by Mike Vanderboegh
(Disclaimer: This story is both fictional and true. Any resemblance to individuals living or dead is purely coincidental, or positively intentional, take your pick. Some might see a parallel here to recent events such as the Olofson case or Randy Weaver or the Davidians. If so, they may be right. Or wrong. There are all kinds of people in the world -- all kinds of Phil Gordons, all kinds of gangs and all kinds of thugs. You may choose which thugs you think I'm writing about here. The story begins at three o'clock in the morning the day after tomorrow, one year from now. Or not. The decision is up to the thugs.)
Phil Gordon felt old, sick, tired and cranky. Cancer did that to you, but he didn't have to like it. Still, Phil had one more thing to do before crossing the bar and he prayed to the God of Abraham that he would have the time and the strength to do it. He shifted in his recliner, taking in the photographs on the side wall, a life in brief, partially illuminated by the soft glow of the porch light angling in through the windowpane above the front door.
Sitting in the dark, with the pictures shadowed in whole or in part, Phil couldn't see the details. He didn't need to. He knew them by heart.
It was all there -- his grandparents, his mamma and daddy in their youth. There he was with his parents at the ceremony when he graduated from Basic, and again, standing in the A Shau Valley with his squad, all of them so young and full of bravado. There was his wedding photo with Claire, and the honeymoon picture at Natural Bridge, still another of that sun-dappled afternoon with her at the lake. Then there were those of the kids, still young, ranked by age. There was the time when his oldest son Bobby had competed with him at Camp Perry, and Bobby's graduation from West Point. A pink frame held Sissy in her scrubs during medical school, and from a steel-gray one Johnny smiled out front of his technology company in Huntsville, with Sally at his side and Phil, Matthew and Gabriel at their feet. Then there was his retirement party at U.S. Pipe, more recent pictures of the grandkids, and the last reunion of his Army unit. It was all there, where he'd come from, where he'd been and where he was going. The dusty frames covered the wall above the sofa, in a room that had seen so much loving, laughter and then, sadness.
Phil took all of them in, those he could see and those he couldn't, closed his eyes and sighed. Well, it was a life. God had been very, very good to him. Still, he resented this last business of cancer breaking him down brick by brick. He knew he could bear it, it wasn't that. The pain, the gradual loss of functions, the bone-deep weariness, all were within his ability to stand. It had hurt worse when he'd been hit in Vietnam. He'd been more helpless back during his recovery at Walter Reed. And he'd been weary beyond belief humping an M-60 machine-gun up and down the Central Highlands. Cancer came close to leaving him that tired but he didn't think it would be worse given the time he had left. Besides, ever since he'd lost Claire to a drunk driver from Mexico City, he'd been ready to lay down his burdens and go home to join her. He wasn't Job, but he could take it. But he was afraid, he admitted, that he wouldn't have enough left in him to do what now had to be done. It was a duty and he was stuck with it.
"Sometimes you're just stuck with the duty." His daddy had told him that when he was six and he had asked why he, Phillip Sheats Gordon, the youngest of seven sons, had to go out and fetch the firewood on a cold morning in Winston County when his lazy brothers were still snug in bed.
Sometimes you're just stuck with the duty. The Master Sergeant had told him that, too, just before he died on that no-name ridge near the Cambodian border. How long had it been, now? His mind dulled by the pain pill, Phil couldn't do the math. Long time, for sure. Hard to believe. The battalion had been strung out, looking for NVA supply caches when the Nathaniel Victors hit back hard. Under a barrage of mortars, recoilless rifles and RPGs, they overran the leading company. The air-cover was a little bit uncovered at that particular moment, and somebody had to slow down the motherless sons of Uncle Ho until the battalion got its excrement together.
So, the battalion top-kick, one Master Sergeant Walter McCoy, took over Phil's platoon from the shaky lieutenant who had only been in country two weeks and who still didn't know crap from breakfast. With McCoy's leadership they'd stopped the bastards cold. Of course, it cost them most of the platoon, the still-bewildered lieutenant and Master Sergeant McCoy.
While they were digging in before the fight, McCoy had walked the line making sure the holes were sited properly and the M60s had clear fields of fire. As he walked by, Phil complained to nobody in particular, "Why us?" McCoy, a veteran of three wars and wise in the ways of killing, stopped, looked down at him and replied kindly, "Son, sometimes you're just stuck with the duty."
Phil was thunderstruck that he should hear his own daddy's words repeated back to him there, then, at that place so far from home when all their lives seemed forfeit. It seemed to him an omen, a talisman. It was reassurance that somehow, some way, he would make it out alive. He did. A buck sergeant, Phil was the senior surviving NCO when the NVA finally withdrew, leaving the ridge and the valley below strewn with their dead. When he saw McCoy's body after the fight, Phil sat down beside it and wept. He had never been in a position to be close to the top-kick, but now it seemed as if his own father had been killed.
"Son, sometimes you're just stuck with the duty." Phil could see McCoy's leathered face even now, softness at the edges of its perpetual, hard-set scowl. He could see the wisdom, the love, in his eyes. Phil shook his head, shuddering like a dog throwing off the rain. Enough of memory lane. He was stuck with the duty and he would fight. And he had no doubt he would die and that would be a good thing.
He looked around the battlefield that had been his home, and carefully raised himself out of the recliner. It wouldn't do to fall and break a hip now. Company was coming, and he had to be ready to greet them. He hoped it would be today. He had been scared of the attacking Nathaniel Victors, the whistles and the bugles, the explosions and the screams. With his whole life ahead of him then, he wanted to live. But now, at the end of his life, he wasn't afraid of the thugs who had targeted him. He was only afraid that they wouldn't come.
He had known that that they would get around to him sooner or later. He'd run his mouth too much. He was too political. He'd made his disdain for the thugs and their gang plain enough and now they were going to settle accounts. Frank Grant had met him at the pharmacy last month. The thugs had been asking about him, Frank said. What guns did he own? Did he have any machine-guns? They knew that Phil had held a blaster's license when he worked in construction after the war. Did he have any explosives? Frank had been Phil's good friend for forty years. Yet when he assured Phil that he had told the thugs nothing, even after they'd turned his shop upside down, Phil wasn't sure. The fear on Frank's face was evident. The fact that he had hung around the drugstore to "accidentally" run into him, rather than calling him or coming over, spoke volumes.
Not that Phil blamed him. The thugs WERE scary, made more so because they operated under color of law. They controlled the justice system. The local cops, the state police, all deferred to the thugs, scared that they too would come under scrutiny and attack. There was no reason to expect a fair trial these days. Juries convicted innocent men and women based on the word of paid informers or friends of the thugs and suborned prosecutors who refused to turn over exculpatory material to the defense, denying that it had ever existed. The rule of law no longer applied. Now it was the rule of man, which is to say, the law of the jungle. Phil smiled at the thought. He had lived by the law of the jungle and survived. He doubted that any of these young punk thugs had. Be careful what you wish for, you may get it. Phil chuckled. Oh, yes indeed.
It was still dark outside, early morning. That was no protection from the thugs, of course. They liked to do their evil work at night. They thought they owned it. Phil smiled. His sleep patterns had long ago been disrupted by the pangs of the cancer that ate at his vitals, so he often did his sleeping in the daylight anyway.
