Author Archives: Joe

Interesting times for this weekend

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Barb’s brother and sister in-law (Dow and Katy) were supposed to come in from Chicago tonight. But poor weather back east is going to keep them out until tomorrow. Sister Susan from Sacramento was supposed to ride from Spokane here with them. So she is going to be stuck in Spokane until they get in about tomorrow noon. And we are supposed to get up to three inches of snow here.

Xenia called from school today and said she was sick. I picked her up and brought her home.  Said she is the Queen of Snot. Lots of sneezing. Hope we don’t all get it and give it to all our guests.

Boomershoot 2004 ads

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Today I placed an ad on google for Boomershoot 2004.  I used some key words and phrases that didn’t show the event in the search listing.  It turns out virtually no one was advertising with these words and I was able to get very cheap rates for at or near the top of the listings.  It’s expected to only cost about $35/month for an estimated 25 clicks a day or so.  Shotgun news is costing me about $50/month and resulting in about 10 clicks per day.  In addition I only pay for actual clicks on google whereas I have to pay for the Shotgun news banner ad whether I get any clicks or not.  We’ll see if they will pay for themselves or not.  The web logs give me pretty good tracking information so I can see how well each of the “Ad Campaigns” do.  The National Rifleman classifed ad will come out soon too.  I really need to fill up the Boomershoot this year to pay for the new explosives magazine.

Gay marriage in MA is inevitable

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Today it was reported in the Washington Post:

The highest court in Massachusetts declared today that the state legislature may not offer “civil union” instead of marriage for same-sex couples, in a ruling that guarantees that the first state-recognized same-sex marriages in U.S. history can take place beginning in mid-May.

As pointed out in the article this will be a big debate point in the coming election and cause further division in the politics of this nation.  But it is a major step forward for freedom.  The other states will have to deal with that pesky “full faith and credit“ clause in the constitution that says they must recognize the licenses of other states.  Which will bring up the issue of concealed carry licenses.  Lots of implications here.  Glad to see it.

Now if MA would just get rid of bunch of their draconian gun laws.  Why is it that people seem to only want one or two particular flavors of freedom at a time?  I can’t help but think that people don’t want freedom at all, or at least they only want it for themselves and not everyone else.

Boomershoot 2004 entries from PA and TX

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I got a call this morning from someone in Pennsylvania.  They were about to make their airplane reservations for Boomershoot 2004 and wanted to make sure there was still openings for the event.  I told him yes, there shouldn’t be a problem if it gets here the next week or so.  Pennsylvania!  First time for that state to be represented.  Cool.

Entries are actually running a bit behind normal so I’m pleased to hear people are in the process of signing up even if I haven’t received the entries yet.  I got a couple emails this week saying “the check is in the mail” so that should help get me to the point where I can order the rest of the materials needed for this year’s event.

I got an email from someone suggesting the targets have various color stripes or other markings on them to aid in the spotter/shooter dialog.  Good suggestion.  We knew it was a problem and planned to put up colored or marked stakes of some sort in the target area to use as landmarks.  But this would be even further help.

Kim du Toit put a link on his blog to http://www.boomershoot.org and doubled the number of page views overnight.  A couple of other blogs put up links as well, apparently after reading Kim’s post.  See http://web.tampabay.rr.com/coastwatcher/ for example.  I am very pleased.  Thank you Kim.  You will be our first representative from Texas.  And it was most pleasant listening to your South African accent when we talked on the phone.  I’m looking forward to seeing you and your family in May.

The U.K. is slip-sliding away.

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From the BBC News — Blunkett plans tougher terror law

Home Secretary David Blunkett wants new anti-terrorism laws to make it easier to convict British terror suspects.  He has discussed lowering the standard of proof required by a court and introducing more pre-emptive action.

Just a couple of steps further.  They already given up the right to be confronted with charges and a speedy trial.  From the same article:

The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 allows foreigners who are suspected international terrorists to be detained indefinitely without charge or trial in the event their lives would be in danger if they were dported.

Britain is holding 14 foreign terror suspects under this law, based on evidence which is tested in secret.

