Saturday, February 28, 2015
28 February: The anniversary of "Waco Jim" Cavanaugh's "finest hour."
Having run out of ammunition, the ATF asked the Davidians if they could retreat. The Davidians held their fire and let them go.
Today is the day of the original raid in 1993.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Elmer Fudd gets motivated on M855; Daily Kollectivist blames NRA pimping for ammo companies.
Elmer Fudd finds out about the M855 ban proposal.
Lawmakers won't be silenced over Obama administration's proposed ammo ban
Meanwhile the Daily Kollectivist gets upset: Law enforcement pushes ATF to ban armor-piercing bullet; NRA stokes paranoia and fear to boost sales.
I stopped by a couple of firearm emporiums today looking (unsuccessfully) for 7mm Mauser ammo and reloading components for .38 and .357s (also unsuccessfully) and noticed that the 5.56 was flying off the shelves at a prodigious rate. I asked one fellow who was buying the last case in one shop what kind of rifle he had. He told me, "We'll, I don't have one yet but I want the ammo for when I do." Yup, they've managed to scare the Fudds with this one.
Playin' that tired old race card -- again.
In an exit interview, the attorney general says his critics may be partly driven by race.
Hell, I don't despise him because he's black, I despise him because he's a lying, murderous constitutional criminal.
These brave folks deserve our support. If I can get there, I'll be going to the Liberty for All Rally next Friday in Spokane.
Our State, Our Rights: The Patriots Answer: Friday, 6 March, 11:00am - 2:00pm PST.
On 25 February 2015, Anthony Bosworth of Liberty for All was approached by Federal agents, under false pretenses and was arrested, detained for five hours in a steel cage without charges, denied Miranda rights, and access to an attorney, interrogated by the FBI as a domestic terrorist, and then released with a citation for "failure to comply", even though his civil rights were clearly violated at every turn.His only action was that he was standing outside the federal courthouse at a 10th amendment rally, while legally openly carrying a firearm. The Feds have still not returned his firearms.This is more than a violation against one citizen's civil liberties. It is a blatant overreach by federal authorities who treated a citizen and a combat veteran as though they were his master.Bring your sidearms. Bring your long guns. This is a peaceful rally. But it is an armed one.This rally is the Patriots' answer to a tyrannical and out of control government.Their abuses will not stand. But we will.We will not comply.Groups sponsoring:Liberty For AllDefend Amendment X
'Gestapo' tactics at US police 'black site' ring alarm from Chicago to Washington
More from Homan Square.
Take a gander at this guy:
The caption reads: "This man circled around a reporter and photographer for the Guardian twice while waiting for a local politician."
Thursday, February 26, 2015
The Washington Times finally notices the green tip ban.
Obama to ban bullets by executive action, threatens top-selling AR-15 rifle.
LATER: And Rush Limbaugh too. Maybe this will help flush some more Fudds our way.
Okay, it's legal but so what? "FedEx Refuses to Ship Machine That Can Make Untraceable Guns."
From the regime of the guy who brought you the Fast & Furious conspiracy. That this is happening in Rahm Emanuel's Collectivist Paradise is no accident.
From the collectivist paradise of Rahm Emanuel, the man in whose Obama White House office (as reported in these pages in early 2011) the Fast and Furious conspiracy was hatched, the man who proposed that the Clinton White House go after the militias in 1995 comes this lovely story: "Chicago Police Detain Americans At Black Site."
The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.Alleged police practices at Homan Square, according to those familiar with the facility who spoke out to the Guardian after its investigation into Chicago police abuse, include:Keeping arrestees out of official booking databases.Beating by police, resulting in head wounds.Shackling for prolonged periods.Denying attorneys access to the “secure” facility.Holding people without legal counsel for between 12 and 24 hours, including people as young as 15.
Herschel Smith observes:
One of the hallmark signs of evil, totalitarian societies is secrecy. Note that the Chicago police didn’t deny the place existed. On the contrary, they insisted that the place be kept secret from the balance of society so that they could continue with their illegal activities. Light scatters the darkness, and they desire the darkness rather than the light. They aren’t scared of being found out, they don’t fear the courts, prosecutors, the justice department, lawyers or anyone else. They have become a law unto themselves. They do what is right in their own eyes and dare anyone to try to stop them.And note that it is a so-called “open secret” among attorneys that this place exists, this place where basic God-given rights are violated. This isn’t a trivial thing, so don’t look past this to the horror of such a place on American soil just yet. These attorneys are officers of the court. They are bound to obey the law and ensure that others do as well, and are obligated to report illegalities. They know the place and practices exist, and yet they do nothing about it.The existence of this facility is an affront to God’s law, and thus constitutes cosmic treason against the most high. . .
In this case, the offending authorities are the local ones, but anyone who believes that the federal government would step in to ensure rights against illegal search and seizure is foolish.Every law enforcement officer who knows about this illegal and immoral site and doesn’t shed light on its existence and practices may as well be a perpetrator of said practices. There are no guiltless parties, from the LEOs to the attorneys who keep this “open secret” to judges and city managers who allow it to happen. They will all be held accountable.The U.S. has become a banana republic. It isn’t on the horizon somewhere, we don’t have actions we need to take to ensure that it doesn’t happen. It has already happened. It is past tense. Since this is cosmic crime against God’s law, it would be cosmic justice if this facility burned to the ground, every one of the LEOs who participated in these activities held to account, and every attorney and judge who knew of this facility disbarred and sent to prison.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
I might lose power tonight because of the sleet/snow storm.
If so, I'll notify David Codrea over at the War on Guns. If I go dark and you don't read about me there by midday, will somebody drop a line to the insurance adjusters of the One hundred Heads life and Casualty Company? ;-)
Gee, like we should be so grateful as to genuflect and kiss their rosy red collectivist asses.
Charges Dropped Against NJ Teacher Caught with Flintlock
The Press of Atlantic City reports that gun charges brought against a retired NJ school teacher in possession of a flintlock rifle have been dropped. Cumberland County prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae announced that she will use prosecutorial discretion to decline to prosecute Gordon Van Gilder. She offered no further comment on the matter. The charge carried a potential 10-year jail sentence for the 72-year-old collector.
Just got off the phone with Anthony Bosworth. Trying to get the FBI to understand about the exponential function of the 100 Heads Life Insurance Concept.
I congratulated Anthony on his day today, and urged him to make a complete set of notes of what was said during the five hours that DHS and FBI held him (saying he was under arrest but never Mirandizing him). They did hold onto his weapons and are further holding the prospect of other charges over his head. I was particularly interested that the FBI was particularly interested in talking to Anthony about me. Nice to know I'm living in their heads rent-free as well. (Maybe they can get with Gottlieb and split the cost.) The FBI, it seems, is particularly interested in the national armed civil disobedience movement. It really must flummox them. We don't fit any pattern they've seen recently (not since, I suppose, the Deacons for Defense and Justice) and have no institutional memory (nor, apparently, the native intelligence) to equip them to deal with people who are not criminals in the traditional sense and can't be frightened or blackmailed into becoming snitches. I received another call yesterday to say that the Fibbies are particularly concerned about the concept of the One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company. They are, it seems, interested in knowing which particular one hundred heads it refers to. What morons. I don't think they've figured out that it is not merely 100 heads of the tyrannical Mandarin class -- of the warmakers and decision takers -- that are at stake but of some exponential function of 100 heads. Something like the chart below:
Of course, if they don't start nuthin', won't be nuthin', as they say down in the Gate City neighborhood of Birmingham. This, too, I don't think they've figured out. Of course anybody who pays SPLC to fill their head with collectivist lies and calls it an "intelligence briefing" can't be expected to be bright enough to figure that out on their own, I guess. If they were, they wouldn't be threatening folks like Anthony, who surely is insured by the 100 Heads L&C Co. as much as I am.
DHS thugs crap all over their jackboots -- again. Another skirmish with the forces of the evil empire in Washington state.
The latest from David Codrea: Federal agents 'catch and release' open carry activist in Washington (Be sure and watch the accompanying video there.)
Washington State liberty activist Anthony Bosworth was arrested Wednesday outside a federal building for openly carrying a firearm, an announcement on Bosworth’s Facebook page reports. Within hours, he had been released with no criminal charges, his wife informed supporters. . .
Bosworth was arrested in front of his wife and children by agents for the Department of Homeland Security, who “claimed that Bosworth was in violation of federal law by open carrying a firearm on federal property.” That’s in spite of the reported fact that “The sign on the building states that firearms are not allowed inside the building, but makes no mention of the outside grounds, where Bosworth was standing. . .”
“If you want to leave, step onto public property,” one of the agents told Bosworth’s wife Maria as she video recorded the arrest. Evidently the understanding of the term “public property” is as murky as the grasp of U.S. Code.
This story will be updated if further relevant information becomes available. As it was being written, no charges had been reported filed and the Spokane County Sheriff was in contact with federal authorities. As it was being prepared for publication, word was posted by Maria Boswell on Facebook that "Spokane sheriff supported us...no charges made....only citation!!" Per a phone call from Sam Wilson, the media contact for the Washington activists, the citation charges Bosworth with "Failure to comply."
Be sure and check Kit Lange's site here.
Note, too, the critical support of local (that is to say, constitutional) law enforcement with the intervention of the Spokane County Sheriff.
