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NRA Members' Council
"WHAT GOOD CAN A HANDGUN
DO AGAINST AN ARMY.....?"
by Mike Vanderboegh
A friend of mine recently forwarded me a question a friend of
his had posed:
"If/when our Federal Government comes to pilfer, pillage, plunder
our property and destroy our lives, what good can a handgun do against
an army with advanced weaponry, tanks, missiles, planes, or whatever else
they might have at their disposal to achieve their nefarious goals?
(I'm not being facetious: I accept the possibility that what happened in
Germany, or similar, could happen here; I'm just not sure that the potential
good from an armed citizenry in such a situation outweighs the day-to-day
problems caused by masses of idiots who own guns.)"
If I may, I'd like to try to answer that question. I certainly
do not think the writer facetious for asking it. The subject is a
serious one that I have given much research and considerable thought to.
I believe that upon the answer to this question depends the future of our
Constitutional republic, our liberty and perhaps our lives. My friend
Aaron Zelman, one of the founders of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership, once told me:
"If every Jewish and anti-nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser
rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition AND THE WILL TO USE IT (emphasis
supplied, MV), Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history
of the Weimar Republic."
Note well that phrase: "and the will to use it," for the simply-stated
question, "What good can a handgun do against an army?", is in fact a complex
one and must be answered at length and carefully. It is a military
question. It is also a political question. But above all it
is a moral question which strikes to the heart of what makes men free,
and what makes them slaves. First, let's answer the military question.
Most military questions have both a strategic and a tactical component.
Let's consider the tactical.
A friend of mine owns an instructive piece of history. It
is a small, crude pistol, made out of sheet-metal stampings by the U.S.
during World War II. While it fits in the palm of your hand and is
a slowly-operated, single-shot arm, it's powerful .45 caliber projectile
will kill a man with brutal efficiency. With a short, smooth-bore
barrel it can reliably kill only at point blank ranges, so its use requires
the will (brave or foolhardy) to get in close before firing. It is
less a soldier's weapon than an assassin's tool. The U.S. manufactured
them by the million during the war, not for our own forces but rather to
be air-dropped behind German lines to resistance units in occupied Europe.
Crude and slow (the fired case had to be knocked out of the breech by means
of a little wooden dowel, a fresh round procured from the storage area
in the grip and then manually reloaded and cocked) and so wildly innaccurate
it couldn't hit the broad side of a French barn at 50 meters, to the Resistance
man or woman who had no firearm it still looked pretty darn good.
The theory and practice of it was this: First, you approach
a German sentry with your little pistol hidden in your coat pocket and,
with Academy-award sincerity, ask him for a light for your cigarette (or
the time the train leaves for Paris, or if he wants to buy some non-army-issue
food or a perhaps half-hour with your "sister"). When he smiles and
casts a nervous glance down the street to see where his Sergeant is at,
you blow his brains out with your first and only shot, then take his rifle
and ammunition. Your next few minutes are occupied with "getting
out of Dodge," for such critters generally go around in packs. After
that (assuming you evade your late benefactor's friends) you keep the rifle
and hand your little pistol to a fellow Resistance fighter so they can
go get their own rifle.
Or maybe you then use your rifle to get a submachine gun from
the Sergeant when he comes running. Perhaps you get very lucky and
pickup a light machine gun, two boxes of ammunition and a haversack of
hand grenades. With two of the grenades and the expenditure of a
half-a-box of ammunition at a hasty roadblock the next night, you and your
friends get a truck full of arms and ammunition. (Some of the cargo
is sticky with "Boche" blood, but you don't mind terribly.)
Pretty soon you've got the best armed little maquis unit in your
part of France, all from that cheap little pistol and the guts to use it.
(One wonders if the current political elite's opposition to so-called "Saturday
Night Specials" doesn't come from some adopted racial memory of previous
failed tyrants. Even cheap little pistols are a threat to oppressive
regimes.)
They called the pistol the "Liberator." Not a bad name,
all in all.
