of deodorant? Not one of those things is any less dangerous to someone who is not attacking the innocent than is my gun. It is a dangerous precedent to single out guns as the only thing that we need to declare to everyone, everywhere we go, every time we step out our front door. This is what hoplophobes would like us to do: think about guns differently than any other object.

If you have no "bubble" of personal property when you leave your home, on your body or in your vehicle, then the real-world implication is that you have no property at all except when you stay home. Anywhere you go, the property owner can demand that you hand over your money, your clothing, or your life. After all, someone claims every square inch of land you must traverse as you go about your day.

Interesting idea. I like it. It implies that the government has no authority to require us to be disarmed in government buildings, in courtrooms, on airplanes, or even while visiting prisons. That pushes even MY crypto-anarcho-libertarian worldview. But it's a push in the right direction. Thank you, sir.

Yet if we can't draw the line at the threat of violence, democracy begins to disintegrate. Power, not reason, becomes the stuff of political life. Will some group of responsible conservatives, preferably life members of the NRA, have the decency to urge their followers to leave their guns at home when they go out to protest the president? Is that too much to ask?

You hypocritical hothouse lily liberals disgust me. There is no one more racist than an American liberal. Why, it was armed black men in the Sixties -- the Deacons for Defense and the Panthers -- who scared you into passing the Gun Control Act of 1968. Why did you then focus on so-called "Saturday Night Specials?" I'll tell you why. Because they were the inexpensive pistols used by poor inner city folks to defend themselves from the thugs that Great Society welfare programs had set amongst them and empowered. Gun control is racist at its core. It always has been since the first slave codes disarmed slaves and free blacks alike. And you call US racist?

But here's the thing. As this is all about diametrically opposed world views, I don't expect you to get any of this. I told you all of the above to tell you this. When a black man, a citizen, shows up carrying an AR-15 at an Arizona town hall, the sound you're missing is the rattlesnake's buzz. When a grandma who's never been in a demonstration in her life, carries a sign to her nation's capitol that says, "Don't make me come back here with my rifle," the message you're ignoring is the quintessential American sentiment, "Don't tread on me." And when firearms owners like me tell you we will NOT obey any further laws that restrict our liberty, steal our property or threaten our lives or those of our children -- and that by our refusal we will force you to try to work your will upon us, even at the point of a government gun -- you are hearing the equivalent of a wolverine's growl.

You know, my Michigan farmer grandpa once told me why he didn't argue too much with my grandmother. "Son, let me tell you something," he cautioned, "You don't poke a wolverine with a sharp stick unless you want your balls ripped off."

How do you like YOUR balls, Mr. Cohen? Attached, or detached?

Hypothetical: They kill some of us, at first accidentally perhaps, but almost immediately thereafter intentionally. The spasm of defensive killing begins, targeted at their leadership. They spasm in return. They would not be able to scuttle into their "green zones" fast enough. For each clumsy attack on us, they receive a lesson in the 500 meter war, one bullet (or many bullets) at a time. They commit "collateral damage" of our innocents, we stay within the rules of engagement and kill only war-planners and war-wagers.

I have asked this question before. They will fight to the last ATF agent or to the last oath-breaking soldier. Will they fight to the first senior bureaucrat, the second Congressman, the third newspaper editor, the fourth Senator, the fifth White House aide? Can they stand Bill Clinton's rules of engagement?

These are the stakes for them, though they do not understand it.

And once they start it, they will find it impossible to stop, until they surrender unconditionally or personally face the music themselves.

Our refusal to cooperate in our own further enslavement will not be tolerated by our "betters." They will hire somebody to enforce their will (for they never risk their own hides). When they do, we will first defend ourselves, and then we will seek out the people who sent the killers and we will wreak justice upon the war makers, not just the war fighters.

That is what "not one more inch" means.

This is called, in the over-technical parlance of the day, "fourth-generation warfare." I call it justice.

...

NOT. ONE. MORE. INCH.

Gradualism will not suffice them this time.

From here on out, they must decide if their tyrannical appetites are worth dying for.

Not one more inch.