They are planning for secret trials and inability to confront your accusors, again from the same article:

Evidence in the new trials would be kept secret from the defendants to protect MI5, MI6 and GCHQ intelligence sources, Mr Blunkett said.

And they have already given up part of the right to remain silent, from the BBC guide to suspect rights: 

The previously important right of silence was amended by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Courts can now draw conclusions from your silence…

And of course everyone knows they gave up their right to keep and bear arms years ago.  It’s likely that it won’t be long before they realize the right to keep and bear arms is what guarantees the preservation of other inalienable rights.  Now would be a good time to review The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek again.  Hayek spells out why socialism is a slippery slope whose inevitable conclusion is the loss of economic and person freedom resulting in tyranny.  It’s not that the proponents of the socialist system were intending for that to happen, but that it is a necessary conclusion of it’s implementation.  And that the good intentioned, probably trustworthy, early promoters, will be pushed out by those who crave the power and will abuse it.  It’s excellent reading material.

State regulated nursing homes

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I got a call from Barb today.  She was pretty upset.  The nursing home where her mother, Joy, lives was audited by the state of Idaho and was told they have too high a percentage of patients that have railing on their bed.  Barb’s mom was one of the residents that would have their railings removed.  Joy has fallen out of bed three times and in one of those falls broke her hip.  A railing seems to be more than just a good idea, but the state has some sort of quota system and Joy was going to pay the price.  Barb called the state inspector and was told, “You are very hostile.  Calm down.”  Barb managed to get some of the anger out of her voice but she still expressed her view of what the inspector should do in regards to the stupid regulations.  The inspector told her that maybe her mother could have her bed on the floor instead of having a railing.  For some reason this helpful suggestion was not received with as much enthusiasm as might have been expected.  Another suggestion was that we take her out of the state licensed nursing home.  This is actually a rather good suggestion if it wasn’t for the fact that the state takes so much of our money in taxes that we cannot afford private care for her.  We could have provided far better care for her if our tax rate was 1/2 of what it currently is.

I explained this is the sort of thing that happens with government “provided” anything.  They take our money from us because they know how to spend it better than we do.  They then spend it according to the whims of the “central committee” and the central committee in their infinite wisdom will come up with rules such as what we are experiencing in this case.  It happens all the time.  It’s not just health care, it’s nearly everything the central committee does.

Vote Liberatarian, the party of principle. 

Gun control news

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I follow the politics of the anti-freedom movement in this country with particular attention paid to gun control.  One of my tools for doing this is google’s news alerts.  It’s a wonderful tool.  This morning I got a notice about Gun control reappears as political issue. Heavy sigh… It included this little nugget:

…the recently enacted omnibus appropriations bill rolls back the government’s timetable in tracking illegal guns. Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) sponsored in the provision in the House. It requires the FBI to destroy gun-buyer records 24 hours after a weapon is sold. The Brady law had required the FBI to retain such records for up to 90 days.

This is a commonly held belief but it is false.  The original Brady Act said:

(2) If receipt of a firearm would not violate section 922 (g) or (n) or State law, the system shall–
(A) assign a unique identification number to the transfer;
(B) provide the licensee with the number; and
(C) destroy all records of the system with respect to the call (other than the identifying number and the date the number was assigned) and all records of the system relating to the person or the transfer.

Item (C) was interpreted by the pro-freedom activists to mean they would be destroyed almost immediately.  This would allevate the concerns about creating a Federal gun owner database by default.  The Brady Act would not have passed without this provision.  The FBI didn’t destroy the records.  Janet Reno said they were being held for “audit purposes“.  Unfortunately they were also being used for other things as well.  One would have thought that if they were by law to be destroyed then they could not be legally used for tracking down gun owners that passed the initial background check.  But this wasn’t the case.  Law enforcement was using the records for far more than “audit purposes“.  The new law restores the original intent and the big fuss this created by the new law should be that law enforcement was violating the law to begin with and another law was necessary to curb them.

