I question Sebastian's premise that the three-percenters are uninvolved in political activism. I don't know what you'd call David Codrea's website and newspaper column if not political outreach of a kind. I am personally involved in activism and politics, if not with the same profile as bloggers. And I got into that only after reading Vin Suprynowicz and others who might be called three percenters, so I don't consider it an either/or choice.
I have a hard time buying that there are fewer, or even only the same number, of politically active three-percenters as among the general gun-owning population. So... why not do both, as in fact some of us are?
I also think the three-percenters are not making their best argument, which I believe to be deterrence. Gun sales in the run-up to the Clinton AWB apparently led to confiscation language being reconsidered. The Clinton administration crackdown on militia members was largely succesful, but implies that someone took the movement seriously. Why not tap that again?
You've admitted you do have a line, even if its only your door. Is it better to keep that quiet, or that people do know it and can decide not to cross it?
Dave, I imagine quite a few people who consider themselves among the "3%" are politically active.
Sebastian's point, though, is that supposedly there are something on the order of 2.4 million people out there willing to kill in defense of the right to arms. There's nothing close to that in terms of people willing to be political activists. In fact, a lot of commenters who proclaim themselves "Three-percenters" denigrate people like Sebastian for the work they're doing.
WRT deterrence, yes the massive buying spree by the public is a warning to the .gov and media. It disturbs them. Publicly threatening politicians and media? That frightens them - and when the only tool you have is a hammer . . .
I think what they're all trying to say here is that dying for what you believe in is easy. But if you want to make a DIFFERENCE, *live* for what you believe in, every day of a busy life.
"I question Sebastian's premise that the three-percenters are uninvolved in political activism."
I don't. I outright reject it. What's happening is that they are arbitrarily being defined out of the game. To the people who make this charge, electoral politics is the only thing that counts, and that is just nonsense. Look: when Henry David Thoreau sat in jail and asked Emerson why he wasn't doing it, too, that was a political act.
All the time, I see people running around spouting flowery bromides, like "Politics is the art of the possible!" They don't know what they're talking about. Politics is the branch of philosophy that addresses matters of how humans behave toward each other.
This goes to this, of mine and which Kevin quoted again:
"But you people are talking about blowing the place up, whether you know it or not. That's the only way it can go, as things are now, because there is no philosophy at the bottom of what you're talking about."
There is a lot of ignorance on both sides of this thing. When I read something like this. --
"After wasting considerable amounts of time reading their writings, the only conclusion I can come to is that they do not give to farts about America's liberties and freedom - they only care about their own liberties and freedoms,..."
...I just laugh. Is that supposed to be an indictment? It's an epistemic mess. "America" doesn't have "liberties". People do, and there is no point on earth in discussing these things with people who haven't bothered to analyze the omnilateral nature of rights. ("If I have 'em, then so do you, by definition.") Who else to care about my freedom? If I'm supposed to be guilty because of that, then I say, "Make the most of it."
Kevin: "...wouldn't those same people be willing to clog the courts and even further overstuff our prison systems in the name of peaceful change?"
I say they should be.
I've been getting a fair lot of attention from the Three Percenters lately, and I think we're going to have to come to terms. I cannot fault one single thing they do or say in terms or preparing for violence, but I would be a lot happier to see them considering, out-loud, the prospects for civil disobedience.
This is really important: I am convinced that it will be the last ditch before violence.
Good one, Kevin. I believe if the threepers could see themselves as they present themselves to the world, they'd be so embarrassed they'd crawl up their own bungholes to hide. But like all selfish loud-mouthed dickheads, they'll never get it.
Heh. Screw "comment shitstorm", I'll blow your damned mind.
I recognize what you are saying in this article in my own actions.
There, you convinced someone on the internet that they were wrong. How about that?
I would have to say that some of Vanderboegh's points are quite valid. If we tell people "we will never fight back, no matter what you do to us", it doesn't give them much incentive to stop.
But the method of saying it may very well be counter-productive to the goal at hand.
Of course, I never was spoiling for a fight. I was just saying that if one happens, I'm not going to run away from it, neither.
"But like all selfish loud-mouthed dickheads, they'll never get it."
Listen, you: there are a lot of people not getting things. I am the most selfish person you ever even heard of. If you think you're going to knock me back on my ethical heels with a charge of "selfishness", then you're as dumb as you think everybody else is.
Billy: Unfortunately, the ATF has changed the rules of civil disobedience in this game, somewhat, with Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Fincher got off lucky.
I'd consider turning out 75% machine gun receivers, and telling people how to finish them, and then suggesting they send a letter to the editor about it and waiting to get arrested. Only, the ATF might decide to just shoot them or abort their children, or burn their houses down around their heads.
There's a difference being willing to die fighting and being willing to die sitting calmly. 'Course, I'm not sure which takes more guts.
Jeesuz peezus, you thought I was talking about you, BB? The few times I've read you you've seemed to be highly intelligent and thoughtful, if extremely angry to boot. You do, however, get zero points for reading comprehension. Try again. Unless, of course, you are indeed a threeper like Codrea and Vanderbeogh et al, with spittle-flying screaming about all the "cowards" that won't start killing jack-booted thugs at the issuance of a traffic ticket. If I've truly misunderstood you and really are one of those, then the shoe fits. Fucking wear it.
Good luck with that. The insurrectionists over at my place never went far enough into their pointless, self- and other-destructive, hypocritical screeds for me to wonder if I should possibly delete the comments, but they did do something: proved just how useless, how pointless, and how ineffective their entire movement will be.
Absolutists are axiomatically failures, before they even start. Especially absolutists who are actually suppressed relativists.
"Jeesuz peezus, you thought I was talking about you, BB?"
You're fuckin'-aye right, and you're the one who can go read for elementary comprehension before I start batting you around here like a punk. Do you see that word that you wrote: "selfish"?
That's me. You're goddamned right: the shoe fits. And every single time I see someone wise-cracking on it like there is something wrong with it, I'll be up in their face.
You were talking about me whether you knew it or not, and you're wrong about the subject in general.
"Absolutists are axiomatically failures, before they even start."
{cackle} Absolutely!
Look, ladies and gentlemen: I am always gratified when Kevin or anyone else cites my remark on "philosophy at the bottom". It is the central problem now. The person I quoted above is acting like a fucking moron, and that's just useless.
Billy, I'd argue that philosophy has been systematically raped through our "educational system" over the last, oh, 100 years or so. Rand's The Comprachicos just pointed it out.
And I don't see any way to overcome that before the crash. Do you?
All the time, I see people running around spouting flowery bromides, like "Politics is the art of the possible!" They don't know what they're talking about. Politics is the branch of philosophy that addresses matters of how humans behave toward each other.
That's a reasonable observation. I wouldn't claim that there aren't politics that matter other than electoral politics, but in terms of raw impact on our issue, electoral politics is where we can make the most difference for ourselves. It's the only place where we, who are a minority, can manage to shape public policy in our favor. Why? Because we're a dedicated minority, and electoral politics favors those.
If polling data is to be believed, in a straight majority vote, we'd lose on most of our issues. The people as a whole agree that you have a right to bear arms. Beyond that, when you get to specifics, there's no national consensus.
I don't deny the role on other types of politics for helping to alter that national consensus, but I think it's hard to argue in terms of raw impact, most of our successes have been driven by our successes in electoral politics.
"I wouldn't claim that there aren't politics that matter other than electoral politics, but in terms of raw impact on our issue, electoral politics is where we can make the most difference for ourselves."
And I say that that is myopic bullshit. Look: the thing is even rendered in more New Age florid rubbish -- "impact". If we took the word at something like reasonable usage instead of its contemporary code for "I listen to talking heads on TEEVEE!", then I would say that nobody is talking about cranking up more "impact" than the three percenters.
I think you will want to choose a different word, and while you're doing it, it might be very helpful for you to start thinking in terms of reality.
As usual, Billy Beck is the only person who understands this in principle.
When he says there is no underlying philosophy behind this, he is absolutely right. And without it, you aren't going to convince anyone of anything. Without it you are just as impotent as the people you're so busy insulting. At the bottom of it all you have nothing to offer - you don't have a moral leg to stand on - and the people you're bargaining with know it. They can sense that weakness the way a dog smells fear.
"And I don't see any way to overcome that before the crash. Do you?"
I see only one hope. That would be in the demonstrations of morality in action necessarily implicit in civil disobedience.
Language is horribly crippled, now. (This is a consequence of Pragmatism. Note the cap-'P'. This is a technical reference and if anyone doesn't know the history, then they should before they remark.) Part of what I have in mind is to validate concepts again, through action.
Good, Linoge. That's something of an understanding, but here's the thing: I laughed your complaint about "absolutists" right out of the room. You can write idiotic shit and not care if you want to, but believe me: you won't get away clean.
Not "getting away clean" from morons like you would be the finest compliment I think I could ever receive, and I thank you for it.
Absolutists are doomed to failure, whether they want to admit to it or not. They are never going to receive exactly what they want, because they are not the only person on this globe. And, guess what? If you do not get exactly what you want, you fail.
However, I have no doubt that you will simply respond with more name-calling, more childish logic, and more self-aggrandizing idiocy, so I am quite done here.
Okay, one issue people - the 2nd Amendment - not enough effective thought and philosophy to make the correction in the American culture's thinking about the issue. Congress and the Executive branch abandoned the 'well regulated militia' pretending that the National Guard is the militia and telling everyone that the National Guard has been around longer than our Constitution (no it hasn't, concerned armed citizens that banded together in defense of their homes, religion, politics and rights have been around over three hundred years - calling them something else doesn't make it so). Once the government does change their portion of the Amendment - they then feel free to change the People's part of the Amendment. Revolution, or armed insurrection isn't the solution to the infringement of the Amendment - that becomes the danger to the security of a free State. Also one of the Gun Lobby's favorite reasons for weapons - self defense makes the sheep in our world (where everyone can just get along) afraid. I am sticking with the reason that I shoot is that I am a law abiding citizen, fully capable of using dangerous weapons with safety, and I don't need a government to shove me into Depends or Pampers to keep me from soiling myself daily. So, since I know how to use machine guns, automatic weapons, submachine guns, rifles, pistols, explosives and other such - like I know how to find the proper place and time to defecate so as not to upset the public nor my friends and family - I don't need the regulations, laws and infringement on my rights to be armed and dangerous. I also don't advocate destruction of my community, government nor world to make it my way - but then I do think there are more good people in the world than bad - but the bad ones tell lies, cheat and dishonor their ancestors for personal gain and general stupidity. I remain, armed and dangerous, but then that is all in my mind and not in yours, you never think about me - just the old man in the back of the room.
I never waste my time pointing out, to them, the stupidity of people who say what you've said, so absolutely as you've said it. I just tag 'em and bag 'em. People with brains in their heads can see them.
And I say that that is myopic bullshit. Look: the thing is even rendered in more New Age florid rubbish -- "impact". If we took the word at something like reasonable usage instead of its contemporary code for "I listen to talking heads on TEEVEE!", then I would say that nobody is talking about cranking up more "impact" than the three percenters.
You want to make a credible argument rather than trying to twist the definition of one of my words? I argued that in terms of advancing the Second Amendment, gun owners getting involved in electoral politics has had more impact, effect, accomplishments, or whatever word you want to use, than any other form of politics we've engaged in. If you want to explain why that perception is wrong or myopic, go ahead. I'm willing to listen. If you just want to twist words, then pretty clearly you have no argument.
My point with that statement isn't so much that none of the IIIs are involved in the political fight, so much as if we could even get 3% motivated to participate in that (as opposed to shooting it out with the feds) then we wouldn't need to shoot it out with the feds. Three percent of 80 million people seriously dedicated to the electoral process can make a huge difference. And when I say dedicated, I mean more than just voting.
Weren't you the one bemoaning the fact that you couldn't understand why people didn't lead themselves?
NOW you're saying we need another MLK to lead us to the promised land? Or am I misunderstanding you?
And Linoge: Slow down and pay attention to what Billy is saying. Attempt to ignore the manner in which he says it. Generally he's worth paying attention to, until he gets so wound up that the signal-to-noise ratio goes negative. His style is aggressive/antagonistic, but there's a lot of "there" there, so to speak.
Except that is the problem, Kevin. Once you strip away the insults, foul language, and general-purpose idiocy from all of his comments directed at me, you are left with nothing. And after the past few days, I have no patience left for that kind of childishness.
Well, I'll have you know that this was part of the upcoming überpost, but because it was so topical I yanked it out and rushed it. It could have been better, more thorough, but I'm OK with it as it stands.
"Weren't you the one bemoaning the fact that you couldn't understand why people didn't lead themselves?
NOW you're saying we need another MLK to lead us to the promised land? Or am I misunderstanding you?"
Yes, Kevin, you are. For god's sake, please work with me a bit in this. There is nothing mutually exclusive there. Yes: people should lead themselves. They should makes up up their own minds about what they're doing. And yes, MLK is an ethical/political example for his bringing otherwise intractable issues to sharp and urgent focus by challenging the moral premises of the law itself.
With your "promised land" crack, you presumed into something quite unwarranted. I have nothing like that in mind, and I might have hoped you would know that about me, at least. In any case, I've pointed out something of what makes King important, and it would be nice to know that this is squared away now.
I once knew a three percenter that lived in that same fantasy world. Needless to say, I no longer associate with him. I could not change him to be more politically active, and I damn sure wasn't going to be anywhere near him if SHTF. Unlike our president elect, I take great care when picking out the kind of people I associate with.
I've noticed an interesting phenomenon with some survivalists, that may be applicable here.
They focus an immense amount of energy on preparing themselves for SHTF, according to some fantastical understanding of what will happen in that circumstances, but pay very little attention to preparing the people around them for the same event.
Never mind that the greatest danger to you in SHTF, in real life, is that your neighbors will run out of food and other essentials and become desperate. In other words, you are crippling your own chances of survival by not reaching out to the people around you.
Something similar goes on with gun rights, I think. Kim du Toit was bang on with his concept of a Nation of Riflemen. If you are the last person in the country with weapons, they will do you no good no matter how many you have.
The ONLY way we can win this thing is through outreach. And somehow, the 3% types need to understand that. I don't know what kind of framing we would need to get through to them, but we need something.
"The ONLY way we can win this thing is through outreach. And somehow, the 3% types need to understand that."
They can speak for themselves. Speaking for myself: for immutable reasons, I am not interested in elections. "Outreach" is futile. You have nothing to offer me.
The militants are at a disadvantage because their strategy is "all or nothing" and the price of failure is very high. Those seeking means other than violence can afford to fail and try something else. This method has produced incremental results.
Because of the costs involved with the militants position they never execute. This method has produced no results, and arguably has worsened the position for everyone else.
An armed populace does has an implicit deterrent effect on government, but it doesn't become any more effective by making empty threats. Money has more effect on government than the threat of armed rebellion.
Many of those that have mumbled their agreement with the militants seem to have done so without thinking about the particulars. The militants start shedding members as soon as they begin to talk about a fight beyond their doorstep.
I cannot imagine the militants effecting an outcome that would make the government reverse course. Rather I can see the government pouring more and more resources into cracking down, and more importantly the general public cheering the government on.
Outreach is very much needed. Our revolution succeeded because it came from the top of society... and, frankly, because it was fighting a tyrant considerably more civilized than what could be expected from DC.
If we're in a shooting war, we've lost. At best, resistance against our military will result in a constant civil war, and chaos.
Maybe, maybe, you could drain enough, that some small parts of the nation would be allowed to secede, but that's pretty unlikely, and at a very high cost.
Our revolution resulted in the loss of 3% of the entire population, in an era of set-piece warfare, and where the colonies were viewed, mostly, as a revenue stream, we simply raised the cost beyond profitability.
Socialists turned loose on a population know no limits when it comes their willingness to kill, so that they might save.
If it comes to that, we've already lost. It means the end of civilization, and no matter how prepared your bunker, you will miss the benefits of modern society.
There must be a willingness to do so, and a free people must always be able to accept destruction and death as preferable to slavery.
Frankly, the shooting should be at a more personal level, as the occasional assassination of corrupt officials, petty tyrants, or the imprisonment of a patriot, can embody a useful message, and has, usually, a minimal effect on society.
Self-defense is an instinct in a healthy society, not a political choice, and it shouldn't be too hard to convince most Americans of that.
I agree that self defense is a viable method of getting people on your side, especially women.
Getting into the grander second amendment rights issues is generally harder and only works on those who are already partially involved.