Phil took three steps over to the sideboard, maneuvering around the coffee table with the surety of a blind man on his own ground. Yet he wasn't blind, not even by the darkness. Above the sideboard hung a framed quotation from John Locke. It was one of his favorites. He could read it with the help of the PVS-14 night vision monocular he wore over his right eye.
“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.” ~ John Locke
"Now would be a good time," Phil whispered in prayer. God heard him.
The PSR1-A seismic intrusion detectors planted in the front yard that he'd first learned how to use in Vietnam began to crackle loudly through the speaker in the hall. Out back, his black lab Barney began to bark, then stopped with a yelp. The bastards, Phil thought, they always had been big dog killers. Phil instantly pivoted to look with his left eye at the closed circuit TVs he had arranged in a bank in the open closet in the hall. There was another set in the kitchen, a third in his bedroom upstairs, and a fourth in the basement.
Armed and armored black-clad men tiptoed up his front porch. Another bunch stood ready by the back porch. Phil smiled, for two reasons. First, he wasn't going to have to wait to do his duty. And second, the thugs were set up in predictable attack formation (they called it a stack) just like the manual told them to.
He was sure they knew where he was in the house from his thermal signature. What they didn't see was the concrete block and sandbag fighting position he had built that covered both the front and back doors. As Phil darted into the miniature pillbox and kneeled, the porch lights went out as the power was cut. The TVs and cameras still operated on their batteries. Phil grasped the semi-auto Browning Automatic Rifle in the firing slit with his right hand and found the first button on the elctrical control box with the index finger of his left hand.
Wait, he thought, wait . . . The front door burst open. He pushed the button, brought his left hand up to the rifle's handguard and began to fire. The BAR was loaded with 21 armor-piercing rounds, one up the spout and twenty in the magazine. He could have used an M-1 Garand (he had twelve in his collection before he parceled them out to his kids as birthday and Christmas presents), but the BAR had a greater magazine capacity and he knew he had to get this bunch in one sweep. The thugs were all wearing military body armor. It didn't help them much. By the time Phil had emptied the magazine, the entire first stack of the raid party was dead or dying. Some of the tungsten steel AP handloads had penetrated two or more thugs. Night vision devices splintered, kevlar helmets split, the trauma plates of their body armor were fractured and holed and their illusions of invincibility were swept away along with their sorry lives.
It was absolutely silent when Phil reloaded, stood and ran to the rear entry window that flanked the back door. The rear stack was splattered all over the flower garden that Claire had planted with such devotion and love, some of them screaming, moaning, moving. The improvised Claymore mine in the flower pot that he had detonated when the front door flew open had shredded them from the left side, leaving the rear door intact. Body armor and helmets had saved some from instant death. Phil fixed that by shooting through the window, hitting each of them carefully in the head. A growing hail of small arms fire now peppered the front and rear of the house, most of the rounds expending their energies on sandbag and concrete block reinforcements or on freestanding steel doors positioned to cover the windows. Fire even penetrated the roof, coming from a helicopter which materialized overhead, only to be stopped by a two-ply thickness of military surplas kevlar blankets that Phil had spread out in the attic. It had taken Phil a whole month to improvise his fort, telling inquisitive neighbors that he was strengthening his gun room in the basement against potential thieves. The bastards thought they had me on the first floor. They thought I was above my defenses, Phil mused. Oops.
OK, Phil thought with satisfaction, their Plan A just dissolved in front of their eyes. Let's see how quickly they start to work on Plan B. There was one piece of unfinished business, however. To the left of where the pictures now hung crazily in splintered frames (those that hung at all) the front windows were shattered by the bullets of the support detachment, whose ineffective fire had dwindled off to shocked silence. That thermal imagining device had to be out there. Phil crept up on his hands and knees, staying below or behind the sandbags and doors. Edging up, he peeked out with his AN/PVS-14. The surveillance van was just about where he had envisioned it would be -- just twenty yards down the street on this side. He could see the glow of the thermal imager on the face of operator through the special glass of the back door. There was a small clot of thugs standing to the side of the van, looking on in unaccustomed horror at the bodies of their dead comrades scattered across Phil's porch and front steps.
Phil ducked back, and a second later a burst of fire from across the street came through the space his head had occupied. Having determined his next targets, Phil crawled over to the steel door that most directly fronted the window-hole facing the van and changed magazines. From his World War II-vintage BAR belt, he selected three magazines, two from one pocket and one from another. All were loaded with an even mix of armor-piercing and armor-piercing incendiary surplus rounds, originally produced to defeat the Germans and the Japanese. Remember, he told himself, you're after body count as much as the van. When he opened the large, reinforced mail slot in the steel door, his thermal signature was in full view of the thermal operator. It didn't save him, for he died about halfway through the first magazine, just shortly after Phil cut the standing bunch of thugs in half. With the rest of that magazine and the following two, Phil sieved the van, its occupants and equipment, starting high and working low, finally exploding the gas tank with .30-06 rounds intended for Mitsubishis and Focke Wulfes. Phil noted with satisfaction that even though almost seventy years old, they still worked perfectly.
As the riddled hulk of the van blazed and rocked with smaller secondary explosions, there were shouts of fear and panic at both ends of Phil's street. The thugs were pulling back to consider Plan B. Now Phil had to buy time in back.
When he got to the rear of his house, he saw that some of the reserve thugs were cautiously working their way toward the back door, still thinking he was preoccupied in front. Had they been soldiers, they would have charged when they heard the BAR open up on the van. But they weren't soldiers, they were thugs. And they were surprised. No one had ever stood up to them like this. They were frightened. They were more worried about reaching retirement age than what was happening in front of their faces. So they were slow, they were tentative, and even with the raid commander shouting in their ears through their radio buds, they moved like molasses.
Phil had counted on that. What was it Sun Tsu had said? "Know your enemy and you will fight a hundred battles and have hundred victories." Something like that. Well, Phil had no illusions. He knew this was going to be a pyrhric victory -- his own personal Alamo -- but so far his study of the enemy had paid off. He proved it when he grabbed the Claymore clacker by the back window and blew up Claire's garden shed at the back of the property with a thunderous blast (it was just six sticks of dynamite packed in a barrel of ball bearings) that atomized the shed, turned the attackers inside out with the concussion and shrapnel and broke every window facing the alley (and some that weren't) for about a half a block around.
The first blast at the back of the house hadn't registered in Phil's brain, so concentrated had he been on the thugs coming in front door. But he heard this one all right -- heard it and felt it -- the concussion driving some of the air out of his chest and ball bearings and pieces of shed flying through every crack and crevice they could find or create, ricocheting off walls and steel doors. One ball bearing tore a short groove sideways across his forearm and a long wood splinter stuck in his ass. Knocked back, scrambling, he broke it off, the point still in him. Crazily he thought, oh, well, it won't have time to fester. Ears ringing, gasping, struggling for breath and fighting disorientation, Phil sheltered behind sandbags along the back wall. After a minute, he pulled out a battle dressing from his pants pocket and put it on his bloody arm.
