The 20th anniversary of the ATF’s murderous attack on the Branch Davidians.

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Nobody ever tells me these things. I hadda find out from Ragnar’s Freedom Outlaw F*c*b**k page.

Anyhow, my cover story from the current issue of BHM, “Hiding a gun: The rule of threes,” is online.

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Also, Ragnar praises new-made Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence — not just for her acting, which is outstanding, but for her Capital-A Attitude. Amen, Ragnar! Lawrence always comes across as a regular person with a great sense of humor and wacky wit. Likes guns, too. And doesn’t like PETA. And jeez, she’s Katniss Everdeen. How much more perfect can an actress be?

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… or better yet, a control that powers down all the neurons, snyapses, and whatnot and reactivates them only when something really important happens in real life.

Lately, I could use something like that. Power me down to standby mode just like my DVD player. Yeah.

It’s been a depressing winter. Not only for the standard seasonal reasons but because the darkness and cold of the real world feel so much like a metaphor for the darkness and cold that are descending on freedom.

I had a plan to get temporarily to someplace warmer and lighter than the NorthWET. But the plan itself became a cause of Giant, Screaming STRESSSSSS. Cancelled that. Now the endless winter remains and the politicians in DC and state capitals peck and rip at the rotted remnants of the Constitution (and crow over their poisonous gun-grabbing feast) and I grok the concept of doldrums in every waking moment. And though I understand that the February chill and the death of the country aren’t necessarily related … well, yes they are.

—–

A friend wrote the other day to note that everybody in her political realm is (I paraphrase) “poised on the edge of a razor blade, bleeding over every little thing.” Angry. Edgy. Ready to explode over small provocations — since, face it, they have not yet figured out how to explode at the BIG provocations without doing a (totally futile) Carl Drega.

Have you seen this, too? The boiling rage, the frustration bursting out in big or small but all-too-often inappropriate ways?

What I see — although admittedly I may be perceiving the reflection of my own mood — is anger indeed. But also a vast weariness at the prospect of fighting the gun-grabbers one more time over the same old issues. A weariness that doesn’t signal resignation. Not at all. But a weariness that is compounded by frustration and a dread uncertainty about … where and when and how.

We will rise to freedom’s defense, of course. The light will return. But what a monstrous long, dark winter this looks to be.

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• Victor Davis Hanson: Why once-successful societies decline and die. (H/T S)
• Ewwwwwwwww! Ewwwwww in a beautiful sorta way, but still ewwwwwww. (H/T S — a different S)
• For the serious dog walker. (H/T MJR)
• Ending the police loophole. Great site for keeping track of the great companies who refuse to sell to governments that don’t allow their citizens to own the same equipment. (H/T to J and not sure who else.)
• This dog can fetch. You might not think that’s newsworthy. But …
• The Department of Homeland (Achtung!) Security steals Michael Arrington’s boat. And gives it back, but only with a whole lot of bitching. (H/T JB)
• Chuckie Schumer and Tom Coburn plot to foist a national gun registry on us. For anyone still doubting that Ds and even the most “conservative” R’s are just two wings on the same carrion bird, there’s your evidence. (H/T C-B)
• A Holocaust survivor explains: “Why I did not leave Nazi Germany in Time.” (H/T Jake)

(H/T O)

BTW: A couple of Commentariat members expressed a wish to have an email addy for me so they could send me good links. I really appreciate the thought and am not as secretive with my address as I used to be. Only thing is, I get overwhelmed by email and am more likely to lose track of links sent that way than links just dropped into comment sections (as many of the above were, thank you). Besides, dropping your link into a comment guarantees that lots of people will see it, while emailing it to me means it might fall victim to bad timing or who knows what else.

Still, I love that people want to send me so many good links. At some point maybe I should set up an addy especially for that purpose. As the above H/T’s make clear, you guys are excellent link-finders.

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Both these came from recent comments sections. But they’ve just got to have more visibility.

From Larken Rose via MamaLiberty:

From the NRA via Pre-Press Veteran (great, great spot; too bad the NRA doesn’t actually mean it):

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As depressing as these last few months have been for gun rights and freedom, there’s a hopeful “something” in the air. It doesn’t always feel like it, but there’s a subtle freedomista breeze wafting.

Those of us who’ve been around a while might be tempted to feel we’re reliving the terrible years of 1993-4. Those were the dark years when the Brady law and the ugly-gun ban clobbered us with a one-two punch and left us thinking we might never get to our feet again.

But Joe Biden is right. Oh, don’t worry, he’s right about only one thing, and actually only half of that. But the political climate around gun rights has changed.

He’s just wrong about the nature of that change — which, given that he’s a politician, I believe and hope he utterly misreads.

He and his ilk think this is the moment when they’ll finally “win” on gun control and destroy the culture of independence that firearms represent.

My prediction is that, whether they “win” in laws and regulation, this time they lose. And they don’t just loose seats in legislatures as they did last time.

They lose their country.

One sign of that shines from Ronnie Barrett’s open letter joining the boycott of those who assault liberty. Barrett is hardly a typical gun maker. Years before the present boycott, he his company refused to sell to or service the weapons of gun-banning governments. In a way, he inspired LaRue, York, Olympic, and all the others to take the tall stand they’re taking now. He just says it well.

And what he says — and what he and others are doing — wouldn’t have been said or done ca. 1993. Back then, gun makers were only too happy to sell out. Heck, Bill Ruger is infamously the father of the standard-capacity magazine ban. And most other gun makers spent time angling for ways to make the various anti-gun (anti-freedom) laws hurt the competition more than themselves.

But yes, Joe Biden, things have changed.

