"Póg mo thóin." Toys for Totalitarians delivery hits Maryland. My question for Gov. O'Malley: “Why is this idiot smiling?”

The following letter with accompanying gift was delivered today in Annapolis, Maryland and signed for by J. Sylvester at 10:54 AM.

From the desk of Mike Vanderboegh

PO Box 926, Pinson AL 35126

18 December 2013

Martin O’Malley, Governor

100 State Circle

Annapolis, MD 21401

Dear Governor O’Malley,

Merry Christmas! Enclosed you will find my Christmas gift to you, one ratty old twenty-round steel standard capacity magazine for a CETME semi-automatic rifle. I thought about sending you a nice new Beretta M-9 pistol magazine manufactured in your state but then I realized that this is just going to end up in an evidence bag and it‘s not like you don‘t know that Beretta is thinking about moving out of your fair state because of the tyrannical new law that you signed banning such devices to otherwise honest, law-abiding citizens.

We all know you are term-limited and cannot seek another stint as Maryland governor, but your presidential aspirations are almost legendary. I have to ask: What is it about you anti-firearm governors? You, Cuomo of New York, Malloy of Connecticut -- all of you all have the out-sized egos and even larger appetites for power that make you believe that you deserve to rightfully sit in George Washington’s chair. Even Hicklenlooper of Colorado, as disingenuously coy as he is, believes he belongs there and would drop his faux modesty in a New York minute if he thought he had the poll numbers. And all of you apparently think that citizen disarmament is a winning national issue that will get you to the Oval Office. One must ask, what are you all smoking? I have before me a copy of the photo of you at the bill signing ceremony on 16 May 2013. You are, as my Michigan farmer grandpa used to say, “grinning like a chimp.” Yet, as Emily Miller wrote in the Washington Times then:

“Mr. O’Malley’s legacy will be an angry citizenry who lost their constitutional rights, firearm manufacturers taking jobs out of state and no change in the crime. He will have to justify this rash move to voters in his try for higher office.”

Indeed you will. Of course, your national aspirations are hardly matched by your name recognition, but then you no doubt are hoping for some of Mike Bloomberg’s millions to help you correct that inconvenient disparity. And should your darkest of dark horse candidacies look like it has a prayer in 2016, no doubt Bloomie’s campaign donations will flow into your war chest. No doubt your attacks on the traditional liberties of American firearm owners are no impediment to success in any Democrat primary. If there’s one thing you collectivists agree upon it is disarming those who disagree with you politically. But just how do you think that will play in the general election? So, I look at your happy face as you signed a bill subverting the constitutional rights of your fellow Marylanders and I ask myself, “Why is this idiot smiling?”

And now that all the provisions of your new tyrannical law have gone into effect, you can count on more headlines of the “honest-gun-owner-caught-in-O’Malley‘s-ill-considered-law“ variety. The issue of citizen disarmament which you have embraced whole-hog will not be going away.

To ensure that, my friends and I will continue to smuggle such magazines as you now own in defiance of that law. Indeed, counting the one your aide (or some state policeman) is now holding in his hand, my friends and I have smuggled more than two dozen such magazines into your state and transferred them to Maryland citizens in defiance of your ill-considered diktat.

It is a modest number, to be sure, but then we work with modest means. All of the magazines we have smuggled to date were donated by folks -- some from Maryland -- who wished to slap you in the face with their defiance. My friends and I, Three Percenters all, are merely the conduit of their contempt for your petty tyranny. They believe the long-standing principle of American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void. Of course the trick is to make that point when the levers of power are in the hands of domestic enemies of the Constitution such as yourself.

In any case, with this Christmas gift you may now have your state police open a file on me with a view to prosecution. They will play hob trying to make a case on my friends, but I’d say that with this modest piece of steel you now own it may be inferred that I, at least, am guilty of defying your unconstitutional tyranny. I invite you to prosecute me if you think you can, but then there’s that pesky firearm rights issue that you may regret in a national election.

It is a conundrum, ain’t it? Of course if you don’t come after me, my friends and I will have, as they say in South, slapped your jaws and forced you to resent it. Can you stand our unanswered defiance? My bet is that you can’t, but even if I were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, my friends, including some of your fellow citizens, will continue to defy your unconstitutional law by smuggling in what you have banned. How well do you know your Maryland history? What would Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone and Charles Carroll -- all men who risked everything as signatories of the Declaration of Independence -- do in response to your petty tyranny? What would the men of the Maryland Line, who George Washington counted as his most faithful soldiers, do? Which way would they be pointing their muskets? Do you think your fellow citizens today are any less committed to opposing your depredations of their traditional liberties? Do you think they do not understand your growing appetite, like all tyrants, for their liberty, their property, and -- at the hands of the state police raiders enforcing your diktat -- their lives?

If you do, you misunderstand their character. They may be a minority, but they are a determined minority and history, for good or ill, is made by such determined minorities. So, too, are critical one-issue voters in national elections.

And you count yourself as a proud Irish American. What would Michael Collins say, come to that, about your wanting to take firearms out of the hands of the people?

Póg mo thóin.

Oh, and one more thing. Since you now own an illegal device smuggled into your state in defiance of your diktat, I have this suggestion: Go arrest yourself.

Sincerely, and hoping you have a merry Christmas,

Mike Vanderboegh, Smuggler

The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters

PO Box 926

Pinson, AL 35126

sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

Martin O'Malley playing Irish music -- "Póg mo thóin" indeed.