First blood to them. But then he laughed, realizing that it was really just a self-inflicted, John Kerry kind of wound. But how many have I killed? More than a dozen anyway, maybe two dozen. Gotta be more if I'm gonna to make the point so everybody gets it. OK, time to cloud their vision. Phil moved around the house on the first floor, pulling strings that he had run through eyelets screwed into the hardwood floor. The strings pulled loose from rolled-up space blankets installed at the top of every wall in the house. Once the strings were pulled free, the space blankets, weighting with steel washers sewn at their bottom edges, unrolled to provide full-length protection against being seen by thermal imaging devices (he'd already installed them under the roof the length of the house). Finishing the first floor, he ascended the stairs and repeated the move in the equally hardened second floor rooms.
The thugs were hampered, Phil knew, by the narrow spaces between the houses in his neighborhood, which stood in an older part of town. Sooner or later, somebody in the gang's headquarters would suggest burning him out like the FBI did at Waco. But would they burn down a half block of innocent folks' homes just to get to him? Questions would be asked by authorities they did not control. News coverage would broadcast it to the nation. Were they ready for that?
Well, this wasn't going to be a drawn out siege and Phil wasn't going to hurt his neighbors if he could help it. Then he grinned. I've already blown the neighborhood to hell and gone and left dead bodies all over their nice lawns --maybe it's a little late to be worried about that? Still, this wasn't going to be a long drawn-out siege. Phil would see to that. He was, in military parlance, inside his enemy's decision making cycle, and he intended to stay there. He could hear sirens nearby now, and see the reflected emergency lights of vehicles all over the place when he peeked around the barriers in front of the upper windows. The thugs would be gathering at their command vehicle by now, trying to figure out what went so terribly wrong and how they could retrieve their reputations with their fellow gang members by killing Phil Gordon.
OK, so get inside their heads. Everything went to crap, their first teams are dead, they've had to call in help, other gangs maybe. But they want to get this done. They will not pull back. The very top-ranking members of their gang will be huddled together at the command vehicle, trying to fight through their horror and panic and figure out what to do. I can help them decide.
Phil pulled the rope on the folding stairs that led to the attic. Confident that he couldn't be imaged through the space blankets, he made his way over to a fighting position he had built not far back from the eave. Weeks before, working at night, Phil had cut a section out of his roof and pulled it inside and mounted it on a hinged framework, making a hatch in his roof. He did this front and back. The next day, went up on his roof and nailed shingles over the gaps created, telling his neighbors that he had leaks that needed fixing. Now he eased that hatch up part way, propped it up with a stick and took a look up and down his front street. Down at the brightly lit intersection, just where he expected it to be, was the command vehicle, surrounded by armed thugs. Other gang members came and went. While he watched, a second van pulled up, then a tractor trailer. Perfect.
OK, thought Phil, it's a math problem. First let's get a base number. He took the ITT range finder he had prepositioned there and lazed the center of intersection. The readout said 215 meters. Perfect. Just perfect. He brought out a plotting device he had made with a thin sheet of plywood and a magic marker. Setting it up to his right, he picked up a Chinese-clone M14S rifle with a loaded magazine. On the end of it, Phil had mounted an M76 grenade launching attachment. Twenty improvised fragmentation rifle grenades lay in a rack made from a large surplus metal 20mm ammo can built high into the position's sandbags. He had crafted them right after he heard he was on the gang's list. If they were going to treat him as no better than a terrorist, he might as well act like one -- within limits. Holding a rope that he had installed to the hatch's leading edge, Phil used the stick to push up the roof section until it began to swing down from the gravity. Using the rope he eased the hatch down until it was fully open resting on the roof.
Slowly rising, he peeked again from the perspective of where he would hold the rifle's muzzle. Estimating the angle from one side of the large target to the other, he took two white cloth tapes with a thumbtack on one end and a washer weight on the other and stuck the thumbtacks into the pine of the roof. These would be his aiming stakes. Dropping back into his sandbag cocoon, Phil rested the butt of the M14 on the attic flooring, and fitted a rifle grenade on the launcher. The chamber was loaded with a grenade blank, and the magazine held nineteen more. Twenty grenades. Twenty cartridges. Phil knew he would only be able to get away with this once, so there was no point in worrying about a second fire mission. He would be lucky to get all twenty off before he was killed.
Holding the rifle at the angle prescribed by the plywood plotting device, he flicked off the safety with his index finger. Aiming with the left hand tape as his guide, he took a breath, let it out, and pulled the trigger. With a "whoommpf" the rifle grenade was gone. Phil fell into the rhythm of killing: his right hand cycled the operating rod, and ejected the spent grenade cartridge. He let the slide go and the next cartridge was loaded. Shifting the right hand to the rifle's rear grip, he grabbed a grenade with his left and brought the projectile down onto the launcher, seating it firmly. His left hand went back to the forearm of the M14. He shifted the rifle, using the right tape as a guide for aim and the plywood for range. He had three rounds gone before the first one landed. Using the tapes and the plywood, moving the muzzle randomly down and up, side to side, Phil hammered the intersection.
Looking from across the street, the gang snipers could not at first figure out what was happening. Had he somehow gotten out of the house to directly engage the bosses? Then one spotted the faint blip of the last grains of burning powder that could be seen above the roof line. They began to fire, plastering the roof with small arms fire that became a general engagement. Behind his sandbags and steel, Phil continued to launch the grenades. By the time he got to ten, all three vehicles were afire and the intersection was littered with bodies while sparks fell on them from a mortally wounded transformer high up a power pole. Eleven, twelve, thirteen. The roof was being eroded above him, around him, swept away by a leaden storm. Fourteen. Fifteen. From down the street, a thug fired the heaviest weapon that the gang owned, an M203 grenade launcher. He had not been trained to use it, so the first round passed over the house and detonated far down on the next street, killing a cop directing traffic. Because the house was not hit, Phil didn't notice it. Sixteen. He noticed the second round though. In fact, it killed him. But Phil Gordon didn't mind. He'd done his duty. He was home with Claire and he got to meet his Maker, his Savior. Absolving, he was absolved.
The gang never did get his guns though. When they tried to force the gun safe open in the light of day, it blew up, killing everybody within fifty yards of the place. In future, the gang resolved, they would never, ever, pick on somebody who had nothing to lose.
In Phil Gordon's pocket, they found a folded up piece of paper that, in part, said this: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and provide new Guards for their future security." Across the bottom of the paper, Phil Gordon had scrawled a phrase in Greek: "Molon Labe."
Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
Note: Feel free to post this anywhere you like and distribute as far and wide as you can. After all, everybody likes a good story.
UPDATE: See all "Absolved" chapter links by clicking here.
26 comments:
We "terminals" have an advantage. I suspect our actions and beliefs are not changed because of our conditions. But rather, our patience is worn very thin.
A good read.
I hate to say it, but I think Phil above would in fact be playing right into the hands of those he is trying to fight against. Imagine the headlines the next day, "Armed Extremist Destroys Neighborhood in Shootout with Police". How long do you think it would be before legislation comes into play allowing more invasive search and seizure methods and more military-grade equipment for even low-level police? Phil fell outside of the OODA loop of those he's fighting against. The key point I noticed is that his actual statement of intent was left in his pocket, where it will be found, filed and hidden by a federal agent never to be seen again. Not published online, not shared with the media, not tattooed on his forehead. Left, hidden, forgotten, in his pocket.