Been very busy this morning.
Despite the "Snowmageddon" hitting here, Rosey went in for a half-day's work and I had to run some errands. Although the roads and stores weren't as jammed with the apparent outpouring of the insane asylums as yesterday ("OMG! OMG! It's going to SNOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!"), today was still crowded with folks practicing my Grandpa's chant of the panicky: "When in peril, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout." Thus, I am just now getting back on the net. And what a day it has been, as you will read at the posts above and below, especially in Washington state.
Illinois Democrat’s ‘Firearms Registration Act’ may test new paradigm
Setting the state up for massive gun owner civil disobedience along the lines of what has occurred in California and is currently happening in New York and Connecticut, Democrat State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins filed the Firearms Registration Act with the Secretary of State on Friday. The act was then presented for first reading and referred to the Democrat-dominated Assignments Committee.
Whether or not Collins’ latest deliberate act of spitting on freedom stands a chance of being enacted remains to be seen. Regardless, a critical mass of gun owners will not let that alter their resolve to hold fast to their rights and to not back up another inch. There’s a new paradigm, with a growing number of determined citizens recognizing what colleague Mike Vanderboegh has identified as two countries sharing the same territory, and where his fundamental question “Do the people serve the government or does the government serve the people?” has yet to be ultimately tested in our time.
GOP waves white flag on amnesty.
"With the Homeland Security Department set to shut down on Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday offered Senate Democrats everything they wanted. And then, as with mice and cookies, they asked for some more."
See also: GOP lawmakers clash over shutdown.
According to four senators at the lunch session, a frustrated Sen. Jeff Sessions angrily dismissed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan, arguing that his party should be prepared for an all-out battle with Democrats to ratchet up public pressure and force President Barack Obama to drop his immigration policies. But Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican who could face a tough reelection next year, sharply countered that McConnell’s plan was the only option to not hamper law enforcement agencies that rely on money from the Department of Homeland Security.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Geezlouise, sounds like Al Sharpton's been taking lessons from Morris Dees.
Garner’s kid on Sharpton: ‘He’s all about the money’
“You think Al Sharpton is kind of like a crook in a sense?” the investigator is heard asking Garner’s oldest daughter. “He’s about this,” Snipes replies, rubbing her fingers together. “He’s about money with you?” the undercover asks. “Yeah,” Snipes responds.
The video of my speech will be back up in a couple of days.
I am reliably informed by Eddie Fulmer of Alabama Carry. They are splitting the whole day's worth of events and speeches into individual clips so that takes some time. I'll have the link here when it happens.
Having heard it now from a half-dozen different sources, I might as well admit what I've known for a while: Alan Gottlieb has ordered me banned from mention at Keep and Bear Arms. But the Kapo can still debate me if he wants to fight this out in the open.
Alan Gottlieb jealously guarding his rice bowl.
Readers who have tried to post my stuff at KABA have reported they're being blocked from doing so. After some inquiries, my understanding is that the orders came straight from Alan Gottlieb to his Igor Dave Workman and others. I guess I really am living in his head rent free, utilities paid. What a pathetic Kapo. I guess if I break another Fast & Furious story you won't be reading about it on KABA. Of course this runs counter to promises made by Gottlieb at the time of his takeover of KABA. Whether it also applies to JPFO remains to be seen. Any bets?
LATER: Of course my challenge to Gottlieb (or Workman if Gottlieb's courage isn't up to it) to debate at the NRA convention still stands. (Someplace where he can't turn the mic off on me as he has in the past.)
Monday, February 23, 2015
I don't know why the video of my speech has been pulled as "private."
I've sent an email to Eddie Fulmer of Alabama Carry asking about it and will let you know. If there's a problem with the whole thing being up, perhaps they can post just mine in a separate YouTube stand-alone.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Proposal to allow loaded guns in vehicles without permit
"They are trying to protect their gravy train and petty political power," said Mike Vanderbough with Bama Carry. Note: I spelled my name very carefully for the reporter and I did not identify myself as a member of BamaCarry, because I am not. At least they got my line about the "Boss Hoggs and Roscoe P. Coltranes of the Alabama Sheriffs Association" in the video part.
Video of my speech, which begins at 3 hours, 13 minutes in.
It is one of the longest speeches I ever gave, being about 46 minutes. Link.
Defiance: The Armed Civil Disobedience Movement. "How many of us are they willing to see dead?" Speech, Alabama Firearms Freedom Conference, 21 February 2015.
You know, I was glad to hear Jan Morgan from Arkansas. My second (and last) wife Rosey is from Arkansas and she told me very quickly when I met her thirty years ago that Arkansas girls don't divorce, they commit homocide, so I'm with her 'til I die, one way or the other.
I am here today to brief you on the national firearm rights movement -- on where we are and where we’re headed and the news is not good. What I am about to say is unpleasant and many of you will not like it. I don’t like it myself. The only thing I can tell you is that it is the unvarnished truth. If you feel better being spoon-fed horsecrap and wishful thinking, you should have invited someone else. Wayne LaPierre or Alan Gottlieb, maybe. I’ll try to wrap this up as fast as I can so that we might have time at the end for your questions. If not I'll try to hang around after the last speaker.
You may thank the Lord that you are Alabamians by birth and Southern by the grace of God. This accident of lineage and location has shielded your liberty, your property and your lives from a predatory state government. We have had the luxury here today of discussing how to move the cause of firearm rights forward in our state – if, that is, we can just get past the Boss Hoggs and Roscoe P. Coltranes of the Alabama Sheriff’s Association who are more concerned about preserving their petty powers and the gravy train of the permit system than they are about our God-given liberty and the constitutional oaths that they swore before the Almighty to uphold.
Count yourselves lucky. For the last two years I have been traveling behind enemy lines to states whose citizens are not so lucky. And “behind enemy lines” sounds like a comic exaggeration but believe me, it is not. In such states as CT, NY, MD, CO and, most recently, WA state, the authorities have passed a series of Intolerable acts banning and registering firearms and magazines and, yes, even registering their owners – for that is what permits and background checks are really all about. Why worry about registering firearms when you can register their owners? After all, it’s those potential trouble makers the government is really interested in controlling – not crime and not criminals, oh, no – they are interested in controlling you – us – ALL of us – In controlling us and stripping us of our means to resist their appetites for our liberty, our property and yes, our lives.
You know, Rudy Guiliani got in trouble the other day for daring to say that he didn’t believe Barack Obama loved his country. Now I don’t pretend to know what evils reside in the innermost being of Barack Obama. Only God knows that. But I will venture to defend the President on this point: I think Barack Obama loves his country – No, I really do. The problem is that HIS country and OUR country are two DIFFERENT countries. Oh, we share a common border and (mostly) a common language but we are divided along the lines of the answer to this eternal question – does the government serve the people, or do the people serve the government? In Barack Obama’s country the people exist to serve the government.
In our country, the government exists to serve the people – mostly by staying out of our way and leaving us the heck alone. This is how the Founders intended it. It is why they gave us a constitutional republic of limited powers securing the rule of law -- NOT the rule of man -- NOT the rule of A man -- no matter how many of his fellow citizens consider him a demi-god and blindly vote his tyranny into power.
We are two countries, ladies and gentlemen, and the sooner you recognize that fact the clearer everything else becomes. Barack Obama loves his country. We love our country. The only question is which vision – which country – which answer to that existential question is to prevail?
Do the people serve the government or does the government serve the people? What do you think?
And if we are honest enough to admit that we inhabit two different countries with two mutually exclusive world views, then let us be honest enough to call the people on the other side by their proper description in language that the Founders would understand–-- indeed, in their own words that they left us with so long ago.
When someone declares his appetite for your liberty and your property at the threat of naked government force against your very life – and takes steps to make that happen -- in contradiction to the Constitution and the rule of law which the Founders crafted -- then such people should be called what they plainly are – DOMESTIC ENEMIES OF THE CONSTITUTION. Let us be that honest, at least, for there is no other way to accurately describe them.
The people who pass these laws hateful to God-given, natural and inalienable rights know EXACTLY what they are about. They know what they want regardless of whatever soft lie of the moment they wrap their naked ambition in -- no matter what velvet glove they cover the iron fist of predatory government with -- What they want is power. Power over you and power over me. Power to tell the rest of us what to do, how to act and even what to think.
But standing in their way, as the Founders intended, is US -- the armed citizenry of the Republic of the United States. And so they have to set out disarm us -- to strip us of our weapons if they can, but in any case to persuade us that resistance is futile. For if we swallow that lie we will have lost the battle before it begins and the weapons we own mean nothing without the will to use them. So the first battleground of this war between the collectivists and ourselves is between our own ears – where lies attack the truth and fears can immobilize principle.
“We have the power,” they say. “We won an election, so we have the power. Do what we say, or else.” To which I would reply, “Or else what?” For the truth is that the rule of law protects THEM from US far more than it protects US from THEM and they should try to remember that when democracy turns to tyranny, the ARMED CITIZENRY STILL GETS TO VOTE!
They are learning this enduring truth -- these domestic enemies of the Constitution -- in states such as CT. They are being taught this lesson by a determined minority of their own citizens who have declared that will NOT comply with unconstitutional laws. They will not comply no matter what promise of state violence threatens them for their non-compliance.
