Statistics tells us it does not matter what you carry, so long as you carry

I count myself very lucky that I have never had the opportunity present itself wherein I had to defensively pull a firearm from concealment to diffuse a situation.  As they say, it is only a matter of time for anyone.  The Old Man did tell me of an encounter he had in a side street of Birmingham earlier this this year when he was still mobile.  Having just come back from, (I think), the Birmingham Public Library, he was walking down a five foot or so wide passageway that was created by a gap in two large municipal buildings.  Not big enough for cars, but it did provide a decent enough place for foot traffic.  As he walked down the path, he was approached by a younger gentleman who noticed that Mike had a hat on that read, in part, "All Lives Matter".  I say in part because the portion that was written underneath was covered up, and said simply. "That's why I'm armed".  Valuable information that the guy would have taken into consideration had he seen it.  The kid, whom was guessed to be of reasonably athletic build and in his late teens to early twenties, saw the hat about 15 feet out and immediately changed his facial expression to stone cold hate.

When the two were just within striking distance, the kid changed his direction and punched at Mike.  The blow was so angry and forceful, he threw the full force of weight into it and became unbalanced.  Mike was able to just dodge the punch to his head and the attacker's kinetic energy carried him to the ground.  Thugs, of either the fake or very real variety, are by nature not the most pleasant bunch, so when they telegraph their intentions it is best to capitalize on it.  When Mike noticed a change in the guys demeanor, he had already started to reach in his front pocket to get a handle on the 380 Taurus.  When the thug struck at him, he was able to step away, pull out the pistol and aim it at his attackers face.  This did not entirely deter his assaulter from resuming the attack.

"It is going to be pretty sad day for your Mama when they have to pick your fucking brains off of the fucking wall after I shoot you", was the only thing that Mike could summon to say.  The kid was still visibly enraged and started to rise.  Fortunately for our would-be attacker, self-preservation took over and he deflated.  Upon seeing that the lead taken from the kids pencil, Mike said, "Now git".   Trayvon ran off in the direction he was originally going and Mike was able to continued going on his.

This was not the first time that he had to pull a pistol in Birmingham.  I believe it was in the mid to late 90's he occupied in one of his favorite things to do, which was to sit in his car and read a news paper that he had just bought at a gas station.  An older gentleman, that appeared to be homeless, approached his car from about 50 feet and said over and over, more loudly each time, "Give me 10 dollas".  When the guy reached to about 10 feet out, Mike produced a Keltec P11 9mm with an extra magazine, and told him, "How about I give you eleven plus ten".  Mr. Mugger made a surprisingly quick 180 degree turn and left without his 10 dollas.

An Alternate Look at Handgun Stopping Power

A 2011 article by Greg Ellifritz of the Buckeye Firearms Association aggregates the stopping power of various common calibers of pistol and compares the data by several factors.  Data is compared by the number of individual incidents per caliber, whether the incident netted one shot or multiple shots fired, if the shots incapacitated the target (or not), and the general shot placement of the bullet.  Math is hard to argue with but I would agree with the author that there are circumstances that are not addressed.  The study does, however, indicate that it is as much of the size of the dog in the fight as it is the size of the fight in the dog.







Now before we get into the weeds with that the venerable small game round, the 22, (or any particular pet round) as the "be all, end all" self defense round, the author has this to consider:

"In a certain (fairly high) percentage of shootings, people stop their aggressive actions after being hit with one round regardless of caliber or shot placement. These people are likely NOT physically incapacitated by the bullet. They just don't want to be shot anymore and give up! Call it a psychological stop if you will. Any bullet or caliber combination will likely yield similar results in those cases. And fortunately for us, there are a lot of these "psychological stops" occurring. The problem we have is when we don't get a psychological stop. If our attacker fights through the pain and continues to victimize us, we might want a round that causes the most damage possible. In essence, we are relying on a "physical stop" rather than a "psychological" one. In order to physically force someone to stop their violent actions we need to either hit him in the Central Nervous System (brain or upper spine) or cause enough bleeding that he becomes unconscious. The more powerful rounds look to be better at doing this."

I contacted Mr. Eillifritz to see if I he could, perhaps, shed any more light on the subject or if he had altered his opinion in the years since he wrote the article. To my honor and delight, he is a regular reader and gave this very thoughtful response:

"After a few years, I am realizing that two additional factors come into play when determining how quickly an attackers stops after being shot. 

"The first is whether the attacker is shot by a cop or an armed citizen. A criminal knows that if he flees an armed citizen, he is likely to survive and not be arrested. The same does not hold true after being shot by a cop. The cop is going to continue the fight until the criminal is either incapacitated or arrested. That means criminals fight harder against cops than they do against armed citizens. 

"Many of the 9mm and .40 shootings are police incidents. I think that leads to a potentially inflated number of rounds taken by criminals in those incidents. 

"The other factor is the speed at which the rounds can be fired. Most people can fire a 9mm faster than they can fire a .45. In scenarios that are psychological stops (not physical incapacitations). it takes a certain period of time for the criminal to recognize that he has been shot and either flee or comply. 

"For the sake of argument, let's say that period of time is 3 seconds. In three seconds, I am likely to hit you with more rounds if I am shooting a 9mm than if I am shooting a .45. In reality, one bullet from either caliber would have likely caused the same reaction. The number of hits ends up more being a function of how quickly the shots can be fired rather than how effective the cartridge is. 

"I think these are the prime reasons why the .22 and .25 did so well. Both are primarily shot by armed citizens. The criminals got hit with one shot and fled. Also the .22 mini revolvers and tiny autos tend to be slower to fire than a full sized auto pistol. They are also more prone to malfunctions. Those factors may be the reason that those particular calibers required such a small number of shots to stop the attack. 

"Overall, that's about the only thing I can add to the information that I wrote back in 2011. If anything, it leads me to believe that there is even LESS difference between all those cartridges than my original study determined."

I could not find definitive numbers, one way or the other, of instances where the mere presence of a firearm brought about a peaceful resolution to the crime.  However, I think it is fairly self-evident that the presence of a firearm, any firearm, is usually enough to make an attacker question their life choice.  If you are going to choose to carry, and I sincerely hope you are even if a little state funded bureaucrat is telling you that you cannot.  But if you choose to carry, the Rawlesian philosophy of ATGATT, or All The Gear, All The Time, would mean you carry the weapon plus spare mags.  All. The. Time.  At the very least it just might save you 10 dollas.

One clear takeaway from the data is that we can argue about pistol calibers in perpetuity.  What trumps them all are rifles and shotguns.

Makes you wonder why, if handguns are the overwhelming winner in firearm related deaths, that the Social Elites want your long guns so bad.  You know...for the children.

Get off my lawn.

Want more gun control? Sit down and shut up.

Michael Seth Stewart, PhD., an Alabama native and English instructor at the University of Alabama and one clueless collectivist. His email, for those of you who would like to write a respectful rejoinder, is msstewart2@ua.edu.

NOTE: Well, my letter to the editor of AL.com below got bounced so I sent this directly to Stewart. Hope he likes it.

Michael Seth Stewart writes that he is "deeply frightened by the increasingly familiar gun massacres in our schools around the country" and thus demands that "Alabamians must stand up for 'sensible gun reform.'" Collectivists always use carefully crafted weasel words to frame the debate in order to win it before it begins. Let me translate his demands into plain English.

"Sensible gun reform," Stewart reveals, consists of "closing the gun show loophole." (Translation: federal seizure of the right to trade in firearms between private individuals -- not even King George III was so grasping.) It also requires "a sensible limit on types of guns that can be purchased." (Translation: the banning of all semi-automatic firearms.) And finally, he demands "universal background checks" (Translation: the creation of a federal registry of all firearm owners.)

He demands this, he says, because he is "deeply frightened" by the mass shootings occurring in the criminal-enabling free-fire areas that he and his collectivist comrades are pleased to call "gun free zones." Stewart wails that “we are in a state of emergency.”

