End the War on Freedom

From highroad:

So I say to all you spooks and spies, all you who watch and catalog and make lists. Leave my fellows and me in peace and we shall all enjoy a long life. Do it not, and all your days are numbered. No writ of law, no force of arms, no tyrant's boot can forever subjugate a people who's birthright is LIBERTY! We taught this lesson to our supposed betters once more than 200 years ago, and if need be we shall teach it to you again.

Jason Gonella at LewRockwell.com - The United States Invades Hell - hehe. [lew]

What appears, for all intents and purposes to be a Demon materialized in lower Manhattan three days ago. After going on a destructive rampage, the Governor called in the National Guard to help contain this menace. So far, it has been contained, although the military refuses to release any progress reports.

Witnesses describe a hole opening in the street, and from that hole crawled the Demon, which shortly thereafter started to destroy everything within reach. There have been 35 casualties, and many more injured, but the monster has been contained and has been repelled by the Guard several times as it tried to leave the confinement zone.

From welcome.to/homelandsecurity / 'Cookie-Cutter Tools' / You'll get your freedoms back. Honest. Click for higher res version. [trt-ny]

Bill St. Clair at AR15.com - Police pointing guns at civilians - I started a thread with the following post in the "Brothers of the Shield" section. Many of the responses were informative.

I read lots of news stories where the police arrest someone at gunpoint. Quite often those arrested complain that the police were pointing their weapons at them during the arrest. How is this OK?

If I were to point my gun at someone, unless in obvious self defense, I would be charged with assault with a deadly weapon. I've even read stories of people being charged with a felony for simply brandishing their licensed concealed handgun in a situation where they were being threatened (in Massachusetts).

If I were to point my gun at someone, I would expect him to shoot me. If you point your gun at someone, I would expect him to shoot you. And I would expect a grand jury to recognize that the shooting was in self defense, and to refuse to indict.

Why do police get away with pointing their weapons at people who are not apparently armed? Yes, you should have your weapon at the ready, but pointed at the ground, not at the citizen.

I realize that a practiced quick draw artist can draw and shoot before you can wiggle your trigger finger, but I can't see that the quarter second it takes to bring your weapon to bear is worth breaking the second law of safe gun handling.

Educate me.

I made a couple more posts to clarify my question, and ended (so far) with:

Thank you, gentlemen, for your thougthful responses. I started this thread with what I thought was a simple question. Your initial answers taught me that it was not as simple as I thought, since I had made some unshared assumptions. Your answers have definitely educated me, as I requested. I'll explain a little about my assumptions, then share my conclusions.

My father taught me at a very young age, so young that I don't remember exactly how old I was, the first three out of four of Jeff Cooper's Rules of Gun Safety. For some reason, he left "Be Sure of Your Target" for me to pick up myself.

I intended this discussion to center around Rule II: "Never Let the Muzzle Cover Anything You Are Not Willing to Destroy", except that I learned it more like "Never Let Your Muzzle Cover Anything You Do Not Intend To Destroy".

My father must have worked hard on me. These rules are stored somewhere in my lizard brain, as much a part of me as walking and talking, as impossible for me to ignore as a snowball in the face.

I hope that I will live to a ripe old age never finding it necessary to shoot anyone, but because of the way I learned the second rule, if you see more than the edge of the muzzle of my gun, you will know that I have already decided to shoot you and that a bullet or a load of shot is headed your way as soon as my sights are on your center of mass, round about half a second from now, or less.

I have learned today that the LEO's who responded in this thread have a significantly different take on the second rule. Seeing your muzzle means that you think that you might need to shoot, but you may not have yet decided. It's not time to shit my pants yet, as long as I'm careful not to startle you.

This is difficult for me to integrate. It goes against my training. Big time.

P.S.

Though I often respond angrily to perceived LEO mis-behavior as reported in the news, I realize that the lion's share of you guys are straight arrows worthy of my greatest respect. As Joe Friday said, "It's an endless, glamourless, thankless, job that's gotta be done." Thank you for doing it.

Yeah, I know. I'm usually not nearly this nice to cops. Just felt like throwing them a bone, I guess. Nice cop. Down, boy.

Ken Valentine at Liberty Magazine - transcribed from p.6 of the February 2003 issue:

War Wimps

In "Wail of the War Wimps" (Reflections, Dec.), Clark Stooksbury stated his case rather mildly--by my standards. Chicken Hawk? I think a more appropriate term would be Chicken Shit!