I think we have a struggle ahead of us, but if we fight them from the soap box and the ballot box, we will never have to reach for the cartridge box.
I used to fear being more politically active because I didn't want others to know I even had guns. I figured the less people know the less likely I would become a target of some vindictive anti or whatever. I then realize I live in Georgia...and guns just aren't much of an issue for people here.
The strength of our movement is that its grass roots. Having dozens of unique individuals come into their offices every week, each practically of their own accord, to discuss second amendment issues would definatly sway a lot of state lawmakers here in GA. And we may one day get HB915 passed.
I imagine the same sort of thing could happen on the national stage to at least prevent a loss of rights over the next 4-8 years.
I put the three-percenters in the same category as the blackmailing democrats always promising "cities burning" and "mass riots" if they don't get their way.
JRD
"...these are guys who accuse other bloggers of cowardice for not drawing a clear line in the sand, while pointing out their own lines have been crossed while they do nothing but engage in a New World Order induced circle jerk."
Uncle said it perfectly. It's narcissism, defined.
I note that none of these people has ever done anything concrete about protecting the Second Amendment, but by golly, they will, you betcha, when the Obama Gun Confiscation Brigade appears at their front door.
Big whoop.
But screaming abuse and imprecations at the "compromisers" and "prags" from your mother's basement in rural NY is so much more satisfying than actually, you know, doing something worthwhile. Instead of teaching a generation of kids to shoot (which will do more for the preservation of the Second Amendment than any number of empty boasts and threats), they'd rather haul off at the ones who do.
Please: spare me from the ideological standard-bearers who refuse to get their precious hands dirty until the mythical Moment Of Truth (as defined by themselves) arrives -- and who castigate others (as cowards) for not conforming to their own set of parameters.
Speaking for myself: for immutable reasons, I am not interested in elections. "Outreach" is futile. You have nothing to offer me.
I was not speaking of elections. I was speaking of practical training in firearms, as well as the philosophical indoctrination that goes with it. If you care about firearms rights, you should be working to teach others about them, or support those who do.
You have nothing to offer me.
"Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from everybody…"
"... teaching a generation of kids to shoot (which will do more for the preservation of the Second Amendment than any number of empty boasts and threats) ..."
This touched a nerve. I am writing a new will, slowly but surely, and the question arises naturally: Who would I leave my guns to if I did so explicitly? It's worth looking at the evolution of four generations of our family.
My father was a Colonel in the Army when he died, and he was the one who taught my older brother and I to hunt, beginning when we were about four years old. My brother worked for many years as a gunsmith, and he and I are still avid hunters and shooters. My younger brother has no interest in guns.
My father-in-law, who'll be 80 next month, has been an avid hunter his whole life. Indeed, only yesterday evening, I hunted deer with him and he killed his second-ever deer. He killed his first-ever deer two weeks ago. But my wife and her two sisters have no interest in guns.
A rather sharp break occurs with the next two generations, which are the five children and ten grandchildren of my two brothers, and the five children of my two sisters-in-law. None of them have the slightest interest in guns. The have no interest in and no real knowledge of the Second Amendment.
Yup, I've tried. Glazed expressions are the only response. Such talk interferes with video games, even for the adults.
Perhaps this question has been asked, but I've not seen it so I'll ask it here:
Would imposition of California's firearms laws at a Federal level -- registration of all new purchases, a (relatively toothless) AWB, restrictions on standard-cap mags, and tons of specific limitations on how and when you can carry or transport -- be sufficient to say the threshold had been crossed? 'Cause I sure didn't see any mass uprisings or resistance here in California when each incremental oppressive bill was signed. I'd just like to see that real-life test case distinguished from what's projected to occur. What's different among non-California gun owners that would cause a different result?
On my part, it would result in disobedience to the law, but not uprising.
Until they came to my door.
How many unregistered "assault weapons" do you think there are in California? How many illegal "high-capacity" magazines? How many people carry, regardless of the laws against it? And finally, how many people make a point there of buying "off paper," even though that's a felony now?
"I was not speaking of elections. I was speaking of practical training in firearms, as well as the philosophical indoctrination that goes with it."
What makes you think I need that stuff from you or anyone else? I've been studying philosophy -- the real thing -- since about 1970 when I was fourteen years old. And I was raised around firearms.
"If you care about firearms rights,..." {whack}
I care about rights, sir. Do you understand? I work from principles and I do not indulge piece-meal fractures of the concept. This is the virtue of integrity.
He's talking about the need for "us", (that being the pro-liberty set) needing to outreach to those who do not have a concrete philosophy and teaching them why our philosophy is a good thing.
Now, maybe you'll just claim that you don't need anyone else on your side, but that seems like a really good way to lose.
Kim: I note that none of these people has ever done anything concrete about protecting the Second Amendment, but by golly, they will, you betcha, when the Obama Gun Confiscation Brigade appears at their front door.
What the fuck do you know? Do you know every single person who claims the 3% title? And every last action they've ever taken in their lives? What a crock of shit. I have to admit I haven't followed every thread of this little internet shitstorm (I have things to do during the day) but I have never once seen anyone on the 3% side castigate anyone for teaching others how to shoot, or calling their Congressweasels, or so on and so forth. In fact the only thing I have seen them give people crap for was standing up and declaring that they will never fight, no matter how bad it gets. Wouldn't want to scare the oppressors, after all.
Thats a very good point,perlhagr. THEY are the oppressors. Most all folks i know are just hard working, family rising types.Who haven't done a thing to anyone to deserve the kind of treatment we are now,and are going to get in the future. I'm sorry, and i would like to apolgize to all for fomenting this problem, i.e. constitutional crisis. By not being more political, and activist minded. But, I've been out working my ass off trying to hold the whole thing together by paying 50% of my live to a bunch of lazy ,theiving, assholes. That can't get off their dead asses enough to do anything more than decide "I'M", the problem? Because i own guns? And i should go out of my way to stop them thru a process that they control? I should go sit in their jail for breaking their laws? They can't even read the 1st. ones that were wrote. And i'm expected to follow everything they've wrote to jot & tittle? Sorry, my door is as far as i can go. Everything else violates homeland security.
Kevin: oh, absolutely. Resistance on many levels, both above and below the radar, is here in the Golden State, for certain, and has been for many years.
But it's not, by any stretch of the imagination, active violent resistance (whether clandestine or open), which I think I understand to be the 3%ers intended threat. And I guess I'm just saying that if California-style firearms law and regulation counts as the threshold, I'd need someone to explain to me what would be so significantly different about non-Californians to trigger violent resistance once that threshold was crossed in their states, where no such action happened here.
So that's a question related to where the threshold is set. I have another observation, as well.
I recall Jeff Cooper's anecdote ("Survivor") of the POW who asked "how many good men are there per hundred, in the world?" and could find only 10 men in 30,000 prisoners willing to fight to escape. That's not 3.00%, that's 0.03%.
0.03% of 80 million gun owners is 26,000 and change, which strikes me as a more realistic number than 3%. Now, even a threat from 0.03% has some deterrence value, but at an entirely different level than the 3% premise and would, I presume, require different strategy and tactics.
"I was not speaking of elections. I was speaking of practical training in firearms, as well as the philosophical indoctrination that goes with it."
What makes you think I need that stuff from you or anyone else? I've been studying philosophy -- the real thing -- since about 1970 when I was fourteen years old. And I was raised around firearms.
Holy. Freaking. Crap.
As perlhaqr noted, I was referring to the need to teach other people.
Do you take very single statement on the internet as a direct personal attack on your pristine self?
Oh, I should add that if the answer to my question is that California-style firearms restrictions are NOT the threshold, then this is a good thing to know. Because if that's NOT the threshold, then the 3% threat provides no deterrence to the passage of such measures, which means we will all (including the 3%ers) need to redouble our nonviolent efforts to resist that level of infringement.
Was it fantasy idealogy at Concord bridge? Is it not the same fantasy idealogy that have brought the communist to the door? Yes, for thats what they are,communist. They have abused our system to turn it against us. It's no longer "our", system. Not by anyone who can read. The prag's would have you believe that somehow were the problem, pushing this country in civil war and what-have-you. Go talk to congress & the pres. All i do is work for a living. And i'm some kind asshole for just SAYING i won't be pushed anymore?
You know, I should learn to click all the links in the original post before commenting. Linoge asked my question above in his linked post, and did so a lot better than I.
Heres some philosophy. Humans are disposed to suffer, where evils are sufferable. When man experiences true freedom, he begs for his chains back. And we don't think the commies have read and taken it to heart? Aren't using it today? How 'bout this: All that nescessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to enter politics!
I can't even make heads or tails of what the hell you all are talking about at this point, so I am going to make it simple.
Are the 3% adequately politically active to make gun control political suicide? On a broader note, how many of the 80 million gun owners out there are adequately politically active, but are not part of the 3%?
Just for definition's sake, the 3% are those who are willing to fight our own government if it ever came down to mom and pa Joe and Jane American hand in your guns confiscation time. They may or not be adequatly politically active.
How active is adequate? Calling your reps at the state and national level every once in a while is a good start. Being apart of the NRA or similar rights organization is another good start. Of course voting and getting others to vote in our favor is a must. Most of all, getting those who are apathetic or indifferent towards the second amendment to join the 80 million and hopefully get them politically active as well.
I don't think that's too much. Hell, I'm just a poor college kid and I do all of the above except the reps part, though I plan to change that.
Historically, both sides of this debate have made very valid points. Both are needed if we are ultimately going to win this. Being politically active and being willing to fight are not mutually exclusive. Imagine trying to negotiate a work contract, for example, by saying that you want more money, less hours, and better healthcare, but if you don’t get it your not going to do anything crazy like go on strike or try to find another job or anything (that would be unreasonable). Likewise, if you’ve been negotiating since 1934 and losing just about every round you need to face facts and give in and shut the hell up or realize the time is coming to go on strike - regardless of whether the idea scares the white people or not.
The goal of far too many (but not all) of these “prags” seems to be to label you crazy, unreasonable, unstable, “unable to get along even with other gun people”, etc. The ultimate goal being to marginalize you so they can take over the debate. At the very least they will manage to divide the gun culture making it easier to defeat. I know this goes both ways but lately it seems to be very prominant on the "prag" side.
Now for the part that’s really going to piss some people off.
Compare the writings of some of these people to those of the American Hunters and Shooters Association and tell me you don’t see a spooky similarity. I’m betting they have all the validity of that false-flag group and are in all likelihood bought and paid for by the same people. I’m not accusing everyone of this because this debate has been going on for quite some time in the gun culture. I’m just accusing the new crop of loudmouthed frauds that have shown up lately, curiously just in time to prepare the ground (marginalize, divide and conquer) for debates that will surround the inevitable legislation that will be coming our way. It’s a version of the campaign waged by liberal bloggers in the election. What?! You thought they would go away! Smearing Sarah Palin gets boring after a while and they’ve got some serious legislation to get passed.
Dude, if I am "bought and paid for", I think I just bankrupted the Brady Bunch, the AHSA, VPC, and all the rest of those moronic, hoplophobic groups - I do not go cheap. That said, where is my bleeding check?
Or, rather, are you just adapting the Brady Bunch line of "the NRA sends wheelbarrows of cash to bloggers" to fit your own needs? Interesting, that...
My response to this issue is a little long even by Kevin's standards.
:)
I would be interested in Mr. Beck's reaction in particular. I don't agree that violence is our remaining alternative - assuming I haven't mis-read his position on that point.
On a more general note, I think it should be accepted that violence is always an implied threat in response to unwanted action by others; the difference between implied threat and express threat is that as between negotiation and extortion. I think too many are making over much of the implied threat (which exists as an intrinsic aspect of the human condition) and too readily equating it to express threat as well. Because one could do something is neither encouragement nor excuse for proclaiming one's willingness to do so.
Excoriating each other for pointing that out seems silly somehow.
The goal of far too many (but not all) of these “prags” seems to be to label you crazy, unreasonable, unstable, “unable to get along even with other gun people”, etc. The ultimate goal being to marginalize you so they can take over the debate. At the very least they will manage to divide the gun culture making it easier to defeat. I know this goes both ways but lately it seems to be very prominant on the "prag" side.
It's not really my goal to marginalize anybody, James. But you guys might want to consider getting under control the folks in your three percent movement who do not play nicely with others. If it was just me suggesting some of your folks were less than willing to have a calm, rational discussion (and that's putting it mildly) I might have to have that look in the mirror. But it's a lot of people saying that. A lot of people who enjoy calm discussions of that nature.
The problem with the threepers is that they bear very striking resemblance to what John Adams would have called a "rabble."
I’m not accusing everyone of this because this debate has been going on for quite some time in the gun culture. I’m just accusing the new crop of loudmouthed frauds that have shown up lately
It's been going on a lot longer than that, and in a lot more than just the gun culture. It's a classic tactic.
But the intellectual crux of my argument is that we need to nurture a politically effective movement to counter the nonsense we see from the other side. Standing up and claiming there will be revolution is not politically effective, because most Americans, and by most I would wager 90%, think that's completely insane.
The threepers have, late in this latest debate, started opining on the deterrent value of what they speak. That is an argument. That's something you can have a debate about. I think you might even have a good point. But it's something that has to be discussed seriously... and I don't think guys like Mike Vanderboegh, from what I've seen, are capable of that kind of discussion, because they can't accept that someone can disagree with them in good faith.
Sebastian, Why is it that we have to have an argument about this at all? Theres no logical position for gun control that's ever been presented. Not legal, moral, philosophical,medical, scienctific or anything else. It's all been presented, and represented. But still ignorance marches on. Talking,presenting logic,facts, proof i.e, debate-arugument. Don't seem to change things. You folks seem to want to rehash the same crap with the same people....... And you expect different results? Whats left but tough talk. And then the belt if childhood memories serve.
But you guys might want to consider getting under control the folks in your three percent movement who do not play nicely with others.
Here's the problem. Those people are not under anyone's control, nor should they be. Let me channel Mr. Beck for a moment (no offense, BB): philosophically, you have one moral choice when it comes to people with whom you disagree: convince or disassociate.
If the 3% "scare the white people" then maybe they should be scared. It's worth pointing out that these are all individuals, under no one's control except their own will, as are we all.
Now some will see that as dividing up and being more susceptible to being defeated. Others will see that differing movements with differing philosophies can never be more then temporary fellow travelers anyway.
The so-called 3% can do what they are going to do. The rest can do whatever they see as necessary. Either point to them and say "they are crazy" or point to them as an extreme example of what is possible. It really doesn't matter.
Beck is right when he says that most people lack an underpinning of philosophy to support their arguments. The average American no longer understands what it means to argue from principle, to the point that when I make an argument explicitly based upon natural principles, I have to explain to people what I mean by "natural principles". They regard the idea of principled argument with distrust because the language around it has been twisted away from plain meaning.
But the intellectual crux of my argument is that we need to nurture a politically effective movement to counter the nonsense we see from the other side. Standing up and claiming there will be revolution is not politically effective, because most Americans, and by most I would wager 90%, think that's completely insane.
Does anyone on the threeper side claim that a politically effective movement is a bad idea? Or is the threeper position just that of "politics is the carrot, and failing that, we are the stick"?
Vanderboegh himself has been the vast majority of my readings on the "pro-3%" side of things, and as far as I can tell, that is his point.
Hell, I dunno, maybe it is childish. "If we don't get our way, we're going to take it". But it is, nonetheless, the philosophically consistent position, as I see it.
Pro-liberty gun owners tend to believe in natural rights, stemming from either Cogito ergo sum or God Almighty, depending on the flavor of gunnie; a commitment to the idea that people have the right to self defence and self-determination. If those of us who CCW are presented with a threat from another person, we believe we have the right to defend ourselves. How is it any different to claim that if threatened by the government, we will defend ourselves from that as well, or to even simply state that we have the right to defend ourselves from that sort of aggression?
I'm asking, because I really just don't see why we're at odds here.
Here's the problem. Those people are not under anyone's control, nor should they be. Let me channel Mr. Beck for a moment (no offense, BB): philosophically, you have one moral choice when it comes to people with whom you disagree: convince or disassociate.
I don't disagree with you. I was not really speaking of physical control, but in defining a community where the worst, offensive elements are outside of it. Obviously you can't really control people in a free society, but you can apply social pressure.
Perlhaqr,
Feel free to show me any evidence that any of the self-admitted .3-Percenters have been active in getting non-shooters to shoot and buy guns.
My guess is that it's scant -- narcissists are not renowned for their public works.