No, we’re not, not yet. But if he gets his way we WILL be in a bloody civil war. Stewart and his ilk should forgo such tyrannical proposals for recent experience proves that the Law of Unintended Consequences still rules.

Since Sandy Hook, there have been a number of states that have passed laws consistent with his demands, notably Connecticut, Maryland, New York, Colorado, Washington and Oregon. Yet in each state these laws have been nullified by armed civil disobedience and NONE are currently being enforced by the same politicians who passed them. How do I know this? Because I have been honored to be a recognized leader of the national We Will Not Comply movement. We have publicly smuggled thousands of banned magazines into CT, CO, and NY. In CT the noncompliance rate for the registration of semi-automatic rifles is thought to be in the neighborhood of 80%. In New York it is 90%, aided by local sheriffs who have put the state police on notice that if they come into their counties to arrest anyone under the SAFE Act that it is the state police who will be arrested. We have flouted Bloomberg's recent background check laws in both WA and OR with armed demonstrations on the steps of those state capitols and we've even held a background-check-free gun show in open defiance. And the politicians don't know whether to defecate or go blind. For this is dangerous ground, making millions of heretofore peaceable citizens into instant felons with nothing to lose -- VERY dangerous ground. It requires only one Waco-type raid to set off a national conflagration.

In the meantime, we have proven that there is no tyrannical law that can be passed that cannot be nullified by armed civil disobedience. If you want to disarm us you must come and take our firearms by force. We will not cooperate in our own enslavement. In short, you must kill us. And we will not go willingly into Mr. Stewart’s collectivist good night. So advocates of further citizen disarmament must ask themselves, how many of us -- along with our families and other innocents -- are they willing to see dead in the civil war that they start in order to accomplish their "benevolent" goal? And how many of their side are they willing to sacrifice in order to win the civil war they start? Will Mr. Stewart kindly do the math and let us know? In the meantime such would-be tyrants should be careful what they wish for, lest they get it.

Living inside the SPLC's head rent free. Bill Morlin tries to discredit the Roseburg action by misquoting me.

The mugshot of a lying propagandist hack.

Bill Morlin used to pretend to be a journalist. Now he's a paid flunky propagandist of Morris Dees and Mark Potok's Lies-For-Money operation in Montgomery, Alabama. Witness this sloppy piece of "reportage": "Oregon Sheriff Focal Point for Anti-Gun Law Movement with Presidential Visit Looming."

Those new state gun laws prompted demonstrations earlier this year in the Northwest by pro-gun, antigovernment groups, including those planning to protest President Obama’s visit to Oregon on Friday.

Mike Vanderboegh, cofounder of the so-called “III Percent” movement, and several “Will Not Comply” leaders spoke at those pro-gun rallies where many demonstrators were armed, some in militia uniforms. On his blog, Vanderboegh already has hyped Friday’s demonstration in Roseburg – live theater pitting gun control advocates and the president against the Oregon sheriff and others who oppose gun control.

Vanderboegh said in a recent post that he wonders if protesters will be “either relegated to a ‘free speech zone’ or the participants face some kind of jackbooted action.”

“In other words, your presence is needed,” Vanderboegh urged his followers. “As I’ve written before, the potential for things to go bad is not a good reason to stay home,” he said. “It is, however, a pretty compelling reason to go.”

There's only one problem: I didn't write that, Kit Lange did. It forms the last two paragraphs of her piece. The post he's referring to is here: Rally in Roseburg: Patriots Plan to Tell Obama He’s Not Welcome. The quote, as is often the case as readers of this blog well know, IS used as a LINK to Kit's piece at the Patrick Henry Society, but anyone who clicks on it and reads her piece would know that.

Morlin's desperation to drag the infamous Vanderboegh into his hit piece is obvious. As always with the Southern Preposterous Lie Center, no distortion or fabrication is too egregious if they want to flog their donors out of more money.

Don't get me wrong. I support the Roseburg action and if I wasn't desperately ill from the chemotherapy, or if I lived closer and this wasn't the weekend my oldest daughter gets married, I'd be there. But when Morlin sold his soul to the SPLC Devil, he obviously lost the ability -- if he ever had any -- to discern fact from fiction, especially if the lie was in service to larger fundraising prime directive.

And a stupid American does the same thing.

U.S. needs a 28th Amendment

My email to him:

-----Original Message-----

From: georgemason1776@aol.com

To: cleaveland1000@comcast.net

Sent: Tue, Sep 1, 2015 9:36 am

Subject: Starting a bloody civil war seems an odd way to "prevent gun violence."

Since you don't seem to live in any real world I recognize, can you perhaps suggest what I should be smoking to duplicate your hallucinatory results, should I wish to leave this reality for your dopey Wonderland? I guess you haven't been paying attention to what has been happening since the various state laws have been passed since Sandy Hook. All of them, I repeat ALL of them, have been nullified by "I Will Not Comply" armed civil disobedience. In CT they have an 85% non-compliance rate. In New York it is estimated to be 90%, with county sheriffs in upstate threatening to arrest any state cops who come into their jurisdiction seeking to enforce the wildly misnamed SAFE Act. In CO, I have led smuggling efforts and public demonstrations flouting their law. Same goes for WA state and OR, where we have had armed marches on the capitol steps, breaking Bloomberg's laws and daring them to do anything about it. We even held a "background-check-free" arms expo/gun show in violation of the law in WA, daring the authorities to do anything about it. They did nothing. The politicians in each of these states have not sent one raid party to enforce their unconstitutional diktats. Indeed, they seem, after almost three years of such armed resistance, not to know whether to defecate or go blind. So who, you stupid, silly little collectivist cypher, are you going to get to enforce your "benevolent" tyranny? Planning on coming yourself? No. I didn't think so. But until you do, until you decide to have the courage of your so-called convictions and send men with state sanctioned violence to our doors, then kindly shut up. You're boring the rest of us with your impotent prattle. But, by all means, if it makes you feel better, go back and take another toke of whatever it is you're smoking.

Mike Vanderboegh

http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com

When last we left NRA lickspittle and hypocritical spineless weasel Bob Owens . . .

"Yes, master! Yes, master!"

he was gratuitously praising someone else's advocacy of the We Will Not Comply movement without ever having risked anything himself to support it. Indeed, he never met even an Open Carry armed civil disobedience that he liked. Internet prags who sit behind keyboards and do nothing else are prone to that, of course. Like intellectual chameleons, they shift colors lest someone notice them and require them to actually do something. They lack all convictions and so have to pretend to absorb by long-distance osmosis the principles of others -- principles that they themselves refuse to act upon, continually finding reasons why such actions are unworthy of prudent "right thinking" firearm owners.

Now Owens has found the convenient straw man of the huckster and money-whore Dudley Brown to condemn by implication those, like David Codrea, who have raised very real concerns over the Cornyn bill. To wit, "Fringe Pushes Back Against Cornyn’s NICS Background Check Fix."

Now I realize that the bill is endorsed by the NRA (and only in Owens' lickspittle world would that require uncritical examination given that organization's long record of preemptive compromises since the National Firearms Act of 1934), so Bob is merely once again doing his Igor impression -- "Yes, master! Yes, master!"

That doesn't mean that the rest of us ought to be suckered in by the straw-man arguments of an apparent moral and physical coward who consistently pretends to be one thing while being something entirely different.

LATER NOTE: Gee, I guess I'm getting pretty tetchy in my old age. But unfair? Before I emailed Bob a copy of the above, I re-read it to make sure I was not slandering or libeling the man. Nope, I concluded. It pretty much describes his positions over the years. So I sent it.

"You can't go home again." A reflection in a distant mirror of the River Valley High School Class of 1970.

