The Best of Times
"They are the last bastion, the last gathering place, of a free people."That is the way it was for years, indeed decades. That's the reason why the opposition is so rabid about closing gun shows down. If the free people can not gather, they can not meet. If they can not meet, they can not organize. If they can not organize, they can not resist.
Except now, there is the internet. It is the worst of times and the best of times.
Give the Sipsey Street Irregulars a look.
Labels: Blogroll, Gun Advocacy
posted by Xavier at 5:56 PM
14 Comments:
The folks there seem to skate just barely this side of legality. They've essentially threatened to rise up and to shoot journalists should another AWB get passed. Instead of "Sipsey Street Irregulars," maybe they should just call themselves "Wolverines" and be done with it.
I think that the existence of gun shows should be defended on the grounds of free assembly and association, rather than attempting to turn the 2A into a larger umbrella of gun rights. There's a lot of rigorously defended constitutional rights that the RKBA community can tap into for a more holistic interpretation.
"Constitutional guarantees of free speech and free association and assembly mean much less if there is literally no peopled public space to serve as forum in which to act out these rights."
-Trevor Boddy, "Underground and Overhead"
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/122/nov08/amar.shtml
wolfwood...
you say that like the "other side" who WOULD sell out our freedoms are anything but those who SHOULD be allowed to continue to do so unabated,their no real threat to our nations future.
those who seek to part,parcel and make friends with them who'd sell us out in the name of "getting along",and being "good world citizens",carry a bullseye on them for my views on the matter.
frankly...I'm biding my time for when the balloon goes up,and you had better pray,that they never made friends with you,or included you and the likes of you in their machanizations of our downfall.
cause buddy...your one of them in my book,and payback is a mother dog,and trust me...it aint gonna be pretty.
you also seem to forget the Wolverines were freedom fighters,not terrorists.
namecalling is easy to do when you're an armchair commando. they were martyrs in the name of the country they love,and even though it is fiction...they showed they're true intent.
John Millius lost many jobs in hollywood to depict it,and was pretty much blacklisted.
that showed HIS true intent..liberals HATED him for portraying that minor fact of personal loss turning to revenge against a adversary attempting to take over his native born land.
you might want to watch it again,and then seek the true meaning behind it..you aint got it yet budrow,not even close.
I was actually going to respond to nature223's comment, but I think it works better if I just point to it and ask people if this is the sort of thing they want to be associated with.
Wolfwood,
I AM a Wolverine, Michigan born and Michigan bred. You cannot insult me that way. Call me a "pragmatist," though . . .
EVERYTHING I have ever written is presupposed upon our reaction being defensive violence. I have preached again and again, "no Fort Sumters" and "no OKCs."
However, if you can blame a man for warning his would-be attacker of what will happen if he persists for the violence that ensues, then you have some serious issues of logic and personal courage. You might as well blame a potential rape victim for pulling a .38 and warning the criminal to put that thing back in his pants before somebody gets dead.
What bothers you about us Three Percenters is that we have finally announced what you are too frightened to: we will not take another step back in the gun confiscationists' campaign for the death of our liberty and the seizure of our property by a thousand cuts.
This is it. We back up no more. For this, we will be attacked by a government gang operating under color of law.
So will you, unless you meekly turn over your property and sell out your inheritance for a little collectivist pottage.
I can't answer for you. I can only answer for me. This is as far as I go. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.
Mike Vanderboegh
III
I'm not a Wolverine, but I own two Whitney Wolverines. Does that and my posting at SSI count for anything?
Last I checked, words are legal. Last I checked, all my Special Forces and related insurgency and counter-insurgency books and manuals, many published by the US and Foreign militaries, are legal to posess.
What's illegal about sharing a bit of information in a non-copyright-infringing way on the internet?
I thought about calling you a name or two, but I'd prefer not to lower myself to your level.
Went to the Valley Forge Gun Show today. Now how cool, how symbolic, is that? A gun show in VALLEY FORGE of all places (happens 4 times a year).
Anyway, I was there aout 3 hrs and when I took a smoke break, four hours after the show opened the line to get in was still consistently nearly a hundred yards long, out the doors, down the sidewalk, into the parking lot.
Inside you couldn't move, couldn't turn around. Talking to some of the dealers & show staff they said they have NEVER seen anything like this. Especially at the show right before Christmas.
Last bastion of a free people indeed.
Oh, and by the way, crowded though it was I managed to find my way to a S&W 36-1 in really nice shape. Original wood grips with patina but no chips or cracks. Just some blueing rubbed away on cyliner & 3 inch barrel from holster wear. Shiny spirally bore. Saw the same gun at the same dealer last week in Harrisburg but was financially challenged at the time.
This time, that gun just wanted to get out of the crowd. And it only cost me $290 to be obliging.