... They don't care, because they're taken with a fantasy--a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. They want to take part in order to confirm their ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling themselves among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability ...
Getting back to Mr. Harris and his friend who felt the needed for intimate engagement - he First had to satisfy himself. He did it for Himself, to be in it, be personally involved - not for whatever "movement" or "cause" it was or pretended to be - and it was the 60's - how many guys protested simply to get laid? That's intimate too. I know my brother did.
Jihadis get their freak on with drugs and hookers - their one freakin' chance to get laid without marrying the Camel - in many ways they're acting-out against an intensely parochial, repressive, and controlling archaic social structure. Plus it lets them get their freak on and be famous for fifteen miliseconds.
Perlhaqr,
Feel free to show me any evidence that any of the self-admitted .3-Percenters have been active in getting non-shooters to shoot and buy guns.
My guess is that it's scant -- narcissists are not renowned for their public works.
Kim du Toit | Email | Homepage | 12.08.08 - 9:40 am | #
You keep pointing the finger at hard-liners as the problem.Why aren't you going after the government? Their the ones trying to turn us into criminals. Despite the fact that every aurgument FOR gun control has been bebunked and disproven in every manner possible. The system won't even allow an open an honest debate on the subject. I've reached out in every manner i can think of, as diplomatic as possible. A still un-principled ignorance marches this once great country to destruction. With or without the 3%. And seeming er-respective of their actions, or the lack thereof.
Kim: I'd consider myself part of that crowd, and I took three people who had never fired a gun before out to the range last year, and two of them now own a gun of their own.
What was that someone was saying about my end of the spectrum being "absolutists"?
Sebastian:
I see valid points on both sides of this. I also see some reprehensible behavior on both sides as well. But as it’s been pointed out, I don’t control anyone. And if they’re not worried about getting on the wrong side of the alphabet agencies, what makes you think they will yield to social pressure from me? I don’t know them and I’m sure they don’t care if I like them or not.
I agree with perlhaqr’s restating of the position: "politics is the carrot, and failing that, we are the stick". But the stick only works if the other side believes you’re willing to use it. No one here would argue with this one bit if we were discussing Muslim terrorism or the local mugger. I know the people who run things sometimes don’t seem very human, but really they’re no different. Likewise, threatening to whack people with the stick all the time isn’t going to work very well either, you’ve got to use the carrot – politics can work. But, to paraphrase Rand, my wish to be an American and their wish to turn me into Euroweenie is not a simple difference of opinion. We aren’t discussing baseball vs. cricket here. At the very bottom of it all, some things are simply not negotiable and there is nothing wrong with saying so.
Basically, convince who you can convince, because there are still people out there who aren’t either stupid or dishonest, and put the fear of God in the rest of them. Your neighbor or friend might be amenable to outreach and logic. Schumer, Brady, and those like them will never be convinced of anything and should be spending the rest of their lives on verge of pissing their pants. Telling the two groups apart is where the skill comes in so there will be some mistakes, but that doesn’t change the strategy.
Linoge:
I said I didn't mean everyone. I even put it in bold, so I find it curious that you're the one who responded to that part. How’d you know? Just look at the tactic of labeling everyone who disagrees with you as stupid, crazy, and not caring about anyone but themselves, for example. Take an honest look at the AHSA page and your own writing and then tell me you can't recognize most of the things that piss you off about the tactics of the AHSA in your own words. Maybe you can, but it seems pretty clear to me. If they're not paying you, they should. I hope you think about that. Really, I do, because if you're sincere, you're doing just as much damage as the people you're railing against. At least present the their side fairly and then argue against that. You’re engaging in the Bogeyman fallacy (similar to the straw man, but scarier).
du Toit:"Feel free to show me any evidence that any of the self-admitted .3-Percenters have been active in getting non-shooters to shoot and buy guns.
My guess is that it's scant -- narcissists are not renowned for their public works."
Look, you: Americans are not required to buy each others' good will -- especially in political matters -- according to busybodies' standards. Understand me, Import? They probably don't teach you this before they give you that government test that says you're in, but freedom is what used to happen in this country when someone would have told you to mind your own fucking business.
"Public works" is a standard that has absolutely no standing in this discussion. Some people know that. You should take the note.
Sorry, James, I did present their side fairly - as I saw it. I see these people as doing far more damage to the cause of freedom of rights, firearm rights, and the acceptance of both into the American society than the AHSA, the Brady Bunch, the VPC, and all the rest of those fun little organizations combined. In all honesty, for a time, I actually thought that some of them were fronts by one of those organizations in order to better build up and cater to the stereotypes they so often portray all firearm owners as.
And then I realized the insurrectionists were serious, and I realized the damage they were capable of causing.
If you honestly think that I should be paid by the AHSA, then I honestly think you should get in touch with them and suggest it - I do not go cheaply, mind you, and I certainly will not sell myself out to them for much. What I wrote I believe, and I am the only person who holds responsibilty for it. If you want to continue throwing out specious charges and baseless assumptions, like so many of the insurrectionists themselves do (talk about personal insecurities), then feel free to do so - it will just push you further into the "full of shit" camp with them.
Bleh. The incomplete thought in there is that you should suggest to the AHSA to hire me - as I mentioned, I do not go cheaply, and I could stand a chance of bankrupting that pathetic, false-flag organization, which I certainly would be honored to do.
I did present their side fairly - as I saw it.
Are you shitting me? I've read the posts concerning this topic on your blog. It's wall to wall insults. You didn't even attempt to address the actual points, you just jumped into the name calling and smears. You dishonestly attribute quotes by some people to everyone who disagrees with you. You say "this is what the other side thinks, here is one person who said so". As if that person could speak for anyone but themselves. And you presented their side fairly?
And what's this stuff about personal insecurities. Why not go ahead and say it? Everyone who disagrees with you has an inferiority complex, right? That must be it. They're stupid and they know it and they want you to feel as bad as they do.
What I wrote I believe, and I am the only person who holds responsibilty for it.
The similarities in tactics are there and whether you do it because they pay you or because you actually believe it is really irrelevant. The effect is the same.
Kevin: As far as "threatening war" goes, can you suggest another method of letting the opposition know what the stakes are, that doesn't fall under that descriptor?
As far as I'm concerned, it seems only fair to let the other side know what the rules of the game they are playing are. Generally, all us gunnies want is to be left alone, but the Soccer Moms and other Handwringers won't have that, seems like they should get to know up front what the result of trying to stamp out our culture might be.
(Edited by Siteowner, because I didn't want the reply halfway down the page: Perlhaqr, my choice of wording was poor. They don't really threaten war, they threaten assassinations. I can't find it right now, but I do remember reading one of Vanderboegh's replies where he stated outright that "long-range rifle shots" would be the method of defending our right to arms.
Right. Printing that in newspapers is going to do what for the image of the Second Amendment defender?
Welcome to the third world, where you too won't know if you're going to get your head blown off in the crossfire!
Anyway, that was my point. "War" was a bad choice of words.)
It's obvious this was meant to be an insult, but I think if it were directed at me I would count it as praise.
I can only speak from my own personal experience, and I'll grant you I don't meet enough thousands of people to qualify as a statistical sample. Nonetheless, my experience is that "imports" tend to understand the concept of liberty better, and take the keeping of it more seriously, than those born here. Most often, that's because they've seen what it is to be *without* liberty up close and personal, and decided they wanted none of it.
It occurs to me that insults that don't support your point only serve to paint you as closed-minded.
The difference between Beck and me is that it's only my body which is the "import"; my philosophy, however, is pure American: a representative republic, a polite, well-ordered society, and a place where acceptance of human freedom is a Constitutional guarantee*.
Beck, however, is the polar opposite: a home-grown American whose philosophy is imported, in whole cloth, from the Russian Anarchist movement of the late 1800s.
There's one more difference between us: I have a record of standing up, physically, against a totalitarian regime (which Beck sneeringly dismisses as "in another country, which doesn't count for anything here").
Beck, as far as I can figure out, has never actually done anything concrete, in any country, to stand up against Our Enemy, The State. He does, however, do a marvelous line of obscure, elliptical invective from his command center in his mother's basement.
----------------------
*I know that this ideal has been tarnished a lot over time -- the struggle against the State is timeless -- but we're still better than all the others, despite what the anarchos think.
I'd prefer to reform the system peacefully, with public education, public works and applying pressure on the reptiles of government.
This, of course, is anathema to the anarchos, even though our objective is the same, because my way requires patience, perseverance and respect for my fellow man -- qualities which are notably lacking among extremists like Beck, who have nothing but contempt for their fellow-citizens and want to get the whole thing over quickly.
A quick reading of Barbara Tuchman's "The Proud Tower" will illustrate the phenomenon.
If communists are just socialists in a hurry, anarchists are the same manifestation of the libertarians.
Du Toit: "The difference between Beck and me is that it's only my body which is the "import"; my philosophy, however, is pure American:"
That is not true.
"Beck, however, is the polar opposite: a home-grown American whose philosophy is imported, in whole cloth, from the Russian Anarchist movement of the late 1800s."
Neither is that, and I don't think you know enough about this stuff to lie about it, Kim. You know just enough to try to snow the kiddies around here. You are as wrong as you can be.
"Beck, as far as I can figure out, has never actually done anything concrete, in any country, to stand up against Our Enemy, The State."
That might be a lie. I don't know, but I do know that du Toit has very good reason to know better.
"He does, however, do a marvelous line of obscure, elliptical invective from his command center in his mother's basement."
My mother doesn't have a basement, Kim, and whatever else you might say, this much is true: at least I didn't marry my mother.
For an individualist who doesn't care what other think of him, you are sure giving folks you say you dislike a lot of rent free space inside your own skull ... most of the posts here are yours ... if nothing else, you have been well and truly trolled.
I'll spend my time doing something about these issues, and working with others, even if they refuse to go as far as I will ... and prepare for war if needed.
You can ( and no doubt will ) do as you please.
Feel free to harangue me here if you wish ... I don't mind. Hopefully we won't need to go to the barricades, but if we do, I'll expect to see you there as well ... and I suspect a bunch of the folks you are lambasting here will be there as well.
"My mother doesn't have a basement, Kim, and whatever else you might say, this much is true: at least I didn't marry my mother."
Beck:
Your mother might not have a basement, but her house sure still contains your bedroom -- or have you moved out recently? (If so, I apologize: even if it did take you thirty-odd years to cut the apron strings.)
Nor did I marry my mother -- but I did stop living with her about thirty-five years ago. Something that YOU can't say.
Oh, and I await any proof as to the substantive difference between Beck's anarcho-libertarianism and the old-fashioned Russian type.
Oh, wait: there is one. Mea maxima culpa.
The major point of difference is that the old anarchists DID something about their anger -- i.e. they blew stuff up -- whereas the modern-day anarchists (like Beck) are just a bunch of whiners.
I too am sick of this thread. However, let me finish my contribution with his:
If ever the SHTF, I'd bet a substantial sum that the sound of my 1911 will be heard LONG before the sound of Beck's Beretta.
"Your mother might not have a basement, but her house sure still contains your bedroom -- or have you moved out recently?"
By the autumn of 2002, almost fifteen years in Atlanta had worn me out. After two years of roadwork I was richly homeless and I had gone there for the best employment propect of my whole life to date. By the end, though, I despised that place. It's the East Coast answer to L.A., and that's about as bad as if gets.
By 2002, my father was facing his third run of radiotherapy for small-cell lung cancer. The third chemo run had been suspended, and none of it looked good.
I added it all up. I never had the responsibilities of a wife and children, which circumstance I had deliberately designed. I was able to work from anywhere I wanted to be. I decided to go home and hang with The Ol' Man. I was there for the last seven months of his life, which is one of the smartest things I ever did.
This decrepit 150 year-old farm house sits on twenty-five acres. This is my mother's home, and it will be valuable among the five children on the awful day when she finally leaves us. The way she's going, though, she could out-live me. Still, it would be appalling to consider her here by herself. Everybody in the family is grateful that I'm here, and before he died, my father made me promise things that no one will ever know.
This is my place, du Toit, as much as anyone's. When I was seventeen years old, I shed blood all over this place with hand tools. I once made the very arrogant mistake of informing my father that I would burn it down someday. He looked at me like I will never forget, and said, "That's very surprising, considering how much work you put in it."
You know nothing about the insinuation that you're making. Do your worst.
"I too am sick of this thread."
You were sick before you rang in.
"If ever the SHTF, I'd bet a substantial sum that the sound of my 1911 will be heard LONG before the sound of Beck's Beretta."
Hey, Fat-Boy: I'm the one who watches what's going on up and down this valley.
Jesus Christ, I lack an internet connection until I get back into the apartment in the evenings, and I have to wade into a cesspit like this?
OK, I get it. You don't like or respect each other and enjoy sniping via snide remarks about marriage, weight, home life, and personal grooming habits for all I know.
Beck, I've read enough of your stuff to at least expect it from you, but Kim, I'm disappointed. You I've at least met.
Here's the deal: My playroom, my rules. KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF. You want to compare pecker-weights or who's done the most to confound the .gov, do it somewhere else. I've had enough of the both of you. Not just in this thread, but on the SITE.
He started, Kevin, and this is it: the next time you see him do that here, you'd better just ban me instantly because I will run him to the fucking wall, every single time.
You know, Beck, I expect childish behavior from you. It's your M.O.
"HE STARTED IT!"
And you just admitted that you can't control yourself, insisting that I ban you because of that lack.
Kim I'm disappointed in, not so much because he insulted you but because of the childishness of the insults. It was playground crap. I've met the man. I KNOW he can insult with style! Somehow you pulled him down to your level and then beat him with experience.
You're an interesting specimen, Beck, but so is the rotting beached corpse of a giant squid. You are both fascinating and repulsive at the same time. The only question is whether the fascination outweighs the repulsiveness.
Fine, then. Now that that's settled, if the Sage of Dallas can make his case for the Russian roots of my politics, I will be happy to laugh him right out of court.
Say what you want about me, Kevin, but when I make an assertion like that fool did about my "Russian" politics, I will document it for you.
He cannot, because he doesn't know what he's talking about. And it's your place and you can do what you want, but du Toit's chiseling bullshit cannot be counted as "civil" by anyone who is serious about this stuff. He dropped that here and ran away like a little kid.
Kevin:"You'll do it civilly (something I think you're constitutionally incapable of, Beck)...
You could get yourself acquainted with the facts and realize how wrong you are.
"...or you'll do it elsewhere."
Oh yeah? Let's go over it: that bastard comes waltzing in here to tell everyone that I'm a garreted loser who's never done anything for his own freedom and who swills Kropotkin. He knows -- he knows, do you understand? -- that I have lived a whole life in the IRS crosshairs and told them explicitly what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. He has excellent reason to know, based on things he has told me, how I mounted a direct attack in court on DMV law, risked eighteen months in Attica in the attempt, and kicked a DA's ass all over Tompkins County, New York with no lawyers involved. I did that all by myself.
For thirty-one years, people who have sold hundreds of millions of records in the aggregate have hired me to do what I do for a living, coast-to-coast and the around the world. He knows this.
If he ever laid eyes on Rose Wilder Lane or Robert LeFevre -- just for instance -- it's a fucking miracle, and it didn't do him any good anyway because all he knows is "Russian anarchy", like a parrot, and he gets to come around your place and tag me with that in every defiance fact that he can muster.
If all that is what you're calling "civil", then you are a goddamned barbarian. Look around, Kevin. I am nothing but civil with people who deserve it, and none of this qualifies. That includes your attitude about it.
You can do your worst. If that's what you're about, then it won't mean shit to me.
Three Percent: toward a theory and practice of republican restoration
"A third area in counterinsurgency operations worth examining is the stability of the environment. It is almost a tautology that insurgencies thrive on chaos. Terror produced by removing basic securities and livelihoods feeds the population’s desire for alternatives. The uncertainty and fear generated by such conditions inspire the dissatisfieds to join the cause. The insurgency tries to prove its claim as a viable solution by using or creating the instability." -- Measuring Effectiveness in Irregular Warfare, James Clancy and Chuck Crossett, Parameters, Summer 2007, pp. 88-100. http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/07summer/clancy.htm
Why are we "bitter clingers"?
During the late, lamentable campaign for the presidency, the President-elect was trying to explain to a latte liberal bunch of donors in San Francisco why he was having such trouble making headway with rural Pennsylvania Democrats.
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” -- Barack Hussein Obama, 12 April, 2008, San Francisco, California.