"You can't go home again." Thomas Wolfe said that in a novel of the same name. I don't know what I expected from my 45th high school reunion in Marion, Ohio -- something in between a bad episode of Happy Days and the bar scene from Star Wars, I guess. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you're fan of the 1938 Carnegie Hall concert like I am), Benny Goodman was not playing in the background and there were no bounty hunters looking for my scalp.

There WERE folks startled by my cancer-altered appearance and it was immediately apparent that some of us had aged more gracefully than others -- MUCH more gracefully in some cases. It's funny. You know that you've aged. You're reminded of it every morning when you look in the mirror. But you expect to see the same people who remain fresh and young in your memory. The recognition is all the more jarring when it dawns on you that they are just as old as you are.

I also was reminded by Dennis Williams, organizer of the event and a childhood friend from the old neighborhood, that contrary to my memory this was my third reunion not my first. He pointed out that I had in fact been at the fifth and the tenth (probably) because of the presence of my ex-wife. I had no memory of these, perhaps blocked out by the episodic hysterical amnesia occasioned by my marriage during the period to Matthew's mother. In retrospect, I put that down to post-traumatic stress disorder. In any case, I hadn't seen most of these folks for over three decades and few of us had gotten any prettier.

The sword of time will pierce our skins

It doesn't hurt when it begins

But as it works it's way on in

The pain grows stronger...watch it grin.

Or so said a movie theme song that came out the year we all graduated. The number of the dead and missing in action has lengthened over the years. It could not be otherwise, I suppose.

As I discovered the names that made up the expanding list, I was moved in an Irish wake sort of mood to remember some of them to surviving classmates willing to listen. For instance, there was the time in 5th grade that Charlie Teets (my best friend in high school, now decades long deceased himself) and I persuaded Bob Frazier to eat a bunch of beans over a period of two days to test the scientific theory that if, (a.) methane was a flammable gas, and (b.) that farts contained significant amounts of methane, that, ergo, (c.) farts were flammable and could be ignited by a lit match. Bob was skeptical but properly encouraged he consumed five cans of pork and beans over a two day period and was properly gassy when the day of the experiment came -- the laboratory being the ground floor boy's restroom of Caledonia Elementary School.

Bob insisted upon being paid his two dollars up front -- a sensible precaution. So, paid in advance, Bob bared his cheeks to the wind, gripped the vertical stand pipe of the toilet, bent over at the proper grunting angle, and I readied the matches -- and the wait began. I went through four matches and two burned fingers before Bob produced the raw material in sync with a lit match, and then . . .

FIAT FREAKING LUX!

The result was a magnificent blinding blue flame which seemed 20 feet long and in its passing set the roll of toilet paper on fire! After picking myself off the floor (having knocked Charlie down as well in my sincere haste to get out of the way), I further burned my fingers trying to pry the the flaming roll off the dispenser and had to settle with improvising my own solitary bucket brigade by carrying water in my cupped hands from the sink, leaving a soaked, charred mass for the janitor to discover. Lord knows what he deduced from THAT evidence. Thus did 5th grade nerds satisfy their scientific curiosity.

But Bob, like Charlie, is gone now. So, too, I learned is Tim Trout. I dated his younger sister in high school briefly and Tim and I were roommates in a large rental tenement house in the Ohio State University area in Columbus for a while in the early 70s. My most vivid memory of Tim came about one day when I got a call on the house phone telling me to get down to 15th and High because Tim was himself high on some hallucinogen. This was hardly unusual for Tim. What WAS unusual was that he was directing traffic in the middle of the intersection -- naked. (He actually met Lewis Grizzard's definition of "nekkid" since he was not only without clothes, but was up to something.)

By the time I got there he was cuffed, face down on the ground, and the cops had thrown a blanket over him.

At this distance of time and place and events I no longer have memory of the legal results of Tim's escapade. I DO recall that as he lay there face down on the hot pavement, he was screaming about police brutality because, he claimed, the cops were trying to burn his private parts off. Specifically, he screamed over and over again, "MY DICK IS ON FIRE! . . . POLICE BRUTALITY! MY DICK IS ON FIRE!" And every now and then he added in, "HELP! THEY'RE TRYING TO BURN MY BALLS OFF!"

Tim kept trying to roll over on his back, which would flash his abused equipment to the crowd, so the cops would roll him back and re-cover him, leading to more screams on the same subject. The cops (and most of the crowd) thought this was all hugely funny. Heck, I even laughed myself, and I liked Tim.

What was funny in a different way was how most of us at the reunion clustered in the same old cliques. I mean, here we were 45 years later, with all that life had thrown at us in the interim, and most of us were still clustered in the same old bunches like we were still teenagers.

The greater difference, however, was between those who had stuck around Marion after graduation and those who had ventured out. And those of us who had left Warren G, Harding's boyhood home found more in common with each other than with those who stayed. I suppose it was the same with them. We shared stories of kids and wives (and ex-wives) and being from the same generation, time and place, we had much in common but we were divided, it seemed to me, by our status as hometowners or voyagers (although in my case "refugee" might be more accurate). This is not to judge one group as superior to the other, we were just . . . different.

Rosey's observations were similar to mine and although most folks were very nice and sought us out to chat over dinner, a couple of biddies insulted her for her Southern roots and accent. Some folks never graduate, I guess.

There were readers of the the blog there, even fans of my work with the armed civil disobedience movement, but there were also folks who avoided me as if my hair was on fire. These were mostly the same folks who avoided me as a "radical troublemaker" way back when. What kind of troublemaker, you may ask? Here's a typical anecdote.

One April Fool's Day, the school newspaper of which I was co-editor, came out with a spoof issue wherein we reported "the news" of the day, making up fictitious plot lines while reversing the usual roles -- the preps and the popular jocks became motorheads and delinquents and vice versa. It was all pretty innocuous stuff, but the administration had a cow and ordered us to quit selling them (I think the price was a nickel) and to buy back all the ones already sold.

I have vivid memories of the principal, Robert Barker, storming into the journalism room and issuing this diktat. And i, being the "devious subversive little bastard" that I was (Barker's words), sensed an opportunity. I asked incredulously, "Mr. Barker, are you really ordering us to stop selling the paper?" "You heard me," he replied, "Stop selling this instant."

I. Had. Him.

He took Harold Boncutter, the journalism teacher, in tow down to his office for some harsh words about "violating the dignity of River Valley." Once again Barger had screwed up. He had left us alone, without supervision, with 200 plus copies of the offending edition.

Without a word to the other staff, I scooped them all up and headed for the door. "Hey," somebody called, "you can't sell those." Without missing a step I called back over my shoulder, "Trust me, I won't sell them."

Of course you see where this is going -- yup, I gave them all away. I handed them out to every student I saw in the halls, at their lockers, from the second floor journalism office all the way downstairs to the cafeteria and got rid of the last of them there.

Every. Single. One.

When called into Barger's office (whose nickname was "Sonny," after the leader of the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang, Sonny Barger), I insisted that I had not sold a single copy and that if he had meant to say that they should also not be given away, why he should have said that and I would have complied. He looked like he was about to stroke out, or strangle me, perhaps both, although which before the other was even money.

As I recall, I got a week off school for that one, and my old man gave me a back hand across the face when I got home for once more getting in trouble at school. So I spent a week at home reading military history and science fiction, playing Doors albums and generally having a high old time. Please Brer Fox, don' throw me in dat briar patch. I considered the whole exercise entirely worth the cost.

They broadcast offers over the intercom to buy back even those copies that I had given away, but Mr. Boncutter later said they got fewer than half of the run back. He said that with a smile and never reprimanded me for getting him into trouble. Mr. Boncutter was a big believer in freedom of the press, even the student press. I learned a lot from him. I'm sure he has passed on by now, but wherever he is, I'm also sure the Fast and Furious expose by one of his old students undoubtedly made him smile.

We were -- both of us, Rosey and I -- glad we went and will go next time if God's schedule permits. On the whole we were treated wonderfully and would like to see those same folks again for the 50th.