I am noticing something similar with Mr. Codrea's blog (and I say this with no disrespect). The blog has become primarily a continuing list of police offenses. The average reader with no background coming in would conclude two things:
1) Police need better oversight and need to be answerable to the law
2) Police should not be armed
Let us imagine for a moment the Bradys win. Obama is in the White House and bans everything but bolt-action rifles and pump-action shotguns (which he has publicly said he would want to do), with those guns, of course, coming with heavy taxes, regulations and so on. Do you think the Brady Bunch would just say 'we've won' and go home? Of course not. They next step is to follow the path of our 'civilized' neighbors across the pond. And how convenient that, in their war on guns, a like-minded soul has already gathered years of evidence on why even police should not be armed?
Take a moment and step out of your mindset.
This is not a war between you and I and the government (I write on my government-issued computer - please don't shoot!)
It is, or should be, a war between all free US citizens and those who are using the government for fascist or tyrannical ends.
Every year we struggle to vote down more new laws, to fight against both the greater and lesser evils, to show how those in charge have wronged us. But this is a defensive war. Phil was running about, reinforcing the ramparts. There are no questions in the end he killed many, many people. But he still lost.
If we are to win, the fight isn't against armored thugs. At that point the question is just how theatric your precise loss will be. The fight is FOR the minds and understanding of every American. That must always be the mindset; proactive, communally minded, socially acceptable, but still strong, courageous and effective. We can't be marginalized. I don't want to be called a 'survivalist', a 'gun nut', because it means whoever I'm talking to has already stopped listening.
We need to show what good guns do, not dwell on the evil they can wreak. Phil showed evil (the death of someone doing something wicked may be just, but it is still the death of a man with a family, a future, a chance to change, and is evil, no matter how necessary).
Show what good freedom, and by extension, guns do. Dwell on and proclaim how the happiness of a nanny state is short-lived and shallow, how the comforts of being a child is nothing compared to the vigor of being a man. Guns are not the ends to it, only freedom is. Guns are only a means, and every time guns protect someone's right to freedom or liberty, they have served their purpose.
I don't want to go out in a blaze of glory. I want to live in a quiet, peaceful, but free America.
"I don't want to go out in a blaze of glory. I want to live in a quiet, peaceful, but free America."
Thus the paradox. We want the same thing, but those who would disarm us demand either your obedience or your destruction. They don't care what you want.
A couple points, then I'll get out of the way and let others say what they will. Some of us have tried the winning hearts and minds approach for decades now. We had some very creative ideas but not a lot of support from those who advocate that approach, and could generate nowhere near the momentum to overcome the massive media machine the establishment relies on to give people their opinion instructions. Besides which, in case you hadn't noticed, we're getting real close to reality time here. I'm not confident we have a lot of time left, and if people aren't awake now, they're probably too obtuse and in denial to arouse anyway. I mean, really--how oblivious do you have to be to not be outraged already?
It probably will be Hillary (I know the momentum right now looks like Obama, but I'm not sure we haven't seen the famous Clinton ruthlessness play out its course.) At which point, people are going to need to make a personal choice complete with very real risks: Do I surrender?
Now--just because I post Mike's stuff here doesn't necessarily mean he and I are on the same page on every detail--in this case, where Phil was terminal, that's one choice. I do like the point about how he could have gotten his message out to the world.
My own preference is to adopt the persona of Don Diego--as far as the world is concerned, you're an affable, harmless fellow. You conduct your defiance, if that's what you've chosen, in secret. Of course, it's too late for me to do appear neutral and benign, but those of you who have not put your names out there still can.
As for "The Only Ones," long time readers will know I have, on more than one occasion, speculated about discontinuing the series, or putting it into a dedicated blog. I don't have time for that, but I honestly don't go looking for these--they just keep coming up in such numbers I practically trip over them--and I do disagree if you think that's not an effective vehicle for pointing to the hypocrisy and irrationality of those who say only the police can be trusted with arms. I can now give thousands of examples where we can call BS on that one. And it also outnumbers all other tips I get probably 3 to 1, so there is an affinity for the category by most regulars.
Here's the thing, nezumi--if people want polite discourse with no sharp edges, I submit the overwhelming majority of the supposedly "pro-gun" blogosphere gives them that. This is one of the few places where we're not afraid to talk about an "or else" attached to the rattle.
I don't know what people think the last resort purpose of the Second Amendment is, but if we're afraid to even talk about that, why would anyone believe we'd ever do anything more?
What I'm inferring from your comments is you think there's no place on the Internet for this kind of talk. I disagree. And there are times when giving warnings gives aggressors pause, so it's the moral thing to do.
Besides which, the purpose of this site is not to bring in newcomers who've been asleep at the switch. The purpose here is to allow activist gun owners to see for themselves the outrages we are expected to submit to--so they can decide for themselves how radicalized and committed they are to their own liberty.
You can't do that and worry about how your enemies will portray you. Once we admit that they truly are our enemies, they're going to paint us as depraved monsters anyway, so why appease them? We just saw NRA give the Bradys what they want on mental health background checks, and that didn't stop any attacks--if anything, they've stepped them up.
The hell with what our enemies say and the hell with them. Some people don't want to admit that we're in a fight for our lives and freedom. That it hasn't broken out into more than sporadic state-initiated hostilities doesn't mean that that awful potential for more widespread assaults isnt' chafing at the restraints.
There's a reason predators prefer attacking the weak. It's past time gun owners stopped appearing that way.
Only by making the cost of infringing our rights too high can we make those who would abridge them afraid to act. Just as, at the individual level, a criminal avoids a potential victim who may be armed, so too does this work on a societal scale.
But not if we're afraid to even talk about it.
NEZUMI,(ANONYMOUS)
"This is not a war between you and I and the government" (I write on my government-issued computer - please don't shoot!)
So you post here, on your gov't computer, bought and paid with our tax dollars,(and yours?) And don't consider how it really is an us against them?
And then say please don't shoot? Seriously. I've not heard one person threaten anyone with that statement.
" Every year we struggle to vote down more new laws, to fight against both the greater and lesser evils, to show how those in charge have wronged us."
Right there says alot about this whole subject, as well as religion, education, and a miriad of other rights.
For way too long people have said the lesser of this, or the lesser of that, when the Gov't is abusing it's power, plain and simple. Remember, it's the Gov't that draws the lines first, causing the Citizenry to then react.
We have Sen. Specter going on the record about the NFL. Who really cares? How about the fact he chairs the Judiciary, and the AG Mukasey refusing to call Waterboarding Torture? That's an obvious wrong, no? He's a powerful person, right? And he wants to investigate the NFL? Geesh!
"We can't be marginalized. I don't want to be called a 'survivalist', a 'gun nut', because it means whoever I'm talking to has already stopped listening."
We've already been marginalized. And it's the "gun grabbers" and "antis" that have labeled us as "nuts" and "survivalists." They're just empty words,so what?
"We need to show what good guns do, not dwell on the evil they can wreak."
Volumes of books have been written by very legitimate people to show the good uses guns have in society. 3+ million people use guns every year for self defense, without ever firing a shot. Sounds like "good fredom" to me, by use of guns, right?
But because there's no bloodshed or deaths, the news doesn't run those stories.
Sensationalism Sells. Advertising pays the bills, money corrupts, and it costs billions to run for the highest offices in Gov't, and on and on. We have our priorites all ass-backwards.