The lamestream media told you:

Armed individuals attended the recent Obama rally in Phoenix, and the guns may have actually been loaded. Reporters nationwide expressed shock, dismay, incredulity and were generally stunned by the occurrence, but did note, for example:

"There is an open carry law that makes this perfectly legal in the state of Arizona." --Ed Henry, White House Correspondent, CNN.

"This is perfectly legal in the state of Arizona because they have an open carry law." --Rick Sanchez, anchor, CNN.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Arizona does NOT have an open carry law.

Arizona has its Constitution in operation. Big difference. This means open carry is not (and cannot be) banned. There is no law "allowing" citizens to have this right (a detestable statist perspective by the way, government has no power to "allow" us to have arms), people here simply have this right, since statehood (1912). The Uninvited Ombudsman wrote the plain-English Arizona Gun Owner's Guide (going into its 24th Edition in October) so he knows of what he speaks.

What Arizona does have is a concealed-carry ban, infringing on the public's right to keep and bear arms discreetly. This situation was adjusted, by a law of questionable constitutionality, "allowing" the government to issue permission slips to people willing to sign up for permits to discreetly exercise their rights. To get a permission slip you must fill out an application, take a class, pass two tests, pay a steep tax called a "fee," give up your fingerprints, get listed in the criminal database, be certified by the FBI, be issued an expiration date and carry around "your papers" (actually, a plastic card). Yes, there are similarities to what blacks had to endure to exercise the right to vote in the early part of last century, which has since been declared totally unconstitutional.

Why was there only ONE person who open carried in the recent New Hampshire story, or only a few at the Arizona protest? Why are not hundreds or thousands of us carrying openly everywhere, every day - and not just to protest the latest insanity of the government? It would quickly cease to be "news" if those hundreds - or thousands - were openly carrying in the grocery store, the bank, the park, the office and every other place possible.

As long as this right is connected mostly with politcal activity and protest, far too few will see it as a normal and rational act of free people, but will continue to dismiss it as the dangerous posturing of "wingnuts." Which is not at all to say that the exercise of our right to self defense is NOT a rational, political act as well. It just can't be relegated to that and remain viable.

We will not disarm.

You cannot convince us.

You cannot intimidate us.

You can try to kill us, if you think you can.

But remember, we'll shoot back.

Your move.

-- The doctrine of the Three Percent, Mike Vanderboegh.

...

But give the people, our people, credit, I tell the reporters, they are not stupid. Angry? Yes. Afraid? Rightfully so. But not stupid.

"Our people," the reporters always ask, picking up on the nuance, not "the people?"

No, I tell them. We are now two peoples, sharing a national border and a common laguage but little else. We are a divided nation, perhaps even more than in 1861. For example, if we cannot agree on the sanctity of life, does it matter that we agree on trivial stuff?

One people have a world-view that tells them that it is government from whom all blessings flow. For the other it is God and hard work and not necessarily in that order. One side wants the ability to tell the other side what to do and tries incessantly to get the government to do it. The other side simply wants to be left alone, for government to get out of the way of private enterprise, uphold the rule of lawm, and the right to life, liberty and property, and to otherwise keep its long nose stuck firmly on its ugly face and out of plain sight.

These are irreconcilable visions, I tell them. One or the other is going to win. It cannot be both.

Here's the plain facts of it. My website gets only 2 to 3 thousand hits a day, sometimes less. In Internet terms, why should that bother them? It's nothing. Miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Yet we know, from various sources, that it does, greatly.

Why?

Because they cannot abide, personally and institutionally, citizens standing up to them, unafraid. It sets a bad example for the other people they try to bully. While tactically they can concentrate enough strength to botch a dynamic entry raid a la Waco (where they backed away without ammo, with their hands in the air, at the Davidians' sufferance), strategically they have always been a big, bad bluff -- "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" Numerically, when compared to even three percent of American gun owners, it is THEY who are statistically insignificant.

That is their PRIMAL fear -- that one day the ants will figure out that they outnumber the grasshoppers a hundred to one, even a thousand to one, and if even a fraction of us act together, their bully-boy gravy train, the possibility of their cushy retirement, even, perhaps, they themselves, WILL CEASE TO EXIST.