Oh, yeah, and one more thing. It turns out that one of my former classmates is a 2nd Amendment activist in New Jersey these days and we know some of the same great "I Will Not Comply" resisters there. I offered to her that if they can come up with travel expenses and a couch to sleep on while I'm there, I would be happy to come to that state, give a speech in any venue they choose, and twist old Chris Christie's 2nd Amendment titty.

The Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.

Bob Owens, who never met an open carry demonstration he liked nor loaned his voice to support the ongoing armed civil disobedience movement, gets all warm and fuzzy about someone else's advocacy of We Will Not Comply.

I guess as long as it's just someone else's words he's cool with it. . . as long as it goes no further than words. Can you imagine how he and the other Internet prags like General Sebastian Snowflake would react to THIS if it happened today? They'd piss their pants. By the way, today is the 69th anniversary of the Battle of Athens. Remember to hoist a glass to those brave veterans who rebelled against a corrupt political machine, shot back and, oh by the way, blew the front off the county jail with explosives. It is easy to praise men long dead, whose actions you can safely approve of without risk to yourself. It is another to risk your own ass emulating them, as millions of the armed citizenry are doing in CT, NY, MD, CO, WA and OR. Owens, by this approving column, reveals himself to be among the biggest hypocrites in the firearm rights movement. . . and a spineless weasel as well.

PS: I sent a copy of this post to him so that he would be fully informed. I never say anything about anyone that I wouldn't say to his or her face.

Another State Backs Down After ‘I Will Not Comply’ Uproar

It frustrates the hell out of gun-grabbers to impotently watch their demands for widespread enforcement collide with the reality of what that would entail and — and of what it would provoke. Enforcers and administrators who would have to live with the repercussions of such attempts aren’t about to stick their heads on that block. Gov. Bentley recognized that and eliminated a rule the state has no belly for enforcing in the face of vocal dares for them to try. Look for that to play out more and more as gun rights advocates begin to realize the power they can wield simply by declaring “I will not comply.”

Upon the choice of defecation or blindness.

A bureaucrat contemplates his choices. . .

I just sent this email letter to the head of the Alabama Department of Transportation. I will send him a hard copy by mail today.

From: georgemason1776@aol.com

To: aldotinfo@dot.state.al.us

Sent: Wed, Jul 22, 2015 6:06 am

Subject: re: Your designated "Death Zones" at Alabama Welcome Centers. If you thought all you have to do is weather the switchboard meltdown, ya got another think comin'.

John Cooper, Director

Alabama Department of Transportation

1409 Coliseum Boulevard

Montgomery, AL 36130

re: Your designated "Death Zones" at Alabama Welcome Centers. If you thought all you have to do is weather the switchboard meltdown, ya got another think comin'.

Dear Director Cooper,

I'm sure you're familiar with the current furor over your department's designated "Gun Free Zones" at state welcome centers. In the wake of multiple mass shootings, including the latest in Chattanooga, these are more properly known as "criminal free fire zones," or "victim disarmament zones," or, my personal preference, "Death Zones."

I will not waste your time arguing points of logic or law, however, knowing bureaucracies such as yours are largely impervious to both. Let me explain what comes after you ignore the current switchboard meltdown you have created.

Introductions first, though. My name is Mike Vanderboegh. I am the citizen journalist who, with my friend David Codrea, first broke the story of the Fast and Furious scandal on my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, on the Internet in December 2010. We also got the ATF whistleblowers together with the senators and then with Sharyl Attkisson, then of CBS News, and the rest, as they say, is history. (See Sharyl's recent book Stonewalled --we're in Chapter 2.) I have been a Second Amendment activist for the past 20 years and I am founder of the national Three Percent movement. The Three Percenters have been denounced by none other than that paragon of moral virtue Bill Clinton and I have been a perennial favorite on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of dangerous folks. But then as my friend Kurt Hofmann says, "It is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable."

More to the present point, however, I have been a national leader in the armed civil disobedience "I Will Not Comply" movement that has flouted the post-Sandy Hook anti-firearms laws in the states of CT, NY, MD, CO, WA and OR. I am proud to say that I have broken all those laws publicly over the past two and a half years and each time the state authorities have declined to arrest me and my friends, perhaps because we were armed and in considerable numbers each time we did it. Indeed, the authorities of those states don't seem to know whether to defecate or go blind when confronted with citizens that they have declared to be newly-minted felons. We don't back down, we don't cower when confronted with state threats, and we most assuredly don't act like any class of criminal they have ever seen before.

I tell you this to assure you that the choice of defecation or blindness is currently headed your way. For if you ignore the telephone blitz you are currently experiencing, I will be my honor and my pleasure to lead "I Will Not Comply" armed civil disobedience actions numbering (at least) in the hundreds of participants at every Alabama Welcome Center in the state, as well as in front of your headquarters.

So, I hope you save us the trouble and reverse this dangerous and deadly policy. But if not, you will look back on the switchboard meltdown with fondness for the good old days when bureaucrats thought they could ignore the law and the will of the people.

Sincerely,

Mike Vanderboegh

PO Box 926

Pinson AL 35126

Looks like we need an "I Will Not Comply" armed civil disobedience action right here in Alabama.

Courtesy of David Codrea we have this link:

Alabama Department of Transportation bans firearms at rest stops. Is it legal?

"When we label a gun-free zone, we actually create a killing field for those people who obviously aren’t going to follow a law like that.”

Money is ammunition -- and the Washington state folks need resupply. Improvised Ordnance Manual discs again for sale to support LFA.

As regular readers know, the Washington state activists of Liberty For All are the tip of the spear when it comes to resistance to Bloomberg's Law. They have staged public "we will not comply" demonstrations and most recently, the background-check-free Arms Expo near Yakima. While there, I gave three blocks of instruction, one of them on Improvised Munitions (I hope to recreate these blocks with YouTube videos soon). In order to raise money for LFA, the Expo and Anthony Bosworth's legal defense fund, I sold CDs of my own personal selections of ordnance manuals pertinent to the subject. I have sold some of these CDs in the past to raise funds, including the following Army Materiel Command Engineering Design Handbooks :

AMP 706-150 Interior Ballistics of Guns, Feb. 1965, 156 pp.

AMP 706-210 Fuzes, General and Mechanical, Aug. 1963, 160 pp.

AMP 706-238 Recoilless Rifle Weapon Systems, Jan. 1976, 544 pp.

AMP 706-240 Grenades (Hand and Rifle) Dec. 1967, 97 pp.

AMP 706-245 Ammunition, Section 2, Design for Terminal Effects, July 1964, 207 pp.

AMP 706-251 Muzzle Devices, May 1968, 148 pp.

AMP 706-260 Automatic Weapons, Feb. 1970, 357 pp.

AMP 706-290 Warheads -- General, July, 1964, 222 pp.

In addition, on the discs I sold out in Yakima for LFA, I added:

The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives by Tenney L. Davis, 1943, 490 pp.

TM-9-1300-214 Military Explosives, Sept. 1984.

TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook, 1969.

Now, these manuals are sold, as they say, "for informational purposes only," and I always opened my classes with an "all laws apply" and "don't try this at home" disclaimer. Nonetheless, I will admit of the possibility -- hypothetically speaking -- that some reasonably intelligent future citizen, having already been made a criminal by a predatory, tyrannical government, might be able to use the detailed information in these various manuals in successful furtherance of said "criminality." My purpose in these seminars, after all, is to prove the utter futility of arms control on a unwilling citizenry. A careful reading of these manuals in their particularities reinforce that point quite well.

That said, I would like to offer copies of the Yakima discs for sale to you, my readership, for what I was selling them there for: $20 each, plus a $5 one time shipping charge regardless of quantity. All proceeds apart from actual shipping expenses will be sent to LFA. Please specify in your order whether you would like the money to go to LFA's operations or to the Anthony Bosworth legal defense fund. You may send the orders (or any other contributions you wish to make) to my P.O. Box 926, Pinson, AL 35126 (make checks or money orders out in my name and I will see that the funds are forwarded appropriately) or by using the PayPal button on the right side of this page.

