You need more than to just have the firearms be present. You still need the will to, eventually, use them.

You need more than to just have the firearms be present.

The guns only have to exist, not be used, to make a difference in both the oppressor and those oppressed.

Personally, I did know some of the seamier history of the American Revolution before this ever came up. I’m aware that I didn’t learn it in public school, I got it out of a layperson’s reading of history afterwards, and not everyone gets that.

I never have gotten the impression that either Codrea or Vanderboegh believes in a clean revolution. Certainly Unintended Consequences is not an optimistic novel, and it doesn’t look like Absolved will be any better.

The true costs of a revolution are serious enough to make this a more than fair subject to keep in discussion, but I don’t think its the case that Vanderboegh believes in a clean revolution.

Maybe there wouldn’t ever be a revolution, or any synchronized resistance to crossing the final lines in America. I’ve had doubts about that myself after Katrina and the New Orleans gun confiscations. Bitter may be right about myself if no-one else, that I’d go meekly when the time came whatever I say now.

But at the very, very least there would be a lot more lone shooters like Carl Drega or the dozen other people whose lines have been crossed already, and who never made it into the national news. And even if they all go down, and get painted as whackos when they’re reported at all, there’s not much either side is going to be able to do to rein them in.

The very deadly serious consequences of a revolution are equally a reason not to bring one on lightly as well as to make sure the opposing side really understands the costs involved if they get everything they’re actively working for. Which is how I read Vanderboegh’s letter.

“If we had a thousand Bitters and Bredas scattered around the country, gun rights would be an unstoppable juggernaut.”

This could imply that the Davids and Mikes are not advancing gun rights at all, or would do more by imitating the B’s. I’m not sure I buy that. On a personal note, although I’ve always been roughly conservative, I never owned a gun until my 20′s. And I didn’t buy one for the privilege of joining a gun club or going to NRA benefit dinners. I still don’t hunt, shoot clays or shoot competitively.

I was “converted” by reading John Lott, Vin Suprynowicz and Fred of Fred’s M14 Stocks fame. The last two are in roughly the same camp as the Mike and David. Am I the only one who was? Maybe, but if I wasn’t alone, and that camp is converting or encouraging shooters, then that means the “revolutionists” in fact are working for a clean revolution and voting the bums out. In effect if not in rhetoric.

I look at California, England and Australia and I see what can happen when you have well-mannered gun owners and no-one else. Because they had, in fact still have, active shooting communities. But they drew no line in the sand, to use Bitter’s words, and we can see where they got by not upsetting anyone’s sensibilities.

Perhaps in some regards, ignoring the malaria and other tropical diseases and remoteness from the rest of the civilized world. There was little poverty precisely because only those with the means and useful skills were able to secure passage to the Americas. So yes, in some ways it was the best. However, we are a far cry from the oppression of King George on the colonists.

1774: The British parliament gave its speedy assent to a series of acts that became known as the “Coercive Acts”; or in the colonies as the “Intolerable Acts”. These acts included the closing of the port of Boston, until such time as the East India tea company received compensation for the tea dumped into the harbor. The Royal governor took control over the Massachusetts government and would appoint all officials. Sheriffs would become royal appointees, as would juries. In addition, the British took the right to quarter soldiers anywhere in the colonies.

Add this on top of all the taxes on staples that had been imposed – tea, molasses, lead, silk, paint, paper, glass, etc., and you can see that things were bad. If local elected offices suddenly were replaced by federal appointees, juries were stacked by the government and homeowners were forced to house and feed soldiers, I suspect you’d see a similar uprising by the masses. The isolated abuses we see today must be addressed, but violence will not win you any allies. There are means available to address them within the law. We the People must be willing to get off our butts and take advantage of those means. It may be a lot of work, but you’ll still have your house will still be intact, and your neighbors and your family will still be alive. Ask an Afghan what years of war and civil unrest is like.

“remember that your revolution will not change the people of the United States, who elected the government that you so despise”

There may be solutions to the problem of continuous government growth and power without restricting the voting rights of the people that don’t know better.

Go read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and their search for a new form of government. Possibilities discussed included all laws required a 2/3s majority in one house of government to be put into effect. And the other house had as it’s sole purpose the repealing of laws and could do so by getting only 1/3 of the votes. Other interesting options were considered. I think we have learned a lot about the failures of our current system of government to protect freedom and perhaps we could better if we started with a clean slate.

Often the biggest barrier to a solution is properly defining the problem. My son James and just finished the book Future of Freedom. We both were highly annoyed about the author being able to describe the process by which freedom was/is destroyed in democracies but never pointed out the, what to us seemed, obvious solutions. But perhaps we were too harsh. Successfully defining the problem is a major accomplishment in its own right.

Anyone considering “shooting the bastards” needs to realize that even if taking that step is fully justified (justification basis deliberately omitted as being beyond the scope of this post but this could be a starting point) one needs to look at the long term direct and unintended consequences of such an act. They need to have a reasonably good idea what the position of society will be a day, a week, a year, and a decade after they “pulled the trigger”. And after evaluation the conclude the world will be a better place by most measures. They need to be a grand master chess player with only a small fraction of the pieces visible on the board and see ten moves ahead against opponents who are known and unknown. Or they need to know, with near certainty, things can’t get any worse if they do take the shot.

I contend no such grand master “chess player” exists. Hence before “taking the shot” the existing or reasonably projected conditions need to be so bad as to replicate something like a Nazi concentration camp or Soviet Gulag.

You’re smart people. We always bemoan the fact that there are no good candidates.

I know none of you WANT to. No one sane and moral would want to.

If our culture doesn’t value smart, decent, ethical candidates, how do we bring it back?

Regards,

It was the best place to live in the entire world in 1775 too.