How do I know this? Because these same people from CT & MA, NY, CO and WA state invited ME into their homes. They take me in, letting me spend the night, KNOWING that they will all be moved up on the list they're already on -- or that they will be placed on another list -- They do it KNOWING it may cost them everything AND THEY DO IT ANYWAY.
THEY WILL NOT COMPLY. And you know what? The proto-tyrants who issued their diktats don’t know whether to defecate or go blind. A good example of this is CT and after numerous trips up north behind those particular “enemy lines,” I am still amazed at these new practitioners of the art of armed civil disobedience. They are few, they are brave, they are magnificent in their defiance. Who knew that Yankees still had it in ‘em? But they do. The Founders would be proud.
You may recall that right after Sandy Hook, the state legislature up there passed a law mandating the registration of all semi-automatic rifles and even their magazines – and we’re talking hundreds of thousands of rifles and literally millions of magazines. The penalty for non-compliance was a Class D felony. And what happened?
Two years ago this April, in the aftermath of that law, I spoke at a huge rally on the steps of their state capitol and told those assembled that if the state wanted to make them criminals that they should embrace that fact and try to be the best, most successful criminals they could be. I urged them to “Defy, resist, evade and smuggle” in resistance to that law. As evidence of my seriousness of purpose, I announced to the crowd that I myself had smuggled in thirty-round AR-15 magazines in defiance of the ban. I dared the authorities to arrest me. Of course surrounded as I was by thousands of armed CT citizens, that probably wasn’t the smartest thing they could have done, so they didn’t.
But I had the luxury of flouting their law and then coming home to the great free state of Alabama. My audience didn’t. They were stuck behind enemy lines. And what happened?
The deadline for registration came and went and it was estimated that there was an EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT NON-COMPLIANCE RATE! EIGHTY- FIVE PERCENT. Perhaps as many as a hundred thousand CT firearm owners – perhaps more – simply refused to comply.
They said, like Leonidas at Thermoplyae and the Texans at Gonzales, “Come and take them.”
The state government blustered, made threats of gun raids and then did, exactly, nothing. Of course part of their calculation may have been that yours truly published a list of the legislators who had voted for this Intolerable Act on my blog --- along with their home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. And you know what? They didn’t react well to that. No, not one little bit. It seems -- and it’s a funny thing -- – but it seems that people who like to put people on lists don’t like to BE on lists themselves. Go figure. Of course they did open a criminal investigation on me for that and for my continuing smuggling activities in defiance of their law. However, late last year I went back to CT to attend a gun show and, frankly, to give them the chance to arrest me. And you know what happened? Exactly nothing. I’m probably going back there this coming April, marking the two years since the beginning of the armed civil disobedience movement in CT. So they will have another chance to arrest me.
But here’s the thing. Since the enactment of the law, the state government has been looking at one hundred thousand of its citizens over rifle barrels -- those of the state police and those of their previously law-abiding citizens -- and beyond empty promises to the firearm confiscation lobby and occasional growling, the “authorities” have not dared to enforce their diktat.
Has that stopped their appetite for their fellow citizens’ liberty and property? Oh, hell no. Here is a portion of the final report of the Sandy Hook Commission. It just came out last week. And what do they further demand? Why, the registration of ALL firearms, the banning of all so-called “assault weapons” and their magazines, the state screening of all firearm owners, and here’s my personal favorite on Page 59: “require that any shell casing for ammunition sold or possessed in CT have a serial number laser etched on it for tracing purposes.” I kid you not.
But of course, this begs the question: “If your state government is afraid to enforce the hateful laws you already have on the books, what is the point of passing more onerous laws?” The firearm owners of CT have already nullified these laws by armed civil disobedience. Is it the intention of this state commission to actually enforce even more onerous and unconstitutional laws to provoke a civil war? How many of our lives, and those of our families and other innocents, is it worth to these collectivists to enforce their appetites upon us? A thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? Six million? Ten? How many of us are they willing to see dead?
And the armed citizens of CT -- who are yet free and intend to remain so -- live with this question every day, wondering what the answer will be. Every day they go home, they have to wonder if their home has been invaded, their property confiscated while they were away. Every night they go to sleep, they have to wonder if tonight is the night that the state will send armed men -- paid by their own tax dollars -- to work the tyrant’s will upon them and their innocent families. So, like I said, consider yourselves lucky to be living in Alabama. These questions need not trouble your sleep, but they should. They should because what happens in CT, or in any other state now “behind enemy lines,” will not STAY in CT. It will, in a short time, come here, to visit you.
For if the state of CT should decide to go to war with its own citizens, then the “authorities” will find out quickly what was like for Custer at Little Big Horn. And they will have but one alternative: to call upon the federal government to send its militarized police and indeed, the military itself, to come help them attack their own people. And then?
This is not entirely unexplored territory. Back in the 90s when I was in Constitutional militia movement, the FBI in the aftermath of the OKC bombing and with the Freemen standoff happening in Montana, became extremely solicitous of the intentions of those of us who had sworn there would be no more free Wacos. In the middle of this, the FBI Special agent in Charge of the Albuquerque NM field office met with a good friend of mine, Bob Wright of Lea County NM. Bob was a militia leader of national reputation and commanded the 1st Brigade, New Mexico Militia. After some preliminary fencing, the SAC got down to the question he needed to know the answer to: “Bob, if this Montana thing turns out badly like Waco, would you really take your unit up there to fight us?”
Now, we had no love for the Freemen. In our eyes they were petty criminals who had victimized their neighbors. But we also determined -- we had sworn to ourselves and to our God -- that the federal government would enjoy no more free Wacos. We viewed the Freemen as proper subjects of state police enforcement and for us the FBI poised to carry out another Waco was intolerable. So when the FBI SAC asked Bob if he would take his unit to Montana if things “went south,” Bob looked him in the eye and said, “Why would I want to do that? There’s plenty of you Federal sonsabitches around here.”
Now this was an aspect to the situation that the FBI man had apparently not previously considered, and witnesses report that his eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped a bit. In the end, we didn’t have to find out. Just like at the Bundy Ranch this past April we didn’t have to find out, although that was much more of a close run thing. But the Bundy situation bore all the hallmarks of Waco --– federal militarized police abuse, the demonization and isolation of the intended target -- and that is why it got the response from an aroused armed citizenry that it did. Those of us who went out to Bunkerville NV didn’t necessarily believe that Bundy was right. But we knew that whatever his conflict with the federal government, it didn’t excuse another Waco. That we got another Freemen result and not a Waco result, however, was, as I know from being there, mere chance. For we are, as I said, two countries. And that question has yet to be answered. But just like Bundy Ranch, a shooting war in CT, or Co, or NY, or Washington state, would not be a local affair. It would start a bloody civil war in the entire nation and that civil war would, in short order, come to visit us all here.
These are not pleasant thoughts. They are the reality that has been growing in this country for some time, although it has hardly been reported by the so-called “mainstream media.” But then the Fast and Furious scandal, which I had the humbling duty and honor to break the story with the help of my friends back in December 2010 was largely ignored by the media as well. That didn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.
And the truth is that civil war is possible precisely because the possibility of such a conflict is not being reported -- precisely because people -- especially people on the other side -- do not think it is possible because, well, this is America in the 21st Century and things like that can’t happen anymore, can they? I assure you that they can. To believe otherwise is to whistle past the graveyard of our own history. I am currently reading a remarkable book, An Empire on the edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by the English historian Nick Bunker. Bunker points out that while Lexington and Concord came as a surprise to many, there were a small number of both American colonists and Britons who foresaw the possibility and would not shrink from it. Nathaniel Greene, later one of Washington’s best generals, wrote as early as July 1774: “Soon very soon expect to hear the thirsty earth drinking in the blood of American sons. This was a full nine months before Captain Parker’s demonstration of armed civil disobedience on Lexington Green led to the “shot heard ‘round the world.” Commenting on Nathaniel Greene’s prediction, Bunker writes:
In the eighteenth century, treason could take many forms, with the sword or with the pen. Long before . . . general (Gates) arrived in Boston, and even with the war a year away, we find young patriots in America already committing lines to paper that might have sent them to the gallows if any british spy had read them.
You know, I am reliably informed that Eric Holder’s Justice Department has had a sedition investigation going on me since before I broke the Fast and Furious scandal story. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has called me an “insurrectionist” and the Southern Poverty Law Center -- a misnamed and misbegotten bunch of liars for money if there ever was one -- has long had me on their list of dangerous folks. I have even been the subject of an 18 and a half minute rant by Rachel Madcow on MSNBC and Bill Clinton, that paragon of moral virtue, has denounced the Three Percent movement that I founded in a speech on national television. Well, as my friend Kurt Hofmann, says, “It is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable.”
But the fact of the matter is that this cold war I describe between the federal government and its citizens has been going on for 20 years now, and I am proud to say that I have been on the enemies lists of the last THREE White Houses, irrespective of party. I am at least an equal opportunity gadfly. But despite the name calling by the other side, I am not seeking an “insurrection” nor soliciting civil war but I am trying to prevent one. The men and women behind enemy lines who, now that every other means of defending their essential liberties have failed, and have turned to armed civil disobedience are trying to prevent one as well. Only by convincing the other side of the seriousness of our purpose and the credibility of our deterrence will we avoid one.