Lastly, if you wish to donate directly to LFA you may do so online at the donate tab at http://lfa3percent.com

Money is ammunition, folks, and the Washingston state LFA folks need resupply.

Statement by Mike Vanderboegh at the opening of the Arms Expo, Yakima WA, 20 June 2015

I'd like to speak to you about the uniqueness of what we are doing here today and the efforts we are making to deal with this unprecedented event and how it effects the way we're handling the competing interests of the participants and the press.  First of all, I'd like to thank y'all for coming and taking your courage in your own two hands and braving the uncertainties to be here.  In looking out at you I see the Founders descendants, only the Founders didn't have to deal with the modern surveillance state.  There were no cameras at the Boston Tea Party, the Green Dragon Tavern where the Sons of Liberty met was not bugged by the secret political police of Ministry of Homeland Security, the Committees of Correspondence did not have their communications photographed by the Royal Mail, General Gage did not possess surveillance drones and Captain Parker was not plagued by agents provocateurs within his own ranks working for the King and determined to discredit the Patriot cause by goading them into firing first.  It is fortunate for us that King George did not possess these instruments of tyranny.  But the fact of the matter is that Barack Obama and his minions do possess them.  So when you come here today, you are, I believe, exhibiting every bit as much courage as the Founders, for you do face these threats and still you refuse to comply.  By your very presence here today, you are sending the message: WE WILL NOT COMPLY WITH THE INSTRUMENTS OF OUR OWN SLAVERY.

But how does this new reality impact us?  You are here.  The press is, or will be, here.  But the fact of the matter is that there's gonna be some good old fashioned Sons of Liberty tyranny-breakin' goin' on here today and the event organizers are doing their best to balance the competing interests of the participants and the press.  How?  Well, first of all we have a First Amendment area set up for the press.  We will be providing folks for them to interview throughout the day but they will not be allowed to roam freely in the event area.  They will, I am sure, try to interview folks going in and coming out of the venue.  Whether you talk them or not is strictly up to you.  But I would urge caution because remember, there's going to be some tyranny-defyin' goin' on here and anything you say, your identity, even your presence, may later be of interest to an unscrupulous state prosecutor who wants to enforce unconstitutional laws.  The other thing is that there are groups out there -- and the Southern Poverty Law Center comes first to mind -- who specialize in masquerading as press, or who circulate through crowds at these events, asking provocative questions whose answers they can later use out of context to discredit people.  Pretending to be participants, they take surveillance photos that they will later provide to their symbiotic agents of social control in the FBI and the DHS.  This should come as no surprise.  It is what they do.  It is not for nothing that we in Alabama call them the Southern Preposterous Lie Center.  But you should expect that.  They are collectivists therefore they are liars.  It is who they are.  You might as well blame a rattlesnake for biting.  But the thing is, they are not as noble as the rattlesnake because they give you no warning before striking.  These folks are copperheads, people, pretending to be what they are not, so be advised.

As for the real press, this situation puts them at some risk as well.  Anything they do here today, interviews, picture taking, video, may later haul them before a grand jury.  This is a direct danger to their First Amendment rights to do their job without threat or interference.  So as much as they might chafe under the restrictions of the First Amendment zone, I hope they understand that we're trying to look out for their own interests as well as yours.  After all, at the Bundy Ranch the press agreed to a First Amendment zone so it's not the first time they've experienced this.  So it's not as great a challenge as, say, asking Hillary Clinton a serious question about Benghazi, or anything.

So, that being said, we will proceed as best we can to have a great event today, to celebrate our rights and responsibilities as free American citizens, and to nullify with our defiance Mike Bloomberg's hateful unconstitutional law, purchased at the cost of his millions.  American jurisprudence has long held that an unconstitutional law is null and void.  But by your presence here today, you will nullify I-594 more directly and immediately.  If it is later found to be "officially" unconstitutional, it will be redundant -- FOR YOU HERE WILL HAVE NULLIFIED IT LONG BEFORE.  And may God bless you for having the courage to be here.  Somewhere, Sam Adams and all the Founding generation are smiling.

Liberty For All Activist Anthony Bosworth needs your help.

Anthony has a status hearing coming up on the 18th in Spokane on his "failure to comply with a lawful order" charge stemming from his detention by DHS thugs at a rally in Spokane. He is currently represented (poorly in my estimation) by a court-appointed attorney. Mindful of David Olofson's tragic experience, we need to get Anthony better counsel. Several Washington state so-called gun rights attorneys have turned up their noses at the case (with one actually suggesting that we contact Alan Gottlieb or the NRA, neither of which would be unhappy at the prospect of an outcome of Anthony ending up UNDER the jail. We are left looking for a Spokane-area civil liberties attorney licensed to practice with experience in the federal system as well as the money to retain him.

At the moment we do not have a P.O. Box for folks to send donations to, and one will be forthcoming. The online address for donations is: https://secure.piryx.com/donate/PJ0dVEbT/Liberty-for-All-/

In the meantime, if you wish to contribute anonymously, just send me your contributions and I will forward them to Anthony Bosworth c/o Liberty For All. And if you have any suggestions for a Spokane-area attorney, let me know as well.

Speaking truth to power. Speech to the We Will Not Comply Rally, Salem OR, 30 May 2015. "It is time, Madam, to pull your head out of your proctology and take a good long look at the new reality you have provoked."

There is an old saying in the Quaker church, “Speak truth to power.” No one seems to know exactly who said it first, or how old it truly is. But I’m going to guess that whoever first said it - as well as most of the folks who have mindlessly repeated it over the years - have never tried themselves to actually speak truth to power. Or if they did, they probably got their asses kicked for their trouble. Because I can tell you from personal experience, the powerful don’t like to have the truth told to them. Not by a long shot do they. And if you actually try to do it, as I have, you’ll find out what I’m talking about after you pick yourself off the floor.

My most recent attempt to speak truth to power came in a letter I wrote to your state Legislators just before they passed this Intolerable Act, this SB-941, seizing state control of the sale of privately held arms in the state of Oregon. You know, not even King George the Third’s tyranny was so grasping as this hateful ‘universal background check” law, this firearm owner registration act. So I spoke truth to power, and, because my time is limited I won’t read you what is now old news but we have made copies available for anyone who wants them down in front here. I can summarize what I told them, in a few paragraphs.

I pointed out that since Sandy Hook in states from Connecticut to New York to Colorado to Washington state, every anti-firearm freedom law that has been passed has been nullified by armed civil disobedience. The lesson of the past two years is clear for anyone paying attention to see -- THERE IS NO UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAW THAT CAN BE PASSED THAT CANNOT BE DEFIED, RESISTED, EVADED, SMUGGLED IN VIOLATION OF AND COMPLETELY NULLIFIED BY ARMED CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.

And that includes the state of Oregon.

I told them that this is dangerous ground, truly dangerous ground. But it is not ground that we chose. I told them that all the law abiding firearm owners of this country wish is to be left alone but that proto-tyrants such as themselves will not leave us alone. I told them that they are the ones who picked this fight, who picked this dangerous ground and I told them that it is ground we have sworn to fight on, and if need be, die on. I told them that the question they have before them is this:

They must ask themselves if it is ground that they themselves are prepared to fight and die on? I asked them if we resisted their 'good intentions,’ how many of us are they willing to see dead in order to enforce their will upon us? And I asked them if once we and our families begin dying at the hands of the state police they send to our doors, can they blame us if their victims return the favor to the people who sent killers operating under color of law? And I told them that there is another law, ancient and unyielding, available to the lowliest slave, and that is Lex Talionis -- an eye for an eye. And I told them that history shows that the distance between laws like this Intolerable Act and Lex Talionis is often unexpectedly short and frequently taken in mortal error. For as the ancient Chinese warned, ‘Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.’ Or, put differently, I told them, that the rule of law protects them from us far more than it protects us from them and their tyrannical intentions.

