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Category: Arms

The tools of liberty

SA, first and foremost

A cautionary tale

I believe that situational awareness (SA) is our single most important resource for survival in an impolite society. A failure in mine occurred that I think is worth relating.

With people I don’t know well, I make limited assumptions about their SA, based on what I do know. In this situation, I made an assumption based on what I assumed were our common interests in self-defense areas. That was my mistake – one that, in retrospect, I know better than to make.

We were standing in an open public parking lot, so I had a blind spot behind me that I assumed this person was observing. I was paying attention to his eye movement and expressions as a substitute for my “eyes behind”. (Normally, I would have looked back over my shoulders periodically if I thought the area wasn’t covered.

Suddenly, my peripheral vision picked up an individual coming into my field of view from behind, moving to my right. His appearance was one that would warrant cautious attention. I picked up no clue whatsoever from my friend that he was there. I consider that to be failure on my part – not his, due to my assumptions about how I would have expected him to act and react.

A short time later, the same individual came back our way, this time out of my friend’s field of view. Without making a show of it, I made eye contact with my friend, shifted my view to the approaching stranger, and made the slightest head motion in the stranger’s direction. I then switched my gaze back and forth between my friend and the stranger until he was in view to us both.

The point of this anecdote is to present two issues that I think are crucial. First, do not depend on others to substitute for your own SA, even if they are the most aware person you know. As Clint Smith says, “one is none, two is one …” Second, the most important aspect of SA is that it is vital for conflict avoidance, and conflict avoidance is always better than physical confrontation.

In times like these, I think it is important to work on our ‘survival skills’, i.e. avoidance of conflict, de-escalation of conflict, and disengagement from conflict. None of us should seek opportunities to engage in conflict, and if we find ourselves so involved, more often than not we could have avoided it with better-tuned SA.

Richmond redux

To my slight surprise and great joy , “Lobby Day” went peacefully in Richmond, as far as I know right now. I’m tempted to attribute this to the fact that there were thousands of armed citizens present – as diverse a bunch as you’d ever want to see, at that.

An armed citizenry provides proof every single day of Heinlein’s argument: “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” Richmond was no exception. The people know this, even if their would-be controllers consistently deny it.

In an earlier post, I suggested a possible outcome from this event going forward. I suggest to you that the events of “Lobby Day” demand that to be the case. This remarkable event will vanish from Big Brother’s screens faster than Jeffrey Epstein.

And the beat goes on. Goodbye Richmond; welcome to … whatever’s next.

Some further thoughts on “Lobby Day”

As events unfold, and the iron glove tightens its grip on the situation, my first thoughts are to pray for: all of those attending; all citizens of Virginia; and all citizens of the former constitutional republic of the united States of America. My second thoughts:

  • Fact: it will be virtually impossible to actually attend the rally on the government grounds without being stripped ‘naked’, both of rights and of property.
  • Fact: the acts of the government of Virginia – executive and judicial – are violations of both the federal and state constitutions; they also violate a state law passed in 2012 (and voted for by the very same quisling who is now the state’s governor) that specifically prohibits exactly these acts.
  • Fact: the situation has been allowed to deteriorate – whether stupidly or cunningly – to the point that neither side can back down or negotiate, and the resulting scenario is virtually guaranteed to lead to negative consequences, no matter which way things go.
  • Fact: no matter which way things go, the cultures of both state and nation will emerge from this forever altered, and almost certainly not – at least near term – for the better.
  • Fact: the very existence of this situation – not to mention its consequences – is indicative of the deterioration of our culture and of the state of our nation.
  • Fact: it is unlikely that there is anything anyone can do at this point to right the ship of state without some faction or factions getting keel-hauled.
  • Fact: no matter what happens, tomorrow or in the future, in this culture war, it is we the people who will suffer; the oligarchs will thrive or, at worst, escape unscathed.

I am going to follow the advice of Clint Smith to not allow myself “to be subjected to the whims of other people without your permission”. That applies to the events of tomorrow and beyond. I urge you all to consider doing the same.