I wrote the author of the article a polite letter explaining things and suggested he should check any facts obtained from the gun control people carefully.  They are frequently misleading in their statements — for example there is no such thing as a “Gun Show Loophole”.  All the laws and regulations that apply at a gun shop also apply at a gun show.

Philosophy Question for the Winter of ’98*

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Q: What are the proper limits to government?  Can it be determined by popular vote?  Or are there limits that absolutely must be respected?

By this I mean, suppose that 90% of the people voted to kill all but 2% of the male babies at birth and just keep those few around for breeding stock.  Would it be acceptable to do so?  90% is more that enough to get a constitutional amendment through to overcome any sort of impediment like that.  So what if 10% of the people didn’t want most of their male children killed at birth.   The majority rules right?  What if it was blacks, native Americans, whites, Jews, Mormons, Catholics, or some other racial/religious group that was being exterminated by popular vote?  How is it that we should determine just what our inalienable rights are?  Some people think the Bill of Rights in the US constitution are a pretty good enumeration.  But then there are those that have a problem with the Second Amendment.   And a few that have a problem with the fourth — due process sort of gets in the way occasionally in the “War on Drugs”.  But just a little, we have overlooked it for the most part.

I see our Bill of Rights under extreme attack from our government.  Is it essential to freedom?  Or just a bunch of loopholes for criminals to make a mockery of our laws?

Send me email. I want to know. If you say it’s okay, I’ll publish your response here.

*This originally appear on a web page of mine. I am moving it here for better visibility and archival.—Joe November 5, 2010

The great bullet debate*

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Stopping power — in the movies and on TV you see humans being shot by handguns and blasted across rooms and through windows.   The bad guys almost always die immediately, and the good guys almost always live long enough to give some final words to a friend or loved one.  It doesn’t happen that way.  If the bullet has enough momentum to slam the person being shot up against the wall or flat on their back then the person shooting the gun would experience the same momentum in the reverse direction.  Handguns do recoil — but it’s manageable.   If the person shooting the gun doesn’t get slammed up against the wall the person getting shot won’t either.

“Stopping Power” is not easily measured and has been highly debated for many years. I have done a bunch of literature research and have answered the question sufficiently for myself.  This page is to help you decide for yourself.

Basically there are two sides to the debate (Greg Hamilton of Insights has a third, which I suspect has a lot of merit).  If you are interested in the great pistol bullet debate take a look at Dale Towert’s Stopping Power Page [the original link is dead but this can be substituted—Joe July 2, 2013] as a starting point. Then get a copy of Duncan MacPherson’s book Bullet Penetration for the other side of the debate.  See also:http://www.firearmstactical.com/wound.htm and http://zeno.chs.du.edu/station/wrong.htm [I have no substitute for this dead link—Joe].

If you are not interested in an overview of the debate, just skip to my conclusions.

Some people select their cartridge on the basis of momentum. In IPSC events momentum is rewarded via what is called Power Factor.   It’s not really power in the physics sense, but that is what they call it.   Power Factor is mass in grains times velocity in feet per second divided by 1000.   IPSC has three classifications for the guns used in matches, Minor is >= 125 PF, Major is >= 175 PF, and “get out of here” is < 125 PF.  Most .45 loads will make Major.  9 x 19,  .38 Special, and many .40 S&W loads only make minor.  This tends to reward heavy but slower moving bullets more than light weight, fast moving bullets.

Some people select their cartridge on the basis of energy.  I’ve seen some States tell hunters their cartridge selected must have a minimum amount of energy in order to take a particular type of game.   This tends to reward the light weight fast moving bullets.

One side says fast (light weight) bullets, if they penetrate “deep enough”, are best. This side thinks that if you get a bullet to hit at > ~1300 fps the temporary cavity causes it’s own damage in the form of blood pressure spikes, and temporary nervous system disruptions in various forms to cause things to happen which will be out of proportion to that which can be explained by blood loss and nerve damage.  The measure of this effect is closely approximated with bullet energy.