That is what I told them when I spoke the plain truth to their power.

Of course they ignored it and passed the bill anyway, thus setting the stage for armed civil disobedience in the state of Oregon.

And do you want to know how truly divorced from reality these collectivist tyrants are? I have here in my hand an official document that was required of the legislature before they passed this hateful bit of tyranny. It is entitled, “Fiscal Impact of Proposed Legislation Measure: SB 941–A REVISED”

This is my favorite part. These bureaucratic pukes estimate that they’re going to make 400 grand a year off you sheep who volunteer to be shorn of your traditional rights. In fact they expect to make a tidy profit off of each and every one of you who comply. But here’s where they’re really smoking’ it like a Colorado doper:

The Criminal Justice Commission estimates that this measure MAY result in an additional 5-10 felony convictions per year.

“Five to ten?” FIVE TO TEN?!? I think I’m looking out at quite a few more than five to ten right here, right now. Who do they think they’re kidding? Themselves? Seriously, this purports to be a sober analysis of the cost of this Intolerable Act.

Well, let me speak truth to power one more time by asking the tax paid morons who crafted this hallucination -- WHAT DO YOU THINK THE “FISCAL IMPACT” OF CIVIL WAR IS?!? Because when you send the raid parties to the doors of our homes, when you begin killing those of us who resist your raw appetite for power, that’s what you’re going to get -- civil war. And if it comes to our doors, what makes them think it won’t come to theirs?

And that, my friends, is speaking truth to power but it is also speaking the truth OF power. It is speaking the truth FROM power. For the fact of the matter is that WE in our numbers possess far more power than they do -- if they force us to wield it. Indeed they only have the power that we allow them to have. They can only work their will upon us, they can only enslave us, if we allow them to do so with our own permission by our own failure to act.

But we are here, now. We ARE acting. Look around you. You know in your heart that for every one here today, there are tens, hundreds, even thousands just like us. People who will not comply. And do you hear that? Listen. Do you hear that? That’s the sound of all those who are not here but who are convinced that this time the tyrannical wolves are indeed coming to our doors. Do you hear it? That’s the sound of cleaning rods moving ceaselessly in thousands of rifle barrels as they are scrubbed to get ready for the coming fight.

The fact of the matter is that WE ARE ACTING! So who has the power now? Them or us -- we who outnumber the bureaucrats with badges a hundred to one? Who now needs to worry about the consequences of speaking truth to power? Them or us? We didn’t want to be here, on this dangerous ground. We just wanted to be left alone. But they will not leave us alone. They will not leave us alone. And whose fault is that? Theirs or ours?

So, on the practicalities of “speaking truth to power,” I tell you this home truth that I have learned and let it sink in deep, where all the collectivist lies cannot touch it. Yes, it can be hazardous. But the past two years have shown me that there is one very important exception to that rule. YOU CAN SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER IF YOU ARE ARMED AND HAVE LOTS OF FRIENDS WHO ARE ARMED!

Indeed, there is no greater example of the Founders’ plan of ordered liberty than this, no further proof required. THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS SECURED BY THE SECOND! And anyone who tells you differently is selling something. For the truth is powerful, but ARMED truth is more powerful still.

Finally, I would like to speak to one more person of power, although she possesses far less real power in this situation of her own making than she thinks. And that is your governor.

Governor, this is dangerous ground you have chosen, making tens of thousands of your own hitherto peaceable, law-abiding citizens into criminals. You are messing with the wrong people -- people who you do not know or understand -- people who you barely acknowledge that they even exist. Nor do you want to. You look at us as ciphers in your collectivist scheme, as cartoon caricatures deserving of your scorn. You and your kind call us “gun nuts” and “knuckle draggers,” “gun queers” and “barrel suckers.” You do your best to dehumanize us to justify your repression of people you despise for their individualism, for their independence, for their refusal to embrace your “enlightened” collectivist tyranny.

You dehumanize us to excuse your tyranny, but are we not human? If you cut us do we not bleed? If you shoot us can we not die? Do we not have families? Do we not live and love and believe and worship as the Founders did? You do not know us, nor do you care -- indeed we know and understand you far better than you understand us -- but I tell you that if you try to enforce this tyrannical abomination upon us YOU WILL KNOW US. Oh, yes, you will.

For we will not comply. We will not back down. If you want to enforce this law you will have to kill us. Is that what you want? It is your choice not ours, but as they say, governor, choose wisely before you drink from this poisoned chalice the witch’s brew you have made.

For though you have made us criminals, we are not criminals, at least not like any criminals you’ve ever seen before. I’ll tell you what we are. WE ARE CITIZENS! More to the point we’re AMERICANS! We will not hide. We will not act guilty, for we are guilty of nothing save resisting tyranny. And we will not go gently into your collectivist night and fog!

We are citizens. AMERICAN CITIZENS. And we retain the right of our own refusal. It is our most powerful weapon, this refusal to bow to collectivist tyranny. We are Americans and like the Founders 240 years ago, we refuse to bow to your will.

WE REFUSE! For we are free men and women, just as the Founders were. And you, madam, and your collectivist kind are tyrants. You may be elected tyrants, but you are tyrants nonetheless. The Founders would have called you domestic enemies of the Constitution for that is what you are.

And when you send the raid parties to our doors to work your will upon us and our innocent families, you will discover that this country has long had a remedy for tyrants -- a Second Amendment remedy. So be careful what you wish for, madam, you may get it. I will not mince words, Governor, we do not have the luxury of wasting time on insincerities, so let me be as blunt as necessary: It is time, Madam, to pull your head out of your proctology and take a good long look at the new reality you have provoked.

That is my message to the governor of Oregon, and this is my message to you:

My fellow Americans, THAT is speaking truth to power. That is speaking FROM the reality of a newly discovered power to a lesser power. For the power is ours, my friends, if we but have the courage to grasp it.

They forced us onto this battlefield. We did not wish it. But we are here. If armed civil disobedience is all that they have left us, then let us make sure of one thing. Let’s make sure we win, let us win and secure our traditional liberties for our children’s children and their children after them. Let’s save and restore the Founders’ Republic as they designed it from the clutches of the domestic enemies of the Constitution who are perilously close to successfully overthrowing it for all time.

The political process has failed us. Both parties are two corrupt wings of the same bird of prey. The courts are packed with their own domestic enemies of the Constitution. We have nothing to count on but ourselves alone. And our rifles.

If we lose this fight, we will have lost liberty in this country, perhaps forever. We cannot lose and be faithful to the oaths that we swore. So let us win. We did not want to be here. The traitors to the Founders’ Republic chose this battlefield. They chose us as their intended victims. They have mistaken our previous exasperated forbearance for cowardice. They have mistaken our “law-abidingness” as a sign of weakness. And worse for them, they have mistakenly concluded that tyranny holds no personal threat to tyrants. And out of such mistakes, civil wars are started.

I say again, we cannot lose this struggle and be faithful to the oaths that we swore. So we must resolve, here and now, to win it. The time for irresolution is over. The time for reluctance is past. These petty tyrants have in their own ignorant, mortal error insisted upon it. If they truly think that they can enforce their will upon us with all the deadly force of state violence, bringing a war to OUR doorsteps, dispatching raid parties to where WE live, endangering OUR families with their flash bangs and small arms fire at the cost of a mere “five to ten felonies a year” and at no cost to themselves, they are delusional. But history teaches that even delusional tyrants pay the price of their errors.

For we refuse their benevolent tyranny. WE REFUSE! NOT ONE MORE INCH BACK! And if they insist upon our dead bodies as the righteous payment for refusing their benevolent dictatorship, if they ironically insist upon civil war as the proper panacea for “gun violence,” then -- regardless of how reluctant we are -- they will be shown, after they kill the first of us, what “gun violence” really is -- as the Founders showed King George.