Now let's consider the strategic aspect of the question, "What
good can a handgun do against an army....?" We have seen that even
a poor pistol can make a great deal of difference to the military career
and postwar plans of one enemy soldier. That's tactical. But
consider what a million pistols, or a hundred million pistols (which may
approach the actual number of handguns in the U.S. today), can mean to
the military planner who seeks to carry out operations against a populace
so armed. Mention "Afghanistan" or "Chechnya" to a member of the
current Russian military heirarchy and watch them shudder at the bloody
memories. Then you begin to get the idea that modern munitions, air
superiority and overwhelming, precision-guided violence still are not enough
to make victory certain when the targets are not sitting Christmas-present
fashion out in the middle of the desert.
I forget the name of the Senator who observed, "You know, a million
here and a million there, and pretty soon you're talking about serious
money." Consider that there are at least as many firearms-- handguns,
rifles and shotguns-- as there are citizens of the United States.
Consider that last year there were more than 14 million Americans who bought
licenses to hunt deer in the country. 14 million-- that's a number
greater than the largest five professional armies in the world combined.
Consider also that those deer hunters are not only armed, but they own
items of military utility-- everything from camoflage clothing to infrared
"game finders", Global Positioning System devices and night vision scopes.
Consider also that quite a few of these hunters are military veterans.
Just as moving around in the woods and stalking game are second nature,
military operations are no mystery to them, especially those who were on
the receiving end of guerrilla war in Southeast Asia. Indeed, such
men, aging though they may be, may be more psychologically prepared for
the exigencies of civil war (for this is what we are talking about) than
their younger active-duty brother-soldiers whose only military experience
involved neatly defined enemies and fronts in the Grand Campaign against
Saddam. Not since 1861-1865 has the American military attempted to
wage a war athwart its own logistical tail (nor indeed has it ever had
to use modern conventional munitions on the Main Streets of its own hometowns
and through its' relatives backyards, nor has it tested the obedience of
soldiers who took a very different oath with orders to kill their "rebellious"
neighbors, but that touches on the political aspect of the question).
But forget the psychological and political for a moment, and consider
just the numbers. To paraphrase the Senator, "A million pistols here,
a million rifles there, pretty soon you're talking serious firepower."
No one, repeat, no one, will conquer America, from within or without, until
its citizenry are disarmed. We remain, as a British officer had reason
to complain at the start of our Revolution, "a people numerous and armed."
The Second Amendment is a political issue today only because of
the military reality that underlies it. Politicians who fear the
people seek to disarm them. People who fear their government's intentions
refuse to be disarmed. The Founders understood this. So, too,
does every tyrant who ever lived. Liberty-loving Americans forget
it at their peril. Until they do, American gunowners in the aggregate
represent a strategic military fact and an impediment to foreign tyranny.
They also represent the greatest political challenge to home-grown would-be
tyrants. If the people cannot be forcibly disarmed against their
will, then they must be persuaded to give up their arms voluntarily.
This is the siren song of "gun control," which is to say "government
control of all guns," although few self-respecting gun-grabbers such as
Charles Schumer would be quite so bold as to phrase it so honestly.
Joseph Stalin, when informed after World War II that the Pope
disapproved of Russian troops occupying Trieste, turned to his advisors
and asked, "The Pope? The Pope? How many divisions does he
have?" Dictators are unmoved by moral suasion. Fortunately,
our Founders saw the wisdom of backing the First Amendment up with the
Second. The "divisions" of the army of American constitutional liberty
get into their cars and drive to work in this country every day to jobs
that are hardly military in nature. Most of them are unmindful of
the service they provide. Their arms depots may be found in innumerable
closets, gunracks and gunsafes. They have no appointed officers,
nor will they need any until they are mobilized by events. Such guardians
of our liberty perform this service merely by existing. And although
they may be an ever-diminishing minority within their own country, as gun
ownership is demonized and discouraged by the ruling elites, still they
are as yet more than enough to perform their vital task. And if they
are unaware of the impediment they present to their would-be rulers, their
would-be rulers are painfully aware of these "divisions of liberty", as
evidenced by their incessant calls for individual disarmament. They
understand moral versus military force just as clearly as Stalin, but they
would not be so indelicate as to quote him.
The Roman Republic failed because they could not successfully
answer the question, "Who Shall Guard the Guards?" The Founders of
this Republic answered that question with both the First and Second Amendments.
Like Stalin, the Clintonistas could care less what common folk say about
them, but the concept of the armed citizenry as guarantors of their own
liberties sets their teeth on edge and disturbs their statist sleep.