The other side says heavy bullets, if they don’t over penetrate, are best. It’s all blood loss and nerve damage (brain and spinal column being target rich environments for nerves). The ‘special’ effects of high speed bullets don’t show up until you get to rifle velocities (~2000 fps).  Hence the heavy bullet people want the largest volume of tissue traversed by the bullet. This is nearly always accomplished by the heaviest bullet your handgun can shoot with maximum weight retention after expanding to approximate double it’s original diameter.   This effect is closely related to bullet momentum (actually it’s roughly proportional to the bullet weight times the velocity to the 0.6 power).

Greg Hamilton’s hypothesis is that tissue is destroyed is the measure of stopping power.  But there is more to tissue being destroyed than just crushing (the “permanent cavity” in the vocabulary of the debaters) as the bullet travels through the tissue. He claims that when the tissue has to move out of the way at a speed faster than the speed of sound in that tissue the cellular membranes will be destroyed by the shock wave. If you remember the speed of sound in water is about 5000 fps and since it’s probably about the same in animal flesh you might wonder how any conventional bullets can manage this. The answer is the flesh must move at least partially perpendicular to the path of the bullet. This can greatly speed up the velocity. To illustrate: A water skier can easily average twice the speed of the boat by skiing from back and forth from side to side, covering twice the total distance the boat does in the same time. A FMJ bullet has a front end that basically doesn’t speed up the flesh as much as a flat nosed or an expanded HP bullet does. The FMJ pushes the flesh aside, the flesh stretches and finally ruptures enough to allow the passage of the bullet. Nearly all at a speed less than that of sound in the tissue.  The flesh then contracts back to nearly it’s original position. A jagged, flattened bullet causes lots of high speed movement of the flesh, destroying nearly everything in it’s path.  Hence Greg hypothesis is that neither energy or momentum is the critical item.  Almost any bullet that expands well and penetrates into the vital organs will work well.

Conclusions

I go with what everyone agrees on, if you are concerned about “stopping power” your efforts should be spent on the range practicing rather than looking for a “magic bullet”. I have heard this expressed many ways, in IPSC they say, “You can’t miss fast enough to win”. Others have said, “A hit from a .22 is more effective than a miss from a .44.” Greg Hamilton (somewhat tangential) says “Do you know how to double the effectiveness of any bullet? Put another round through your target.”  A more to the point quote from Hamilton is:

The entire discussion of “stopping power” is both stupid and irrelevant.   Statistics cannot be applied to individuals. People that need to be shot need to be shot soon and often. They need to be shot until they run out of fluid, brains, or balls.

If during the time you were reading the latest “stopping power” article you were instead practicing to save your life you would be far, far ahead.

Greg Hamilton
May 08, 1998

For self-defense your first criteria in a handgun cartridge should be reliability in your firearm. Next, it should be the largest caliber you can shoot quickly and comfortably.  Next it should be accurate enough to get the job done (two inch groups versus four or six inches groups at 25 yards probably doesn’t matter). Next it should be of expanding technology, rather than FMJ — reliability may be an issue in this trade off. If you really feel the need you can test the expanding characteristics of your bullet very easily. A couple of milk jugs filled with water will closely duplicate the ability of a bullet to expand in flesh — BUT NOT IT’S ABILITY TO PENETRATE. Put a layer or two of clothing (or other material you think you might be shooting through) in front of the first jug. Some HP’s will plug up and act as a FMJ after acting as a cookie cutter going through some materials.  Some types of obstructions will damage and slow bullet down enough to cause it to fail to expand. Car doors and window glass are good examples of this.

*This originally appear on a web page of mine. I am moving it here for better visibility and archival.—Joe July 2, 2013

Philosophy Question for the Fall of ‘97*

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Q: How do you determine right from wrong? Truth from falsity?

Do you read it in books? If so, is it the law and science books? Religious books such as the Bible, Koran, Talmud, and other sacred (to some people) writings? Or from listening to some authority figure such as your parents, teachers, government officials or religious leaders? Do you do a poll and see what the majority think is the truth or moral this week/year/decade? How do you know those sources are correct? Didn’t you have to make a determination about their correctness? And if you verified 80, 90, or 99% of some source as being correct, do you think that makes everything from that source correct? Couldn’t it just a well be the trick of someone evil to give you information that is almost correct, except in some critical item?