By the passage of this tyrannical law, they have decided to use deadly state violence against all those who refuse them. They have decided that it is worth it to them to bring civil war to our doors, our homes and our families. There is only one outcome consistent with liberty in that case -- LET. -- US. -- WIN. Let us emulate the Founders of 240 years ago. LET’S WIN!

Speaker's List Schedule for the Salem Event on Saturday.

Speaker List as posted on their Facebook page:

"The list of speakers at the event is as follows! If you should be speaking and do not see your name on the list, please get into contact with me (Reuben Eliason) ASAP!"

1. Kit Lange, With The Washington LFA III%

2. Rep Mike Nearman, From the Oregon House of Representatives

3. Casey Runyan, President of the Heirs of Patrick Henry NW

4. Sheriff Glen Palmer, Testified Against SB 941

5. Anthony Bosworth, With The Washington LFA III%

6. Rep Bill Post, From the Oregon House of Representatives.

7. Mike Vanderbough, Inventor of the III%

8. Kevin Starrett, President of the OFF

9. Rick Halle, With the Gun Rights Coalition, and more!

10. Jeff Ford, Oregon Coordinator for the Oathkeepers

11. Jeff Krpof, With Petunia the Spending Pig! (Tentative)

12. Ian Houston, Youtube: TheHossUSMC

13. Tom Mckirgan, With the Oregon III%

14. Stewart Rhodes, Founder and President of the Oathkeepers

15. Gavin Seim, Liberty Activist and organizer for I-594 i will not comply.

The event kicks off at noon Pacific and we will all be held to a five to ten minute limit. I'm looking forward to seeing the Washington state folks, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters out there. If you come to the event, look me up after my speech and we'll try to go to lunch. There will also, obviously, be an opportunity for an evening meet-n-greet over supper. I'll be pulling out of here late morning to rendezvous with my co-driver and then on to the Beaver State.

"Nobody wants to ride to the call of an uncertain trumpet." Oregon "Will Not Comply" (unless the authorities are made nervous, or somebody doesn't like it, and whatever you do don't invite Vanderboegh to speak because he's "too radical.")

"For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" -- 1 Corinthians 14:8.

The wheels are coming off Oregon's SB 941 I Will Not Comply Demonstration even before it gets started, and it is, according to my sources, simply a matter of lack of guts on the part of failed leadership. Many comments at their Facebook page linked above are similar to this:

Hey Sunshine Patriots, Yes, that is what you are right now. I remember when we had the I will not comply rally in WA, PATRIOTS from around the country, including OR, came, and we stood and defied tyranny. Today, the same tyranny is at YOUR doorstep, and yet you still want to cower and appease your masters.

I had offered to come out and speak at their rally, no preconditions demanded. As I explained before, I prefer now to drive rather than fly, and I am willing to spend a week on the road to carry the message to the heathen and faithful alike just for the gas money and a place to lay my head at night. In fact, a Washington state activist has already offered to pick up the gas expense.

I offered, but heard . . . nothing but the echo of my offer. So I started calling folks in Oregon last night after a tip from a reader that the leadership didn't want me there because I was "too radical." Odd for a group that claims it is going to engage in armed civil disobedience. Only a few calls were required to confirm the report. "No guts," said a disgusted Oregon activist. Said another activist, "They claim they want help from all over the country," (especially from the successful Liberty for All folks in nearby Washington state, I was told, because they want at least 3,000 people there), "but they are afraid to deal with the realities of the position they've staked out." People are getting very frustrated, he said, and the leadership is entirely to blame. "Well," I said, "Nobody wants to ride to battle following the call of an uncertain trumpet."

"Yeah," he agreed, "they need to lead, follow or get the hell out of the way." He paused. Then he offered gratuitous testicular advice to certain members of the Oregon leadership by name. Part of the problem, I was told by another source, is that the hard core of the resistance folks in Oregon are currently preoccupied with the BLM-miner situation, leaving the "leadership" roles to people who apparently will not lead and are reluctant to offend anybody. As if armed civil disobedience is ever going to be popular with the politicians and the media. (The reader is permitted to sarcastically snort at this time.)

I don't know how this situation is going to resolve itself, but I can tell you that I am being disinvited by official silence from coming out to speak. Unfortunate.

I wonder if they need a speaker?

Oregon begins to fight back.

SB 941 I Will Not Comply

Demonstration

Saturday, May 30 at 12:00pm in PDT

900 Court Street NE, 160 Salem, OR 97301

David Codrea knocks it out of the park in his Guns Magazine column.

“I Will Not Comply”

The authorities, used to being obeyed, don’t know what to do now that their bluff has been called. They understand they don’t have the resources to go after any but a statistically insignificant percentage of “scofflaws,” no matter how loudly indignant urban newspaper editorials demand they do just that. . .

Still, when an edict passes that there’s no getting around, one we won’t be able to vote our way out of or sue our way around, when we see that the right delayed is, in fact, a right denied, you and I are going to have a decision to make. No one can make it for us.

What will you do if ordered to register your firearms? What will you do if ordered to surrender them because they have been declared “illegal”? Will you obey political and judicial criminals betraying their oaths to the “supreme Law of the Land,” or will you resolve “I will not comply”?

Open Letter to the Oregon House of Representatives: Planning on voting for "Universal Background Checks"? The NRA is the least of your personal worries. The Law of Unintended Consequences, Armed Civil Disobedience, and Lex Talionis.

NOTE: I would be indebted if readers will forward this to anyone they think might benefit from it, especially firearms rights activists in Oregon and blogs and websites read by them. -- Mike.

An Open Letter to the Oregon House of Representatives: Planning on voting for "Universal Background Checks"? The NRA is the least of your personal worries. The Law of Unintended Consequences, Armed Civil Disobedience, and Lex Talionis.

-----Original Message-----

From: georgemason1776@aol.com

To: Rep.JeffBarker@state.or.us; Rep.PhilBarnhart@state.or.us; Rep.GregBarreto@state.or.us; Rep.BrentBarton@state.or.us; Rep.CliffBentz@state.or.us>; Rep.DeborahBoone@state.or.us; Rep.PeterBuckley@state.or.us; Rep.KnuteBuehler@state.or.us; Rep.BrianClem@state.or.us; Rep.JohnDavis@state.or.us; Rep.MargaretDoherty@state.or.us; Rep.SalEsquivel@state.or.us; Rep.PaulEvans@state.or.us; Rep.ShemiaFagan@state.or.us; Rep.LewFrederick@state.or.us; Rep.JoeGallegos@state.or.us; Rep.VicGilliam@state.or.us; Rep.DavidGomberg@state.or.us; Rep.ChrisGorsek@state.or.us; Rep.MitchGreenlick@state.or.us; Rep.JodiHack@state.or.us; Rep.CedricHayden@state.or.us; Rep.DallasHeard@state.or.us; Rep.KenHelm@state.or.us; Rep.PaulHolvey@state.or.us; Rep.ValHoyle@state.or.us; Rep.JohnHuffman@state.or.us; Rep.MarkJohnson@state.or.us; Rep.BillKennemer@state.or.us; Rep.AlissaKenyGuyer@state.or.us; Rep.BettyKomp@state.or.us; Rep.TinaKotek@state.or.us; Rep.WayneKrieger@state.or.us; Rep.AnnLininger@state.or.us; Rep.JohnLively@state.or.us; Rep.CaddyMcKeown@state.or.us; Rep.SusanMclain@state.or.us; Rep.MikeMcLane@state.or.us; Rep.NancyNathanson@state.or.us; Rep.MikeNearman@state.or.us; Rep.RobNosse@state.or.us; Rep.AndyOlson@state.or.us; Rep.JulieParrish@state.or.us; Rep.CarlaPiluso@state.or.us; Rep.BillPost@state.or.us; Rep.DanRayfield@state.or.us; Rep.TobiasRead@state.or.us; Rep.JeffReardon@state.or.us; Rep.GregSmith@state.or.us; Rep.BarbaraSmithWarner@state.or.us; Rep.SherrieSprenger@state.or.us; Rep.DuaneStark@state.or.us; Rep.KathleenTaylor@state.or.us; Rep.JessicaVegaPederson@state.or.us; Rep.JimWeidner@state.or.us; Rep.GeneWhisnant@state.or.us; Rep.GailWhitsett@state.or.us; Rep.JenniferWilliamson@state.or.us; Rep.CarlWilson@state.or.us; Rep.BradWitt@state.or.us

Sent: Sat, May 2, 2015 9:23 am

Subject: Planning on voting for "Universal Background Checks"? The NRA is the least of your personal worries. The Law of Unintended Consequences, Armed Civil Disobedience, and Lex Talionis.

