Getting under some Horiuchi-wannabe's skin. "That's all very impressive, but if I just take that natural gas line and make this small adjustment, I can blow your ass up."

In linking to the latest purchase requisition for yet more ammunition to supply the federal militarized police constabulary which I believe has no constitutional right to exist, I ironically used the headline, "In the event of civil war, remember to strip the dead of useful items." This was, of course, deliberate, designed to elicit a response from each of the segments of the regular readership of this blog. The first segment is made up of those who are committed to the Three Percent ideal despite any threat of state violence. The second consists of folks who are here exploring, who agree in principle with the ideal but who are not committed. Some of these folks have a distressing tendency to magnify the size and power of the domestic enemies of the Constitution, sometimes to the point of defeatism. The third segment of the audience, albeit numerically tiny by comparison with the others but perhaps most important of all, consists of the enemy and the analysts who serve them. These people have a vested interest in getting that second group to focus on the mighty display of the great and powerful federal leviathan Oz and fervently wish that you will pay no attention to the little illusionist behind the curtain. Their mantra is the Borgian "resistance is futile" and they like defeatism on our side just fine.

The other day I dropped into a local firearms emporium which has long had a cozy informant's sort of relationship with the local ATF (as I can tell you from personal experience). One of the counter help, who had proclaimed from the very beginning of the Fast and Furious scandal that nothing would come of it, chose that moment to say "I told you so" to me. I said that coming from someone who had done exactly jack shit to achieve a different outcome, such talk was merely self-fulfilling prophecy justifying his own inaction. If he wanted to know why Eric Holder evaded justice up to this point, he should look in the mirror. He shut up. I left. Of course the guy had been saying the same things to other customers for years. Who knows what the malignant effects were of his defeatism over time to people who otherwise might have gotten involved? The guy is a walking, talking billboard for "resistance is futile." And who, exactly, does that serve?

That is one reason why, when folks point with alarm to the military armaments race among local police departments to acquire with federal assistance automatic weapons and armored vehicles, I merely take the long view and heartily approve of this transfer of military hardware out into the countryside. If federal misadventures rise to the level of precipitating civil war, arms and ammunition pre-positioned there means that our side can get their hands on them and use them against their tyrannical providers. Think of it as one huge but diffused Fort Ticonderoga, stocked to the palisades with armaments, conveniently placed for use by rebels. In other words, as I have written elsewhere over the years, a Three Percenter doesn't worry excessively about what the enemy is going to do to him, but rather is constantly working out what can be done TO the enemy if HE tries it -- and preferably with the enemy's own resources that he has thoughtlessly provided.

Thus, in true 4th Generation Warfare fashion, every threat becomes an opportunity. It is the equivalent of the Scarecrow pulling back the curtain and commenting to the little man, "You know that's all very impressive, but if I just take that natural gas line and make this small adjustment, I can blow your ass up and this whole place with it. Now, can we calm down and have a rational discussion about liquidating wicked witches?"

But however other readers reacted to my ironic headline, I got at least one response of interest from that important third audience:

"Don't go squirting all over yourself, thinking of killing fellow Americans. ATF or otherwise. One hopes there'd be a sniper aiming at you as you rape the dead."

Hmmm. Apparently my attitude hit a little too close to home for this Lon Horiuchi-wannabe. Of course, anyone who has read even a modicum of my stuff over a short period of time should understand that what I am about is PREVENTING a civil war and not inciting one. The prospect of dead feds on the ground whose ammo pouches can be plundered makes me infinitely sad, because that image represents a fundamental failure of my mission.

I have, of course, had many people hope for my future demise, but it is an interesting choice of terms, though, this "rape the dead" business. How the taking of ammunition from dead minions of a tyrannical federal government who presumably, moments before, were trying to kill me and mine in the service of some bureaucrat's diktat equates to sexual violation is, to say the least, psychologically revealing. I'll leave that analysis to someone more skilled in psychiatry than I am, but I would refer the writer to Sam Fuller and Sergeant "Iron Mike" Zack on the practical utility of supplying yourself out of dead men's ammunition pouches.

The interesting thing is that the prospect of federally-provoked civil war -- with all the horror and evil that it would represent -- seems to upset the writer less than the image of dead federal corpses being looted for ammunition that they would be past caring about. "Another country heard from," for sure.

Iron Mike: "See if there's any ammo on those guys."

Short Round: "I know, 'thirty caliber.' . . . No bullets. All swiped by enemy."