Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

"Being disarmed, among the other harm it brings you, causes you to be despised."
— Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513

The current flavour of gun control that seems to impress the socialists, communists, and leftists is "red flag laws." Taking away the right to keep and bear arms appears to meet with the approval of President Trump, numerous politicians, and even various federal judges. In response to a question about red flag laws, I recently posted these thoughts on Twitter: Violates privacy, free speech, free press, remain silent, confront witnesses, due process, counsel, privacy, requirements for warrants to issue, and that's off the top of my head.

A few minutes later, I noted that it violates privacy twicet. You'll be able to supply the amendments in the Bill of Rights yourself if you wish. Clearly, to me, red flag laws are a terrible evil.

Been SWATted

One of the many reasons I feel that way is because a neighbour of mine decided it was her privilege to call the sheriff's department, for which she worked in an administrative capacity (and for whom, I gather, her husband worked as as confidential informant), misreport a number of things and have a SWAT team show up outside my home. When I walked out of my house about 9 pm that evening in April 2017, there were three laser range finder dots on my chest. One error on my part or one exclamation or even perhaps a sneeze on the part of the watch commander, and my heart would have been blown out the back of my chest.

After some time in jail, hiring a bail bondsman, hiring an attorney, selling my house to pay for the legal expenses involved, and a number of hearings, the prosecutor moved to dismiss the case. Subsequently, the prosecutor also moved to expunge the arrest record. There are parts of the world where it is still possible to find people in the law enforcement community who can experience embarrassment when they are misled by their noses to do mistaken things.

Nevertheless, I cannot recommend the experience. Being arrested was amongst the many reasons I stopped voting after February 1991, it was among the many reasons I searched the world for a free country, it was one of the reasons I re-located, briefly, to Somalia. The United States has not been a free country in a very long time.

Your Guns

Why shouldn't you ever surrender your guns? Quite simple, really. They are the main line of defence for individual liberty in the world. Anyone who wants to take away your guns wants you to be a victim of crime, either by street criminals or by the government or by both. Victim disarmament is inexcusable, unjustiable, and despicable. No one who ever says anything in favour of disarming people has any good intentions, and such people should be, at least, ostracised.

Here, in graphical terms, is why:

Those who pretend that they want gun control for some good reason are either fools or liars, and neither one recommends close further contact with them. Every government, from the United States which disarmed Native Americans to Turkey before World War One, to Germany and Russia before World War Two, to China after World War Two, and on and on, every government which has disarmed its people has then rounded people up and put them in camps. You cannot trust people in government, so you had best keep your hands on your weapons.

Which Guns?

My friend Bill Buppert runs ZeroGov.com which is a great site for information on the topic. A person to follow on Twitter who is the " village armourer" for Bill and others, is Twitter.com/thefreerifleman Skip. You can also get a lot of good information on guns from Boston's Gun Bible. Anything I say here derives from my own experiences, or from reading Boston's book, or from discussions and reading of Bill and Skip's thoughts on the topic. Any errors are exclusively my own.

You want a rifle. If you have only one gun, if you have not yet bought any and you want to go get a gun, go get a rifle. Get a semi-auto rifle with an adequate calibre with which you can hit a target at 100 yards or greater. Get a rifle with the capacity to hold a magazine with more than ten rounds because rate of fire and time before empty are critical issues in you surviving in a firefight. And get ten or more magazines, and plenty of ammo for your rifle.

Why? Your rifle is your main weapon for self-defence. It should be the one you practice with the most. It should be familiar to you. You should fire it weekly or more often, whenever you can get to a gun range. You should be highly trained with it. You should know how to clean it, and maintain it. There are many rifles, but your rifle is your own. It is your best friend. It can save your life.

A handgun, as Boston says in his gun bible, is a tool for getting you back to your rifle. I myself have said that a knife is a tool for getting you to your handgun. These are things you should have with you, I believe, and not ever be far from.

What sort of rifle is best? I think the rifle you are familiar with is always best. But, I also agree with Skip and Bill, who point out that the main weapon likely to be brought against Americans by the police, the military, and other forces of oppression, is the AR-15 or M-16. Therefore it makes sense to be able to use the identical calibre of bullet and the same magazines, as well as be able to pick up discarded weapons from a battlefield to continue fighting.