If you don’t know how to determine right from wrong or truth from falsity, how can you justify voting? Or rearing children? Or even giving your opinion on something. It seems this is a very critical question. Yet, when I ask this question (the short version) of people face to face, they tell me, “Yeah, I know right from wrong.” But when pressured just a little bit, they fall apart. They are completely at a loss to describe a sure-fire method of determining, what seems to me, something that is incredibly important.

A: Other than to say they read it, no one sent me email answering this question.  The answer seems very clear to me.  George Smith in his book Atheism — the Case Against God said it most succinctly:

… we may indicate three minimum requirements that must be fulfilled before any belief can claim the status of knowledge: (a) a belief must be base on evidence; (b) a belief must be internally consistent (i.e. not self-contradictory); (c) a belief cannot contradict previously validated knowledge with which it is to be integrated. If a belief fails to meet any or all of these criteria, it cannot properly be designated as knowledge.

Question your sources and your authorities on these criteria.  These three criteria will never fail you.  There may be new data which becomes available and invalidates previous conclusions, but that doesn’t mean that until that new data was available the answer you had was the best approximation to the truth that was available at the time.  And you can’t do any better than that.

*This originally appear on a web page of mine. I am moving it here for better visibility and archival.—Joe, November 5, 2010

Philosophy Question for the Month of July ’97*

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Question: When, if ever, is it morally justifiable to disobey the law?

This is a 4th of July question, Boston Tea Party, and that sort of thing. And also, I think this is particularly relevant at this time because of the Timothy McVeigh trial. In the most general case I think it is possible that some people (certainly McVeigh and Terry Nichols, assuming they did it) do not think a bombing of this type is necessarily wrong.

At what point would YOU decide to disobey the law if the laws and the government enforcing them depart from your beliefs in regard to morality? For example, would you have been willing to hide Jews in Germany in the late ’30s? Would you be willing to take up arms and shoot at the Gestapo as they dragged the Jews who lived next door away? Or if the Gestapo (or what ever it might be called in your time and place) were about to drag you and your family away? Or help runaway slaves during the 1850’s and early 1860’s in the US? Or would you as a member of the US army fired upon Native American women and children after being ordered to? Or what if our government required everyone to have an electronic identification device imbedded in his or her skull? Or your SSN tattooed on your wrist? Or required that you (as a non-criminal — until now) register with the police every time you left one jurisdiction and entered a new police jurisdiction (it could made easy with today’s technology — magnetic encoded credit card like badges at the county lines and town borders — that sort of thing)? Or required that you show positive ID for every purchase you made (makes it hard to conceal your feeding the family of ‘Jews’ living in your attic). Or what if the police start making “routine checks” of your vehicles for drugs, politically incorrect weapons (the UK has outlawed many types of knifes), and other contraband? What about registration of your firearms? Confiscation of your firearms? Possession of more than X rounds of ammunition? Or what if the government required that you obtained permission before having a child? Or required that your child be taught a version of history that you believed was incorrect? Or prohibited you from viewing certain materials? Or prohibited you from criticizing the government? Or prohibited you from private meetings (a public “watchdog” must be in attendance and the entire meeting video taped) of more than X people? Or declared that mere possession of explosive components was a crime (never mind that kitchen flour can be made to explode)? Or a tax on singles/gays/non-whites/whatever? Or (il)legal abortion? There are people who believe abortion is murder. Is their claim that much different than believing Jews are human and qualified to enjoy the same rights as other humans even though the law claims they are not (US law on abortion, compared to 1939 German laws regarding people of Jewish descent)? Would you break the law to stop someone from having a legal abortion? Others claim abortion is a right. If abortion was illegal in your state or country would you help someone to obtain one in another state or country even if such action were against the law?

Basically, at what point, if any, do you, as a freedom loving person, declare you are willing to disobey authority and potentially suffer the consequences? And further, at what point, if any, are you willing to use force to exercise that freedom or prevent the arrest and/or prosecution of people trying to exercise their freedoms? And if you are, at some point, willing to use force, what form would that force be?

