Fear

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:56:17 GMT <== RKBA ==>

Mike Vanderboegh at Western Rifle Shooters Association - a glorious essay relating the real Americans Mr. Vanderboegh knows, redneck southernors. They truly love liberty, enough to kill and die for it. He got a lot of negative comments on his last essay, Awkward, but all from "pissant Yankee wusses", not real American men.

Stupid me, I should have realized two things. First, it is not only liberals who can extrapolate from their own cowardice. And second, the folks who were responding to my writing negatively are not representative of the people I expect to "get" my stuff anyway. I use the medium at hand to broadcast my message, the Founders' message, forgetting that the folks who will best understand it are not tuned in. In a "blinding flash of the obvious" to use John Wesley Rawles' phrase, here is what I finally figured out: most rednecks (and most gunnies) are not keyboard commandos. They do not sit in the dark trying to make sense of the electron-borne winds of modern information (or disinformation). They are too busy with the exigencies of life to trade intellectualisms on the Net. The folks I'm talking about (and those I'm trying to reach) are rather more like the Kentuckians that Hank Messick described in the forward to his book King's Mountain: "One thing about the fellows back home -- when they say they're going to kill somebody, they kill him."

...

They are quiet fellows, mostly. But it is not the smartest thing in the world to make them mad, as British Colonel Patrick Ferguson found out when he called their ancestors in North Carolina "backwater men," "barbarians" and "mongrels" in 1780. He miscalculated his audience. The Scotch Irish pioneers came down out of the "backwaters," tracked Ferguson and his Tories to King's Mountain and killed him in a fight that proved THE turning point of the Revolution. One of my friends, a maintenance man at a local nursing home, a humble fellow who never went to college, a son of a coal miner and the descendant of men who fought Ferguson (and others who fought the Creeks, Abe Lincoln AND Jefferson Davis, and the Kaiser and Hitler and Hirohito) can tell you the story as if it happened yesterday with a comprehensive knowledge of the subject and an eye for detail that would put a professional historian to shame. One of the defeatist critics of Awkward headlined his piece "the revolution has been canceled." Try telling that to my friend. It lives within his soul. As another great Southerner once said, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

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Wusses

Submitted by Sheila on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:30:46 GMT

Those "wusses" seem like hypocrites to me, and belong on http://www.hypocrites.com

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair