Lines, and Lies, in the Sand, or, A Sensible Request Rejected

Lines, and Lies, in the Sand,
or,
A Sensible Request Rejected


A fellow named Dock had a sensible request over at Snowflake’s house, which you can find at http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2008/12/04/the-line-in-the-sand/#comment-34695.

It went like this:

Dock Said,
December 4th, 2008 at 5:51 pm

Instead of fracturing our community, is there any way that we can instead try to mend fences with the 3 percenters? I know, I know, they’re (insert bad thing here) and they are intractable and everything else. Fine. Someone has to wear the big boy pants and be smart enough to realize that we can no longer afford internal warfare of any kind. The modern political reality has robbed us of this luxury. Sebastian, I admire your cool head and your ability to see the big picture - it’s a large part of why I started my own new blog. Will *you* be the one to try to mend fences? Just a thought.

To which a prag named Chris replied:

chris Said,
December 4th, 2008 at 6:33 pm

Dock, that would be kinda like getting Islam to tame the terrorist groups among them… not impossible, but it would be easier to loudly let everyone know that these wackjobs do not represent the rest of the shooting community.


Now wasn’t that a nice slap, comparing us with Jihadists? But, Dock, ever hopeful, replied thusly,

Dock Said,
December 4th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

Easier, sure. But is it better? I’m not so sure. It is a worthy task. Perhaps it is wrong of me to call anyone to that duty, because it really is a tough one.


Tough indeed, for Sebastian promptly shot it down.

Sebastian Said,
December 4th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

"Instead of fracturing our community, is there any way that we can instead try to mend fences with the 3 percenters?"

I don’t honestly see any way to do that when they think we’re cowards who just want to surrender, and we have different ideas about effective tactics that makes us believe they are a liability to the movement. I mean, I doubt they really even see guys like me as on their side, and I don’t really seem them as on mine. So I’m not sure there’s a fence to be mended to be honest.


Dock, I appreciate your trying. I believe it was Sebastian who started this current folderol by calling me a “lunatic” after the Madison letter. I had a similar dustup with Chris Knox, responding to names that he called, and we ended up making a fragile peace, along the lines of understanding that if he was to play the good cop advocating our Second Amendment rights, it might be useful to have a bad cop around to play off of.

Martin Luther King and the other advocates of non-violent change were unable to interest the federal government in enforcing their own laws until the Birmingham Riots of 1963, and the formation of the Deacons for Defense and Justice by black veterans who not only had weapons but knew how to use them, raised the very real prospect of armed conflict.

For his part, Sebastion has finally answered the $64,000 question, at least in part. Sez he:

The demand to know what we’d do if the line is drawn behind us is rather like someone asking a chess player what he’d do to avoid being check mated if his opponent checks his king. They will be the first, no doubt, to say it’s a cowardly cop out. But it’s how I feel about it. There are circumstances where I would agree violent resistance is the only choice. But we are not now, in this country, anywhere close to those circumstances. I find the rather delighted glee with which with some boast of forcing circumstances on others to be utterly repulsive. If believing that makes me a coward, so be it, but I won’t stand with a group that preaches and prepares for civil war while numerous non-violent options lay unused on the table. If they pass a new assault weapons ban? We’ll fight it in the courts. If they ban private sales? There’s legislative, judicial action, and civil disobedience at our disposal. Confiscation? Heller should take that off the table, and even if not, there’s fifth amendment challenges that can be made. Registration? We already have it with every 4473 you fill out.

A court fight takes how long to reach the Supreme Court? And how many Obamanoids will appointed by then? Sebastian must know, and accept, that we will have to forfeit the banned weapons long before it comes to final judgment. And what are we to do then when the decision is against us? It is a fait accompli. Funny how he just gives them registration at the end. I’ll tell you this, if they start picking up all the 4473s the Three Percenters will be in a race with them to see how many we can destroy before they get to them. We’ll burn them in huge bonfires and dare the feds to do anything about it.

What will it take for the Sebastians, and the Ahabs, the SayUncles and the Linoge’s to understand? This is not the country you grew up in. The old verities no longer apply. The tried and true political maneuvers are going to have to be rethought, and refought -- like the Sons of Liberty, not the Kiwanis Club.

When Sebastian moans this:

If 3% of gun owners were as involved in political activism as they supposedly are at preparing for civil war, we’d be an unstoppable political force. There would be no need to argue about where the line is, because it would be political suicide for any politician to get anywhere near it.

Not only is he wrongly assuming that all of us Three Percenters have not been fully engaged politically for lo, these many years, he is wishing for a land that has disappeared.

Look around you, people. Wake up and smell the kindling burning for the ghastly pyres of a future Waco. For it is coming, unless we convince the gun confiscationists that this is as far as they go without violence. Thus, it would behoove the so-called “pragmatists” of the gun world to use us as Martin Luther King did Stokely Carmichael. Instead of calling us belittling names and trying to discredit us, you should be saying, “Look, Senator, these people have a point and they’re angrier than we are. We wouldn’t go that far, BUT THEY WILL, and you’d better have the good sense God gave a goose and back off the seizure of control over the private sale of arms. And for your own sake, don’t try to ban another previously legal class of weapons. These people will fight, and they’ve already said that after your first shots at them they’ll take the fight to YOU. Not just the ATF and the FBI, but to YOU. Senator, I beg you, is it worth it?”

The gun confiscationists are not going to stop without a reason. We have backed up too fast, too easily, for 70 plus years. We Three Percenters will now provide them with a reason. It is up you pragmatists to convince them of it. Thus, it is in the pragmatists’ interest to acknowledge our position, not to denigrate it or to call us names. Sebastian has said that he, too, has his own “line in the sand.” If he and his fellow pragmatists do not take this opportunity we have given them, that “line in the sand” is just a lie in the sand.

I am willing to work with anybody to prevent this country from descending into civil war. I am willing to do anything short of compromising my principles, and those of the Founders’ Republic, to do so.

Dock, you made a convincing plea. I’m sorry it didn’t work. Maybe when things get worse they will change their minds. For things WILL get worse. In the meantime, the Three Percent will continue to prepare for the test to come.