"Our national experiment in extermination." The Chemists War: How the United States government deliberately killed 10,000 of its own people in the name of Prohibition. (Enforced by the predecessors of the ATF.)

"Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that." -- Captain Malcom Reynolds, Serenity, 2005.

So, you thought facilitating the murder of thousands of Mexicans was the worst crime the ATF had committed? Take a little walk through history.

The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Ten thousand dead Americans, and no one ever paid a price for it. I am reminded of the scene from Serenity, when the crew finally discovers the horrible truth of government societal engineering on Miranda as the recorded testimony of a federal scientist is played back:

Dr. Caron: These are just a few of the images we've recorded. And you can see, it wasn't what we thought. There's been no war here and no terraforming event. The environment is stable. It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die.

Some few of the inhabitants of Miranda, however, were turned into hyper-violent marauders -- the Reavers -- who have been wiping out communities on the outer planets. The horror of what the federal government has done sinks into to all of the crew. Their Captain reacts:

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: This record here's about twelve years old. Parliament buried it and it stayed buried until River here dug it up. This is what they were afraid she knew. And they were right to fear. There's a universe of folk who're gonna know it, too. Someone *has to* speak for these people. . . Y'all got on this boat for different reasons, but y'all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave.

The nanny state is merely a step in collectivist, totalitarian evolution. Does anyone think that if Chuck Schumer could get away with sabotaging small arms ammunition so that it would detonate and kill target shooters that he would hesitate for one second? History is filled with the results of killer governments -- as are the mass graves of their victims. The Founders had a solution for that. We should not hesitate to use it when the time comes.

When democracy turns to tyranny, the armed citizen still gets to vote.