My father, who was a mortar squad leader on Bougainville and a forward observer on Guam and Iwo Jima, said is best: "What happens in war is that one bunch of politicians gets mad at another bunch of politicians so they tell their people, 'Let's you and them go fight.'" Another cause of war is when one government has something another government wants. As Jacob Bronowski put it: "War is a highly organized and co-operative form of theft."

The practical fact is that young men are yanked out of their lives, guns are thrust into their hands, and they are sent off to kill other young men who have been yanked out of their lives and guns thrust in their hands. While these young men huddle shivering in their foxholes hopint that they will live to see the next sunrise, the people who cause the problems--the politicians, generals, priests, mullahs, tribal elders--sit back in their comfortable digs and move their chess pieces around.

When those who declare war, vote for war, or send troops into battle, have to actually go with those troops themselves... When they know that they, themselves, will have to shiver in a foxhole, endure an artillery or mortar barrage, draw a bead on another human being, press the trigger, and watch their "target" drop and writhe on the ground--in the full knowledge that someone else may be drawing a bead on them--then, and only then, will we learn what is really worth fighting for.

Doug Kenline - Income Taxes - one man's interactions with his employer and the IRS after deciding to stop paying income taxes. Mr. Kenline has a weblog, Blog Against the Machine.

Chris Weinkopf at The American Enterprise - Defending the Homeland Begins at Home - You are responsible for homeland security. No one else can do it. [kimdutoit]

"LET ME TELL YOU, AS A COP, I'm not gonna be there," Mark Granko told his students, who sat transfixed, listening to war stories from his 25 years as a police officer, including five on a SWAT team. "I don't care if you call 911. By the time we get there, it's over."

That's why the 15 men, mostly in their 20s and 30s, had trekked to the seedy Oakland suburb of Richmond for the weekend. We were there for one purpose alone: to learn how to kill an attacker instead of allowing him to kill us while we wait for the police to arrive.

...

In 1993, Jeffrey Snyder wrote a seminal piece for The Public Interest, "A Nation of Cowards," in which he marveled at an odd contradiction in American culture-- our collective, professed commitment to independence and autonomy, yet our utter refusal to accept, individually, the responsibility for protecting ourselves from crime. "While people are encouraged to revel in their individuality and incalculable self-worth," Snyder wrote, "the media and the law enforcement establishment continually advise us that, when confronted with the threat of lethal violence, we should not resist, but simply give the attacker what he wants."

This mentality assumes that the attacker--who has already broken both the law and our first social contract to respect the property rights, freedom, and dignity of others--will suddenly abide by a new social contract, one Snyder characterized as, "I will not hurt or kill you if you give me what I want." At times that may be the case, but often, it isn't.

...

Snyder wrote convincingly of each person's moral responsibility to take up arms in self-defense: "Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens.... We are a nation of cowards and shirkers."

...

When my wife and I bought our first home a year ago, friends and family helpfully advised us to buy a fire extinguisher--after all, we wouldn't want a small kitchen fire to grow out of control and consume the house while we wait for the fire department to arrive. None, however, suggested that we buy a gun, lest a home invader rape or kill a member of our family while waiting for the police to show up.

Michael Peirce at LewRockwell.com - Will This Year Be Better? - likely not. Amen. [lew]

That constitution of ours is so daggoned complicated that only a simple citizen can understand it -- judges and lawyers remain absolutely mystified while government merely ignores it as if it didn't exist at all. Since it is now considered "extremist" to believe in the Second Amendment, the one upon which all the others depend; I'd have to guess that this might be the big year. Out of bondage to that scrap of paper and on to that brave new world promised to us by our progressive leaders.

...

Or how about North Korea? Didn't the South Koreans ask us to leave recently (and repeatedly)? How is it then that we are still there? How is it that our troops are in jeopardy of nuclear attack in a region where we are not welcome? What is it that we gain from this, you and I? Isn't this a problem for Japan and China? Would the NKs really be crazy enough to slip a nuke into one of those gigantic tunnels they've constructed under the DMZ? Nah...

How about the real question? Are you willing to sacrifice your child for this coming confrontation? I didn't think so.

The High Road - Tell me about Anarchism - there are a bunch of us an-caps hanging out at The High Road. Cool. [highroad]

Bob Barr at The Washington Times - Crimes before the fact - commentary on the Virginia sitting-in-a-bar-while-drunk arrests and our new airport sekurity Gestapo. [root]

Add comment Edit post Add post