Again, these are dark and bloody thoughts but they are not new for some of us. Back in January 2009, I had been working on the David Olofson case and other ATF scandals when one day, in my post office box, I received an anonymous envelope. It was postmarked from somewhere in Oklahoma. It said this in handwritten block letters:
“Sir,
I have read you on the internet and believe in what your doing. One day the ATF will come to count coup on you & take your head. I promise to take One hundred heads for yours.
Cheyenne 0317/8541”
There was a small, delicate ink drawing on the bottom of the sheet, showing what appeared to be a coup stick crossed with a tomahawk and over-arched with eagle feathers. 0317/8541, for the uninitiated, are the current and former MOS numbers for a Marine Scout/Sniper.
One hundred heads. I sat in the car, reading and rereading this piece of paper, touched and frankly shaken by its simple sincerity. I had no doubt the man meant what he said. It is a token of the power of the written word to evoke such a response. I also had no doubt that a Marine scout/sniper had the skills to take a hundred heads if, God forbid, this should come to guns. I shared this with a friend at the time and he had only this blunt comment: "A hundred heads properly targeted could finish this thing." Indeed.
Now I did with this what I always do, I wrote about it on my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, and it became somewhat of a dark running joke, albeit a deadly serious one and it picked up a life of its own. One reader embraced the idea and crafted a teeshirt reading “100 Heads Life and Casualty Company,” with a little mound of skulls in the center. And then, stranger still, I would go places, speeches, rallies, gunshows, even the NRA convention, and people would come up to me, shake my hand and say, “One hundred heads, sir,” and then walk away. It wasn’t a discussion they were seeking, it was a declaration of intent. It wasn’t approval they were looking for, it was just, well, a valediction. For the honoree this is quite a two-edged sword for the action promised, you may recall, is predicated upon his own – MY own – demise. Yet it is somehow strangely comforting that my life has been insured these past six years by the entirely voluntary and absolutely free of charge One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company. Who knows, maybe it is one reason I’m still alive. We have since, by popular demand, begun selling “One Hundred Heads Life Insurance” ball caps in order to raise money for the armed civil disobedience campaign. Some of them are on sale over at my table here, along with these "Fight Tyranny, Shoot Back" hats -- IF you are looking for headgear that comes with a free personal FBI file at no extra charge. But I offer this story -- which like all the best stories has the advantage of being true -- as evidence that some of us, like Nathaniel Greene and his contemporaries of the Founders’ generation, have been thinking about this sort of thing for a while. If a civil war breaks out in CT, or in Washington state, tomorrow, we at least will not be surprised. Horrified, saddened, like everyone else. But not surprised.
I mention Washington state because that is where the latest front of armed civil disobedience has been opened. Back in November, you may recall, Michael Bloomberg and some other millionaires bought themselves a mandatory background check law by referendum, called I-594. Now, the so-called mainstream gun rights organizations had only themselves to blame for this fiasco because they couldn't restrain their petty jealousies and refused to work together lest the other group get the credit for the win -- and I’m talking here about the NRA and Alan Gottlieb’s bunch. The only thing was, they lost. Immediately there sprung up an “I Will Not Comply” organization that held a rally on the 13th of December to not only protest the new law, but to break it, and dare the state authorities to do anything about it. They were initially granted then denied a permit. They said, “fine, we don’ need no steenking permits. We’re still going to have our rally.” “Well arrest you,” the state police threatened. They told the state police, “hey, do what you gotta do. We’ll do what we gotta do. Your move.”
I was honored to be invited to speak in front of a group that I estimated at 2,000 folks (the WSP said it was more like 1800, but that still made it one of the largest firearm rights demonstrations ever held in the state). We gathered, armed, we broke the law and . . . nothing happened. We were even congratulated by the state police for the professional manner with which we carried out the protest. Last month, I went back to Olympia to help with another armed civil disobedience action after the state legislature banned firearms from the galleries. Again they threatened to arrest us. Again we said, “Fine, do what you gotta do.” And what did they do? They locked the gallery doors on us. In a word, they wimped out. So we trooped, about a hundred of us who gathered on a day of awful weather, through the state house, served our list of grievances by taping them to the gallery and governor’s office doors and then marched over to the governor’s mansion where we startled a gate guard by presenting the same petition and then, having knelt in prayer, adjourned.
Now in the process of all this law-breaking, the Washington activists presented me with this. All firearms being female, meet Mrs. Bloomberg. I call her Charlotte when nobody’s listening. She is named for Michael Bloomberg’s mother. It seemed only fitting that if I was breaking Bloomberg’s law that I give at least a tip of the boonie hat to the nanny state fascist who motivated me to do so. It is my intention to tote Charlotte around to every other armed civil disobedience event and speaking engagement that I attend from now on. And the next one in Washington state ought to be a doozy.
You see, the armed civil disobedience resisters out there are hosting an arms expo late in June -- a background check free gun show --– and they are again daring the authorities to do anything about it. I’ll be there, toting Mrs. Bloomberg, and daring right along with them.
Armed civil disobedience has a long, honorable history in America. From Captain Parker to the Battle of Athens TN in 1946 to the Deacons for Defense and Justice during the civil rights movement to the Bundy Ranch standoff, Americans have been opposing government-sanctioned violence by putting their own bodies on the line with determination in their hearts and firearms in their hands.
This is no surprise to black Americans who, like Condoleeza Rice’s father stood armed guard over Martin Luther King while that advocate of Gandhian non-violence slept, made safe from Klan violence and Sheriff Bull Connor’s Klan-member deputies by their .38 revolvers and .45 automatics. Throughout our history Americans have been a practical people and when the regular means of sustaining our rights and our liberties have failed, we have always turned to our own resources.
Is it dangerous? You bet. Is it desirable? No way. But it is sometimes required. You live in a free state. But there are people in this country who do not. There are people who, thanks to the domestic enemies of the Constitution in their states, now live behind enemy lines. You may disagree with them. You may condemn them. They may make you nervous. They may make the authorities nervous. Heck, they make me nervous. But they are meant to. As Jefferson observed, where the people fear the government there is tyranny. Where the government fears the people, there is liberty.
But remember, whatever you think of them, these armed civil disobedience activists, you sleep safe at night, safe from the arbitrary exercise of government violence. They do not. But however you react to them, they are there, they are not going away, and the conflict that their oppressive state governments force on them will likely come to your door anyway -- if it happens, accidentally or intentionally, it will come to all of our doors. This is the new reality, the new paradigm. This is the state of our two countries, the one that Barack Obama loves and the one that we love. And they will tell you, they will say to anyone including Barack Obama if he asks, that if you don’t like it you’d better ease up out of their faces, get your hands out of their pockets, off their property and liberty as the Founders intended before something goes wrong. “Be careful what you wish for,” they will quote the old Chinese adage, “because you may get it.”
As for me, I am honored to stand beside them, these brave men and women behind enemy lines. I am honored and I am humbled but I will stand with them until God, according to his own plan, calls me home.
Thank you.
And remember folks -- Fight tyranny, shoot back.
I am here today to brief you on the national firearm rights movement -- on where we are and where we’re headed and the news is not good. What I am about to say is unpleasant and many of you will not like it. I don’t like it myself. The only thing I can tell you is that it is the unvarnished truth. If you feel better being spoon-fed horsecrap and wishful thinking, you should have invited someone else. Wayne LaPierre or Alan Gottlieb, maybe. I’ll try to wrap this up as fast as I can so that we might have time at the end for your questions. If not I'll try to hang around after the last speaker.
You may thank the Lord that you are Alabamians by birth and Southern by the grace of God. This accident of lineage and location has shielded your liberty, your property and your lives from a predatory state government. We have had the luxury here today of discussing how to move the cause of firearm rights forward in our state – if, that is, we can just get past the Boss Hoggs and Roscoe P. Coltranes of the Alabama Sheriff’s Association who are more concerned about preserving their petty powers and the gravy train of the permit system than they are about our God-given liberty and the constitutional oaths that they swore before the Almighty to uphold.
Count yourselves lucky. For the last two years I have been traveling behind enemy lines to states whose citizens are not so lucky. And “behind enemy lines” sounds like a comic exaggeration but believe me, it is not. In such states as CT, NY, MD, CO and, most recently, WA state, the authorities have passed a series of Intolerable acts banning and registering firearms and magazines and, yes, even registering their owners – for that is what permits and background checks are really all about. Why worry about registering firearms when you can register their owners? After all, it’s those potential trouble makers the government is really interested in controlling – not crime and not criminals, oh, no – they are interested in controlling you – us – ALL of us – In controlling us and stripping us of our means to resist their appetites for our liberty, our property and yes, our lives.
You know, Rudy Guiliani got in trouble the other day for daring to say that he didn’t believe Barack Obama loved his country. Now I don’t pretend to know what evils reside in the innermost being of Barack Obama. Only God knows that. But I will venture to defend the President on this point: I think Barack Obama loves his country – No, I really do. The problem is that HIS country and OUR country are two DIFFERENT countries. Oh, we share a common border and (mostly) a common language but we are divided along the lines of the answer to this eternal question – does the government serve the people, or do the people serve the government? In Barack Obama’s country the people exist to serve the government.