Thoughts on 01/20/20

The more I read about the upcoming “Lobby Day / MLK Day Rally” in Richmond VA, the more issues with it I have to think about. The more I think about it, the more uncertain I become. There are a number of people both smarter and more experienced than I who have provided rational and informed observations, all of which make very good sense to this poor soul.

I would refer interested readers to The Raconteur Report, Matt Bracken, and NCRenegade, to mention a few. Of course, VCDL is the primary source for rally plan information, and of course their position seems to have been clear from the beginning.

If I lived in a county where the sheriff and/or county government might be even slightly amenable to reasonable input, I would focus my attention there. Unfortunately, for reasons both beyond my control and not germane to this discussion, at this point in time I find myself living in a county where the sheriff was elected on a platform completely antithetical to liberty, and – needless to say – the county government is cut from the same cloth.

Why I would go to Richmond

  • It will prove important, quite possibly historic
  • The state needs to be held accountable for its attempted tyranny
  • The issue is as important to my state as it is to Virginia
  • It is a cause in which I believe

Why I would not go to Richmond

  • It may be the “buffalo jump” that Bracken and others think it is
  • It will almost certainly have no effect on the VA state government
  • It may turn into a confrontation like Charlottesville
  • It is a fertile ground for government covert action

On balance, I am going to defer to my better, more “mature” judgment. For personal reasons of interest only to me, I will watch from ‘down the road’ and pray for the safety of all attendees. I do believe that Monday, January 20th, 2020, will be a significant date in the republic’s history. I hope for us all that it will not be tragically so.

The Red Flag Council

[via my dear friend, “El Neilyo“]

By L. Neil Smith lneil@netzero.com
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lneilsmith
Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

In America, the  highest law of the land consists of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights.

Unlike the remainder of the Constitution (which merely serves as an “operating system” for the government) the Bill of Rights is the exclusive property of the American people, their guarantee of liberty, and the essential condition, historically, on which the rest of the Constitution was ratified.

The Bill of Rights is not simply a laundry list of things that government generously allows it humble subjects to do. (Go to Canada, if that’s the kind of  society you prefer, go to disarmed and prostrate Australia.) It is a list of things that government is absolutely forbidden to do by the people, who were meant own and control it. A far better name for it would have been the “Bill of Limits”.

As such, the Bill of Rights was never intended by its authors to be readable and understandable, only by so-called or self-appointed elite “experts” but by everyday citizens. Its mandates are not to be trivialized or interpreted away by judges, courts, lawyers, or collectivist legal “scholars”, whose real interest lies in controlling individual lives by naked, brute force, if necessary.

Ordinary Americans are entitled to express any opinion they wish, a right guaranteed to them under the First Amendment. Politicians, political appointees (bureaucrats), and police officers gave up that right when they took an Oath of Office — required by law  — to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Accordingly, any politico, bureaucrat, or cop who attempts to nullify or suspend any part of the Bill of Rights in any way is a criminal, having (A) committed perjury when he took his Oath of Office, (B) for disregarding the civil rights provisions of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Sections 241 and 242, and (C) having engaged in what amounts to an act of “Rebellion against the Constitution”, forbidden under the Fourteenth Amendment.

An additional crime, (D) is to be found in the Bill of Rights itself, specifically in the Second Amendment, which asserts (written and duly-ratified laws are allowed to do that) “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” (which, in 18th century terminology simply means, “the right of the individual to own and carry weapons”) is “necessary for the security of a free state”). That means clearly that any politician, bureaucrat, or cop who tries to take weapons away from Americans is endangering the security of a free state and is therefore guilty of treason.

Which famously calls — strictly under due process of law, mind you — for an especially severe punishment, involving a length of rope and a drop through a trapdoor. Talk about being “de-platformed”.

It brings a whole new meaning to the expression “swingers”.

And to “hanging judge, as well.

Now you may well wonder (I actually pretend I can hear you asking) why these laws have not been energetically enforced and these penalties have not been properly meted out. It’s simply because the criminals themselves have been in charge of the law, and  for a long, long time. If they hadn’t, just to point out a single example, Wyatt Earp, and his pack of brothers, far from any kind of heroes, would have been among the first trapdoor dropees, for having forcibly created the first “gun-free zone” in Dodge City, Kansas. The man himself was beyond corrupt: a crook, a whore-monger. a thug, an apologist for Lincoln Administration brutalities, and was continuing a vendetta against impoverished former Confederates out west.