Governments, some great men once avowed, derive their legitimacy
from "the consent of the governed." In the country that these men
founded, it should not be required to remind anyone that the people do
not obtain their natural, God-given liberties by "the consent of the Government."
Yet in this century, our once great constitutional republic has been so
profaned in the pursuit of power and social engineering by corrupt leaders
as to be unrecognizable to the Founders. And in large measure we
have ourselves to blame because at each crucial step along the way the
usurpers of our liberties have obtained the consent of a majority of the
governed to do what they have done, often in the name of "democracy"--
a political system rejected by the Founders. Another good friend
of mine gave the best description of pure democracy I have ever heard.
"Democracy," he concluded, "is three wolves and a sheep sitting down to
vote on what to have for dinner." The rights of the sheep in this
system are by no means guaranteed.
Now it is true that our present wolf-like, would-be rulers do
not as yet seek to eat that sheep and its peaceable wooly cousins (We,
the people). They are, however, most desirous that the sheep be shorn
of taxes, and if possible and when necessary, be reminded of their rightful
place in society as "good citizen sheep" whose safety from the big bad
wolves outside their barn doors is only guaranteed by the omni-presence
in the barn of the "good wolves" of the government. Indeed, they
do not present themselves as wolves at all, but rather these lupines parade
around in sheep's clothing, bleating insistently in falsetto about the
welfare of the flock and the necessity to surrender liberty and property
"for the children", er, ah, I mean "the lambs." In order
to ensure future generations of compliant sheep, they are careful to educate
the lambs in the way of "political correctness," tutoring them in the totalitarian
faiths that "it takes a barnyard to raise a lamb" and "all animals are
equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Every now and then, some tough old independent-minded ram refuses
to be shorn and tries to remind the flock that they once decided affairs
themselves according to the rule of law of their ancestors, and without
the help of their "betters." When that happens, the fangs become
apparent and the conspicuously unwilling are shunned, cowed, driven off
or (occasionally) killed. But flashing teeth or not, the majority
of the flock has learned over time not to resist the Lupine-Mandarin class
which herds it. Their Founders, who were fiercely independent rams,
would have long ago chased off such usurpers. Any present members
of the flock who think like that are denounced as antediluvian or mentally
deranged.
There are some of these dissidents the lupines would like to punish,
but they dare not-- for their teeth are every bit as long as their "betters."
Indeed, this is the reason the wolves haven't eaten any sheep in generations.
To the wolves chagrin, this portion of the flock is armed and they outnumber
the wolves by a considerable margin. For now the wolves are content
to watch the numbers of these "armed sheep" diminish, as long teeth are
no longer fashionable in polite society. (Indeed, they are considered
by the literati to be an anachronism best forgotten and such sheep are
dismissed by the Mandarins as "Tooth Nuts" or "Right Leg Fanatics".)
When the numbers of armed sheep fall below below a level that the wolves
can feel safe to do so, the eating will begin. The wolves are patient,
and proceed by infinitesimal degrees like the slowly-boiling frog.
It took them generations to lull the sheep into accepting them as rulers
instead of elected representatives. If it takes another generation
or two of sheep to complete the process, the wolves can wait. This
is our "Animal Farm," without apology to George Orwell.
Even so, the truth is that one man with a pistol CAN defeat an
army, given a righteous cause to fight for, enough determination to risk
death for that cause, and enough brains, luck and friends to win the struggle.
This is true in war but also in politics, and it is not necessary to be
a Prussian militarist to see it. The dirty little secret of today's
ruling elite as represented by the Clintonistas is that they want people
of conscience and principle to be divided in as many ways as possible ("wedge
issues" the consultants call them) so that they may be more easily manipulated.
No issue of race, religion, class or economics is left unexploited.
Lost in the din of jostling special interests are the few voices who point
out that if we refuse to be divided from what truly unites us as a people,
we cannot be defeated on the large issues of principle, faith, the constitutional
republic and the rule of law. More importantly, woe and ridicule
will be heaped upon anyone who points out that like the blustering Wizard
of Oz, the federal tax and regulation machine is not as omniscient, omnipotent
or fearsome as they would have us believe. Like the Wizard, they
fan the scary flames higher and shout, "Pay no attention to the man behind
the curtain!"