Of course, this immediately promoted the sale of teeshirts proclaiming "I'm a 'bitter clinger'". This sort of insulting, clueless snobbery has always informed the liberal critique of traditional America but the observation, while mistaking causes and effects, hit on something eternal. We do "cling" to our faith and our liberty with great ferocity, mostly because we intuitively understand that it is the old verities that have brought us this far as a free people.
The Gramscian collectivists who have assaulted our culture for the past century through Hollywood and the indoctrination of our youth in government schools understand this. It is to their successes in the culture that they owe the election of the candidate who is the epitome of the collectivist con artist. A people firmly grounded in the principles and history of western civilization, who understood free markets and the glorious concepts of the rule of law and private property, a people who were educated in critical thinking -- HOW to think, rather than WHAT to think -- would never have allowed the slow destruction by corruption that has brought the Founders' Republic to this point.
Yet, here we are. Two peoples, divided by culture, trapped within the same borders. For the moment, our opponents have swept the political field and are poised to collect what they see as the fruits of victory. Among these fruits, we have been told, are more oppressive gun control laws. We Three Percenters, so named because we see ourselves as lineal descendants of the three percent of the colonial population who physically took up arms against King George the Third, have sworn to resist any more such laws. Not one more step back, is our cry. We understand that this may make us outlaws within our own country in short order, bringing us into conflict with the new federal regime. We Three Percenters are truly the "bitter clingers" of whom Obama spoke.
But why are we "bitter clingers"? Leaving aside the issues of faith and principle and focusing merely on defense of the God-given inalienable rights that are codified in the Second Amendment, we do so because we understand (as did the Founders) that it is the Second Amendment that secures all the rest of the Bill of Rights. We do so because it is our firearms that provide stability and order to the society.
We all know this. Heck, even the gun confiscationists know this from experience though they refuse to admit it. What has been the result of the concealed carry movement in the past 30 years? John Lott has said it in the title of his book: "More Guns, Less Crime." Where are the worst outrages against public order, life and limb? Why in the victim disarmament zones of our big cities, of course. Where do the massacres of innocents take place? In the criminal free fire zones that have been carved out of our schools and public spaces. "Gun free school zone" is a lie just as much as a sign that says "Arbeit Macht Frei" over an extermination camp gate, and in the aggregate it is just as deadly. So we cling to our firearms because in the violent uncertain world that has arisen in the ashes of our traditional culture, it is only them, and ourselves, we can count on to protect our families, hearth and home. As the saying goes, "9-1-1: Minutes Away When Seconds Count."
We also understand from observing the statistics of crime that it is unnecessary for everyone to be armed for weapons in the hands of some of the citizenry to bring order and stability for all, even the most hard-headed gun confiscationist who is protected by the uncertainty engendered in the local criminal's mind as to just who has a weapon. Do you see the Brady Bunch putting up signs on their front lawns saying: "Gun Free Household"? Of course not. They're hypocritical beneficiaries of our preparedness.
We are "bitter clingers" because we understand that for a woman with a vengeful ex-boyfriend, or one who accidentally walks into the notice of a rapist, her gun IS order and safety. And we are "bitter clingers" because we understand that our firearms protect us not only from petty criminals, rapists and freelance murderers, but also from tyrannical government criminals and organized murderers of the Stalinist and Hitlerian kind.
Our gun confiscationist opponents sneer at this reasoning, but as I have written in more than one place, if they think tyranny can't come to America, they're whistling past the graveyard of history. The armed black veterans of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who protected the advocates of Ghandian pacifist resistance to the racist oppression of Klan-dominated local law enforcement with M-1 rifles in their hands and determined looks in their eyes knew this. That is why gun control down here in Alabama is a non-starter for most black folks even today. They remember what it was like to face corrupt government officials who could kill you at a whim.
Here again we see that firearms, and the will to use them, protected order and liberty. Another example would be the Battle of Athens, Tennessee in 1946, when veterans fought a corrupt and violent political machine ignored by the state police with guns in their hands, kept an election from being stolen and won the day. It is not necessary to footnote this with quotes from Ceasare Beccaria, or Tom Paine, or any of the Founders. This is plan common sense understood by anybody with half a brain. Criminals and governments step lightly around citizens who are armed and prepared to defend their lives, their property and their liberty.
In any riot, hurricane, or other man-made or natural disaster, who is the most popular guy in the neighborhood when the looters begin to roam? The man with the evil semi-automatic "assault rifle" of course. "Nobody needs one of those," our enemies sneer. Except, of course, when they do. Will the Crips, the Bloods, MS-13, the Latin Kings, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Klan and every motorcycle gang in the country not have them too? What a silly question. So pardon me, Brady Bunch, if I wish to be armed as capably as the worst maddog criminal I might encounter.
So when we "bitterly cling" to firearms, this is what we cling to: order, safety, liberty.
"Insurrection" or Restoration?
For our declarations of refusal to cooperate in our own further disarmament, our "pragmatist" critics in the gun rights movement have labeled us Three Percenters as "insurrectionists," "insurgents" and "revolutionaries," among other less printable names. Yet we do not want to overthrow the system of government designed by the Founders, but rather to restore it to its former glory. I would draw your attention once more to the quote at the top of this essay.
(I)nsurgencies thrive on chaos. Terror produced by removing basic securities and livelihoods feeds the population’s desire for alternatives. The uncertainty and fear generated by such conditions inspire the dissatisfieds to join the cause. The insurgency tries to prove its claim as a viable solution by using or creating the instability.
Our political enemies of all stripes, including those who claim to be our friends, say that it is we who are "revolutionaries." But, I ask you, which side of this struggle over the culture of this Republic has introduced "chaos," "terror," "uncertainty," and "fear"? Is it not the social engineers of the left who destroyed the black family with their tender mercies of the "War on Poverty" so condemned by own of their own at the time, Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Is it not the Gramscian culture wreckers of Hollywood and the Gangstas? Is it not, indeed, the gun confiscationists, with their criminal free fire zones in the cities? Further, is it not the social engineers and crony capitalists of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democrats all, who set us on this current descent into financial chaos?
It is THEY who are the revolutionaries. THEY who are the insurgents. THEY who are the insurrectionists. By clinging to our firearms and our values, it is WE who provide the basis of order and stability in this society, not them. NEVER them. Ordinary Americans understand this intuitively, even if they are often gullibly taken in by the lies of language the
(Cont.) the gun confiscationists use: "reasonable regulation," "common sense," "loophole," and "assault weapon."
Gun control has worked so well in the localities under the political domination of the gun controllers that they are happily willing to share their disorder with us. What nice folks. Of course in the end, this is not about "pulic safety," or "crime in the streets," or really even about firearms. The anti-gunners aren't anti-gun, they're anti-guns-in-the-hands-of-individuals. It's not about guns, its about power, which is why it's about guns because as one of the collectivists' fondly-recalled Asian rock stars of the last century famously observed, "political power grows out of the end of a gun."
They know this, and on some level, most every one of us "bitter clingers" knows this. The government, at every level, will always have firearms. Criminals, obviously will always have firearms. At issue here is whether or not the law-abiding citizens of this country will have firearms of military utility able to resist predatory criminals or predatory governments. Yet it is WE who provide the basis for safety and security in this country. This is why we refuse to continue to disarm by a thousand cuts. Because it is in our ability to project credible deterrence to criminals of all stripes, even elected ones, that our safety and the safety, security and liberty of this entire country rests.
We Three Percenters are not trying to "overthrow the government." We are merely insisting that we will not allow the government of the Founders, that sad, battered old girl of a republic, to be finally, irrevocably, overthrown by the collectivists who now have it by the throat. To the extent that we are able to get that idea across to the people (a huge challenge, for it must needs be over the megaphone shouts of the Obamanoids and the ill-named "main stream media"), we may be able to get out of this looming confrontation without anybody getting shot. The "pragmatists," who have much greater resources for getting that message out than do we, could be critical in that. I know they can, but I do not hold out much hope that they will. They are too busy calling us "lunatics" and "insurrectionists," while the real insurrectionists and revolutionaries tear down the old political verities that the pragmatists have counted on for so long.
In the end, faithful to the Founders' legacy, we Three Percenters will still be here, providing even in our resistance to tyranny, the basis of order, liberty and the rule of law against the revolutionaries of the left.
(If you do not know *precisely* the risks he has taken - the talk that he bloody damned well walks - I'd recommend standing back and watching for a time.)
I can't do what he does.
I DAILY wish to hell I could but I am a coward. And I'm okay with it.
For now.
But if you intend to contend, choose your words very carefully because they MEAN SOMETHING, damn it.
I chipped in on the vaunted Kim's child's competition pistol when he couldn't afford it and I've taught a load of anti-gun people to shoot and like it.
We do our own appleseeds.
We are members of political organizations.
We vote.
We campaign.
I'm helping an acquaintance of mine get ready to run for an upcoming county office as we speak.
He can hurl whatever epithets as he wants at us but he can't hurl my money back at me because I hope his kid learns to shoot well and I refused to take it back when offered.
If I live in "my mother's basement control room" she'd be surprised that she has an adult son that somehow has a basement not connected to her house 1200 miles away and of many acres.
Tom
That one he kicked off his boards for laughing at him too much when he deserved it.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the number with which this rotten government has tagged me, and which fools nationwide know as the "social security number". Go look it up. That number was issued in Little Rock, Arkansas, where I was born. My birthdate is 11/27/56.
I despise the idea of tatoos, but I think the time is coming when I will put that on my left forearm, like the Nazis did it.
In any case, anyone here is free to publish it anywhere (I've done it in Usenet several times, and Wendy McElroy once blogged it with my hearty blessing), and anyone here is free to use it for anything, because I don't.
IS NOT CREATED by whiners in Plano, Texas or a website and t-shirt profiteering scheme. Cool tshirt, give KdT credit for that. People have tried to buy mine off of me at the ranges over the years.
It's created by selfish assh*les craving FREEDOM like myself and Billy Beck and Mike V. AND, in spite of hating cowardly politicos, we do our level best to be polite to the cowards. We even let them fire our rifles at the range and speak to them in a civil fashion.
Thought to end the day with, perhaps?
"The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."--Thucydides
Some of us are scholars AND are willing to fight.
How many of us hit the gym today or chopped wood. How many sent 200 down range like we do three+ days a week? How many are people who called me a "mall ninja" that whine about shooting with gloves on?
I did my part today.
Go do yours tomorrow.
Volunteer to teach Kiwanis Club kids to shoot. Get on a political campaign. Run for office. But a line is still drawn in the sand and we won't back down.
My part today even involved writing actual LETTERS of a non-electronic kind to my Senators and Reps today on five different issues, only some involving firearms, all involved creeping socialism/communism.
Perlhaqr,
Feel free to show me any evidence that any of the self-admitted .3-Percenters have been active in getting non-shooters to shoot and buy guns.
Jack Dailey, I, and a bunch of other folks founded a road-show of volunteer rifle instruction traveling nationwide, called the Appleseed Program, in 2005.
The road show part was my idea.
You should be familiar with it -- our second event was at Tac-Pro in Mingus, Texas.
You and I had several emails in which you agreed to co-promote the event.
Jim from Galveston used the event to present you with a Browning Hi-Wall rifle.
Remember now?
Remember how you missed the target shooting your new rifle from the bench, and how the Appleseed instructor hit the target with the same rifle firing from prone?
Remember telling me and Jack Dailey about how your website was never going off the 'Net, and how you had the ability to host from servers offshore if the .gov here got too oppressive?
Remember how you insisted that the range fee for the two-day event be kept to $25, which left a bigass hole in the gate for the event?
I covered that gap out of my pocket.
You, on the other hand, wrote that crappy "No Red Dawns" essay, characterizing the Appleseed volunteers as a bunch of paranoid yahoos.
That first 18 months of the Appleseed program we put on 15+ events all across the country. I instructed at 13 of those events. A thousand plus shooters received quality basic rifle marksmanship training for minimal cost.
And the Appleseed program came into being.
You were then -- and are now -- a fraud and a liar and a failure.
THAT is how you write an argumentative comment. I'm unfamiliar with the event described (except for the fact that I donated money toward the Browning Hi-Wall), but seeing as there were multiple witnesses, I expect there will be others commenting on it.
I didn't send two hundred down range today since I can't afford it.
As soon as I can spare the cash, I will buy a 3/4" breaker bar so I can mate my STG-58 barrel with my DSA Type 1 receiver.
I sold a co worker his first rifle recently, a home made STG-58. You should have seen the way his eyes lit up.
I engage everyone I can in the principles of Natural Law and the source of our freedoms.
I am active in the open carry movement here in Texas.
The moral of the story is I am a proud three percenter, I do what I can everyday to spread liberty. I don't hunker down in a basement and stroke my barrel. I read, I educate myself and others.
People in my office are tired of me sending them emails about issues and action. One co worker, a retired First Sergeant, has had enough of my activism, and told me never to send him anything else. I think I got him so mad at what is happening about the potential new Con-Con that he couldn't take it.
I am doing my part. And by the way, we are probably all on the "rojo list".
3%, devoting even hobbyist-level involvement to the pro-rights movement while we're still doing politics, could easily remake the world, along lines far more congenial to our concerns.
3% sitting on their butts making vaguely (or not-so-vaguely) threatening noises but DOING nothing substantive until the politics are over and the confiscation brigades show up, will just make a bunch of big bloody messes without changing a damned thing.
It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees, true. But infinitely better than either to act so as to retain OTHER OPTIONS, while you've still got time.
Would I kill, if necessary, in defense of my rights? Yes...that's why they're called "rights". I guess that makes me a 3%er. But in the meantime, I'm working my butt off in non-lethal venues to try and avoid ever getting to the state where I'd _have to_ kill anybody. If all of my supposed cohort could say the same, the job wouldn't be nearly so hard, and the odds wouldn't look nearly so grim.
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I question Sebastian's premise that the three-percenters are uninvolved in political activism. I don't know what you'd call David Codrea's website and newspaper column if not political outreach of a kind. I am personally involved in activism and politics, if not with the same profile as bloggers. And I got into that only after reading Vin Suprynowicz and others who might be called three percenters, so I don't consider it an either/or choice.
I have a hard time buying that there are fewer, or even only the same number, of politically active three-percenters as among the general gun-owning population. So... why not do both, as in fact some of us are?
I also think the three-percenters are not making their best argument, which I believe to be deterrence. Gun sales in the run-up to the Clinton AWB apparently led to confiscation language being reconsidered. The Clinton administration crackdown on militia members was largely succesful, but implies that someone took the movement seriously. Why not tap that again?
You've admitted you do have a line, even if its only your door. Is it better to keep that quiet, or that people do know it and can decide not to cross it?
Dave, I imagine quite a few people who consider themselves among the "3%" are politically active.
Sebastian's point, though, is that supposedly there are something on the order of 2.4 million people out there willing to kill in defense of the right to arms. There's nothing close to that in terms of people willing to be political activists. In fact, a lot of commenters who proclaim themselves "Three-percenters" denigrate people like Sebastian for the work they're doing.
WRT deterrence, yes the massive buying spree by the public is a warning to the .gov and media. It disturbs them. Publicly threatening politicians and media? That frightens them - and when the only tool you have is a hammer . . .
I think what they're all trying to say here is that dying for what you believe in is easy. But if you want to make a DIFFERENCE, *live* for what you believe in, every day of a busy life.
"I question Sebastian's premise that the three-percenters are uninvolved in political activism."
I don't. I outright reject it. What's happening is that they are arbitrarily being defined out of the game. To the people who make this charge, electoral politics is the only thing that counts, and that is just nonsense. Look: when Henry David Thoreau sat in jail and asked Emerson why he wasn't doing it, too, that was a political act.
All the time, I see people running around spouting flowery bromides, like "Politics is the art of the possible!" They don't know what they're talking about. Politics is the branch of philosophy that addresses matters of how humans behave toward each other.
This goes to this, of mine and which Kevin quoted again:
"But you people are talking about blowing the place up, whether you know it or not. That's the only way it can go, as things are now, because there is no philosophy at the bottom of what you're talking about."
There is a lot of ignorance on both sides of this thing. When I read something like this. --
"After wasting considerable amounts of time reading their writings, the only conclusion I can come to is that they do not give to farts about America's liberties and freedom - they only care about their own liberties and freedoms,..."
...I just laugh. Is that supposed to be an indictment? It's an epistemic mess. "America" doesn't have "liberties". People do, and there is no point on earth in discussing these things with people who haven't bothered to analyze the omnilateral nature of rights. ("If I have 'em, then so do you, by definition.") Who else to care about my freedom? If I'm supposed to be guilty because of that, then I say, "Make the most of it."