In our country, the government exists to serve the people – mostly by staying out of our way and leaving us the heck alone. This is how the Founders intended it. It is why they gave us a constitutional republic of limited powers securing the rule of law -- NOT the rule of man -- NOT the rule of A man -- no matter how many of his fellow citizens consider him a demi-god and blindly vote his tyranny into power.
We are two countries, ladies and gentlemen, and the sooner you recognize that fact the clearer everything else becomes. Barack Obama loves his country. We love our country. The only question is which vision – which country – which answer to that existential question is to prevail?
Do the people serve the government or does the government serve the people? What do you think?
And if we are honest enough to admit that we inhabit two different countries with two mutually exclusive world views, then let us be honest enough to call the people on the other side by their proper description in language that the Founders would understand–-- indeed, in their own words that they left us with so long ago.
When someone declares his appetite for your liberty and your property at the threat of naked government force against your very life – and takes steps to make that happen -- in contradiction to the Constitution and the rule of law which the Founders crafted -- then such people should be called what they plainly are – DOMESTIC ENEMIES OF THE CONSTITUTION. Let us be that honest, at least, for there is no other way to accurately describe them.
The people who pass these laws hateful to God-given, natural and inalienable rights know EXACTLY what they are about. They know what they want regardless of whatever soft lie of the moment they wrap their naked ambition in -- no matter what velvet glove they cover the iron fist of predatory government with -- What they want is power. Power over you and power over me. Power to tell the rest of us what to do, how to act and even what to think.
But standing in their way, as the Founders intended, is US -- the armed citizenry of the Republic of the United States. And so they have to set out disarm us -- to strip us of our weapons if they can, but in any case to persuade us that resistance is futile. For if we swallow that lie we will have lost the battle before it begins and the weapons we own mean nothing without the will to use them. So the first battleground of this war between the collectivists and ourselves is between our own ears – where lies attack the truth and fears can immobilize principle.
“We have the power,” they say. “We won an election, so we have the power. Do what we say, or else.” To which I would reply, “Or else what?” For the truth is that the rule of law protects THEM from US far more than it protects US from THEM and they should try to remember that when democracy turns to tyranny, the ARMED CITIZENRY STILL GETS TO VOTE!
They are learning this enduring truth -- these domestic enemies of the Constitution -- in states such as CT. They are being taught this lesson by a determined minority of their own citizens who have declared that will NOT comply with unconstitutional laws. They will not comply no matter what promise of state violence threatens them for their non-compliance.
How do I know this? Because these same people from CT & MA, NY, CO and WA state invited ME into their homes. They take me in, letting me spend the night, KNOWING that they will all be moved up on the list they're already on -- or that they will be placed on another list -- They do it KNOWING it may cost them everything AND THEY DO IT ANYWAY.
THEY WILL NOT COMPLY. And you know what? The proto-tyrants who issued their diktats don’t know whether to defecate or go blind. A good example of this is CT and after numerous trips up north behind those particular “enemy lines,” I am still amazed at these new practitioners of the art of armed civil disobedience. They are few, they are brave, they are magnificent in their defiance. Who knew that Yankees still had it in ‘em? But they do. The Founders would be proud.
You may recall that right after Sandy Hook, the state legislature up there passed a law mandating the registration of all semi-automatic rifles and even their magazines – and we’re talking hundreds of thousands of rifles and literally millions of magazines. The penalty for non-compliance was a Class D felony. And what happened?
Two years ago this April, in the aftermath of that law, I spoke at a huge rally on the steps of their state capitol and told those assembled that if the state wanted to make them criminals that they should embrace that fact and try to be the best, most successful criminals they could be. I urged them to “Defy, resist, evade and smuggle” in resistance to that law. As evidence of my seriousness of purpose, I announced to the crowd that I myself had smuggled in thirty-round AR-15 magazines in defiance of the ban. I dared the authorities to arrest me. Of course surrounded as I was by thousands of armed CT citizens, that probably wasn’t the smartest thing they could have done, so they didn’t.
But I had the luxury of flouting their law and then coming home to the great free state of Alabama. My audience didn’t. They were stuck behind enemy lines. And what happened?
The deadline for registration came and went and it was estimated that there was an EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT NON-COMPLIANCE RATE! EIGHTY- FIVE PERCENT. Perhaps as many as a hundred thousand CT firearm owners – perhaps more – simply refused to comply.
They said, like Leonidas at Thermoplyae and the Texans at Gonzales, “Come and take them.”
The state government blustered, made threats of gun raids and then did, exactly, nothing. Of course part of their calculation may have been that yours truly published a list of the legislators who had voted for this Intolerable Act on my blog --- along with their home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. And you know what? They didn’t react well to that. No, not one little bit. It seems -- and it’s a funny thing -- – but it seems that people who like to put people on lists don’t like to BE on lists themselves. Go figure. Of course they did open a criminal investigation on me for that and for my continuing smuggling activities in defiance of their law. However, late last year I went back to CT to attend a gun show and, frankly, to give them the chance to arrest me. And you know what happened? Exactly nothing. I’m probably going back there this coming April, marking the two years since the beginning of the armed civil disobedience movement in CT. So they will have another chance to arrest me.
But here’s the thing. Since the enactment of the law, the state government has been looking at one hundred thousand of its citizens over rifle barrels -- those of the state police and those of their previously law-abiding citizens -- and beyond empty promises to the firearm confiscation lobby and occasional growling, the “authorities” have not dared to enforce their diktat.
Has that stopped their appetite for their fellow citizens’ liberty and property? Oh, hell no. Here is a portion of the final report of the Sandy Hook Commission. It just came out last week. And what do they further demand? Why, the registration of ALL firearms, the banning of all so-called “assault weapons” and their magazines, the state screening of all firearm owners, and here’s my personal favorite on Page 59: “require that any shell casing for ammunition sold or possessed in CT have a serial number laser etched on it for tracing purposes.” I kid you not.
But of course, this begs the question: “If your state government is afraid to enforce the hateful laws you already have on the books, what is the point of passing more onerous laws?” The firearm owners of CT have already nullified these laws by armed civil disobedience. Is it the intention of this state commission to actually enforce even more onerous and unconstitutional laws to provoke a civil war? How many of our lives, and those of our families and other innocents, is it worth to these collectivists to enforce their appetites upon us? A thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? Six million? Ten? How many of us are they willing to see dead?
And the armed citizens of CT -- who are yet free and intend to remain so -- live with this question every day, wondering what the answer will be. Every day they go home, they have to wonder if their home has been invaded, their property confiscated while they were away. Every night they go to sleep, they have to wonder if tonight is the night that the state will send armed men -- paid by their own tax dollars -- to work the tyrant’s will upon them and their innocent families. So, like I said, consider yourselves lucky to be living in Alabama. These questions need not trouble your sleep, but they should. They should because what happens in CT, or in any other state now “behind enemy lines,” will not STAY in CT. It will, in a short time, come here, to visit you.
For if the state of CT should decide to go to war with its own citizens, then the “authorities” will find out quickly what was like for Custer at Little Big Horn. And they will have but one alternative: to call upon the federal government to send its militarized police and indeed, the military itself, to come help them attack their own people. And then?
This is not entirely unexplored territory. Back in the 90s when I was in Constitutional militia movement, the FBI in the aftermath of the OKC bombing and with the Freemen standoff happening in Montana, became extremely solicitous of the intentions of those of us who had sworn there would be no more free Wacos. In the middle of this, the FBI Special agent in Charge of the Albuquerque NM field office met with a good friend of mine, Bob Wright of Lea County NM. Bob was a militia leader of national reputation and commanded the 1st Brigade, New Mexico Militia. After some preliminary fencing, the SAC got down to the question he needed to know the answer to: “Bob, if this Montana thing turns out badly like Waco, would you really take your unit up there to fight us?”
Now, we had no love for the Freemen. In our eyes they were petty criminals who had victimized their neighbors. But we also determined -- we had sworn to ourselves and to our God -- that the federal government would enjoy no more free Wacos. We viewed the Freemen as proper subjects of state police enforcement and for us the FBI poised to carry out another Waco was intolerable. So when the FBI SAC asked Bob if he would take his unit to Montana if things “went south,” Bob looked him in the eye and said, “Why would I want to do that? There’s plenty of you Federal sonsabitches around here.”
Now this was an aspect to the situation that the FBI man had apparently not previously considered, and witnesses report that his eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped a bit. In the end, we didn’t have to find out. Just like at the Bundy Ranch this past April we didn’t have to find out, although that was much more of a close run thing. But the Bundy situation bore all the hallmarks of Waco --– federal militarized police abuse, the demonization and isolation of the intended target -- and that is why it got the response from an aroused armed citizenry that it did. Those of us who went out to Bunkerville NV didn’t necessarily believe that Bundy was right. But we knew that whatever his conflict with the federal government, it didn’t excuse another Waco. That we got another Freemen result and not a Waco result, however, was, as I know from being there, mere chance. For we are, as I said, two countries. And that question has yet to be answered. But just like Bundy Ranch, a shooting war in CT, or Co, or NY, or Washington state, would not be a local affair. It would start a bloody civil war in the entire nation and that civil war would, in short order, come to visit us all here.