For similar reasons, a good calibre of handgun is the 9 mm. And a good style of 9mm semi-auto handgun is the Glock. Again, why? Because it is very frequently carried by police and other minions of the state, because being able to use the same calibre of ammo and the same magazines, or pick up a weapon from a battlefield to continue fighting is potentially going to save your life. These are serious considerations, and you don't want to be unarmed. Ever.

Swallwell's Nukes

A recent (and I gather now former) candidate for the Democrat nomination for president in 2020, Eric Swallwell, is a gun grabber from some jurisdiction in California. Not long ago, he said on Twitter that in the event of a confrontation with American gun owners, the national government would use nuclear weapons. Here is that post:

But, keep in mind, the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Lebanon, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Kosovo, Mali, Yemen, and Syria involving USA military forces have been largely free of nuclear weapons. Yes, "depleted uranium" rounds were used for their greater density and additional danger. Yes, the USA government knowingly allowed radioactive fallout from nuclear tests in the Western desert to fall on civilian populations in, e.g., Utah, and did not warn those people they were being irradiated. Yes, the USA government did nuke Aleutian islanders. Yes, the USA nuked two cities in Japan in 1945, and remains the only national government to have used nuclear weapons against civilian populations during war. Nevertheless, it is very unlikely that even Swallwell would be able to deploy nuclear weapons against American cities.

Nor would the use of nukes cause Americans to surrender, especially not Americans in any of the mountain states in Appalachia, the Ozarks, or the Rockies. In order to hold territory, infantry is required, not strategic bombing. In order to hold territory, the will of the enemy to resist must be eliminated. And, with about 200 million American homes having one or more guns within them, the number of people likely to resist is very, very high.

In past essays, I've estimated that as many as 110 to 125 million Americans do not vote, do not file income tax paperwork, and do not answer the census, among other ways in which they have withdrawn from participating in the system which oppresses them and robs them on a daily basis with taxes, regulations, and evil machinations. I believe that approximately that number would resist, or give support to those in resistance.

In order for an occupied territory to be "pacified " various strategists, dating back to Clausewitz, have suggested that as many as 20 soldiers are required for every person in resistance to the occupation. Examples of very successful resistance groups include the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the revolt at the death camp Sobibor, and the aforementioned wars in Lebanon, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Mali, Somalia, etc.

Is it possible to find 2 billion troops to set against 100 million resisting Americans? Almost certainly yes, though only at great expense and with considerable difficulty. Nor would the presence of occupying troops from foreign countries reduce the number of Americans in resistance. Not more than 80 million Americans are committed to the communist-socialist doctrines and even some of these might find circumstances persuasive reasons to change their ideology.

Moving, say, 100 million Chinese troops to the United States would be costly, and would arguably destabilise China which is not exactly a bastion of stability right now, as evidenced in Hong Kong. The people of Hong Kong know that they are going to be harvested for organs, as were the Falun Gong, if they give up their protests.

Where?

I believe the places where Americans are most free to own guns, the bright green or "constitutional carry" states are the best places to be in or near when things come to a head. Your mileage may vary. The deep blue states are "shall issue" though concealed carry permits are not much honoured in, say, Chicago.

You'll have the greatest difficulty in Hawai'i and New Jersey, which have other difficulties. Islands are very difficult logistically. And extremely urban environments are where one goes to locate large numbers of communists and socialists (but I repeat myself). The red and yellow locations on the map above impose the most against gun owners.

Are you safe in the rest of the country? Very clearly not. Those in power have a psychotic desire to destroy freedom and imprison the population to their dark designs.

If you are going to do one thing this year that you haven't done in the past, find a few friends and neighbours and train with them. Train to get to each other's homes quickly. Train to be in communication in the face of a cell phone disruption, which can be imposed on any location by law enforcement. Train to be in communication and train to help one another. The lives you save may be your own.

Can the American people win against those who seek to disarm, imprison, and enslave us? Yes.

Besides, do you have any rational choice? If you give up your guns, or if you stop resisting, you too will be sent to a death camp. You would become a supply of organs for medical tourists to the United States. So, never surrender.

Never surrender your guns.

 

Jim Davidson is an author, actor, entrepreneur, and gun owner. You can find him online.