Kevin: "...wouldn't those same people be willing to clog the courts and even further overstuff our prison systems in the name of peaceful change?"
I say they should be.
I've been getting a fair lot of attention from the Three Percenters lately, and I think we're going to have to come to terms. I cannot fault one single thing they do or say in terms or preparing for violence, but I would be a lot happier to see them considering, out-loud, the prospects for civil disobedience.
This is really important: I am convinced that it will be the last ditch before violence.
Good one, Kevin. I believe if the threepers could see themselves as they present themselves to the world, they'd be so embarrassed they'd crawl up their own bungholes to hide. But like all selfish loud-mouthed dickheads, they'll never get it.
Heh. Screw "comment shitstorm", I'll blow your damned mind.
I recognize what you are saying in this article in my own actions.
There, you convinced someone on the internet that they were wrong. How about that?
I would have to say that some of Vanderboegh's points are quite valid. If we tell people "we will never fight back, no matter what you do to us", it doesn't give them much incentive to stop.
But the method of saying it may very well be counter-productive to the goal at hand.
Of course, I never was spoiling for a fight. I was just saying that if one happens, I'm not going to run away from it, neither.
"But like all selfish loud-mouthed dickheads, they'll never get it."
Listen, you: there are a lot of people not getting things. I am the most selfish person you ever even heard of. If you think you're going to knock me back on my ethical heels with a charge of "selfishness", then you're as dumb as you think everybody else is.
I don't fucking care what you think.
Billy: Unfortunately, the ATF has changed the rules of civil disobedience in this game, somewhat, with Ruby Ridge and Waco.
Fincher got off lucky.
I'd consider turning out 75% machine gun receivers, and telling people how to finish them, and then suggesting they send a letter to the editor about it and waiting to get arrested. Only, the ATF might decide to just shoot them or abort their children, or burn their houses down around their heads.
There's a difference being willing to die fighting and being willing to die sitting calmly. 'Course, I'm not sure which takes more guts.
I don't fucking care what you think.
Jeesuz peezus, you thought I was talking about you, BB? The few times I've read you you've seemed to be highly intelligent and thoughtful, if extremely angry to boot. You do, however, get zero points for reading comprehension. Try again. Unless, of course, you are indeed a threeper like Codrea and Vanderbeogh et al, with spittle-flying screaming about all the "cowards" that won't start killing jack-booted thugs at the issuance of a traffic ticket. If I've truly misunderstood you and really are one of those, then the shoe fits. Fucking wear it.
Good luck with that. The insurrectionists over at my place never went far enough into their pointless, self- and other-destructive, hypocritical screeds for me to wonder if I should possibly delete the comments, but they did do something: proved just how useless, how pointless, and how ineffective their entire movement will be.
Absolutists are axiomatically failures, before they even start. Especially absolutists who are actually suppressed relativists.
"Jeesuz peezus, you thought I was talking about you, BB?"
You're fuckin'-aye right, and you're the one who can go read for elementary comprehension before I start batting you around here like a punk. Do you see that word that you wrote: "selfish"?
That's me. You're goddamned right: the shoe fits. And every single time I see someone wise-cracking on it like there is something wrong with it, I'll be up in their face.
You were talking about me whether you knew it or not, and you're wrong about the subject in general.
"Absolutists are axiomatically failures, before they even start."
{cackle} Absolutely!
Look, ladies and gentlemen: I am always gratified when Kevin or anyone else cites my remark on "philosophy at the bottom". It is the central problem now. The person I quoted above is acting like a fucking moron, and that's just useless.
Billy, I'd argue that philosophy has been systematically raped through our "educational system" over the last, oh, 100 years or so. Rand's The Comprachicos just pointed it out.
And I don't see any way to overcome that before the crash. Do you?
All the time, I see people running around spouting flowery bromides, like "Politics is the art of the possible!" They don't know what they're talking about. Politics is the branch of philosophy that addresses matters of how humans behave toward each other.
That's a reasonable observation. I wouldn't claim that there aren't politics that matter other than electoral politics, but in terms of raw impact on our issue, electoral politics is where we can make the most difference for ourselves. It's the only place where we, who are a minority, can manage to shape public policy in our favor. Why? Because we're a dedicated minority, and electoral politics favors those.
If polling data is to be believed, in a straight majority vote, we'd lose on most of our issues. The people as a whole agree that you have a right to bear arms. Beyond that, when you get to specifics, there's no national consensus.
I don't deny the role on other types of politics for helping to alter that national consensus, but I think it's hard to argue in terms of raw impact, most of our successes have been driven by our successes in electoral politics.
"I wouldn't claim that there aren't politics that matter other than electoral politics, but in terms of raw impact on our issue, electoral politics is where we can make the most difference for ourselves."
And I say that that is myopic bullshit. Look: the thing is even rendered in more New Age florid rubbish -- "impact". If we took the word at something like reasonable usage instead of its contemporary code for "I listen to talking heads on TEEVEE!", then I would say that nobody is talking about cranking up more "impact" than the three percenters.
I think you will want to choose a different word, and while you're doing it, it might be very helpful for you to start thinking in terms of reality.
As usual, Billy Beck is the only person who understands this in principle.
When he says there is no underlying philosophy behind this, he is absolutely right. And without it, you aren't going to convince anyone of anything. Without it you are just as impotent as the people you're so busy insulting. At the bottom of it all you have nothing to offer - you don't have a moral leg to stand on - and the people you're bargaining with know it. They can sense that weakness the way a dog smells fear.
"And I don't see any way to overcome that before the crash. Do you?"
I see only one hope. That would be in the demonstrations of morality in action necessarily implicit in civil disobedience.
Language is horribly crippled, now. (This is a consequence of Pragmatism. Note the cap-'P'. This is a technical reference and if anyone doesn't know the history, then they should before they remark.) Part of what I have in mind is to validate concepts again, through action.
MLK is the touchstone here.
...
'Nuff said.
Good, Linoge. That's something of an understanding, but here's the thing: I laughed your complaint about "absolutists" right out of the room. You can write idiotic shit and not care if you want to, but believe me: you won't get away clean.
Not "getting away clean" from morons like you would be the finest compliment I think I could ever receive, and I thank you for it.
Absolutists are doomed to failure, whether they want to admit to it or not. They are never going to receive exactly what they want, because they are not the only person on this globe. And, guess what? If you do not get exactly what you want, you fail.
However, I have no doubt that you will simply respond with more name-calling, more childish logic, and more self-aggrandizing idiocy, so I am quite done here.
Okay, one issue people - the 2nd Amendment - not enough effective thought and philosophy to make the correction in the American culture's thinking about the issue. Congress and the Executive branch abandoned the 'well regulated militia' pretending that the National Guard is the militia and telling everyone that the National Guard has been around longer than our Constitution (no it hasn't, concerned armed citizens that banded together in defense of their homes, religion, politics and rights have been around over three hundred years - calling them something else doesn't make it so). Once the government does change their portion of the Amendment - they then feel free to change the People's part of the Amendment. Revolution, or armed insurrection isn't the solution to the infringement of the Amendment - that becomes the danger to the security of a free State. Also one of the Gun Lobby's favorite reasons for weapons - self defense makes the sheep in our world (where everyone can just get along) afraid. I am sticking with the reason that I shoot is that I am a law abiding citizen, fully capable of using dangerous weapons with safety, and I don't need a government to shove me into Depends or Pampers to keep me from soiling myself daily. So, since I know how to use machine guns, automatic weapons, submachine guns, rifles, pistols, explosives and other such - like I know how to find the proper place and time to defecate so as not to upset the public nor my friends and family - I don't need the regulations, laws and infringement on my rights to be armed and dangerous. I also don't advocate destruction of my community, government nor world to make it my way - but then I do think there are more good people in the world than bad - but the bad ones tell lies, cheat and dishonor their ancestors for personal gain and general stupidity. I remain, armed and dangerous, but then that is all in my mind and not in yours, you never think about me - just the old man in the back of the room.
"I am quite done here."
You were done before you wrote that, sonny.
I never waste my time pointing out, to them, the stupidity of people who say what you've said, so absolutely as you've said it. I just tag 'em and bag 'em. People with brains in their heads can see them.
And I say that that is myopic bullshit. Look: the thing is even rendered in more New Age florid rubbish -- "impact". If we took the word at something like reasonable usage instead of its contemporary code for "I listen to talking heads on TEEVEE!", then I would say that nobody is talking about cranking up more "impact" than the three percenters.
You want to make a credible argument rather than trying to twist the definition of one of my words? I argued that in terms of advancing the Second Amendment, gun owners getting involved in electoral politics has had more impact, effect, accomplishments, or whatever word you want to use, than any other form of politics we've engaged in. If you want to explain why that perception is wrong or myopic, go ahead. I'm willing to listen. If you just want to twist words, then pretty clearly you have no argument.
Dave:
My point with that statement isn't so much that none of the IIIs are involved in the political fight, so much as if we could even get 3% motivated to participate in that (as opposed to shooting it out with the feds) then we wouldn't need to shoot it out with the feds. Three percent of 80 million people seriously dedicated to the electoral process can make a huge difference. And when I say dedicated, I mean more than just voting.
MLK is the touchstone here. - Billy Beck
Wait a minute . . .
Weren't you the one bemoaning the fact that you couldn't understand why people didn't lead themselves?
NOW you're saying we need another MLK to lead us to the promised land? Or am I misunderstanding you?
And Linoge: Slow down and pay attention to what Billy is saying. Attempt to ignore the manner in which he says it. Generally he's worth paying attention to, until he gets so wound up that the signal-to-noise ratio goes negative. His style is aggressive/antagonistic, but there's a lot of "there" there, so to speak.
Except that is the problem, Kevin. Once you strip away the insults, foul language, and general-purpose idiocy from all of his comments directed at me, you are left with nothing. And after the past few days, I have no patience left for that kind of childishness.
There, you convinced someone on the internet that they were wrong. How about that?
Ah-ha! And someone said on another thread here that the mysteries of the universe will never be resolved in an internet comments thread.
Another great post Kevin, and it didn't even take 30 minutes to read it.
Well, I'll have you know that this was part of the upcoming überpost, but because it was so topical I yanked it out and rushed it. It could have been better, more thorough, but I'm OK with it as it stands.
"Weren't you the one bemoaning the fact that you couldn't understand why people didn't lead themselves?
NOW you're saying we need another MLK to lead us to the promised land? Or am I misunderstanding you?"
Yes, Kevin, you are. For god's sake, please work with me a bit in this. There is nothing mutually exclusive there. Yes: people should lead themselves. They should makes up up their own minds about what they're doing. And yes, MLK is an ethical/political example for his bringing otherwise intractable issues to sharp and urgent focus by challenging the moral premises of the law itself.
With your "promised land" crack, you presumed into something quite unwarranted. I have nothing like that in mind, and I might have hoped you would know that about me, at least. In any case, I've pointed out something of what makes King important, and it would be nice to know that this is squared away now.
I once knew a three percenter that lived in that same fantasy world. Needless to say, I no longer associate with him. I could not change him to be more politically active, and I damn sure wasn't going to be anywhere near him if SHTF. Unlike our president elect, I take great care when picking out the kind of people I associate with.
-Anon
I've noticed an interesting phenomenon with some survivalists, that may be applicable here.
They focus an immense amount of energy on preparing themselves for SHTF, according to some fantastical understanding of what will happen in that circumstances, but pay very little attention to preparing the people around them for the same event.
Never mind that the greatest danger to you in SHTF, in real life, is that your neighbors will run out of food and other essentials and become desperate. In other words, you are crippling your own chances of survival by not reaching out to the people around you.
Something similar goes on with gun rights, I think. Kim du Toit was bang on with his concept of a Nation of Riflemen. If you are the last person in the country with weapons, they will do you no good no matter how many you have.
The ONLY way we can win this thing is through outreach. And somehow, the 3% types need to understand that. I don't know what kind of framing we would need to get through to them, but we need something.
"The ONLY way we can win this thing is through outreach. And somehow, the 3% types need to understand that."
They can speak for themselves. Speaking for myself: for immutable reasons, I am not interested in elections. "Outreach" is futile. You have nothing to offer me.
(Thank you for the link.)
The militants are at a disadvantage because their strategy is "all or nothing" and the price of failure is very high. Those seeking means other than violence can afford to fail and try something else. This method has produced incremental results.
Because of the costs involved with the militants position they never execute. This method has produced no results, and arguably has worsened the position for everyone else.
An armed populace does has an implicit deterrent effect on government, but it doesn't become any more effective by making empty threats. Money has more effect on government than the threat of armed rebellion.
Many of those that have mumbled their agreement with the militants seem to have done so without thinking about the particulars. The militants start shedding members as soon as they begin to talk about a fight beyond their doorstep.
I cannot imagine the militants effecting an outcome that would make the government reverse course. Rather I can see the government pouring more and more resources into cracking down, and more importantly the general public cheering the government on.
Outreach is very much needed. Our revolution succeeded because it came from the top of society... and, frankly, because it was fighting a tyrant considerably more civilized than what could be expected from DC.
If we're in a shooting war, we've lost. At best, resistance against our military will result in a constant civil war, and chaos.
Maybe, maybe, you could drain enough, that some small parts of the nation would be allowed to secede, but that's pretty unlikely, and at a very high cost.
Our revolution resulted in the loss of 3% of the entire population, in an era of set-piece warfare, and where the colonies were viewed, mostly, as a revenue stream, we simply raised the cost beyond profitability.
Socialists turned loose on a population know no limits when it comes their willingness to kill, so that they might save.
If it comes to that, we've already lost. It means the end of civilization, and no matter how prepared your bunker, you will miss the benefits of modern society.
There must be a willingness to do so, and a free people must always be able to accept destruction and death as preferable to slavery.
Frankly, the shooting should be at a more personal level, as the occasional assassination of corrupt officials, petty tyrants, or the imprisonment of a patriot, can embody a useful message, and has, usually, a minimal effect on society.
Self-defense is an instinct in a healthy society, not a political choice, and it shouldn't be too hard to convince most Americans of that.
I agree that self defense is a viable method of getting people on your side, especially women.
Getting into the grander second amendment rights issues is generally harder and only works on those who are already partially involved.
I think we have a struggle ahead of us, but if we fight them from the soap box and the ballot box, we will never have to reach for the cartridge box.
I used to fear being more politically active because I didn't want others to know I even had guns. I figured the less people know the less likely I would become a target of some vindictive anti or whatever. I then realize I live in Georgia...and guns just aren't much of an issue for people here.
The strength of our movement is that its grass roots. Having dozens of unique individuals come into their offices every week, each practically of their own accord, to discuss second amendment issues would definatly sway a lot of state lawmakers here in GA. And we may one day get HB915 passed.
I imagine the same sort of thing could happen on the national stage to at least prevent a loss of rights over the next 4-8 years.
'What's happening is that they are arbitrarily being defined out of the game.'
And you don't think that works both ways?
I put the three-percenters in the same category as the blackmailing democrats always promising "cities burning" and "mass riots" if they don't get their way.
JRD
"...these are guys who accuse other bloggers of cowardice for not drawing a clear line in the sand, while pointing out their own lines have been crossed while they do nothing but engage in a New World Order induced circle jerk."
Uncle said it perfectly. It's narcissism, defined.
I note that none of these people has ever done anything concrete about protecting the Second Amendment, but by golly, they will, you betcha, when the Obama Gun Confiscation Brigade appears at their front door.
Big whoop.
But screaming abuse and imprecations at the "compromisers" and "prags" from your mother's basement in rural NY is so much more satisfying than actually, you know, doing something worthwhile. Instead of teaching a generation of kids to shoot (which will do more for the preservation of the Second Amendment than any number of empty boasts and threats), they'd rather haul off at the ones who do.
Please: spare me from the ideological standard-bearers who refuse to get their precious hands dirty until the mythical Moment Of Truth (as defined by themselves) arrives -- and who castigate others (as cowards) for not conforming to their own set of parameters.
Mr. Beck,
Speaking for myself: for immutable reasons, I am not interested in elections. "Outreach" is futile. You have nothing to offer me.
I was not speaking of elections. I was speaking of practical training in firearms, as well as the philosophical indoctrination that goes with it. If you care about firearms rights, you should be working to teach others about them, or support those who do.
You have nothing to offer me.
"Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from everybody…"
"... teaching a generation of kids to shoot (which will do more for the preservation of the Second Amendment than any number of empty boasts and threats) ..."