I can appreciate your comments here, as well as respect your opinions,even though I think it's part of the problem.
There is no more wiggle room on this topic, or other civil rights that are trampled upon daily by "our" elected Gov't. No one holds true to oathes or anything anymore. Hence the hard stances by "the people." Have a geat day, whoever you are. It's always easy to hide behind anonymity.
Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
Thus sayeth nezumi:
I hate to say it, but I think Phil above would in fact be playing right into the hands of those he is trying to fight against. Imagine the headlines the next day, "Armed Extremist Destroys Neighborhood in Shootout with Police." How long do you think it would be before legislation comes into play allowing more invasive search and seizure methods and more military-grade equipment for even low-level police?
MBV: Two points. First, at what point do we resist under your scenario? The "gang" in my story, like the Nazis in the Thirties, are operating illegally yet under color of law. I'm sure many Jews and other anti-Nazis said, "wait, wait, don't provoke them, you'll just make them pass more laws. What would you have the Phils of the world who are targeted by illegal gangs operating under the color of law do? Go peaceably into a system you know in advance is a mockery of justice? Second, the WHOLE point of the story, and for that matter of the Olofson case, is that IT NO LONGER MATTERS WHAT LAWS ARE PASSED OR NOT PASSED, THESE THUGS DO NOT PAY ANY ATTENTION TO THE LAW. THE ARE A LAW UNTO THEMSELVES. THEY ARE UNRESTRAINED BY LAW. THEY ARE ABOVE IT. OUTSIDE IT. They have NEVER been called to account for their misdeeds. Not once. If you cannot restrain such thugs on the government payroll under a nominally GOP administration, what then will happen when the Hildabeast is President?
Phil fell outside of the OODA loop of those he's fighting against. The key point I noticed is that his actual statement of intent was left in his pocket, where it will be found, filed and hidden by a federal agent never to be seen again. Not published online, not shared with the media, not tattooed on his forehead. Left, hidden, forgotten, in his pocket.
MBV: I'd say a kill rate of about 75 to 1 and the destruction of their on-site command party pretty well smashed their immediate OODA loop. What was it Napoleon said, "The moral is to the physical as three is to one," I think. After the conflict with Phil, the gang leaders are in the position of the Sheriff in Silverado, "I've gotta get some more deputies." Only recruiting is going to be a lot more difficult, isn't it? The war, at Phil's level, is submit or die. Phil chooses to fight and die. In the original outline Phil had a media plan to explain himself. I left it out for brevity's sake. I left in the detailed manner of his resistance to show others that it was possible. Tungsten steel AP .30-06 handloads WILL puncture body armor and trauma plates. IEDs DO work. Improvised rifle grenades ARE possible to make by someone with a little experience and a small pamphlet called "Improvised Rifle Grenades" by the aptly pseudonymed expert "Powder Burns." It is still legal to buy or make your own rifle grenade cartridges and practice with dummy grenades to hone your indirect fire marksmanship skills. I had three purposes in writing Absolved. First, to demonstrate to gunnies that it was not only right (references to Locke and Jefferson) to resist a "gang" raid, but possible with tools available to anyone. Second, to send the same message to "gang members" everywhere. I did this for the deterrent effect. If it's circulation in "gang" quarters makes them say, "Oh, sh-t, that COULD happen to me," then maybe they'll be a little less on the prod. Third, to once again beat the drum of the Law of Unintended Consequences. I am confident that there are many real Phil Gordons out there. One day, the "gang" is going to pick on one with devastating unintended consequences to them.
I am noticing something similar with Mr. Codrea's blog (and I say this with no disrespect). The blog has become primarily a continuing list of police offenses. The average reader with no background coming in would conclude two things:
1) Police need better oversight and need to be answerable to the law
2) Police should not be armed
MBV: I think the point of delineating the failures of the police is that the liberals make the claim that only the police should have guns. By demonstrating the patent unfitness of many "law officers" to be the sole packers of societal heat, Mr. Codrea and others are striking at the root of the liberals' argument.
Let us imagine for a moment the Bradys win. Obama is in the White House and bans everything but bolt-action rifles and pump-action shotguns (which he has publicly said he would want to do), with those guns, of course, coming with heavy taxes, regulations and so on. Do you think the Brady Bunch would just say 'we've won' and go home? Of course not. They next step is to follow the path of our 'civilized' neighbors across the pond. And how convenient that, in their war on guns, a like-minded soul has already gathered years of evidence on why even police should not be armed?
MBV: Huh? How would they disarm anybody without cops and the Army? (Not that any great percentage of them would obey a confiscation order. Remember, in that case, a million Phil Gordons would be created overnight.)
Take a moment and step out of your mindset. This is not a war between you and I and the government (I write on my government-issued computer -- please don't shoot!)
MBV: You're wrong. It is between free people and a government who wishes to disarm them. The Bush administration may not have the STATED goal of attacking gun owners but they do not restrain their own in-house gang from doing so under color of law. What should we believe? What they say or what they do? A sign outside an extermination camp saying "Arbeit Macht Frei" doesn't mean a damn thing when you're herded into the showers. (And I cannot resist asking, to which agency does your typewriter belong? Is that you, "Waco Jim" Cavanaugh?)
It is, or should be, a war between all free US citizens and those who are using the government for fascist or tyrannical ends.
MBV: And you would not describe the thugs who come to attack Phil Gordon in the latter category?
Every year we struggle to vote down more new laws, to fight against both the greater and lesser evils, to show how those in charge have wronged us. But this is a defensive war. Phil was running about, reinforcing the ramparts. There are no questions in the end he killed many, many people. But he still lost.
MBV: Yeah, he lost his life, but he did his duty. Another thing I left off was how the people, and especially his accomplished and intelligent kids, react to the attack on Phil Gordon. No man is an island, remember? One man's example prompts a hundred, a thousand, or millions at the right time in the right place.
If we are to win, the fight isn't against armored thugs. At that point the question is just how theatric your precise loss will be. The fight is FOR the minds and understanding of every American. That must always be the mindset; proactive, communally minded, socially acceptable, but still strong, courageous and effective. We can't be marginalized. I don't want to be called a 'survivalist', a 'gun nut', because it means whoever I'm talking to has already stopped listening.
MBV: Helllloooo, wake up and smell the coffee. At the point of contact it is CERTAINLY a war against armored thugs. The majority of Americans, even including some gun owners, despise us "gun nuts" who insist on our rights. "Socially acceptable?!?!?" What media have you been watching for the past forty years? We have been shoved back from the free exercise of our natural rights precisely because we have allowed them to do so. Too many "socially acceptables" have been willing to compromise too many times, claiming to speak for us. Can you say "NRA?" I want to be "marginalized." I want to be labeled in my corner with a great big sign that says to prospective tyrants "Heer bee Draggons." Or put another way, "Don't tread on me," when everybody understands I have both the means and the will to back it up.
We need to show what good guns do, not dwell on the evil they can wreak. Phil showed evil (the death of someone doing something wicked may be just, but it is still the death of a man with a family, a future, a chance to change, and is evil, no matter how necessary). Show what good freedom, and by extension, guns do. Dwell on and proclaim how the happiness of a nanny state is short-lived and shallow, how the comforts of being a child is nothing compared to the vigor of being a man. Guns are not the ends to it, only freedom is. Guns are only a means, and every time guns protect someone's right to freedom or liberty, they have served their purpose.
