Unforeseen Contingencies

Mike Vanderboegh speaks at a pro-freedom, pro-Second Amendment rally in Connecticut.  For philosophical and moral clarity, strategic thinking, and plain inspiration, you can't beat this.

He asks that this be spread far and wide, so have at!

My name is Mike Vanderboegh and I'm a smuggler. I am from the great free state of Alabama and I am a Three Percenter.

If you need to pigeonhole my politics I consider myself a Christian libertarian. I believe in free men, free markets, the rule of law under the Founder's Republic and that the Constitution extends to everyone regardless of race, creed, color or religion.

I most especially believe in the right of the people to keep and bear arms as the ultimate guarantor of liberty.

I have also been called a "seditionist" by members of the current regime. If faithfully fulfilling my oath to the Founders' Republic and unrelenting hostility to those who would undermine and overthrow it makes me a "seditionist" then I cheerfully plead guilty.

The Three Percent movement I founded has been denounced by that paragon of moral virtue Bill Clinton and I am a perennial "honorable mention" on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of dangerous folks. I have even been the subject of an eighteen and a half minute rant by Rachel Madcow on MSNBC and the current Attorney General of the United States knows -- and despises -- me by name because of the Fast and Furious scandal that, with my friend David Codrea, I broke the news of on the Internet. Eric Holder would not be surprised to know that the feeling is mutual.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence calls me an "insurrectionist" because I don't believe, as they do, in a government monopoly of violence, but rather in a literal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as a bulwark against tyranny. Well, as my friend Kurt Hofmann says, "It is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable" and I suppose my remarks here today will only reinforce my enemies' opinions of me. I think I can bear the burden.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775, but also of the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and that of the Branch Davidians at Waco fifty years later to the day -- two examples of what happens when governments exercise a monopoly of violence.

It is proper, then, to contemplate the lessons of the date in history -- April 19th -- then, now and in the near future. What I say now I say with reluctance, sadness and not a little bit of dread, but say it I must.

FOR SILENCE IN THE FACE OF TYRANNY IMPLIES CONSENT -- AND I DO NOT CONSENT!

Neither do I believe that you consent, for you would not be here today if you did. But what I say is not easy to say nor easy to hear and many of you will not like it.

"An unconstitutional law is void." So says the standard legal text American Jurisprudence. That is certainly true. The tricky part is how we are to make that point when the local, state and federal executive and legislative branches as well as the courts are in the hands of the domestic enemies of the Constitution. Every one who is currently trying to take away your right to arms starts out by saying "I support the 2nd Amendment." Let me tell you a home truth from Alabama -- Barack Obama supports the 2nd Amendment about as much as Adolf Hitler appreciated Jewish culture, or Joe Stalin believed in individual liberty. Believe what politicians do, not what they say.

So what shall we do about this current spate of tyranny breaking out all over?

The facsimile of a semi-automatic pistol that some of you hold in your hands was smuggled into your state from the South. Manufactured in Georgia, trans-shipped to Alabama, it came across your state line in the trunk of a car. The fact that the authorities of your state have not yet banned "sponge guns" is immaterial. It could as easily been a whole trunk full of real pistols. Indeed, before this year no one thought that other firearms and related items would ever be banned -- but they have been. No one thought that the authorities of your state would pass laws making criminals out of the previously law-abiding -- but they did. If they catch you violating their unconstitutional laws, they will -- when they please -- send armed men to work their will upon you. And people -- innocent of any crime save the one these tyrants created -- will die resisting them.

Yet despite the cost, these unconstitutional laws MUST be resisted. For if not now, when? And if not us, who? This is no longer a "slippery slope" leading to firearm registration and eventual confiscation -- it is a precipice that some states have already plunged over and that the federal government threatens to follow. Arrests are happening NOW. When, if not now, shall we resist? Will we allow ourselves to be shoved back once again, from the free exercise of our God-given, natural and inalienable rights to liberty? -- Shoved back once more, muttering but compliant?

THAT IS HOW WE GOT TO THIS PLACE --- WE NEVER SHOVED BACK WHEN WE COULD DO SO WITHOUT VIOLENCE. Where does it stop? When we are all disarmed slaves?

The Founders knew how to answer such tyranny. When Captain John Parker -- one of the three percent of American colonists who actively took the field against the King during the Revolution -- mustered his Minutemen on Lexington Green, it was in a demonstration of ARMED civil disobedience. He might have retreated at the British approach, but he didn't. He might have ordered his men to lay down their arms, but he didn't. His defiance was silent but plainly stated. A veteran of the French and Indian War, he did not want a war. He knew intimately the horrors of war. BUT HE ALSO KNEW THAT SOME THINGS ARE WORSE THAN WAR. The British could not tolerate his silent defiance -- and someone fired a shot.

But even before the shot heard 'round the world, the colonists understood their weaknesses and their military needs and did something about it. They smuggled. They smuggled Dutch gunpowder and French flints. They smuggled tents and uniform cloth and artillery and ammunition. Boston was the high headquarters of anti-British smuggling and John Hancock was its prime minister. Connecticut was a small empire built on patriotic smuggling. The colonists knew what to do and they did it, regardless of the risk -- regardless of all the King's ministers and the King's soldiery.

They defied the King. They resisted his edicts. They evaded his laws and they smuggled. Lord above, did they smuggle.

Now we find ourselves in a similar situation. The new King Barack and his minions have determined to disarm us. We must determine to resist them.

No one wants a new civil war (except, apparently, the anti-constitional tyrants who passed these laws and the media toadies who cheer them on) but one is staring us in the face. Yes, a civil war is staring us in the face. To think otherwise is to whistle past the graveyard of our own history. We must, if we wish to avoid armed conflict, get this message across to the collectivists who have declared their appetites for our liberty, our property and our lives --

WHEN DEMOCRACY TURNS TO TYRANNY, THE ARMED CITIZEN STILL GETS TO VOTE.

Just like King George, such people will not care, nor modify their behavior, by what you say, no matter how loudly or in what numbers you say it. They will only pay attention to what you DO.

So defy them. Resist their laws. Evade them. Smuggle in what they command you not to have. Only by our ACTS will they be impressed. Then, if they mean to have a civil war, they will at least have been informed of the unintended consequences of their tyrannical actions. Again I say --

Defy. Resist. Evade. Smuggle. If you wish to stay free and to pass down that freedom to your children's children you can do no less than to become the lawbreakers that they have unconstitutionally made of you. Accept that fact. Embrace it. And resolve to be the very best, most successful lawbreakers you can be.

One last thing before I go. On Thursday I smuggled a half-dozen 30 round AR-15 standard capacity magazines into Connecticut in deliberate disobedience of the new state diktat.

So to Martin Looney, Mike Williams, Larry Cafarro and John McKinney I'd like to say this:

I JUST COMMITTED A "D" CLASS FELONY, YOU TYRANNICAL MORONS -- PROVE IT -- WHICH YOU CAN'T -- AND CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

And I'll tell you something else. When the new ammo restrictions go into effect the first week of July, I'll be back -- with two full crates of 7.62x39 ball ammunition and I will transfer said ammunition into the hands of a Connecticut citizen without the state's permission or paperwork.

And after I break their unconstitutional laws again, I'll be sitting in Frank Pepe's Pizza down in New Haven waiting for Looney and Company to come arrest me --

ANY TIME THEY THINK THEY CAN MAKE IT STICK AND FEEL FROGGY ENOUGH TO TRY.

Thank you.

I agree.  Resist the tyrants.