Or perhaps you are one who says, “the law is the law”, or “peace at any cost”. And if so, what would you say to Patrick Henry, who declared, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Or to Samuel Adams who in 1776 said:

If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

And if so, what would you say to the families of the millions who fought the British, the Japanese, the Germans, and all the others and ended up giving their lives for your freedom? Would you tell them, “Freedom is just not that important to me?” Or, “I wouldn’t give it up to another government, but if my government takes it from me, that’s okay?”

Answers: As if there is a definitive answer. Heavy sigh. Okay, I read a bunch of books, still more to read so as I get more information on the subject that I think is worthwhile I’ll update this.

Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi said that under no circumstances should violence be used. In fact he did things such as call off exceedingly successful, peaceful, strikes because he wanted the authorities to be able to save face. Interesting technique, yes? Another thing he did, when he disobeyed the law he would tell the authorities exactly what he was going to do. He felt that time in prison was well spent, he got to rest, pray, and meditate. And Gandhi was enormously successful in getting changes in the laws. He also believed the Jews in Nazi Germany could “… score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity.” All without a single violent act on their part. Believable? Read on. This was first published in Harijan on November 11, 1938. I found it in Gandhi The Power of Pacifism, pages 146 and 147:

If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon…. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription ere offered, he or they cannot be worse of than now…. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary sacrifice, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving that Jehovah had wrought deliverance for the race even at the hands of a tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror….

If I had to summarize Gandhi’s method in a way that most people could grasp just a glimmer of what he was talking about it would be as follows:

Gandhi’s philosophy was to have no fear. Fear of absolutely nothing. Not fines, nor loss of property, nor prison, nor torture, nor death. He acquired no property. He made his own clothes (for reasons related to the exploitation of factory workers) right down to the spinning of the yarn. When you are in that position, in many ways you make yourself nearly invulnerable to authority. They cannot successfully threaten you. They can only physically restrain you (death being the ultimate physical restraint). And even government authority has limits to its resources. How many people can they physically restrain at once?

Interesting, yes? You become powerful as you are stripped of all possessions — as long as you have no fear. There are hints that the Germans thought he was onto something, the same book, on page 146 claims, “After the publication … in 1938 …the Nazi press launched a fierce attack against Gandhi.”

What I have been unable to find from my readings of Gandhi is some method for objectively determining what laws should be disobeyed. There are vague things about injustice, and lots of examples of things he protested against, but nothing (yet) that helps answer the fundamental question.

Katie

Katie, my wife’s sister-in-law is very much involved in Catholicism (she would be a priest if the religion would allow it). I asked about her thoughts on when it was morally justified to disobey the law. Again it was vague on the when and specific on the non-violence. Also of interest is that apparently the Church has made some fairly recent changes in their doctrine about war. There used to be a concept of a “just war”. If some specific conditions were met then a war could be considered “just” if it were waged in a proper manner (no action taken against civilians, that sort of thing). They no longer have such a doctrine. Something about nuclear weapons, fallout, etc. I asked about personal defense. Is it acceptable to use force to defend yourself or other innocent people against someone that is attempting to physically harm you. She said that was left up to the individual. It’s not a sin to do that. I found this odd. If an individual could use force to defend themselves, then wouldn’t it be acceptable for a group of people to use force? And if a group can use force to resist why can’t a government wage war against an aggressor? I didn’t have the opportunity to get into that with her, perhaps another time.

 

The Lawyer’s Second Amendment Society

The Lawyers Second Amendment Society (LSAS) recently had two articles  in The Liberty Pole about “Tripwires” (see My Tripwire and Ultimate Tripwire).  Great reading.  Basically, in My Tripwire the authors say censorship is the ultimate tripwire.  As long as we may speak, publish, and associate freely, we have the means to resist tyranny.  They claim firearms confiscation is easy to evade and therefore is only secondary in importance as a tripwire.   As long as we have the means to expose the truth we have the means to change the system.  They go on to say the basis of when to resist is as follows:

The enforcement of any laws–local,state or federal–that through the action or inaction of the courts makes nugatory the individual means of resisting tyranny, justifies resistance.