For the truth is, they are frightened that we will find out how
pitifully few they are compared to the mass of the citizenry they seek
to frighten into compliance with their tax collections, property seizures
and bureaucratic, unconstitutional power-shifting. I strongly recommend
everyone see the new animated movie "A Bug's Life". Simple truths
may often be found sheltering beneath unlikely overhangs, there protected
from the pelting storm of lies that soak us everyday. "A Bug's Life",
a childrens' movie of all things, is just such a place.
The plot revolves around an ant hill on an unnamed island, where
the ants placate predatory grasshoppers by offering them each year one-half
of the food they gather (sounds a lot like the IRS, right?). Driven
to desperation by the insatiable tax demands of the large, fearsome grasshoppers,
one enterprising ant goes abroad seeking bug mercenaries who will return
with him and defend the anthill when the grasshoppers return. (If
this sounds a lot like an animated "Magnificent Seven", you're right.)
The grasshoppers (who roar about like some biker gang or perhaps
the ATF in black helicopters, take your pick) are, at one point in the
movie, lounging around in a "bug cantina" down in Mexico, living off the
bounty of the land. The harvest seeds they eat are dispensed one
at a time from an upturned bar bottle. Two grasshoppers suggest to
their leader, a menacing fellow named "Hopper" (whose voice characterization
by Kevin Spacey is suitably evil personified), that they should forget
about the poor ants on the island. Here, they say, we can live off
the fat of the land, why worry about some upstart ants? Hopper turns
on them instantly. "Would you like a seed?" he quietly asks one.
"Sure," answers the skeptical grasshopper thug. "Would you like one?"
Hopper asks the other. "Yeah," says he. Hopper manipulates
the spigot on the bar bottle twice, and distributes the seeds to them.
"So, you want to know why we have to go back to the island, do
you?" Hopper asks menacingly as the thugs munch on their seeds. "I'll
show you why!" he shouts, removing the cap from the bottle entirely with
one quick blow. The seeds, no longer restrained by the cap, respond
to gravity and rush out all at once, inundating the two grasshoppers and
crushing them. Hopper turns to his remaining fellow grasshoppers
and shrieks, "That's why!"
I'm paraphrasing from memory here, for I've only seen the movie
once. But Hopper then explains, "Don't you remember the upstart ant
on that island? They outnumber us a hundred to one. How long
do you think we'll last if they ever figure that out?"
"If the ants are not frightened of us," Hopper tells them, "our
game is finished. We're finished."
Of course it comes as no surprise that in the end the ants figure
that out. Would that liberty-loving Americans were as smart as animated
ants.
Courage to stand against tyranny, fortunately, is not only found
on videotape. Courage flowers from the heart, from the twin roots
of deeply-held principle and faith in God. There are American heroes
living today who have not yet performed the deeds of principled courage
that future history books will record. They have not yet had to stand
in the gap, to plug it with their own fragile bodies and lives against
the evil that portends. Not yet have they been required to pledge
"their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor." Yet they will
have to. I believe with all my heart the lesson that history teaches:
That each and every generation of Americans is given, along with the liberty
and opportunity that is their heritage, the duty to defend America against
the tyrannies of their day. Our father's father's fathers fought
this same fight. Our mother's mother's mothers fought it as well.
From the Revolution through the world wars, from the Cold War through to
the Gulf, they fought to secure their liberty in conflicts great and small,
within and without.
They stood faithful to the oath that our Founders gave us: To
bear true faith and allegiance-- not to a man; not to the land; not
to a political party, but to an idea. The idea is liberty, as codified
in the Constitution of the United States. We swear, as did they,
an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
And throughout the years they paid in blood and treasure the terrible price
of that oath. That was their day. This is ours. The clouds
we can see on the horizon may be a simple rain or a vast hurricane, but
there is a storm coming. Make no mistake.
Lincoln said that this nation cannot long exist half slave and
half free. I say, if I may humbly paraphrase, that this nation cannot
long exist one-third slave, one-third uncommitted, and one-third free.
The slavery today is of the mind and soul not the body, but it is slavery
without a doubt that the Clintons and their toadies are pushing.
It is slavery to worship our nominally-elected representatives
as our rulers instead of requiring their trustworthiness as our servants.