Dear Legislator,

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an unindicted criminal. For the past two years, my friends and I have been breaking the state firearm laws of Colorado, Connecticut, New York, Maryland and, most recently, the state of Washington, that were passed in the wake of Sandy Hook. In those states where standard capacity magazines were banned, we have smuggled in such forbidden items in defiance of those laws. We have hardly made a secret of it. We want the authorities to arrest us. To date, they have not dared. In Connecticut and New York, the non-compliance rates on the registration of firearms and magazines are estimated to be as much as 85% to 90%. In New York, county sheriffs have put the state police on notice that if they try to enforce the SAFE Act in their jurisdictions that THEY will be arrested, not their intended victims. The authorities of those states have made noises that they will enforce these unconstitutional laws. But again, to date THEY HAVE NOT DARED.

In Washington state, Michael Bloomberg bought himself a "universal background check" law much like the one you are about to pass. In response, two thousand of that state's uncompromising firearm owners gathered on the steps of the state capitol in Olympia -- armed to the teeth -- and defied Bloomberg's law despite threats that they would be arrested if they did. The rally, one of the largest pro-firearm rights demonstrations ever held in Washington, came off without a hitch and the "lawbreakers" were complimented by the state police afterward for the professional way that they conducted themselves. I know, I was there. Why did they not enforce Bloomberg's law? Because they did not dare. In June, a firearms expo will be held in Yakima by the group Liberty For All -- a background-check-free gun show -- testing further the resolve of the state authorities to enforce a plainly unenforceable law. Will they dare? We will find out, because WE WILL NOT COMPLY.

The lesson of the past two years is clear for anyone paying attention to see -- THERE IS NO UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAW THAT CAN BE PASSED THAT CANNOT BE DEFIED, RESISTED, EVADED, SMUGGLED IN VIOLATION OF AND COMPLETELY NULLIFIED BY ARMED CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.

And that includes the state of Oregon.

This is dangerous ground, truly dangerous ground. But it is not ground that we chose. All the law abiding firearm owners of this country wish is to be left alone. But collectivist control freaks like Michael Bloomberg will not leave us alone. Still, pass what laws they like, they cannot escape from the Law of Unintended Consequences. In Connecticut, the state legislators who voted for their Intolerable Act discovered that when I posted on my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, a list of their names, home addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. I discovered something from their hysterical reaction -- people who like to put other people on lists (you know, like the bill you are considering on Monday) do not react well when they themselves get put on a list.

Which brings us to you, today. The NRA has sent out a legislative alert. You will no doubt be contacted by many, many outraged citizens. Let me reassure you, this is the least of your personal worries. What you must remember is that we understand intimately, even if you choose to ignore it, that the velvet lies of your "good intentions" are wrapped around the iron fist of the threat of state violence against those who do not comply. Now this is true of any law you pass -- all are backed up by the threat of arrest and incarceration and, yes, death at the hands of the state police if anyone resists your good intentions and refuses the honor of arrest and incarceration. The thing is, we are not your average criminals. In fact, we are not criminals at all, no matter if the last election has placed you in the position of power to declare us so. However, if you make us criminals, we will be the very best, most successful criminals we can be. For we will not comply.

For there is a difference, as I have said in speeches in the past, between "the law" and the rule of law as codified by the Founders' Republic in the Constitution. Our natural, God-given and inalienable rights are not subject to negotiation, dilution, diminution or infringement, by you or anyone else. For us, it is the height of cruel irony that those of us who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law find ourselves required to become "lawbreakers" to remain in fidelity to that oath. Again, this is not ground we chose. Michael Bloomberg and his collectivist fellow travelers, domestic enemies of the Founders' Constitution, picked this ground. It is ground we have sworn to fight on, and if need be, die on. The question before you today is this: Is it ground that YOU are prepared to actually fight and die on? If we resist your 'good intentions," how many of us are you willing to see dead in order to enforce your will upon us? And once we and our families begin dying at the hands of the state police you send to our doors, can you blame us if your victims return the favor to the people who sent killers operating under color of law?

This is not ground we chose. It is deadly dangerous ground. By your votes on Monday, we will discover if it is ground that YOU choose for Oregon. But kindly remember the words of John Locke, who wrote them nearly a century before the Founders wrote the Constitution:

“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence.”

For there is another law, ancient and unyielding, available to the lowliest slave, and that is Lex Talionis -- an eye for an eye. And history shows that the distance between laws like the one you are considering passing on Monday and Lex Talionis is often unexpectedly short and frequently taken in mortal error. For as the ancient Chinese warned, "Be careful what you wish for, you may get it." Or, put differently, the rule of law protects you from us far more than it protects us from you and your tyrannical intentions.

Again I ask, how many of us are you willing to see dead to enforce your "benevolent" will upon us? Understand in advance, if you wish to enforce such a law, you will have to kill us. FOR WE WILL NOT COMPLY. We will greet it with the same tactic that we used to nullify every such law passed since Sandy Hook -- armed civil disobedience. And who do you suppose, after the bodies are all stacked up and the butcher's bill calculated, that history will judge to be guilty for passing such a dangerous, unenforceable "law" that is absolutely destructive of the constitutional rule of law? Us? Or the people who passed it?

Sincerely,

Mike Vanderboegh

PO Box 926

Pinson, AL 35126

"Take a look at yourself and inquire, what have I done today to secure liberty?" Maria Bosworth on the removal of the communist Chinese flag.

FOX News reports on WA commie flag removal: Patriots Helped Take Down a Communist China Flag at a US State Capitol

Received this via email from Maria Bosworth in WA state.

Standing on our state capitol that day, as my eyes gaze upon the flag of a communist country ,flying in a place of honor, I was brought to tears. When did our country forget what it meant to have pride? Pride in what our flag represented. I remembered a story, a story about men standing and giving their lives so that the flag would not fall under the constant bombing of war ships from the British. The bombs bursting in air, and yet the flag still stood! Men, women running into the line of fire, to make sure that our flag remained in the air! How heart wrenching it was to see that red flag flying next to OURS! Our flag represents freedom and liberty! Men gave their lives to secure those freedoms, and yet a flag that is in every way opposite of the very meaning of what we represent is flown next to ours, at the same height as ours!

Bye the dawns early light, in the mist of the early morning fog, patriots demanded the communist flag be removed! It did not take hundreds, or even fifty people! we did it with nine people!

We need to stand for liberty even if we stand alone! One leader stands out more then a thousand followers! When you ask your self what can I do, remember one person can make a difference, one person can change the path of others, one person can change the out come of history!

As mothers, and fathers, sisters, and brothers it is our duty to secure liberty and freedoms for the next generations! We stand not on our own glory, praise or ego, we stand because we are called to. It is in who we are that demands us to stand! We can not, as patriots, stand idly by as tyranny spreads like a virus across this nation! We must all stand together, whether it be nine people or nine hundred people! We must set aside our differences, petty egos, and childish arguments, to defend our common goal.

So I ask that you take a look at yourself and inquire, what have I done today to secure liberty?

We will not comply.

WE WILL STAND

LFA III%