MBV: Do you believe that Phil's guns wreak "evil" just because in his skilled hands they kill gangsters in self-defense? Phil did not come to their homes, they came to his. Before being targeted by the "gang", Phil hadn't broken a law, even an unconstitutional one. It is time to remember that Iraq under Saddam was an armed society. There were AKs aplenty in private hands. Yet no one overthrew him until the Army and Marines came to settle a debt. What was missing was THE WILL TO USE THEM, what Jefferson called "the spirit of resistance in the people." You, I note, seem to lack that spirit. History, for good or ill, is made by determined minorities. The rest of the societies they battle over are mere onlookers. I want the determined minority of gunowners who are adamant about remaining free to preserve that "spirit of resistance" against the other smaller, minority who would disarm us for their own heathen purposes. Thus it was in the Revolution, thus it is today. If you want to be one of those who "hide and watch" you may do so. If we win, you'll no doubt come out of your hole and congratulate us, telling us you were rooting for us the entire time. If we lose, you'll lick the boots of your oppressor and pronounce it "justice."
I don't want to go out in a blaze of glory. I want to live in a quiet, peaceful, but free America.
MBV: Do you seriously think anybody wants to die? I have a family, a son and two daughters. I want to see them grow up, have grandkids. But I'll die before I leave them a tyranny to live in. NOTHING worthwhile was EVER won, or maintained, without struggle. Stay home and watch it unfold on TV. We don't need you. As my second-favorite Founder once said:
“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say 'what should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!” -- Sam Adams
Thank you all for the chance to comment here and for the opportunity to 'cut my teeth', as it were. I'll be the first to admit, I'm pretty new to the movement. I have been asleep at the switch, but I'm learning.
I think I may be more young and optimistic than many people here. Or it could be that, having just come of age recently myself, I don't have much understanding of what was lost in the last generation. All I know is where the line is now, and where it's heading if we don't push back.
I should also say that I do think this should be discussed on the internet. I agree we need to admit that's what the second amendment was written for, and I will publicly say (as I write with my anonymous account... The irony, it pains me) that I would be proud to fight and die for the America my grandfather lived in. But I won't accept a pyrrhic victory. If I fight, I fight to win. That's what makes me different from Phil. I'm not going to die fighting a losing war.
What I am trying to say is, if we are going to provide examples to other people who support our cause of heroes, which I assume Phil was meant to be, it should be heroes who are effective. Phil was brave, but I would not say he is smart, and we need to encourage people to be smart. If we do see heroes who are brave and not smart, I feel like as part of a community I want to succeed, it would be poor of me not to say 'hey, this could be done better'. That is all I am trying to say, Phil lost because he was fighting the wrong way.
"Volumes of books have been written by very legitimate people to show the good uses guns have in society. 3+ million people use guns every year for self defense, without ever firing a shot. Sounds like "good fredom" to me, by use of guns, right?
But because there's no bloodshed or deaths, the news doesn't run those stories. "
And this is where I become optimistic, because this isn't my dad's world any more. Gentlemen like Mr. Codrea report the news. How many thousands of readers does he get? What about the Vorsky report? Blogs are becoming genuine competition with mainstream news, and that is terrific. I want to hear about these day-to-day things, but I can't find them. What resources can we find or make to get them out there? Mr. Codrea has the right idea, and I understand he has a life beyond this blog, but... It just seems like we're focusing on the wrong heroes. (To counter my criticism - Red is a great hero, and I am always impressed with the posts I see about him. I'm impressed with Heller as well. But these are people fighting legal battles, showing that lawyers are good, not guns.)
Phil lost because he was fighting 20th century in a 21st century war. I'm not saying don't fight, or to say we should trade freedom for life. I'm saying that the story of Phil is an example of someone kicking a goal for the wrong team (and I hope I wrote out why!) Take a moment and contrast what Phil did to what Red is doing right now, or Heller or Ron Paul. Imagine how Waco would have been different if, the whole time, the Davidians could show the inside of the camp to the world; how scared they were, how much they didn't want to fight. If we could show to the world whether it was the Federals who started the fire, or if it just happened 'on accident' like the news reported.
So people are clear on who I am...
Yes, I work for the federal government. Some people read news on their breaks, I read more political stuff. If you think I'm wasting government time, I'd be happy to send you the list of things I completed last pay period and why this week is (fortunately) slower. I'm voting for Ron Paul and I tell that to everyone I get the chance to discuss it with. I've donated a few hundred dollars to his campaign (which has not been easy, I'll admit). I'm in a very anti-gun state and I spend way too much time writing to my congresspeople telling them why they're wrong. My board outside my cubicle says "[government is] a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." I take my position very seriously, because I think my job adds value to America, and because I think we need ethical people to be doing it. Again, if you want to know specifically what I do, go ahead and ask, but I don't think this is the place to discuss me personally.
Yes, I do use anonymous accounts when posting publicly on the internet. I do that in general, I consider it prudent for security purpose. If anyone here would like my personal information, I will send you an e-mail with it.
As I preview my post, I notice I got the attention of Mr. Vanderboegh, who I assume to be the author of the piece. Firstly, thank you for sharing. I understand you have a lot of emotional investment in the piece, and it is a very engaging, inspiring story. I also realize you have a lot more experience and knowledge than I do, so I will try to tread carefully.
At what point would I fire back against that gang of thugs? At the point when firing back wins the most for my country and my children. That has been my sole point in this thread; I do not care for honor, I care about leaving something better for those who I leave behind. So I ask, did Phil make it so his children are likely to have more freedoms, or less? I suspect less, but clearly you disagree.
I would rather survive under a tyrannical regime in which I can sabotage the process than die without accomplishing anything, and I would rather die honorably stopping the regime than either. As I've said, I feel Phil did not truly serve to stop the process any more than Waco did - more laws were passed, better tools were bought, government rolled on.
Since you've asked, I work for Department of Agriculture. I don't work for any law enforcement agency (although I would be interested in working there. If I don't fill the job, someone else would instead, and I think the most pervasive change comes from within. How would Phil's story be different if one of those thugs said 'hey, we don't have a warrant, isn't this illegal?' Well, he'd be sitting at home waiting to be fired, but at least he's moving the process.)
I can understand there's a lot of resistance to the position I'm taking, and maybe you're right. I don't focus on honor or glory. I don't care about kill counts. All I care about is making a difference. It may be I'm looking at it the wrong way, and I'm happy to be corrected. But I don't think Phil killing 75 or even 750 jackbooted thugs is seriously going to reduce the jackbooted thug population. There's no shortage of bullies looking to get paid for the privilege.
I don't want to go out in a blaze of glory either but something tells me that in days to come, if you have a dozen or a hundred or 500 4473's on file that choice may be made for you.
(unless you are going to set the example for your children of sucking your tail between your legs and handing over your guns - or buying "arsenol licenses" and showing your kids how slaves and subjects live......that is to say the legacy of your simpering hand licking you will leave them)
Fight islam Now
"But I won't accept a pyrrhic victory. If I fight, I fight to win. That's what makes me different from Phil. I'm not going to die fighting a losing war."