These are not pleasant thoughts. They are the reality that has been growing in this country for some time, although it has hardly been reported by the so-called “mainstream media.” But then the Fast and Furious scandal, which I had the humbling duty and honor to break the story with the help of my friends back in December 2010 was largely ignored by the media as well. That didn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.
And the truth is that civil war is possible precisely because the possibility of such a conflict is not being reported -- precisely because people -- especially people on the other side -- do not think it is possible because, well, this is America in the 21st Century and things like that can’t happen anymore, can they? I assure you that they can. To believe otherwise is to whistle past the graveyard of our own history. I am currently reading a remarkable book, An Empire on the edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by the English historian Nick Bunker. Bunker points out that while Lexington and Concord came as a surprise to many, there were a small number of both American colonists and Britons who foresaw the possibility and would not shrink from it. Nathaniel Greene, later one of Washington’s best generals, wrote as early as July 1774: “Soon very soon expect to hear the thirsty earth drinking in the blood of American sons. This was a full nine months before Captain Parker’s demonstration of armed civil disobedience on Lexington Green led to the “shot heard ‘round the world.” Commenting on Nathaniel Greene’s prediction, Bunker writes:
In the eighteenth century, treason could take many forms, with the sword or with the pen. Long before . . . general (Gates) arrived in Boston, and even with the war a year away, we find young patriots in America already committing lines to paper that might have sent them to the gallows if any british spy had read them.
You know, I am reliably informed that Eric Holder’s Justice Department has had a sedition investigation going on me since before I broke the Fast and Furious scandal story. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has called me an “insurrectionist” and the Southern Poverty Law Center -- a misnamed and misbegotten bunch of liars for money if there ever was one -- has long had me on their list of dangerous folks. I have even been the subject of an 18 and a half minute rant by Rachel Madcow on MSNBC and Bill Clinton, that paragon of moral virtue, has denounced the Three Percent movement that I founded in a speech on national television. Well, as my friend Kurt Hofmann, says, “It is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable.”
But the fact of the matter is that this cold war I describe between the federal government and its citizens has been going on for 20 years now, and I am proud to say that I have been on the enemies lists of the last THREE White Houses, irrespective of party. I am at least an equal opportunity gadfly. But despite the name calling by the other side, I am not seeking an “insurrection” nor soliciting civil war but I am trying to prevent one. The men and women behind enemy lines who, now that every other means of defending their essential liberties have failed, and have turned to armed civil disobedience are trying to prevent one as well. Only by convincing the other side of the seriousness of our purpose and the credibility of our deterrence will we avoid one.
Again, these are dark and bloody thoughts but they are not new for some of us. Back in January 2009, I had been working on the David Olofson case and other ATF scandals when one day, in my post office box, I received an anonymous envelope. It was postmarked from somewhere in Oklahoma. It said this in handwritten block letters:
“Sir,
I have read you on the internet and believe in what your doing. One day the ATF will come to count coup on you & take your head. I promise to take One hundred heads for yours.
Cheyenne 0317/8541”
There was a small, delicate ink drawing on the bottom of the sheet, showing what appeared to be a coup stick crossed with a tomahawk and over-arched with eagle feathers. 0317/8541, for the uninitiated, are the current and former MOS numbers for a Marine Scout/Sniper.
One hundred heads. I sat in the car, reading and rereading this piece of paper, touched and frankly shaken by its simple sincerity. I had no doubt the man meant what he said. It is a token of the power of the written word to evoke such a response. I also had no doubt that a Marine scout/sniper had the skills to take a hundred heads if, God forbid, this should come to guns. I shared this with a friend at the time and he had only this blunt comment: "A hundred heads properly targeted could finish this thing." Indeed.
Now I did with this what I always do, I wrote about it on my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, and it became somewhat of a dark running joke, albeit a deadly serious one and it picked up a life of its own. One reader embraced the idea and crafted a teeshirt reading “100 Heads Life and Casualty Company,” with a little mound of skulls in the center. And then, stranger still, I would go places, speeches, rallies, gunshows, even the NRA convention, and people would come up to me, shake my hand and say, “One hundred heads, sir,” and then walk away. It wasn’t a discussion they were seeking, it was a declaration of intent. It wasn’t approval they were looking for, it was just, well, a valediction. For the honoree this is quite a two-edged sword for the action promised, you may recall, is predicated upon his own – MY own – demise. Yet it is somehow strangely comforting that my life has been insured these past six years by the entirely voluntary and absolutely free of charge One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company. Who knows, maybe it is one reason I’m still alive. We have since, by popular demand, begun selling “One Hundred Heads Life Insurance” ball caps in order to raise money for the armed civil disobedience campaign. Some of them are on sale over at my table here, along with these "Fight Tyranny, Shoot Back" hats -- IF you are looking for headgear that comes with a free personal FBI file at no extra charge. But I offer this story -- which like all the best stories has the advantage of being true -- as evidence that some of us, like Nathaniel Greene and his contemporaries of the Founders’ generation, have been thinking about this sort of thing for a while. If a civil war breaks out in CT, or in Washington state, tomorrow, we at least will not be surprised. Horrified, saddened, like everyone else. But not surprised.
I mention Washington state because that is where the latest front of armed civil disobedience has been opened. Back in November, you may recall, Michael Bloomberg and some other millionaires bought themselves a mandatory background check law by referendum, called I-594. Now, the so-called mainstream gun rights organizations had only themselves to blame for this fiasco because they couldn't restrain their petty jealousies and refused to work together lest the other group get the credit for the win -- and I’m talking here about the NRA and Alan Gottlieb’s bunch. The only thing was, they lost. Immediately there sprung up an “I Will Not Comply” organization that held a rally on the 13th of December to not only protest the new law, but to break it, and dare the state authorities to do anything about it. They were initially granted then denied a permit. They said, “fine, we don’ need no steenking permits. We’re still going to have our rally.” “Well arrest you,” the state police threatened. They told the state police, “hey, do what you gotta do. We’ll do what we gotta do. Your move.”
I was honored to be invited to speak in front of a group that I estimated at 2,000 folks (the WSP said it was more like 1800, but that still made it one of the largest firearm rights demonstrations ever held in the state). We gathered, armed, we broke the law and . . . nothing happened. We were even congratulated by the state police for the professional manner with which we carried out the protest. Last month, I went back to Olympia to help with another armed civil disobedience action after the state legislature banned firearms from the galleries. Again they threatened to arrest us. Again we said, “Fine, do what you gotta do.” And what did they do? They locked the gallery doors on us. In a word, they wimped out. So we trooped, about a hundred of us who gathered on a day of awful weather, through the state house, served our list of grievances by taping them to the gallery and governor’s office doors and then marched over to the governor’s mansion where we startled a gate guard by presenting the same petition and then, having knelt in prayer, adjourned.
Now in the process of all this law-breaking, the Washington activists presented me with this. All firearms being female, meet Mrs. Bloomberg. I call her Charlotte when nobody’s listening. She is named for Michael Bloomberg’s mother. It seemed only fitting that if I was breaking Bloomberg’s law that I give at least a tip of the boonie hat to the nanny state fascist who motivated me to do so. It is my intention to tote Charlotte around to every other armed civil disobedience event and speaking engagement that I attend from now on. And the next one in Washington state ought to be a doozy.
You see, the armed civil disobedience resisters out there are hosting an arms expo late in June -- a background check free gun show --– and they are again daring the authorities to do anything about it. I’ll be there, toting Mrs. Bloomberg, and daring right along with them.
Armed civil disobedience has a long, honorable history in America. From Captain Parker to the Battle of Athens TN in 1946 to the Deacons for Defense and Justice during the civil rights movement to the Bundy Ranch standoff, Americans have been opposing government-sanctioned violence by putting their own bodies on the line with determination in their hearts and firearms in their hands.
This is no surprise to black Americans who, like Condoleeza Rice’s father stood armed guard over Martin Luther King while that advocate of Gandhian non-violence slept, made safe from Klan violence and Sheriff Bull Connor’s Klan-member deputies by their .38 revolvers and .45 automatics. Throughout our history Americans have been a practical people and when the regular means of sustaining our rights and our liberties have failed, we have always turned to our own resources.
Is it dangerous? You bet. Is it desirable? No way. But it is sometimes required. You live in a free state. But there are people in this country who do not. There are people who, thanks to the domestic enemies of the Constitution in their states, now live behind enemy lines. You may disagree with them. You may condemn them. They may make you nervous. They may make the authorities nervous. Heck, they make me nervous. But they are meant to. As Jefferson observed, where the people fear the government there is tyranny. Where the government fears the people, there is liberty.
But remember, whatever you think of them, these armed civil disobedience activists, you sleep safe at night, safe from the arbitrary exercise of government violence. They do not. But however you react to them, they are there, they are not going away, and the conflict that their oppressive state governments force on them will likely come to your door anyway -- if it happens, accidentally or intentionally, it will come to all of our doors. This is the new reality, the new paradigm. This is the state of our two countries, the one that Barack Obama loves and the one that we love. And they will tell you, they will say to anyone including Barack Obama if he asks, that if you don’t like it you’d better ease up out of their faces, get your hands out of their pockets, off their property and liberty as the Founders intended before something goes wrong. “Be careful what you wish for,” they will quote the old Chinese adage, “because you may get it.”