In 1993, do you think the biggest sports show in the U.S. would have been shut down by vendors — not producers of ugly black guns, but makers of boats, duck blinds, spices, and clothing — standing up, saying “the Second Amendment is for ALL or it’s for none,” and walking out? In 1993, do you think the NRA and the big gun makers would have followed the lead of those little guys?

How many gun or firearms equipment makers back then would have even thought about refusing to sell to police? It would have been unthinkable.

Sure, there are still plenty of compromisers. Like Armalite, that wants to have its boycott cake and eat it, too. Or the never-met-a-compromise-he-didn’t-like Alan Gottleib of the Second Amendment Foundation/CCRKBA who seriously expects Washington state gun owners to believe that having one vast gunowner database foisted upon them will be better than having one minor database that a lot of them didn’t even know about.

But condemnation of their tactics is swift, fierce, and increasingly unanimous.

I don’t know how any of this is going to come out. I’m not seeing rainbows and unicorns in our future. Whether the gun-banners “win” or get beaten back on a new ugly-gun ban or a private-sale ban, I expect chaos. But this time around, there seems to be a lot more understanding that the battle is about freedom. For all of us. And that it’s not just the possessions and privileges of one group or another that are at stake.

I also think that those powerful grassroots gun-rights groups that organized and triumphed in state after state in the last 20 years will have a lot to say about the long-term outcome.

Back in ’93-4, powerless nobodies took to the woods and played militia while leaders in the gun industry and the NRA sold them out. I’m not knocking the militia movement; it seemed like a good idea at the time and may have been the best thing for people who had damn few alternatives.

But … things are so much bigger now. It’s no longer just us “lone nuts with guns,” grumbling angrily in meeting rooms or cabins. It’s a whole culture whose members understand that everything they value, everything they are, is under attack.

And for all our fear, good citizenship, and hesitancy to act … this time I don’t think we’re going to take that politely.

How ironic. “Our” leaders obviously fear us. But they fear us for all the wrong reasons. Our guns? Ha. The guns aren’t what it’s about at all. Then, misunderstanding everything so badly, they take exactly the steps to provoke us. People, you have no freakin’ idea what you really have to fear when you aim to take away freedom.

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I almost titled this post, “Why I’m thinking so hard about leaving ‘my’ country.”

When I first saw this over at Joel’s place …

… I assumed he had fallen for some Internet parody. When the second place I saw it was an Alex-Jonesy site, I was relieved. Now I knew the ‘Net was falling hard for somebody’s hilariously awful put on.

But apparently, appallingly, it’s no put on.

No. It’s no longer merely acceptable for cops to blow away anybody who might be holding a cellphone, a squirt gun, a wallet, or a remote control. They’re actually being conditioned to blast any mere “civilian” without hesitation.

Without hesitation.

After all, it’s for “officer safety” and no doubt once the police department or government agency investigates itself it will decree that “procedures were followed.” And the officer in question will get to enjoy a long paid vacation in the meantime.

Hey — everybody wins! Well … except … you know. But who cares about mere “civilians”?

Have TPTB and their robotic servants totally lost track of the concept that hesitation (i.e. the use of judgment) might be a good thing before deciding to splatter the brains of little kids, pregnant women, old folks, and others whose behavior may not actually be threatening? Have they all forgotten that hesitation (i.e. good judgment) in fact should be a duty for so-called “public servants” dealing with the actual public?

Yes, they’ve lost sight of all that. And why not? There are no consequences for murdering the innocent — as long as you can cite “procedures.”

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Seriously, this is why I think so often these days of just getting the hell out.

Back in the 1990s, every time somebody mentioned some cool place for expatriation I would respond (knowing the answer in advance), “So, how are their gun rights compared with ours?”

Gun rights still matter vitally of course.

But for years now I’ve suffered a growing feeling that the country of my birth has gone completely, absolutely paranoid bonkers. How many times a month (or a week or a day) do you see or read something about “security” or “public safety” that you first believe is simply too outlandish to be true? Then you turn right around and find that not only is it true, but it’s just a little mole that signals an underlying metastatic tumor?

Freedom-loving Americans are rapidly coming to realize that “our” governments have covertly declared war on us — that we are no longer mere criminal suspects subject to arrest for ordinary, peaceable acts, but we are outright enemies to be obliterated at the will of the state or any of its functionaries.

That would be awful enough if Our Enemy the State were merely calculating and ruthless. But living in a society where the governmental norm is a state of paranoid insanity grinds a body (and a mind) down.

We’re forced to become hypervigilant and downright paranoid ourselves — only to discover each time that we haven’t been vigilant or suspicious enough. Even if it turned out that these “no hesitation” targets were somebody’s bad joke, you can know for certain that something just as bad — or worse — is going on that you can’t (yet) see.

Eventually, no matter how sane you are or how calm and well-balanced you are determined to remain, you inevitably end up accepting insane premises as “normal.”

THAT is no way to live.

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• “Cannabis: The Audacity of Dope.” When Reefer Madness goes legit.
• Another gun-maker joins the rebellion — and does it in no uncertain terms. (H/T JG)
• Basset hound and “dad” reunited after 10 years.
• At the end of December, Bob Owens looked around his local gun stores and wrote, “This isn’t a society stocking up on certain guns because they fear they may be banned. This is a society preparing for war.” (H/T BW)
• And he mentioned something I can’t recall ever hearing about, though it was an important precursor to the American Revolution: The Powder Alarm. Yep. That’s a good analogy for where things stand now. The tyrants hadn’t yet started killing people to get their guns and ammo. They just confirmed their intentions and the colonists’ suspicions.
• Hey, look! Business owners, here’s yet another “benefit” from the fedgov and possibly another addition to your “three felonies a day” quota (and you are doing your share to keep up, aren’t you?). You could become a criminal for running criminal background checks on prospective employees.

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