If you have to look up “nugatory” don’t feel bad.  I had to also — it means “Having no force, invalid”.  Thus, they claim, firearms confiscation may be a sufficient tripwire because it will make resistance impossible.

In Ultimate Tripwire a different author comments on the previous article and says:

… there are two additional and significant “tripwires:” (1) Positive Identification of the enemy, and (2) A strict constructionist leader.

This is because of his concern for anarchy.  Only if resistance is focused on the problem and a solution will resistance be preferable to the problem.

John Ross

Unintended Consequences by John Ross:  Another expression of basically the same viewpoint that I have heard expressed, most recently via an email discussion with someone, is put forth in the book Unintended Consequences.  Basically it is this: When one’s ability to resist is under assault, that is the time to fight to the teeth. One of the major characters in the book give the analogy of someone inviting you to ride with him in his van.  Perhaps even insisting that you take the ride with him.  When you get to the van he asks you to put handcuffs on that secure you to the van.  It might be entirely innocent, but can you take the chance?   If you accept the invitation you will be without significant recourse if it turns into a hostile situation.  You must resist while you still have the means.

Turner Diaries

How about The Turner Diaries? Check out my review of The Turner Diaries on Amazon.com.  Basically the main character “Earl Turner” joins the underground and violently resists the federal government when they arrest him for possession of a firearm.  He and the others in his organization blame their political situation on the Jews and non-whites — which must be exterminated.  Non-whites are sub humans and therefore are a genetic pollutant to the human race.  Laws which protect them are “racial treason”.   This author needs to do some thinking on my question for the fall of ’97 — How do you determine right from wrong? Truth from falsity? Because, if he still believes as the main characters in the book do, he doesn’t have a clue.

Joe Huffman

My thoughts are probably best described as a mixture of Gandhi and Ross.  Quite a combination huh?  There are injustices that demand action.  Those actions should be non-violent if at all possible.  But, there are cases when violence is fully justified.  I think Winston Churchill says it best for me:

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

Email response

I think this person obtained this from someplace else, and I’m not sure he/she wants their name on it anyway, so I’ll leave it as anonymous.

Remember the lessons of the 20th Century:

Lesson No. 1:

If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and take you someplace you don’t want to go because of who you are or what you think– kill him. If you can, kill the politician who sent them. You will likely die anyway, and you will be saving someone else the same fate. For it is a universal truth that the intended victims always far outnumber the tyrant’s executioners. Any nation which practices this lesson will quickly run out of executioners and tyrants, or they will run out of it.

 

Lesson No. 2:

If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and confiscate your firearms– kill him. The disarmament of law-abiding citizens is the required precursor to genocide.

 

Lesson No. 3:

If a bureaucrat tells you that he must know if you have a firearm so he can put your name on a list for the common good, or wants to issue you an identity card so that you may be more easily identified– tell him to go to hell. Registration of people and firearms is the required precursor to the tyranny which permits genocide. Bureaucrats cannot send soldiers to doors that aren’t on their list.

 

Lesson No. 4

Believe actions, not words. Tyrants are consummate liars. Just because a tyrant is “democratically elected” doesn’t mean that he believes in democracy. Reference Adolf Hitler, 1932. And just because a would-be tyrant mouths words of reverence to law and justice, or takes a solemn oath to uphold a constitution, doesn’t mean he believes such concepts apply to him. Reference Bill Clinton, among others. The language of the lie is just another tool of killers. A sign saying “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes You Free) posted above an execution camp gate doesn’t mean that anybody gets out of there alive, and a room labeled “Showers” doesn’t necessarily make you clean. Bill Clinton notwithstanding, the meaning of “is” is plain when such perverted language gets you killed. While all tyrants are liars, it is true that not all political liars are would-be tyrants– but they bear close watching. And keep your rifle handy.

*This originally appear on a web page of mine. I am moving it here for better visibility and archival.—Joe November 5, 2010