As for me, I am honored to stand beside them, these brave men and women behind enemy lines. I am honored and I am humbled but I will stand with them until God, according to his own plan, calls me home.
Thank you.
And remember folks -- Fight tyranny, shoot back.
Saturday, February 21, 2015
I am told that my speech at the Alabama Firearms Freedom Conference will be live-streamed.
Looking forward to seeing local Threepers at the conference. The roads may be a little dicey further north, but I will be there pretty much all day.
Friday, February 20, 2015
Cartoon demonization of gun owners recalls an earlier target
Inyenzi, a Kinyarwanda word meaning "cockroach," used to describe Tutsi by their Hutu murderers during the Rwandan genocide.
"This is an exhibit of pure bigotry. It’s every bit as evil and offensive as blood libel, and its done for the same purpose."
David recalls for us when the LA Times compared Second Amendment activists to cockroaches. The US News cartoon collection includes this one, which is not too far from the Nazi cartoon above.
Looks like I'm in the 7x57mm Mauser reloading business.
By means of a convoluted trade, I just acquired a nice example of an M1895 Chilean Mauser Short Rifle in 7x57mm. It has no importer's marks, so I guess that it came into the country pre-1968. It has no sling or cleaning road, but is otherwise all matching with a dark but excellent bore.
I've never owned anything in 7x57 bu I know that the caliber is reputed to be accurate and flat-shooting with minimal recoil compared to some others. My thought now is to give it to Zoe (Hannah has the Moisin Nagant M44 Carbine). Still, looking at the price of ammo, I guess I'll be reloading the 7x57 now. Are there any readers who have experience with this rifle/cartridge combination?
Homeland Security Report (Leaked To CNN) ClaimsHuh? "Right-Wing Extremists Carrying Out Terror Attacks Across The U.S."
Silly people. You were worried about that "religion of peace" workplace violence when you should be worried about yourselves. DHS intelligence report warns of domestic right-wing terror threat.
Proof that while beggars can't be choosers, they can still bitch about it.
I would like to announce my official disdain, disgust and disaffection with PPU head-stamped once-fired 9mm brass which has primers made out of some soft material that jams up my decapping press with distressing regularity. Just wanted to get that on the record.
Interesting on 4GW.
Gamers Are Now Engaged In 4th-Generation Warfare
According to the leading theorists of 4GW tactics—American military historian William S. Lind, Israeli historian Martin Van Creveld, Col. Thomas X. Hammes (USMC), and the late military genius and probably the originator of the term, Col. John Boyd (USAF)—you will find that all of them say exactly the same thing: The moral level of war is BY FAR the most powerful.By capturing the moral high ground, by making your cause look like a pure choice between good and evil to those who are unsure which side is worthy of support, and by relentlessly crafting the narrative to suit your ends, you can destroy your enemy’s will to fight and cut him off from the economic and political support he needs in order to defeat you, even if his forces outnumber yours a thousand to one.
You know, this whole thing could be solved tomorrow by the delivery of 500 Javelins to the Ukrainians.
Ukraine crisis: House of Lords criticises EU and Britain for 'sleepwalking into crisis' as Moscow and Nato remain on diplomatic collision course.
Along with some updated Stingers of course -- these are defensive weapons only. Faced with another Afghanistan, Putin would have to back off. No world war, no more agression answered by words, merely encouraging more aggression. Putin's already hiding his casualties by lying to the families of the dead. His ground force "modernization" would go up in smoke if he tried further invasion. Hell, yes, let 'em eat Javelins and see how froggy he still is with his dreams of being Tsar of Greater Russia.
Meanwhile, no wonder the Germans are so interested in selling out the Ukrainians: Germany’s army is so under-equipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns
"On Tuesday, German broadcaster ARD revealed that German soldiers tried to hide the lack of arms by replacing heavy machine guns with broomsticks during a NATO exercise last year. After painting the wooden sticks black, the German soldiers swiftly attached them to the top of armored vehicles, according to a confidential army report which was leaked to ARD."
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Was Malcolm X assassinated by his own side? Or the FBI? Probably both.
"Was Malcolm your traitor or ours? And if we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours? A nation has to be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and turncoats." -- Louis Farrakhan.
We're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. I watched a CNN piece on Malcolm the other night and one of the documents presented included this instruction to the FBI's New York office from J. Edgar Hoover: “Do something about Malcolm X.” From the Wikipedia citation:
Within days, the question of who bore ultimate responsibility for the assassination was being publicly debated. On February 23, James Farmer, the leader of the Congress of Racial Equality, announced at a news conference that local drug dealers, and not the Nation of Islam, were to blame. Others accused the NYPD, the FBI, or the CIA, citing the lack of police protection, the ease with which the assassins entered the Audubon Ballroom, and the failure of the police to preserve the crime scene.In the 1970s, the public learned about COINTELPRO and other secret FBI programs established to infiltrate and disrupt civil rights organizations during the 1950s and 1960s.[193] John Ali, national secretary of the Nation of Islam, was identified as an FBI undercover agent. Malcolm X had confided to a reporter that Ali exacerbated tensions between him and Elijah Muhammad, and that he considered Ali his "archenemy" within the Nation of Islam leadership. Ali had a meeting with Talmadge Hayer, one of the men convicted of killing Malcolm X, the night before the assassination.Some, including the Shabazz family, have accused Louis Farrakhan of involvement in Malcolm X's assassination. . .
Some have called me the "Malcolm X of the gun rights movement." I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult. Probably both. But it struck me while I was watching the CNN special that if I ever do turn up suddenly dead, that it wouldn't surprise me if it was at the hands of "one of his own" with the FBI's oily fingerprints all over it. It is what they have done in the past and frankly, they're not very bright about coming up with new ideas when push comes to shove regarding their bureaucratic reputation. Comey may be the smiling face of the "New FBI" but behind that mask they are at heart the same murderous secret police thugs they have ever been. In that, at least, they agree with Malcolm X's famous dictum: "By any means necessary."
Don't know if I've been hacked or if AOL is breaking down, but I can't access my email. (Never mind.)
Or anything else on AOL at the moment. If you need to get hold of me, leave a comment here and I'll try to get back to you.
LATER: Must have been an AOL brain fart, because shortly after I posted the above, my mail came back on.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
David Codrea breaks another story: "ATF claims Administrative Procedures Act exemption for proposed ammo ban notice."
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told Gun Rights Examiner Wednesday afternoon that ATF’s recent ammunition ban proposal is not required to be published in the Federal Register. That claim was in answer to a query after determining ATF’s notice does not appear in the government’s official journal, and further noting a Wednesday Reuters report that a tangentially-related lack of rulemaking publication was given by a Texas judge as his reason for blocking the Obama administration’s “immigration overhaul.”
That the proposed “interpretation” affects a considerable segment of the ammunition market and falls well within considerations of public interest is indisputable. Also in the public interest is the ability of affected parties to read comments submitted to date, so that arguments necessary for knowledgeably commenting on the issue are available for those wishing to add constructive inputs of their own. Additionally, but of unknown significance, is the documented reality that justification for the proposed rule cannot be based on a currently-low violent crime rate, nor on any cited evidence supporting the contention that the ammunition affected poses a special danger to law enforcement.
Free advertising for the Pelham event from the Montgomery Advertiser. Wait 'til they get a load of my speech.
The Monky Advertiser sez: "Time for straight shooting on gun laws." I agree, but perhaps not quite in the same way they mean.
My comment at the editorial:
I trust the Advertiser will send a reporter to the Pelham event and have him stick around for my speech at 4PM. I will be talking on the subject of the national armed civil disobedience movement that is evident in states such as CT, CO, NY, MD, TX and now, thanks to Michael Bloomberg, in Washington state. It is a given in American jurisprudence that an unconstitutional law is null and void. The trick is how do we maintain our rights when all the branches of government in a given state -- the legislative, judicial and executive backed up by their willing handmaidens in the press (try looking in a mirror) -- are in the hands of people whom the Founders would deem "domestic enemies of the Constitution."The residents of the aforementioned states have answered that question by refusing to comply and daring the "authorities" to do anything about it. And the politicians don't know whether to defecate or go blind. So they have passed laws they dare not enforce upon armed people who will not comply. This is as dangerous as it gets. Just ask the ghost of British General Thomas Gage.Mike Vanderboegh, PO Box 926, Pinson, AL 35126GeorgeMason1776@aol.comsipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com
A New Sentinel on the Wall. "We ain't going nowhere."
George Gramlich, the Managing Editor of the Sangre de Cristo Sentinel in Westcliffe, CO, and his friends have been doing a bang-up job of reclaiming their local news market from the collectivists who have dominated it for the past half-century or so. I get his paper hard-copy in my PO Box to keep up on events, including the latest row from the lefties who run the opposing collectivist rag and their wailing over having lost the status of "paper-of-record" to the Sentinel. I spotted this article by George about the secret of their success and I pass it on to you as a template from doing the same thing in your areas of operation.
The Sentinel: Why, How and Now
by George Gramlich, Managing Editor
(This is a speech I prepared to give at the special Commissioners meeting last week. This meeting was set up for citizens to comment on the awarding of the contract to print the County's legal notices in the Sentinel (we were low bidder). There wasn't enough time to give it, but we thought our readers would appreciate it.)