But as usual, I have digressed.

Now the security of our free state is threatened with “red flag” laws, a simple-minded, evil scheme to circumvent the Second Amendment entirely, and cut it out of the Constitution, and use corrupt judges and the police to forcibly strip everyone of their means of personal and national defense. It cannot stand.

Clearly Congress, the various state legislatures, and the
egregiously mislabeled “justice system” are not up to doing the right
thing in this regard. If they were, every capitol building in the nation
would be filled with empty seats, rather than empty suits. That’s why
I’m proposing — and with extreme reluctance, believe me — an
organization to “provide new guards for [our] future security.

The “Red Flag Council” will be a national group, a step beyond the National Rifle Association or the Second Amendment Foundation, or even Gun Owners of America or my Alma Mater, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, that publicly lists politicians, bureaucrats, and police by name (not the same as “doxing” them), all those who have taken an Oath of Office, to “uphold and defend” the Constitution — and betrayed it.  The Red Flag Council will relentlessly work toward their prosecution. With an eye toward the future, it would be wise to track candidates, and their views on Constitutional rights, as well.

The “Red Flag Council”. American colonists won their Revolution thanks largely to the clunky, short-range “Brown Bess”, a bit of a blunderbuss, with which the Crown was accustomed to enforcing its Imperial will. By comparison, significant elements among the rebels were equipped with “assault rifles” their own, personal, deadly flintlock rifles, which were ray-guns, phasers, by comparison. We were better-armed than the bad-guys were, which is exactly how the Founding Fathers wanted it to remain, forever. The high-capacity semiautomatic weapons we enjoy today, are simply our flintlocks.

The “Red Flag Council”. English lawyers and judges wear white wigs for the same reason that rattlesnakes have rattles. If there had been any red flag laws back then, I’d be writing this now, with a British accent. As it is, the fight began with an attempt by 1200 redcoats (which ended for them in a humiliating rout) to confiscate private weaponry at Lexington and Concord. They should have known better — I’ll bet a lot of them did.

The “Red Flag Council”. The whole idea, since then, has been that civilians ought to be at least as well-armed as the military. Maybe even better. Setting Wyatt Earp aside, the first large-scale infringement of the individual right to own and carry weapons was in the 1930s. It was disguised as anti-gangster legislation because it was an unconstitutional power-grab, enacted because Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his communist pals were wetting their panties, afraid of a coup, which very nearly happened. (Look it up.)

The “Red Flag Council”. Since then the government and the insatiably greedy left have ridden roughshod over rights that were supposed to have been guaranteed to us, and the right wing has started to join them. It is no coincidence that the resident parasites in politics who want to steal as much of what we’ve earned from us as they can, also demand that we be forced (somehow) to give up what my friend the late Aaron Zelman used to call our “liberty teeth”.

The “Red Flag Council”. If you want to help us in some way, let us know. We could use your assistance to help keep this a free country. Having striven against the Dark Side since 1968, I’m absolutely determined that, now it’s going to cost them something, at long last. There are at least a hundred million gun owners in America. I can’t think of a single Democrat who deserves to occupy anything but a jail cell. And if we gun owners stay home next November, because our “own” side took us for granted (the way Democrats do black people) and failed to adequately defend our rights, no Republican will ever hold office again.

Award-winning writer L. Neil Smith is Publisher and Senior Columnist of L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise and the author of over thirty-five books. Look him up on Google, Wikipedia, and Amazon.com. He is available at professional rates, to write for you, fiercely defending your rights, as he has done since the mid-60s. His writings (and e-mail address) may be found at L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise, at JPFO.org or at https://www.patreon.com/lneilsmith. His many books and those of other pro-gun libertarians may be found (and ordered) at L. Neil Smith’s THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE “Free Radical Book Store”. The preceding essay was originally prepared for and appeared in L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise. If you like what you’ve seen and want to see more, he says, “Don’t applaud, throw money.”