This touched a nerve. I am writing a new will, slowly but surely, and the question arises naturally: Who would I leave my guns to if I did so explicitly? It's worth looking at the evolution of four generations of our family.
My father was a Colonel in the Army when he died, and he was the one who taught my older brother and I to hunt, beginning when we were about four years old. My brother worked for many years as a gunsmith, and he and I are still avid hunters and shooters. My younger brother has no interest in guns.
My father-in-law, who'll be 80 next month, has been an avid hunter his whole life. Indeed, only yesterday evening, I hunted deer with him and he killed his second-ever deer. He killed his first-ever deer two weeks ago. But my wife and her two sisters have no interest in guns.
A rather sharp break occurs with the next two generations, which are the five children and ten grandchildren of my two brothers, and the five children of my two sisters-in-law. None of them have the slightest interest in guns. The have no interest in and no real knowledge of the Second Amendment.
Yup, I've tried. Glazed expressions are the only response. Such talk interferes with video games, even for the adults.
I am writing a new will, slowly but surely, and the question arises naturally: Who would I leave my guns to if I did so explicitly?
If no one else will, I will volunteer :)
I am writing a new will, slowly but surely, and the question arises naturally: Who would I leave my guns to if I did so explicitly?
I volunteer, too!
[...]The "taking the high road" game [...]
Really good post, Kevin.
Perhaps this question has been asked, but I've not seen it so I'll ask it here:
Would imposition of California's firearms laws at a Federal level -- registration of all new purchases, a (relatively toothless) AWB, restrictions on standard-cap mags, and tons of specific limitations on how and when you can carry or transport -- be sufficient to say the threshold had been crossed? 'Cause I sure didn't see any mass uprisings or resistance here in California when each incremental oppressive bill was signed. I'd just like to see that real-life test case distinguished from what's projected to occur. What's different among non-California gun owners that would cause a different result?
David:
On my part, it would result in disobedience to the law, but not uprising.
Until they came to my door.
How many unregistered "assault weapons" do you think there are in California? How many illegal "high-capacity" magazines? How many people carry, regardless of the laws against it? And finally, how many people make a point there of buying "off paper," even though that's a felony now?
"I was not speaking of elections. I was speaking of practical training in firearms, as well as the philosophical indoctrination that goes with it."
What makes you think I need that stuff from you or anyone else? I've been studying philosophy -- the real thing -- since about 1970 when I was fourteen years old. And I was raised around firearms.
"If you care about firearms rights,..." {whack}
I care about rights, sir. Do you understand? I work from principles and I do not indulge piece-meal fractures of the concept. This is the virtue of integrity.
I repeat: you have nothing to offer me.
Billy: He's not talking about outreach to you.
He's talking about the need for "us", (that being the pro-liberty set) needing to outreach to those who do not have a concrete philosophy and teaching them why our philosophy is a good thing.
Now, maybe you'll just claim that you don't need anyone else on your side, but that seems like a really good way to lose.
Kim: I note that none of these people has ever done anything concrete about protecting the Second Amendment, but by golly, they will, you betcha, when the Obama Gun Confiscation Brigade appears at their front door.
What the fuck do you know? Do you know every single person who claims the 3% title? And every last action they've ever taken in their lives? What a crock of shit. I have to admit I haven't followed every thread of this little internet shitstorm (I have things to do during the day) but I have never once seen anyone on the 3% side castigate anyone for teaching others how to shoot, or calling their Congressweasels, or so on and so forth. In fact the only thing I have seen them give people crap for was standing up and declaring that they will never fight, no matter how bad it gets. Wouldn't want to scare the oppressors, after all.
Thats a very good point,perlhagr. THEY are the oppressors. Most all folks i know are just hard working, family rising types.Who haven't done a thing to anyone to deserve the kind of treatment we are now,and are going to get in the future. I'm sorry, and i would like to apolgize to all for fomenting this problem, i.e. constitutional crisis. By not being more political, and activist minded. But, I've been out working my ass off trying to hold the whole thing together by paying 50% of my live to a bunch of lazy ,theiving, assholes. That can't get off their dead asses enough to do anything more than decide "I'M", the problem? Because i own guns? And i should go out of my way to stop them thru a process that they control? I should go sit in their jail for breaking their laws? They can't even read the 1st. ones that were wrote. And i'm expected to follow everything they've wrote to jot & tittle? Sorry, my door is as far as i can go. Everything else violates homeland security.
Kevin: oh, absolutely. Resistance on many levels, both above and below the radar, is here in the Golden State, for certain, and has been for many years.
But it's not, by any stretch of the imagination, active violent resistance (whether clandestine or open), which I think I understand to be the 3%ers intended threat. And I guess I'm just saying that if California-style firearms law and regulation counts as the threshold, I'd need someone to explain to me what would be so significantly different about non-Californians to trigger violent resistance once that threshold was crossed in their states, where no such action happened here.
So that's a question related to where the threshold is set. I have another observation, as well.
I recall Jeff Cooper's anecdote ("Survivor") of the POW who asked "how many good men are there per hundred, in the world?" and could find only 10 men in 30,000 prisoners willing to fight to escape. That's not 3.00%, that's 0.03%.
0.03% of 80 million gun owners is 26,000 and change, which strikes me as a more realistic number than 3%. Now, even a threat from 0.03% has some deterrence value, but at an entirely different level than the 3% premise and would, I presume, require different strategy and tactics.
"I was not speaking of elections. I was speaking of practical training in firearms, as well as the philosophical indoctrination that goes with it."
What makes you think I need that stuff from you or anyone else? I've been studying philosophy -- the real thing -- since about 1970 when I was fourteen years old. And I was raised around firearms.
Holy. Freaking. Crap.
As perlhaqr noted, I was referring to the need to teach other people.
Do you take very single statement on the internet as a direct personal attack on your pristine self?
Oh, I should add that if the answer to my question is that California-style firearms restrictions are NOT the threshold, then this is a good thing to know. Because if that's NOT the threshold, then the 3% threat provides no deterrence to the passage of such measures, which means we will all (including the 3%ers) need to redouble our nonviolent efforts to resist that level of infringement.
Was it fantasy idealogy at Concord bridge? Is it not the same fantasy idealogy that have brought the communist to the door? Yes, for thats what they are,communist. They have abused our system to turn it against us. It's no longer "our", system. Not by anyone who can read. The prag's would have you believe that somehow were the problem, pushing this country in civil war and what-have-you. Go talk to congress & the pres. All i do is work for a living. And i'm some kind asshole for just SAYING i won't be pushed anymore?
You know, I should learn to click all the links in the original post before commenting. Linoge asked my question above in his linked post, and did so a lot better than I.
Heres some philosophy. Humans are disposed to suffer, where evils are sufferable. When man experiences true freedom, he begs for his chains back. And we don't think the commies have read and taken it to heart? Aren't using it today? How 'bout this: All that nescessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to enter politics!
Damn guys...this is a shitstorm.
I can't even make heads or tails of what the hell you all are talking about at this point, so I am going to make it simple.
Are the 3% adequately politically active to make gun control political suicide? On a broader note, how many of the 80 million gun owners out there are adequately politically active, but are not part of the 3%?
Just for definition's sake, the 3% are those who are willing to fight our own government if it ever came down to mom and pa Joe and Jane American hand in your guns confiscation time. They may or not be adequatly politically active.
How active is adequate? Calling your reps at the state and national level every once in a while is a good start. Being apart of the NRA or similar rights organization is another good start. Of course voting and getting others to vote in our favor is a must. Most of all, getting those who are apathetic or indifferent towards the second amendment to join the 80 million and hopefully get them politically active as well.
I don't think that's too much. Hell, I'm just a poor college kid and I do all of the above except the reps part, though I plan to change that.
"If no one else will, I will volunteer" -- Sebastian
"I volunteer, too!" -- Ride Fast
Ghouls. I intend to outlive you.
Historically, both sides of this debate have made very valid points. Both are needed if we are ultimately going to win this. Being politically active and being willing to fight are not mutually exclusive. Imagine trying to negotiate a work contract, for example, by saying that you want more money, less hours, and better healthcare, but if you don’t get it your not going to do anything crazy like go on strike or try to find another job or anything (that would be unreasonable). Likewise, if you’ve been negotiating since 1934 and losing just about every round you need to face facts and give in and shut the hell up or realize the time is coming to go on strike - regardless of whether the idea scares the white people or not.
The goal of far too many (but not all) of these “prags” seems to be to label you crazy, unreasonable, unstable, “unable to get along even with other gun people”, etc. The ultimate goal being to marginalize you so they can take over the debate. At the very least they will manage to divide the gun culture making it easier to defeat. I know this goes both ways but lately it seems to be very prominant on the "prag" side.
Now for the part that’s really going to piss some people off.
Compare the writings of some of these people to those of the American Hunters and Shooters Association and tell me you don’t see a spooky similarity. I’m betting they have all the validity of that false-flag group and are in all likelihood bought and paid for by the same people. I’m not accusing everyone of this because this debate has been going on for quite some time in the gun culture. I’m just accusing the new crop of loudmouthed frauds that have shown up lately, curiously just in time to prepare the ground (marginalize, divide and conquer) for debates that will surround the inevitable legislation that will be coming our way. It’s a version of the campaign waged by liberal bloggers in the election. What?! You thought they would go away! Smearing Sarah Palin gets boring after a while and they’ve got some serious legislation to get passed.
Something to think about.
Dude, if I am "bought and paid for", I think I just bankrupted the Brady Bunch, the AHSA, VPC, and all the rest of those moronic, hoplophobic groups - I do not go cheap. That said, where is my bleeding check?
Or, rather, are you just adapting the Brady Bunch line of "the NRA sends wheelbarrows of cash to bloggers" to fit your own needs? Interesting, that...
Oh, and thanks, David!
My response to this issue is a little long even by Kevin's standards.
:)
I would be interested in Mr. Beck's reaction in particular. I don't agree that violence is our remaining alternative - assuming I haven't mis-read his position on that point.
On a more general note, I think it should be accepted that violence is always an implied threat in response to unwanted action by others; the difference between implied threat and express threat is that as between negotiation and extortion. I think too many are making over much of the implied threat (which exists as an intrinsic aspect of the human condition) and too readily equating it to express threat as well. Because one could do something is neither encouragement nor excuse for proclaiming one's willingness to do so.
Excoriating each other for pointing that out seems silly somehow.
The goal of far too many (but not all) of these “prags” seems to be to label you crazy, unreasonable, unstable, “unable to get along even with other gun people”, etc. The ultimate goal being to marginalize you so they can take over the debate. At the very least they will manage to divide the gun culture making it easier to defeat. I know this goes both ways but lately it seems to be very prominant on the "prag" side.
It's not really my goal to marginalize anybody, James. But you guys might want to consider getting under control the folks in your three percent movement who do not play nicely with others. If it was just me suggesting some of your folks were less than willing to have a calm, rational discussion (and that's putting it mildly) I might have to have that look in the mirror. But it's a lot of people saying that. A lot of people who enjoy calm discussions of that nature.
The problem with the threepers is that they bear very striking resemblance to what John Adams would have called a "rabble."
I’m not accusing everyone of this because this debate has been going on for quite some time in the gun culture. I’m just accusing the new crop of loudmouthed frauds that have shown up lately
It's been going on a lot longer than that, and in a lot more than just the gun culture. It's a classic tactic.
But the intellectual crux of my argument is that we need to nurture a politically effective movement to counter the nonsense we see from the other side. Standing up and claiming there will be revolution is not politically effective, because most Americans, and by most I would wager 90%, think that's completely insane.
The threepers have, late in this latest debate, started opining on the deterrent value of what they speak. That is an argument. That's something you can have a debate about. I think you might even have a good point. But it's something that has to be discussed seriously... and I don't think guys like Mike Vanderboegh, from what I've seen, are capable of that kind of discussion, because they can't accept that someone can disagree with them in good faith.
Sebastian, Why is it that we have to have an argument about this at all? Theres no logical position for gun control that's ever been presented. Not legal, moral, philosophical,medical, scienctific or anything else. It's all been presented, and represented. But still ignorance marches on. Talking,presenting logic,facts, proof i.e, debate-arugument. Don't seem to change things. You folks seem to want to rehash the same crap with the same people....... And you expect different results? Whats left but tough talk. And then the belt if childhood memories serve.
But you guys might want to consider getting under control the folks in your three percent movement who do not play nicely with others.
Here's the problem. Those people are not under anyone's control, nor should they be. Let me channel Mr. Beck for a moment (no offense, BB): philosophically, you have one moral choice when it comes to people with whom you disagree: convince or disassociate.
If the 3% "scare the white people" then maybe they should be scared. It's worth pointing out that these are all individuals, under no one's control except their own will, as are we all.
Now some will see that as dividing up and being more susceptible to being defeated. Others will see that differing movements with differing philosophies can never be more then temporary fellow travelers anyway.
The so-called 3% can do what they are going to do. The rest can do whatever they see as necessary. Either point to them and say "they are crazy" or point to them as an extreme example of what is possible. It really doesn't matter.
Beck is right when he says that most people lack an underpinning of philosophy to support their arguments. The average American no longer understands what it means to argue from principle, to the point that when I make an argument explicitly based upon natural principles, I have to explain to people what I mean by "natural principles". They regard the idea of principled argument with distrust because the language around it has been twisted away from plain meaning.
There's inspiration for the QotD.
But the intellectual crux of my argument is that we need to nurture a politically effective movement to counter the nonsense we see from the other side. Standing up and claiming there will be revolution is not politically effective, because most Americans, and by most I would wager 90%, think that's completely insane.
Does anyone on the threeper side claim that a politically effective movement is a bad idea? Or is the threeper position just that of "politics is the carrot, and failing that, we are the stick"?
Vanderboegh himself has been the vast majority of my readings on the "pro-3%" side of things, and as far as I can tell, that is his point.
Hell, I dunno, maybe it is childish. "If we don't get our way, we're going to take it". But it is, nonetheless, the philosophically consistent position, as I see it.
Pro-liberty gun owners tend to believe in natural rights, stemming from either Cogito ergo sum or God Almighty, depending on the flavor of gunnie; a commitment to the idea that people have the right to self defence and self-determination. If those of us who CCW are presented with a threat from another person, we believe we have the right to defend ourselves. How is it any different to claim that if threatened by the government, we will defend ourselves from that as well, or to even simply state that we have the right to defend ourselves from that sort of aggression?
I'm asking, because I really just don't see why we're at odds here.
"Hell, I dunno, maybe it is childish. 'If we don't get our way, we're going to take it'."
I understand how that is posed as a rhetorical device, and: I say that it's a fair pose of prag attitude.
It is completely fucking outrageous.
I don't have a single civil word for anyone who comes on like that, and I am not interested to explain why.
Here's the problem. Those people are not under anyone's control, nor should they be. Let me channel Mr. Beck for a moment (no offense, BB): philosophically, you have one moral choice when it comes to people with whom you disagree: convince or disassociate.
I don't disagree with you. I was not really speaking of physical control, but in defining a community where the worst, offensive elements are outside of it. Obviously you can't really control people in a free society, but you can apply social pressure.
Perlhaqr,
Feel free to show me any evidence that any of the self-admitted .3-Percenters have been active in getting non-shooters to shoot and buy guns.
My guess is that it's scant -- narcissists are not renowned for their public works.
... They don't care, because they're taken with a fantasy--a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. They want to take part in order to confirm their ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling themselves among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability ...
Yep. Right on target.
Getting back to Mr. Harris and his friend who felt the needed for intimate engagement - he First had to satisfy himself. He did it for Himself, to be in it, be personally involved - not for whatever "movement" or "cause" it was or pretended to be - and it was the 60's - how many guys protested simply to get laid? That's intimate too. I know my brother did.
Jihadis get their freak on with drugs and hookers - their one freakin' chance to get laid without marrying the Camel - in many ways they're acting-out against an intensely parochial, repressive, and controlling archaic social structure. Plus it lets them get their freak on and be famous for fifteen miliseconds.
Perlhaqr,
Feel free to show me any evidence that any of the self-admitted .3-Percenters have been active in getting non-shooters to shoot and buy guns.
My guess is that it's scant -- narcissists are not renowned for their public works.
Kim du Toit | Email | Homepage | 12.08.08 - 9:40 am | #
You keep pointing the finger at hard-liners as the problem.Why aren't you going after the government? Their the ones trying to turn us into criminals. Despite the fact that every aurgument FOR gun control has been bebunked and disproven in every manner possible. The system won't even allow an open an honest debate on the subject. I've reached out in every manner i can think of, as diplomatic as possible. A still un-principled ignorance marches this once great country to destruction. With or without the 3%. And seeming er-respective of their actions, or the lack thereof.