Last bastion of a free people indeed.
It is hard to understand the outright hatred and disdain expressed for Mike and the three-percenters. Wolfwood, what about the term 'SELF-DEFENSE' don't you understand?
So far as I know, nothing illegal has been said at SSI (and even "words" can be illegal; add in even a tiny otherwise-legal act and it becomes much, much easier).
Things I've seen at SSI:
-how to get a P.O. box using forged documents (http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2008/12/going-postal-clandestinely.html)
-the government is planning on using EMPs against Americans (http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2008/12/war-outside-faraday-cage-emp.html)
-the Democrats are trying to kill Mike Vanderboegh and there will be a revolution against them (http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2008/12/i-always-thought-you-were-full-of-sh-t.html)
At every turn, those not looking to form a private militia and take up arms are cast as cowards, "boy," willing to surrender, etc. Those who believe in the RKBA but aren't in their elite club are urged to use the threat of armed insurrection by the "3%ers" as leverage against those who would ban guns. Individual readers should judge for themselves whether this goes with what they believe to be true, and whether such a movement is one with which they'd like to align themselves.
Wolfwood,
Forget everything else and answer this:
What will YOU do when they move the line of the "law" behind where you now stand?
No name calling. Just a straight up question calling for a definitive answer.
What will YOU do?
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"
- The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Hmmmmmmm...Should I say more?
Also something happened in a locked down section of Warsaw sometime in 1943 that made the SS shit their pants so badly their asses became permanently brown afterward.
Speaking of Sipsey Street Irregulars, we have never threatened anything. We are simply making it clear that free men and women in this country will not approve of more restrictions on our God given rights. Just take a moment to think about what happiness means. Happiness means that we can enjoy our favorite books, have fun with our friends, raise our families, hear the laughter of our children, and listen to the sweet things they say. What does happiness mean anymore if people are forced to live under a totalitarian government which can take the lives of it's citizens at will? After all, Germany was democratic back in the 20s and early 30s. Wonder what happened afterwards? Imagine how history would have been different if a group of determined people had the courage to speak out and stand up against Adolf Hitler.
Six million people gassed to death, shot to death, beaten to death, starved to death, worked to death. There will be no more!
Please order and watch the video "Innocents Betrayed". And forget about the popcorn and soda because you won't have the appetite for it anyway after watching.
I have watched "Innocents Betrayed", and I am another proud Three Percenter.
Calling someone a wolverine is a complement! The wolverine was named carcajou by the indians which means something like devil bear. A wolverine isn't afraid to fight for what he believes in and he will fight to win. If my spirit animal wasn't the raccoon I'd be proud have wolverines instead. I'm one of those three percenters and I'm proud of that also.
Don't get me wrong: there are lines that I won't stand by and see crossed (although they may not be the same lines the "3%ers" see as problematic). What concerns me is what sounds like an eager tone, like people are just itching for some provocation to break out the FAL and start shooting those who would impose on their rights. Trust me, I understand the desire to want to shoot those who do wrong; I've got a close connection to one of the recent mass shootings of past years and I understand how one armed person standing up for what's right could have changed things.
Revolt is something that should be approached with sadness and a desire to exhaust every possible alternative means first. If that means some imposition on my rights, I'm willing to bear that so long as certain lines aren't crossed and so long as I believe that the rights taken can ultimately be restored. I don't have a wife and kids, but if I did that would amplify my beliefs on this.
The "3%ers" sound positively Jacobinical to my ears, and I'm someone whom most of the population would see very little, if any, difference between my beliefs and those of the folks at SSI, yet I see comments like nature223's that would punish me (violently?) for not being ideologically pure.
Is there a need for some sort of renewal? Of course; the notions of federalism and governmental restraint have fallen on very hard times lately, to the country's loss. That said, those doing any sort of uprising aren't going to be looked at as liberators or even Browncoats, but as criminals or even latter-day McVeighs. If the SSI folks make even "prags" uneasy, how do they expect to have any traction whatsoever with Joe Public who, at best, sees a gun as a good way to bag a deer and not much more?
There's a PR groundwork that has to be laid first, and SSI folks, were they known to the general public, would be causing harm to that. Yes, you have rights which shouldn't be trampled on, but what's being proposed (terms like "survivalist" and "militia" mean "creepy unjailed criminal" to the general public) sets things back. You're trying to build on a foundation that needs to be renovated first, and while aspects of the whole 3% thing are worthwhile abstractly, they're counterproductive to the RKBA movement at present. That so many of the writings sound like a Martyr Complex make it even worse: there are no black helicopters looking to silence dissidents. There are people living freely outside of gun shows. That, and the spiteful tone used in so many 3% messages means that they will remain isolated from even the RKBA community, much less Americans in general
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