When Leonides demanded "MOLWN LABE," of the Persians, a losing war was exactly what he knew he was getting himself and his men involved in. They did it anyway.
I pray that anyone; pro-freedom, pro-gun, pro-Constitution, whatever--would consider the sentiment and import of those words before they ever dared quote them.
As for me and my house, we boldly proclaim them. If the JBT's will not fear the warrior who stands in defiance of them, how much respect will they accord the mole or rat who crouches down among them to quietly work for change from within?
The Post-Katrina confiscations were a test; one, I might add that we failed, but did not fail as utterly or miserably as we might. The Federal monster continually seeks to test the limits of its bonds, and it has already stretched its chain far beyond the point our Founders tolerated from the crown.
I will not submit. I will not go quietly. I will not comply. Period. Will this ultimately lead to an O'Dark-Thirty visit at our house by the JBT's? Possibly. And I can tell you that we're not nearly as prepared as the protagonist in Mike's story. Will I/we die? Quite probably, but we have resolved as a family to do so rather than to become like the kings defeated by Adoni-bezek.
MOLWN LABE
I don't know what people think the last resort purpose of the Second Amendment is, but if we're afraid to even talk about that, why would anyone believe we'd ever do anything more?
What I'm inferring from your comments is you think there's no place on the Internet for this kind of talk. I disagree. And there are times when giving warnings gives aggressors pause, so it's the moral thing to do.
Besides which, the purpose of this site is not to bring in newcomers who've been asleep at the switch. The purpose here is to allow activist gun owners to see for themselves the outrages we are expected to submit to--so they can decide for themselves how radicalized and committed they are to their own liberty.
You can't do that and worry about how your enemies will portray you. Once we admit that they truly are our enemies, they're going to paint us as depraved monsters anyway, so why appease them? We just saw NRA give the Bradys what they want on mental health background checks, and that didn't stop any attacks--if anything, they've stepped them up.
The hell with what our enemies say and the hell with them. Some people don't want to admit that we're in a fight for our lives and freedom. That it hasn't broken out into more than sporadic state-initiated hostilities doesn't mean that that awful potential for more widespread assaults isnt' chafing at the restraints.
There's a reason predators prefer attacking the weak. It's past time gun owners stopped appearing that way.
Only by making the cost of infringing our rights too high can we make those who would abridge them afraid to act. Just as, at the individual level, a criminal avoids a potential victim who may be armed, so too does this work on a societal scale.
But not if we're afraid to even talk about it.
David, you put this as directly and eloquently as I only could've dreamed of doing. My heart leaped when I read your words.
nezumi, your keepers ARE watching in the name of "security." Your name is on the list, just visiting this site has marked you. Who is the security meant for, you or them? All the good intentions to reform the system from inside are just as despised as the attempts to reform it from outside, and all attempts will be stopped. The system must live on, because in its eyes it is the only way.
and I ask again...
How many "law enforcement" officers are there? Nationwide, in the united states. From the local cops all the way up to the feds. How many are there?
How many gun owning people that WOULD stand up do you know in your town? How many "backups" for "Phil"?
The problem I see is things like this, if happening often enough and with the results that Phil had...under the rug it goes. The news IS and WILL BE controlled to prevent any kind of widespread nationwide movement.
How many of those books do you have? How many tools? How much raw material? How much "backup"?
"We cannot simply possess freedom, we must constantly fight for it. We fight for it by putting it to good use and using it in the cause of truth." - Pope John Paul II
It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds. - Samuel Adams
The hardest part will be winning the peace. Americans can win wars, but it seems lately that we lose the peace. If Something like Phil's fight comes here, getting rid of the enemies of freedom is only part of it. Say a whopping 10% of the population is involved in active fighting...and ALL the "law enforcement" is taken out...now what? Best be prepared for whatever comes next. I'm not sure what that will be, but it will be ugly for a while.
Would it be something like this:“"Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will pledge with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government."
- Henry Kissinger in an address to the Bilderberger meeting at Evian, France, May 21, 1992.
It's not 100%, but it's best to plan ahead.
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur - what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956
I also had an initial reaction to the violence that was emotional. Let's look past this, though, and analyze:
Phil spent his life doing what he thought was right: he listened to his father's lessons, he served his country, he made a home and raised a family. He loves and misses his wife. He is now elderly, alone and losing a battle against cancer. The author spent some eleven paragraphs describing Phil's family, life and attitude in an effort to evoke sympathy in the reader. Is Phil an "extremist"? He has only recently resolved to take action. The short story covers only our protagonist's final moments. We don't know exactly what lead to this point, but the author leaves us clues that his crime was an act in violation of one of the impossibly complex and numerous procedural rules of an unrestrained, self-serving authority, instead of a violation of the liberties of other men. Phil is already in the hands of those he is trying to fight against, he's already trapped in the system, and cancer will surely take him before even the most vigorous legal defense buys him some small morsel of freedom.
What love must we have for authority, to study this contrived situation and abandon our sympathy for the protagonist, but not question the acts of the antagonists? Under what circumstances would it be acceptable for the state to deploy seventy-five fully-equipped and armed Bundesgendarmerie, surveillance vehicles and a helicopter gunship to arrest an elderly cancer victim, who has committed no crime that deprived his fellow citizens of their property or liberty? What are more "invasive search and seizure" methods compared to those described in the story? It is a question of magnitude, much like the relevance of the cosmetic qualities of a weapon used in a murder. Can the actions of the antagonists even be considered an "arrest"? There is no warrant, no court and no lawyers. The state has resolved to do violence, and in the end the deaths that result from the safe explosion are no less pointless than the effort expended in the mission to seize the safe's contents.
Phil is not a "survivalist", he's a non-survivalist, he is alone, and ultimately the state prevails. Phil is defending his liberty and his property. What moral principle underlies the actions of the state? His friend Frank is too fearful of the (unrestrained) authorities to do more than warn Phil. Frank is a lot like "pro-gun" advocates: too afraid to do more than secretively offer his support. (I'm a "Frank" myself.) Many "pro-gun" advocates don't even do this, because they feel they must publicly support the authority they helped create. Small "R" republicans believe in an orderly republic, not a government which thinks it has discovered a novel approach by re-defining the limits of its power -- as if history isn't littered with the smoking hulls of nations which employed that type of governance.
David said:
"there are times when giving warnings gives aggressors pause, so it's the moral thing to do."
Isn't that why the rattlesnake is the symbol on the Gadsden flag?
Fair warning and all...
Tyranus Emptor
p.s. Thanks to Mike for the thought-provoking piece.
p.p.s. I've got some bad news about the Department of Agriculture...
"Who is the security meant for, you or them? "
I know my internet activity is monitored by the government. My concerns are more germane, such as when a future employer googles my name. I already have a few embarrassing google hits connected with me, and the internet has an awfully long memory.
"How many gun owning people that WOULD stand up do you know in your town? "
In my area (a major metropolitan area in the DC/MD area, I prefer not to specify which on public record, see above)? None. I'd be lucky to have a Frank in my neighborhood. And maybe that's why I have a slightly more cynical mindset than most of the people here.