"Why aren't you going after the government?"
Isn't that what National Ammo Day is about?
Kim: I'd consider myself part of that crowd, and I took three people who had never fired a gun before out to the range last year, and two of them now own a gun of their own.
What was that someone was saying about my end of the spectrum being "absolutists"?
Errmm ... why can't we do all these at once?
1)Get involved in your local precinct committee, try to take it over with your buddies.
2)Take the un-informed out shooting.
3)Prepare for war.
I'd feel like I screwed up horribly if I hadn't done all three before TSHTF.
Some folks can or want to do only one or two of the above ... that's OK.
Sebastian:
I see valid points on both sides of this. I also see some reprehensible behavior on both sides as well. But as it’s been pointed out, I don’t control anyone. And if they’re not worried about getting on the wrong side of the alphabet agencies, what makes you think they will yield to social pressure from me? I don’t know them and I’m sure they don’t care if I like them or not.
I agree with perlhaqr’s restating of the position: "politics is the carrot, and failing that, we are the stick". But the stick only works if the other side believes you’re willing to use it. No one here would argue with this one bit if we were discussing Muslim terrorism or the local mugger. I know the people who run things sometimes don’t seem very human, but really they’re no different. Likewise, threatening to whack people with the stick all the time isn’t going to work very well either, you’ve got to use the carrot – politics can work. But, to paraphrase Rand, my wish to be an American and their wish to turn me into Euroweenie is not a simple difference of opinion. We aren’t discussing baseball vs. cricket here. At the very bottom of it all, some things are simply not negotiable and there is nothing wrong with saying so.
Basically, convince who you can convince, because there are still people out there who aren’t either stupid or dishonest, and put the fear of God in the rest of them. Your neighbor or friend might be amenable to outreach and logic. Schumer, Brady, and those like them will never be convinced of anything and should be spending the rest of their lives on verge of pissing their pants. Telling the two groups apart is where the skill comes in so there will be some mistakes, but that doesn’t change the strategy.
Linoge:
I said I didn't mean everyone. I even put it in bold, so I find it curious that you're the one who responded to that part. How’d you know? Just look at the tactic of labeling everyone who disagrees with you as stupid, crazy, and not caring about anyone but themselves, for example. Take an honest look at the AHSA page and your own writing and then tell me you can't recognize most of the things that piss you off about the tactics of the AHSA in your own words. Maybe you can, but it seems pretty clear to me. If they're not paying you, they should. I hope you think about that. Really, I do, because if you're sincere, you're doing just as much damage as the people you're railing against. At least present the their side fairly and then argue against that. You’re engaging in the Bogeyman fallacy (similar to the straw man, but scarier).
Kristopher:
You left out the two issues that are causing the problem:
4) Threaten war - blatantly, publicly, and in print (generally behind a screen of internet anonymity, though not always).
5) Accuse anyone who suggests that doing so might be counterproductive of being on the other side.
du Toit: "Feel free to show me any evidence that any of the self-admitted .3-Percenters have been active in getting non-shooters to shoot and buy guns.
My guess is that it's scant -- narcissists are not renowned for their public works."
Look, you: Americans are not required to buy each others' good will -- especially in political matters -- according to busybodies' standards. Understand me, Import? They probably don't teach you this before they give you that government test that says you're in, but freedom is what used to happen in this country when someone would have told you to mind your own fucking business.
"Public works" is a standard that has absolutely no standing in this discussion. Some people know that. You should take the note.
Sorry, James, I did present their side fairly - as I saw it. I see these people as doing far more damage to the cause of freedom of rights, firearm rights, and the acceptance of both into the American society than the AHSA, the Brady Bunch, the VPC, and all the rest of those fun little organizations combined. In all honesty, for a time, I actually thought that some of them were fronts by one of those organizations in order to better build up and cater to the stereotypes they so often portray all firearm owners as.
And then I realized the insurrectionists were serious, and I realized the damage they were capable of causing.
If you honestly think that I should be paid by the AHSA, then I honestly think you should get in touch with them and suggest it - I do not go cheaply, mind you, and I certainly will not sell myself out to them for much. What I wrote I believe, and I am the only person who holds responsibilty for it. If you want to continue throwing out specious charges and baseless assumptions, like so many of the insurrectionists themselves do (talk about personal insecurities), then feel free to do so - it will just push you further into the "full of shit" camp with them.
Bleh. The incomplete thought in there is that you should suggest to the AHSA to hire me - as I mentioned, I do not go cheaply, and I could stand a chance of bankrupting that pathetic, false-flag organization, which I certainly would be honored to do.
I did present their side fairly - as I saw it.
Are you shitting me? I've read the posts concerning this topic on your blog. It's wall to wall insults. You didn't even attempt to address the actual points, you just jumped into the name calling and smears. You dishonestly attribute quotes by some people to everyone who disagrees with you. You say "this is what the other side thinks, here is one person who said so". As if that person could speak for anyone but themselves. And you presented their side fairly?
And what's this stuff about personal insecurities. Why not go ahead and say it? Everyone who disagrees with you has an inferiority complex, right? That must be it. They're stupid and they know it and they want you to feel as bad as they do.
What I wrote I believe, and I am the only person who holds responsibilty for it.
The similarities in tactics are there and whether you do it because they pay you or because you actually believe it is really irrelevant. The effect is the same.
Kevin: As far as "threatening war" goes, can you suggest another method of letting the opposition know what the stakes are, that doesn't fall under that descriptor?
As far as I'm concerned, it seems only fair to let the other side know what the rules of the game they are playing are. Generally, all us gunnies want is to be left alone, but the Soccer Moms and other Handwringers won't have that, seems like they should get to know up front what the result of trying to stamp out our culture might be.
(Edited by Siteowner, because I didn't want the reply halfway down the page: Perlhaqr, my choice of wording was poor. They don't really threaten war, they threaten assassinations. I can't find it right now, but I do remember reading one of Vanderboegh's replies where he stated outright that "long-range rifle shots" would be the method of defending our right to arms.
Right. Printing that in newspapers is going to do what for the image of the Second Amendment defender?
Welcome to the third world, where you too won't know if you're going to get your head blown off in the crossfire!
Anyway, that was my point. "War" was a bad choice of words.)
"Understand me, Import?"
It's obvious this was meant to be an insult, but I think if it were directed at me I would count it as praise.
I can only speak from my own personal experience, and I'll grant you I don't meet enough thousands of people to qualify as a statistical sample. Nonetheless, my experience is that "imports" tend to understand the concept of liberty better, and take the keeping of it more seriously, than those born here. Most often, that's because they've seen what it is to be *without* liberty up close and personal, and decided they wanted none of it.
It occurs to me that insults that don't support your point only serve to paint you as closed-minded.
Grumpy,
The difference between Beck and me is that it's only my body which is the "import"; my philosophy, however, is pure American: a representative republic, a polite, well-ordered society, and a place where acceptance of human freedom is a Constitutional guarantee*.
Beck, however, is the polar opposite: a home-grown American whose philosophy is imported, in whole cloth, from the Russian Anarchist movement of the late 1800s.
There's one more difference between us: I have a record of standing up, physically, against a totalitarian regime (which Beck sneeringly dismisses as "in another country, which doesn't count for anything here").
Beck, as far as I can figure out, has never actually done anything concrete, in any country, to stand up against Our Enemy, The State. He does, however, do a marvelous line of obscure, elliptical invective from his command center in his mother's basement.
----------------------
*I know that this ideal has been tarnished a lot over time -- the struggle against the State is timeless -- but we're still better than all the others, despite what the anarchos think.
I'd prefer to reform the system peacefully, with public education, public works and applying pressure on the reptiles of government.
This, of course, is anathema to the anarchos, even though our objective is the same, because my way requires patience, perseverance and respect for my fellow man -- qualities which are notably lacking among extremists like Beck, who have nothing but contempt for their fellow-citizens and want to get the whole thing over quickly.
A quick reading of Barbara Tuchman's "The Proud Tower" will illustrate the phenomenon.
If communists are just socialists in a hurry, anarchists are the same manifestation of the libertarians.
"Nonetheless, my experience is that 'imports' tend to understand the concept of liberty better,...."
This one doesn't.
Du Toit: "The difference between Beck and me is that it's only my body which is the "import"; my philosophy, however, is pure American:"
That is not true.
"Beck, however, is the polar opposite: a home-grown American whose philosophy is imported, in whole cloth, from the Russian Anarchist movement of the late 1800s."
Neither is that, and I don't think you know enough about this stuff to lie about it, Kim. You know just enough to try to snow the kiddies around here. You are as wrong as you can be.
"Beck, as far as I can figure out, has never actually done anything concrete, in any country, to stand up against Our Enemy, The State."
That might be a lie. I don't know, but I do know that du Toit has very good reason to know better.
"He does, however, do a marvelous line of obscure, elliptical invective from his command center in his mother's basement."
My mother doesn't have a basement, Kim, and whatever else you might say, this much is true: at least I didn't marry my mother.
I like both you guys and I'm getting tired of all this arguing, lets talk about me instead. I'm a quasi-import, in both space and time, so there.
I have liked him, too. I've had a soft-spot in my heart for Kim for a long time.
I am swiftly coming to my senses over it.
Mr. Beck:
For an individualist who doesn't care what other think of him, you are sure giving folks you say you dislike a lot of rent free space inside your own skull ... most of the posts here are yours ... if nothing else, you have been well and truly trolled.
I'll spend my time doing something about these issues, and working with others, even if they refuse to go as far as I will ... and prepare for war if needed.
You can ( and no doubt will ) do as you please.
Feel free to harangue me here if you wish ... I don't mind. Hopefully we won't need to go to the barricades, but if we do, I'll expect to see you there as well ... and I suspect a bunch of the folks you are lambasting here will be there as well.
"My mother doesn't have a basement, Kim, and whatever else you might say, this much is true: at least I didn't marry my mother."
Beck:
Your mother might not have a basement, but her house sure still contains your bedroom -- or have you moved out recently? (If so, I apologize: even if it did take you thirty-odd years to cut the apron strings.)
Nor did I marry my mother -- but I did stop living with her about thirty-five years ago. Something that YOU can't say.
Oh, and I await any proof as to the substantive difference between Beck's anarcho-libertarianism and the old-fashioned Russian type.
Oh, wait: there is one. Mea maxima culpa.
The major point of difference is that the old anarchists DID something about their anger -- i.e. they blew stuff up -- whereas the modern-day anarchists (like Beck) are just a bunch of whiners.
I too am sick of this thread. However, let me finish my contribution with his:
If ever the SHTF, I'd bet a substantial sum that the sound of my 1911 will be heard LONG before the sound of Beck's Beretta.
Too bad I'd not be around to collect.
"Your mother might not have a basement, but her house sure still contains your bedroom -- or have you moved out recently?"
By the autumn of 2002, almost fifteen years in Atlanta had worn me out. After two years of roadwork I was richly homeless and I had gone there for the best employment propect of my whole life to date. By the end, though, I despised that place. It's the East Coast answer to L.A., and that's about as bad as if gets.
By 2002, my father was facing his third run of radiotherapy for small-cell lung cancer. The third chemo run had been suspended, and none of it looked good.
I added it all up. I never had the responsibilities of a wife and children, which circumstance I had deliberately designed. I was able to work from anywhere I wanted to be. I decided to go home and hang with The Ol' Man. I was there for the last seven months of his life, which is one of the smartest things I ever did.
This decrepit 150 year-old farm house sits on twenty-five acres. This is my mother's home, and it will be valuable among the five children on the awful day when she finally leaves us. The way she's going, though, she could out-live me. Still, it would be appalling to consider her here by herself. Everybody in the family is grateful that I'm here, and before he died, my father made me promise things that no one will ever know.
This is my place, du Toit, as much as anyone's. When I was seventeen years old, I shed blood all over this place with hand tools. I once made the very arrogant mistake of informing my father that I would burn it down someday. He looked at me like I will never forget, and said, "That's very surprising, considering how much work you put in it."
You know nothing about the insinuation that you're making. Do your worst.
"I too am sick of this thread."
You were sick before you rang in.
"If ever the SHTF, I'd bet a substantial sum that the sound of my 1911 will be heard LONG before the sound of Beck's Beretta."
Hey, Fat-Boy: I'm the one who watches what's going on up and down this valley.
Place your bet.
I stopped living at my parents' thirty five ago too, what a coincidence!
And I was born overseas! To American Leftists! And now I'm not.
Jesus Christ, I lack an internet connection until I get back into the apartment in the evenings, and I have to wade into a cesspit like this?
OK, I get it. You don't like or respect each other and enjoy sniping via snide remarks about marriage, weight, home life, and personal grooming habits for all I know.
Beck, I've read enough of your stuff to at least expect it from you, but Kim, I'm disappointed. You I've at least met.
Here's the deal: My playroom, my rules. KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF. You want to compare pecker-weights or who's done the most to confound the .gov, do it somewhere else. I've had enough of the both of you. Not just in this thread, but on the SITE.
"KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF."
He started, Kevin, and this is it: the next time you see him do that here, you'd better just ban me instantly because I will run him to the fucking wall, every single time.
You know, Beck, I expect childish behavior from you. It's your M.O.
"HE STARTED IT!"
And you just admitted that you can't control yourself, insisting that I ban you because of that lack.
Kim I'm disappointed in, not so much because he insulted you but because of the childishness of the insults. It was playground crap. I've met the man. I KNOW he can insult with style! Somehow you pulled him down to your level and then beat him with experience.
You're an interesting specimen, Beck, but so is the rotting beached corpse of a giant squid. You are both fascinating and repulsive at the same time. The only question is whether the fascination outweighs the repulsiveness.
Guess which one won in this thread?
"And you just admitted that you can't control yourself,.."
FAIL. I know exactly what I'm doing, Kevin, every step of the way. You're wrong.
I am never going to take that bullshit from him or anyone else. You can forget it.
Fine, then. Now that that's settled, if the Sage of Dallas can make his case for the Russian roots of my politics, I will be happy to laugh him right out of court.
Get to work, du Toit, or be known as a slug.
You'll do it civilly (something I think you're constitutionally incapable of, Beck) or you'll do it elsewhere.
This thread would be hilarious if it weren't so frightening.
If this infantile ranting is the best we can do...even amongst ourselves...we're screwed.
Any hope I ever had for the future that we are leaving our children and grandchildren fades daily.
"This thread would be hilarious if it weren't so frightening."
Are you kidding? KdT just called someone a narcissist for Christ's sake! This is the best entertainment on teh intarw3bz right now!
;)
du Toit: {crickets.wav}
That's what I thought.
Say what you want about me, Kevin, but when I make an assertion like that fool did about my "Russian" politics, I will document it for you.
He cannot, because he doesn't know what he's talking about. And it's your place and you can do what you want, but du Toit's chiseling bullshit cannot be counted as "civil" by anyone who is serious about this stuff. He dropped that here and ran away like a little kid.
Figure it out.
Kevin: "You'll do it civilly (something I think you're constitutionally incapable of, Beck)...
You could get yourself acquainted with the facts and realize how wrong you are.
"...or you'll do it elsewhere."
Oh yeah? Let's go over it: that bastard comes waltzing in here to tell everyone that I'm a garreted loser who's never done anything for his own freedom and who swills Kropotkin. He knows -- he knows, do you understand? -- that I have lived a whole life in the IRS crosshairs and told them explicitly what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. He has excellent reason to know, based on things he has told me, how I mounted a direct attack in court on DMV law, risked eighteen months in Attica in the attempt, and kicked a DA's ass all over Tompkins County, New York with no lawyers involved. I did that all by myself.
For thirty-one years, people who have sold hundreds of millions of records in the aggregate have hired me to do what I do for a living, coast-to-coast and the around the world. He knows this.
If he ever laid eyes on Rose Wilder Lane or Robert LeFevre -- just for instance -- it's a fucking miracle, and it didn't do him any good anyway because all he knows is "Russian anarchy", like a parrot, and he gets to come around your place and tag me with that in every defiance fact that he can muster.
If all that is what you're calling "civil", then you are a goddamned barbarian. Look around, Kevin. I am nothing but civil with people who deserve it, and none of this qualifies. That includes your attitude about it.
You can do your worst. If that's what you're about, then it won't mean shit to me.
If I may, can I redirect this marvelously disciplined and respectful debate back to original character assassinations?