I would like to spend a minute on why the Sentinel was started. Custer County is like hundreds, maybe thousands, of predominantly Christian conservative areas in our country that have a liberal newspaper monopoly. Why this has occurred in America is an interesting subject, but it is what it is. To alleviate this situation, some of us got together two years ago and talked about starting a conservative newspaper, with Christian underpinnings, for our county so that the majority of people living here would at least have a conservative alternative.
During our research phase, we realized that the 100 year old local community newspaper model wasn't going to cut it. We saw there was a reason that print newspapers were losing readership all over the country. They were boring and simply uninformative. Bowling scores, senior citizen lunch menus and white-washed, let's-get-along local news articles weren't cutting it anymore with the advent of the internet, talk radio and satellite TV. And we saw that for a vast majority of these liberal papers, it was Profit before Service.
We knew innovation was the key. So we built a new, fresh, business model based on a paid production and sales staff, voluntary citizen/taxpayer reporters, a commitment to reporting real community, Colorado, national and international news, an open and honest conservative viewpoint, a dramatic use of photo-journalism, and a utilization of the internet's enormous, honest, news sources that refuse to white wash the news like the traditional news outlets like Reuters and AP. It was time for a change and guiding our entire effort is the principle: Service Before Profit.
Being completely new to the business it was a rough start, but after only 18 months the Sentinel has become one of the most successful new community based weekly newspapers in recent Colorado history. We have met or exceeded every business goal and objective including readership and revenue.
Our volunteer, citizen reporters have simply been outstanding. Their reporting on local issues is fresh, hard hitting and written from the perspective of a fellow taxpayer neighbor rather than a paid reporter who doesn't want to make waves so that the paper doesn't lose subscribers. Boring, stylized, uninformative writing it is not.
Our reporting on our local government entities, the County, Westcliffe, and Silver Cliff, and Special Districts like the Clinic and Custer County Central School is extremely detailed, factual and is not afraid to report on controversial and contentious items. It is second to none in Colorado. Walk thru our school here and you can see dozens of the Sentinel articles and photo features plastered all over. That is community commitment. Service Before Profit.
These brave and dedicated reporters have informed the public, that even in Happy Valley here, there are problems and issues that have been buried for years due to a press that refuses to expose it.
Without these citizen reporters the public would have not have known of the absolute disaster that the clinic has been with its simply incredible mismanagement and poor vision that has resulted in untold wasted dollars and human agony.
Without these citizen reporters the public wouldn't have know that, in an otherwise excellent school here in Custer County, that the school is failing in its primary mission - that of academic performance. And failing badly.
Without these citizen reporters, the public wouldn't have known that the newest holy grail of liberalism, marijuana, legal and illegal, has literally created a war zone in the Copper Gulch area with Cuban and Mexican cartels, Texas biker gangs, and local thugs terrorizing the local citizens with gunfire and threats.
We are proud of our paper. After only 18 months, take any other local community newspaper and lay it side by side with ours. Our visual presentation, article mix, detailed and honest local reporting, our outstanding photo-journalism, our internet sourced Colorado, state, national, international, veterans, business, economic, political, and religious news outshines any paper I have seen.
Our non-local news sources are some of the finest available, including CNS News and The Daily Caller on general news; Zero Hedge, Karl Denninger, and The Mises Institute on business and economic news; Colorado Peak Politics, WatchDog.Org, The Blaze and Allen West on political news; nationals level evangelicals Bill Wilson and Paster Jim Modlish on religion and Colorado Chalkbeat and EAG News on the educational scene. I could go on but there are dozens more. People just don't read our paper and throw it away, they study it. That is called "content".
So we now have two newspapers in our community, a liberal one and a conservative one. It has resulted in a dramatically more informed public, which has been sorely lacking here in Happy Valley. It is a good thing.
A just a few quick points.
Some of the liberals here today who will talk are simply using this sealed bid, common sense, decision by Commissioners Kit Shy and Lynn Attebury as a foil to simply bash the Sentinel. They don't like our Clinic reporting, they don't like our school academic reporting, they think pot will save the world and saying the word "God" or "Jesus" offends their little hearts. And the list goes on. These aren't "concerned citizens". These are people who refuse to accept any opinion except their own, biased progressive viewpoint and wish to suppress any speech or press that doesn't agree with their views. And it makes them very angry to even have an alternate view available in the valley.
Our liberal friends seem outraged when we criticize their public actions. They immediately cry that they are being personally "attacked" when we are simply informing the citizens of their actions. It is a classic liberal technique to avoid responsibility by claiming that the criticism is personal.
Our liberal friends also seem to take offense when the Sentinel uses common, time-proven techniques of humor, parody, sarcasm, comedy and hyperbole to make our points. It seems it is ok for liberals to use it, but when applied to them, it is "offensive". Folks, if things like calling Governor Hickenlooper, Governor Chickenlooper, is offensive and out-of-line, you better stop taking yourself so seriously. I know it is hard for liberals to laugh, but come on, grow up a bit and appreciate some cutting humor.
There seems to be some confusion about how much money the county and our taxpayers will save with the Sentinels winning low bid on the public notices. There are two types of county based legal notices, statutory and non-statutory. Statutory is where a government entity pays (e.g., the county for a Treasurers Report) and non-statutory is where the county does the publishing but the notice is eventually payed by the taxpayers as the county will bill them (e.g., foreclosures). There is a different rate charged for each one.
If we use the figures provided by the Tribune for 2014, that of $3,745 for statutory and $11,534 for non-statutory, and the Sentinels low bids to compare (in each case, about a third of the Tribune's bid), the savings for 2014 would have been $2397 for statutory and $8074 for non-statutory, for a total savings of $10,471 for the county and our fellow taxpayers. Note that the Statutory notices are paid by county tax dollars and the Non-Statutory notices are paid by us citizens and businesses after the County bills us. Whether it is tax dollars or right out of our own pockets, it is still our money.
Also, it has been recently alleged that the Sentinel is overcharging the county because we are printing in larger type than what the bid specified. We have stated publicly and even in print last week, that we will be printing many of the notices in larger type so that the public can actually read them, at NO extra charge to the county or the taxpayers. For you Common Core journalists, we are billing at the bid print size and publishing at a larger print size. We have even revamped our website to post the notices on there for Free so if the thought of spending 50 cents on the Sentinel is a moral or ethical crime in your universe, you don't have to do it.
And finally, I want our liberal friends to hear this loud and clear. You can disparage our newspaper, you can mock the efforts of our outstanding volunteer citizen reporters, you can directly infer that my partner, Mary Seifert, one of the most honest and caring women I have ever met in my life, has committed crimes because she sold some real estate to her life long friend, Commissioner Kit Shy over the last decade or so, you can attempt to destroy our Constitution, you can try to take our guns and right to defend ourselves away, you can mock our papers Christian viewpoint and conservative values, you can even ridicule our God. And you know what? We will still pray for you.
With God's help, the Sentinel is here to stay, my liberal friends, so you had better get use to it, cause we ain't going nowhere.
A Pincer Movement on Ammunition
As it wanes, the Obama administration grows bold, and even reckless, on matters that send a thrill up the leg of its most leftward supporters. Its new attack on so-called armor-piercing ammunition — which is, in reality, a very broad attack on ammunition across the board — is a dangerous and destructive example of the administration’s late-days slide into rule-by-decree.
What gun-rights advocates fear — not without reason — is that this is the beginning of a pincer movement, with the ATF banning non-lead ammunition as a threat to armor-wearing police officers and the EPA banning lead ammunition as a toxin.
The only question I have is: Will ATF lawyer James P. "Little Jimmy" Vann attend?
Britain's first small penis party to encourage positive body image for men. You know, the secretaries at ATF headquarters don't call him "Little Jimmy" fer nuthin'. Or so I'm told by Ramsey A. Bear.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Good. Give 'em more of what they're scared of.
No Panic Buttons for the Public: Why Open Carry Is Bad for America
What's funny is that she blames the NRA for the OC movement when the NRA has, for the most part, been extremely shy about joining that debate.
A bit about Mrs. Bloomberg
Close examination of Charlotte with a jeweler's loupe shows that the lock plates on either side are marked "T.Barker." The barrels are marked "Belgian laminated steel." A quick search revealed this:
Shotguns marked 'T. BARKER' were sold by various hardware store and catalog stores in c.1880-1910 (or so). They were generally imported from Belgium and distributed by the H&D Folsom Co. Look for the telltale Belgian proofmark underneath the barrels and on the water table (flat part of the frame where the barrels meet the frame). The proofmark is the letter 'E' over 'LG' in an oval or variant thereof.These shotguns were designed to be utility shotguns and were low priced when they were new. Nothing has changed today, and their value is strictly whatever somebody will pay to have something hanging on the wall. Under no circumstances should a T. BARKER shotgun be fired. The barrel construction is almost certainly a twisted-wire construction and the pressure curve of modern shells, even "low-brass" can certainly cause the barrels to come apart.
You can see them priced at $200-300 on some auction sites, but they rarely sell. A more realistic value would be $100-150 in really good condition. I have had mine checked by a good gunsmith and do shoot hand loaded, full length brass shells loaded with light black powder loads. NEVER shoot smokeless shells in these guns.
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