In my opinion, I am alone. If I were to die like Phil, it would not precede any great revolution. My neighbors would probably be pissed I lowered property values. My neighbors don't agree with me. My local government certainly doesn't agree with me. My coworkers don't agree with me. My family doesn't agree with me. Hell, my local precint saw 2,000 dems for the last election and 10 (yes, count them, 10) republicans.
It's just me and my wife. Beyond that, as far as I can tell, I am alone. And since I'm a pretty lousy shot to boot, it tells me that if I'm going to fight this, I'm not going to wear a bright red shirt shooting at tanks.
I don't know how many of these later comments are directed at me personally and how many are just being generally aired, however I do sense the general emotion is that my favored tactic would be to turn tail and let the government have its way. The thing is, in most cases, that would also be defeat, and I hope I've been making it clear that my goal is success.
So let me shift back onto the offensive and pose a question back to everyone else.
How many minds did he change making headlines on CNN as an extremist leading to police officer deaths? (Of course, they wouldn't put the precise number on the front lines, but they would report civilian casualties, at least until they got a later report and aired a minor correction.) Seriously, who else in his neighborhood is going to say 'wow, Phil is right, lets get our guns and fight back?' And how many are going to see Phil get properly perforated, all his dirty laundry dug up, shown to be a foreign sympathizer communist scum or however else his name is dragged through the mud and say 'wow, Phil, he was always quiet, but we never suspected...'
How effective is that?
Now, Phil already knows he's going to die, so his goal isn't survival. So let's make a minor change. Phil is smart enough to set up a dead man's switch. When he hits a button, when he dies, whatever conditions that need to be met, he sends out a pre-recorded video about himself, about what he suspects will happen and so on out to every major media outlet in the world, so they get news about Phil before they even hear about the massacre. Suppose Phil is smart enough to send that camera footage? Police can't really lie about how many people did or didn't die, about whether they knocked or not. It's clear they were thugs and not heroes. There's a strike against the establishment.
Let's knock it up a notch. Phil is still working on the defensive, which he shouldn't be. Phil needs to think like a fighter. He may hate it, but he needs to think like the Viet Cong, the exact guys he was fighting, because ultimately those were guys who committed their lives to a political cause, took on the biggest army in the world, and eventually prevailed. (Yeah, I know I'm losing whatever favor I had with you guys...)
Phil takes the fight to their doors. You think Sullivan cares how many thugs get killed in the line of duty? Of course not. Sullivan cares about Sullivan. Phil doesn't want to fight the pawns, he needs to focus on the king.
So Phil does something rash. He ditches the gun (no reason to turn them into ammunition for future legislation, right?) Instead he loads up on every day items. Meat cleavers, hatchets, whatever. He scouts out the house of a few high-and-mighty folk here in DC and stages a few proper break-ins. Ties up family members, breaks their nice stuff and leaves. Now he makes it personal. People realize just how defenseless they are, those in charge realize the threat is becoming personal, and Phil is in control of the board (and in control of what information he releases to the news).
If he's really serious, he takes it to the next level yet, which is probably bombs. Or sabotage. Or heck, he just walks down the street in public in DC with his big gun.
Is this stuff scary? Of course, and it has to be. Is it terrorism? Yes, no question. But is it effective?
nezumi said:
"How many minds did he change making headlines on CNN as an extremist leading to police officer deaths? (Of course, they wouldn't put the precise number on the front lines, but they would report civilian casualties, at least until they got a later report and aired a minor correction.)"
You know, you're right! The media would do a superficial investigation of the circumstances, and determine that it would be in the interest of "public safety" to prevent terminally ill people from owning guns. Hey, they have nothing to live for.
We would lose more of our liberties and freedoms. Before you know it, they'll be chanting "there awtur be a lawr" that medical records are included in the National Instant Check database!
Oh wait, that already happened...
What were we talking about again?
p.s. I am the reluctant Big Brother at my bare-fisted defense zone. I admire your willingness to take the risk of posting here. Blogger Joe Huffman was not so fortunate, and lost his job. Your masters are less likely to fire you for fear of First Amendment defense, but will probably get you with the use agreement that you signed when you were hired, or else they'll fabricate some log entries to show casual use during work time.
If it came down to that point for me ... the thugs would end up breaking into an empty house.
My bank account would be empty, my car sold, and my credit cards deliberately maxed out.
I would leave in a car not registered in my name with a trunk full of cash and guns, and go hunting.
I prefer offense to defense.
If Phil were my neighbor he would have recieved some help.
I just did something I rarely do--I deleted a comment. To the anonymous poster, if you wish to advocate initiating violence against citizens, please do so on your own blog and under your own name. I don't post anonymously and I work awful damned hard at this--I give up too much to allow you or anyone else to come in here and marginalize me by associating my name with what the government and our enemies would surely brand "domestic terrorism," and make myself enough of a target without any help.
If you wish to be an advocate for that, please don't associate me with it. Sorry, folks--I need to be the arbiter of how far the envelope gets pushed here, and I'm erring on the side of my gut on this one.
If the anonymous advocate wishes to post an article repeating what he said here on his own site and under his real name, I'll give him a link so you can decide for yourself if I overreacted. But he has no right to expect me to have the courage of HIS convictions.
He pushed the button, brought his left hand up to the rifle's handguard and began to fire. The BAR was loaded with 21 armor-piercing rounds, one up the spout and twenty in the magazine.
You cannot have "one up the spout". BAR M1918A2 fires from an open bolt. That is to say, pull the trigger. The bolt goes forward. Strips a round from the mag and fires that round when it seats in the chamber.
http://tinyurl.com/67vyb2
I was intimately acquainted with M1918A2 in First Squad First Platoon (Ent's Platoon) Co B 27th Wolfhounds Korea Sep 1950 to Sep 1951
I look forward paying my respects Phil Gordon, Carl Drega and other
warriors in Valhalla.
re Carl Drega
http://tinyurl.com/4jbpg9
I got curious and Googled the "semi-auto BAR".
I was mistaken. I stand corrected, sir. The 1918A3 semi-auto BAR allows one in the spout.
http://tinyurl.com/5rjzwl
quote
We took one of the new 1918A3s to the range, along with a selection of .30-06 ammunition. Included in the lineup were 185-grain Lapua Soft Points, 172-grain surplus military ball, 150 grain Samson SPs, 180 grain Remington Soft Point Core Lokts and PMC 180 grain SPs. The BAR is readied for firing by pressing 20 rounds into the removable box magazine and inserting the magazine in the well in front of the trigger guard. Pulling back and releasing the charging handle (located on the left side of the receiver) cocks the gun and strips a round from the mag, chambering it. unquote
Thanks Vlad. One of the things about posting chapters on the 'Net is that they get thoroughly fact checked. -- Mike III
If you never fight when you might lose you will never win.
"The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once".
Judge Alex Kozinski
I have just spend a valuable time while reading this. Good job
I admire what Phil did but he is leading to more of what he hates.
The News is heavily controlled and the Republicans had their chance in the 90s to stop America from going down the crapper before things got really bad.
Guess what? They blew that chance sitting back doing nothing but play mind games with us.
It's like we don't even have a political party system anymore and instead we are getting a *Good Cop* *Bad Cop* scenario where one Cop tries to scare us and the other cop pretends to have sympathy but are both working together to weasel information out of you.
The two cops then pat each other on the back while you just gave everything up.
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