What say you to this?
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2008/12/three-percent-toward-theory-and.html
Three Percent: toward a theory and practice of republican restoration
"A third area in counterinsurgency operations worth examining is the stability of the environment. It is almost a tautology that insurgencies thrive on chaos. Terror produced by removing basic securities and livelihoods feeds the population’s desire for alternatives. The uncertainty and fear generated by such conditions inspire the dissatisfieds to join the cause. The insurgency tries to prove its claim as a viable solution by using or creating the instability." -- Measuring Effectiveness in Irregular Warfare, James Clancy and Chuck Crossett, Parameters, Summer 2007, pp. 88-100. http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/07summer/clancy.htm
Why are we "bitter clingers"?
During the late, lamentable campaign for the presidency, the President-elect was trying to explain to a latte liberal bunch of donors in San Francisco why he was having such trouble making headway with rural Pennsylvania Democrats.
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” -- Barack Hussein Obama, 12 April, 2008, San Francisco, California.
Of course, this immediately promoted the sale of teeshirts proclaiming "I'm a 'bitter clinger'". This sort of insulting, clueless snobbery has always informed the liberal critique of traditional America but the observation, while mistaking causes and effects, hit on something eternal. We do "cling" to our faith and our liberty with great ferocity, mostly because we intuitively understand that it is the old verities that have brought us this far as a free people.
The Gramscian collectivists who have assaulted our culture for the past century through Hollywood and the indoctrination of our youth in government schools understand this. It is to their successes in the culture that they owe the election of the candidate who is the epitome of the collectivist con artist. A people firmly grounded in the principles and history of western civilization, who understood free markets and the glorious concepts of the rule of law and private property, a people who were educated in critical thinking -- HOW to think, rather than WHAT to think -- would never have allowed the slow destruction by corruption that has brought the Founders' Republic to this point.
Yet, here we are. Two peoples, divided by culture, trapped within the same borders. For the moment, our opponents have swept the political field and are poised to collect what they see as the fruits of victory. Among these fruits, we have been told, are more oppressive gun control laws. We Three Percenters, so named because we see ourselves as lineal descendants of the three percent of the colonial population who physically took up arms against King George the Third, have sworn to resist any more such laws. Not one more step back, is our cry. We understand that this may make us outlaws within our own country in short order, bringing us into conflict with the new federal regime. We Three Percenters are truly the "bitter clingers" of whom Obama spoke.
But why are we "bitter clingers"? Leaving aside the issues of faith and principle and focusing merely on defense of the God-given inalienable rights that are codified in the Second Amendment, we do so because we understand (as did the Founders) that it is the Second Amendment that secures all the rest of the Bill of Rights. We do so because it is our firearms that provide stability and order to the society.
We all know this. Heck, even the gun confiscationists know this from experience though they refuse to admit it. What has been the result of the concealed carry movement in the past 30 years? John Lott has said it in the title of his book: "More Guns, Less Crime." Where are the worst outrages against public order, life and limb? Why in the victim disarmament zones of our big cities, of course. Where do the massacres of innocents take place? In the criminal free fire zones that have been carved out of our schools and public spaces. "Gun free school zone" is a lie just as much as a sign that says "Arbeit Macht Frei" over an extermination camp gate, and in the aggregate it is just as deadly. So we cling to our firearms because in the violent uncertain world that has arisen in the ashes of our traditional culture, it is only them, and ourselves, we can count on to protect our families, hearth and home. As the saying goes, "9-1-1: Minutes Away When Seconds Count."
We also understand from observing the statistics of crime that it is unnecessary for everyone to be armed for weapons in the hands of some of the citizenry to bring order and stability for all, even the most hard-headed gun confiscationist who is protected by the uncertainty engendered in the local criminal's mind as to just who has a weapon. Do you see the Brady Bunch putting up signs on their front lawns saying: "Gun Free Household"? Of course not. They're hypocritical beneficiaries of our preparedness.
We are "bitter clingers" because we understand that for a woman with a vengeful ex-boyfriend, or one who accidentally walks into the notice of a rapist, her gun IS order and safety. And we are "bitter clingers" because we understand that our firearms protect us not only from petty criminals, rapists and freelance murderers, but also from tyrannical government criminals and organized murderers of the Stalinist and Hitlerian kind.
Our gun confiscationist opponents sneer at this reasoning, but as I have written in more than one place, if they think tyranny can't come to America, they're whistling past the graveyard of history. The armed black veterans of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who protected the advocates of Ghandian pacifist resistance to the racist oppression of Klan-dominated local law enforcement with M-1 rifles in their hands and determined looks in their eyes knew this. That is why gun control down here in Alabama is a non-starter for most black folks even today. They remember what it was like to face corrupt government officials who could kill you at a whim.
Here again we see that firearms, and the will to use them, protected order and liberty. Another example would be the Battle of Athens, Tennessee in 1946, when veterans fought a corrupt and violent political machine ignored by the state police with guns in their hands, kept an election from being stolen and won the day. It is not necessary to footnote this with quotes from Ceasare Beccaria, or Tom Paine, or any of the Founders. This is plan common sense understood by anybody with half a brain. Criminals and governments step lightly around citizens who are armed and prepared to defend their lives, their property and their liberty.
In any riot, hurricane, or other man-made or natural disaster, who is the most popular guy in the neighborhood when the looters begin to roam? The man with the evil semi-automatic "assault rifle" of course. "Nobody needs one of those," our enemies sneer. Except, of course, when they do. Will the Crips, the Bloods, MS-13, the Latin Kings, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Klan and every motorcycle gang in the country not have them too? What a silly question. So pardon me, Brady Bunch, if I wish to be armed as capably as the worst maddog criminal I might encounter.
So when we "bitterly cling" to firearms, this is what we cling to: order, safety, liberty.
"Insurrection" or Restoration?
For our declarations of refusal to cooperate in our own further disarmament, our "pragmatist" critics in the gun rights movement have labeled us Three Percenters as "insurrectionists," "insurgents" and "revolutionaries," among other less printable names. Yet we do not want to overthrow the system of government designed by the Founders, but rather to restore it to its former glory. I would draw your attention once more to the quote at the top of this essay.
(I)nsurgencies thrive on chaos. Terror produced by removing basic securities and livelihoods feeds the population’s desire for alternatives. The uncertainty and fear generated by such conditions inspire the dissatisfieds to join the cause. The insurgency tries to prove its claim as a viable solution by using or creating the instability.
Our political enemies of all stripes, including those who claim to be our friends, say that it is we who are "revolutionaries." But, I ask you, which side of this struggle over the culture of this Republic has introduced "chaos," "terror," "uncertainty," and "fear"? Is it not the social engineers of the left who destroyed the black family with their tender mercies of the "War on Poverty" so condemned by own of their own at the time, Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Is it not the Gramscian culture wreckers of Hollywood and the Gangstas? Is it not, indeed, the gun confiscationists, with their criminal free fire zones in the cities? Further, is it not the social engineers and crony capitalists of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democrats all, who set us on this current descent into financial chaos?
It is THEY who are the revolutionaries. THEY who are the insurgents. THEY who are the insurrectionists. By clinging to our firearms and our values, it is WE who provide the basis of order and stability in this society, not them. NEVER them. Ordinary Americans understand this intuitively, even if they are often gullibly taken in by the lies of language the
(Cont.) the gun confiscationists use: "reasonable regulation," "common sense," "loophole," and "assault weapon."
Gun control has worked so well in the localities under the political domination of the gun controllers that they are happily willing to share their disorder with us. What nice folks. Of course in the end, this is not about "pulic safety," or "crime in the streets," or really even about firearms. The anti-gunners aren't anti-gun, they're anti-guns-in-the-hands-of-individuals. It's not about guns, its about power, which is why it's about guns because as one of the collectivists' fondly-recalled Asian rock stars of the last century famously observed, "political power grows out of the end of a gun."
They know this, and on some level, most every one of us "bitter clingers" knows this. The government, at every level, will always have firearms. Criminals, obviously will always have firearms. At issue here is whether or not the law-abiding citizens of this country will have firearms of military utility able to resist predatory criminals or predatory governments. Yet it is WE who provide the basis for safety and security in this country. This is why we refuse to continue to disarm by a thousand cuts. Because it is in our ability to project credible deterrence to criminals of all stripes, even elected ones, that our safety and the safety, security and liberty of this entire country rests.
We Three Percenters are not trying to "overthrow the government." We are merely insisting that we will not allow the government of the Founders, that sad, battered old girl of a republic, to be finally, irrevocably, overthrown by the collectivists who now have it by the throat. To the extent that we are able to get that idea across to the people (a huge challenge, for it must needs be over the megaphone shouts of the Obamanoids and the ill-named "main stream media"), we may be able to get out of this looming confrontation without anybody getting shot. The "pragmatists," who have much greater resources for getting that message out than do we, could be critical in that. I know they can, but I do not hold out much hope that they will. They are too busy calling us "lunatics" and "insurrectionists," while the real insurrectionists and revolutionaries tear down the old political verities that the pragmatists have counted on for so long.
In the end, faithful to the Founders' legacy, we Three Percenters will still be here, providing even in our resistance to tyranny, the basis of order, liberty and the rule of law against the revolutionaries of the left.
Billy, Never Fucking Stop.
Hear me, Man?
(If you do not know *precisely* the risks he has taken - the talk that he bloody damned well walks - I'd recommend standing back and watching for a time.)
I can't do what he does.
I DAILY wish to hell I could but I am a coward. And I'm okay with it.
For now.
But if you intend to contend, choose your words very carefully because they MEAN SOMETHING, damn it.
I'll stop one of these days, Laura.
With my very last breath.
Ooh, a girl who reads Beck! I knew I wasn't being too picky!
I chipped in on the vaunted Kim's child's competition pistol when he couldn't afford it and I've taught a load of anti-gun people to shoot and like it.
We do our own appleseeds.
We are members of political organizations.
We vote.
We campaign.
I'm helping an acquaintance of mine get ready to run for an upcoming county office as we speak.
He can hurl whatever epithets as he wants at us but he can't hurl my money back at me because I hope his kid learns to shoot well and I refused to take it back when offered.
If I live in "my mother's basement control room" she'd be surprised that she has an adult son that somehow has a basement not connected to her house 1200 miles away and of many acres.
Tom
That one he kicked off his boards for laughing at him too much when he deserved it.
Just for giggles that only a few will get:
KdT said: If ever the SHTF, I'd bet a substantial sum that the sound of my 1911 will be heard LONG before the sound of Beck's Beretta
I'll bet the sound of my poodleshooters and Grendels will start up before you even knew there was a battle. Won't even involve a zebra.
What kind of ponce carries a 1911 to war except in case of emergency as a sidearm?
When we get the Hays County Shooting Sports Complex built, you're welcome to come down and shoot, even if I don't like your interwebs persona.
Anybody in Texas that wishes to help out, we're looking to build a first class facility to perhaps help recreate a "nation of riflemen".
http://www.haysshootingsports.com/
It's not a 3%-er daydream, we're making it REAL. Not bad for a bunch of puss faggots that live in their mother's basements?
Cheers from Central Texas Tom,
Admitted asssh*le and gun crank.
Mall Ninja to Tam. Likes 1911s too.
But they aren't rifles.
430-21-4093
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the number with which this rotten government has tagged me, and which fools nationwide know as the "social security number". Go look it up. That number was issued in Little Rock, Arkansas, where I was born. My birthdate is 11/27/56.
I despise the idea of tatoos, but I think the time is coming when I will put that on my left forearm, like the Nazis did it.
In any case, anyone here is free to publish it anywhere (I've done it in Usenet several times, and Wendy McElroy once blogged it with my hearty blessing), and anyone here is free to use it for anything, because I don't.
The government does.
Do any of you people understand?
"...and Wendy McElroy once blogged it with my hearty blessing..."
Actually, I think it might've been Claire Wolfe. One of the two.
A "Nation of Riflemen"
IS NOT CREATED by whiners in Plano, Texas or a website and t-shirt profiteering scheme. Cool tshirt, give KdT credit for that. People have tried to buy mine off of me at the ranges over the years.
It's created by selfish assh*les craving FREEDOM like myself and Billy Beck and Mike V. AND, in spite of hating cowardly politicos, we do our level best to be polite to the cowards. We even let them fire our rifles at the range and speak to them in a civil fashion.
Thought to end the day with, perhaps?
"The nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."--Thucydides
Some of us are scholars AND are willing to fight.
How many of us hit the gym today or chopped wood. How many sent 200 down range like we do three+ days a week? How many are people who called me a "mall ninja" that whine about shooting with gloves on?
I did my part today.
Go do yours tomorrow.
Volunteer to teach Kiwanis Club kids to shoot. Get on a political campaign. Run for office. But a line is still drawn in the sand and we won't back down.
My part today even involved writing actual LETTERS of a non-electronic kind to my Senators and Reps today on five different issues, only some involving firearms, all involved creeping socialism/communism.
DuToit:
Re your comment:
Perlhaqr,
Feel free to show me any evidence that any of the self-admitted .3-Percenters have been active in getting non-shooters to shoot and buy guns.
Jack Dailey, I, and a bunch of other folks founded a road-show of volunteer rifle instruction traveling nationwide, called the Appleseed Program, in 2005.
The road show part was my idea.
You should be familiar with it -- our second event was at Tac-Pro in Mingus, Texas.
You and I had several emails in which you agreed to co-promote the event.
Jim from Galveston used the event to present you with a Browning Hi-Wall rifle.
Remember now?
Remember how you missed the target shooting your new rifle from the bench, and how the Appleseed instructor hit the target with the same rifle firing from prone?
Remember telling me and Jack Dailey about how your website was never going off the 'Net, and how you had the ability to host from servers offshore if the .gov here got too oppressive?
Remember how you insisted that the range fee for the two-day event be kept to $25, which left a bigass hole in the gate for the event?
I covered that gap out of my pocket.
You, on the other hand, wrote that crappy "No Red Dawns" essay, characterizing the Appleseed volunteers as a bunch of paranoid yahoos.
That first 18 months of the Appleseed program we put on 15+ events all across the country. I instructed at 13 of those events. A thousand plus shooters received quality basic rifle marksmanship training for minimal cost.
And the Appleseed program came into being.
You were then -- and are now -- a fraud and a liar and a failure.
I spit on you.
"Beck, as far as I can figure out, has never actually done anything concrete, in any country, to stand up against Our Enemy, The State."
You are not paying attention:
"I await my arrest."
Cabinboy:
THAT is how you write an argumentative comment. I'm unfamiliar with the event described (except for the fact that I donated money toward the Browning Hi-Wall), but seeing as there were multiple witnesses, I expect there will be others commenting on it.
Matt:
You earn first runner-up.
Tom,
I hit the gym today.
I didn't send two hundred down range today since I can't afford it.
As soon as I can spare the cash, I will buy a 3/4" breaker bar so I can mate my STG-58 barrel with my DSA Type 1 receiver.
I sold a co worker his first rifle recently, a home made STG-58. You should have seen the way his eyes lit up.
I engage everyone I can in the principles of Natural Law and the source of our freedoms.
I am active in the open carry movement here in Texas.
The moral of the story is I am a proud three percenter, I do what I can everyday to spread liberty. I don't hunker down in a basement and stroke my barrel. I read, I educate myself and others.
People in my office are tired of me sending them emails about issues and action. One co worker, a retired First Sergeant, has had enough of my activism, and told me never to send him anything else. I think I got him so mad at what is happening about the potential new Con-Con that he couldn't take it.
I am doing my part. And by the way, we are probably all on the "rojo list".
We need a quiet and self-assured outreach, not egotistical posturing and a firefight revolution. Quigley, not Neo.
3%, devoting even hobbyist-level involvement to the pro-rights movement while we're still doing politics, could easily remake the world, along lines far more congenial to our concerns.
3% sitting on their butts making vaguely (or not-so-vaguely) threatening noises but DOING nothing substantive until the politics are over and the confiscation brigades show up, will just make a bunch of big bloody messes without changing a damned thing.
It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees, true. But infinitely better than either to act so as to retain OTHER OPTIONS, while you've still got time.
Would I kill, if necessary, in defense of my rights? Yes...that's why they're called "rights". I guess that makes me a 3%er. But in the meantime, I'm working my butt off in non-lethal venues to try and avoid ever getting to the state where I'd _have to_ kill anybody. If all of my supposed cohort could say the same, the job wouldn't be nearly so hard, and the odds wouldn't look nearly so grim.
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