It is slavery of the mind and soul that demands that God-given rights that
our Forefathers secured with their blood and sacrifice be traded for the
false security of a nanny-state which will tend to our "legitimate needs"
as they are perceived by that government. It is slavery of a more
traditional sort that extorts half of our incomes to pay, like slaves of
old, for the privilege of serving and supporting our master's regime.
It is slavery to worship humanism as religion and slavery to deny
life and liberty to unborn Americans. As people of faith in God,
whatever our denomination, we are in bondage to a plantation system that
steals our money; seizes our property; denies our ancient liberties; denies
even our very history, supplanting it with sanitized and politicized "correctness";
denies our children a real public education; denies them even the mention
of God in school; denies, in fact, the very existence of God.
So finally we are faced with, we must return to, the moral component
of the question: "What good can a handgun do against an army?" The
answer is "Nothing," or "Everything." The outcome depends upon the
mind and heart and soul of the man or woman who holds it. One may
also ask, "What good can a sling in the hands of a boy do against a marauding
giant?" If your cause is just and righteous much can be done, but
only if you are willing to risk the consequences of failure and to bear
the burdens of eternal vigilance.
A new friend of mine gave me a plaque the other day. Upon
it is written these words by Winston Churchill, a man who knew much about
fighting tyranny:
"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily
win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be
sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have
to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of
survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight
when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to
live as slaves."
The Spartans at Thermopylae knew this. The fighting Jews
of Masada knew this, when every man, woman and child died rather than submit
to Roman tyranny. The Texans who died at the Alamo knew this.
The frozen patriots of Valley Forge knew this. The "expendable men"
of Bataan and Corregidor knew this. If there is one lesson of Hitlerism
and the Holocaust, it is that free men, if they wish to remain free, must
resist would-be tyrants at the first opportunity and at every opportunity.
Remember that whether they the come as conquerors or elected officials,
the men who secretly wish to be your murderers must first convince you
that you must accept them as your masters. Free men and women must
not wait until they are "selected", divided and herded into Warsaw Ghettos,
there to finally fight desperately, almost without weapons, and die outnumbered.
The tyrant must be met at the door when he appears. At your
door, or mine, wherever he shows his bloody appetite. He must be
met by the pistol which can defeat an army. He must be met at every
door, for in truth we outnumber him and his henchmen. It matters
not whether they call themselves Communists or Nazis or something else.
It matters not what flag they fly, nor what uniform they wear. It
matters not what excuses they give for stealing your liberty, your property
or your life. "By their works ye shall know them."
The time is late. Those who once has trouble reading the
hour on their watches have no trouble seeing by the glare of the fire at
Waco. Few of us realized at the time that the Constitution was burning
right along with the Davidians. Now we know better.
We have had the advantage of that horrible illumination for more
than five years now-- five years in which the rule of law and the battered
old parchment of our beloved Constitution have been smashed, shredded and
besmirched by the Clintonistas. In this process they have been aided
and abetted by the cowardly incompetence of the "opposition" Republican
leadership, a fact made crystal clear by the Waco hearings. They
have forgotten Daniel Webster's warning: "Miracles do not cluster.
Hold on to the Constitution of the United States of America and the Republic
for which it stands-- what has happened once in six thousand years may
never happen again. Hold on to your Constitution, for if the American
Constitution shall fail there will be anarchy throughout the world."
Yet being able to see what has happened has not helped
us reverse, or even slow, the process. The sad fact is that we may
have to resign ourselves to the prospect of having to maintain our principles
and our liberty in the face of becoming a disenfranchised minority within
our own country.
The middle third of the populace, it seems, will continue to waffle
in favor of the enemies of the Constitution until their comfort level with
the economy is endangered. They've got theirs, Jack. The Republicans,
who we thought could represent our interests and protect the Constitution
and the rule of law, have been demonstrated to be political eunuchs.
Alan Keyes was dead right when he characterized the last election as one
between "the lawless Democrats and the gutless Republicans." The
spectacular political failures of our current leaders are unrivaled in
our history unless you recall the unprincipled jockeying for position and
tragi-comedy of misunderstanding and miscommunication which lead to our
first Civil War.
And make no mistake, it is civil war which may be the most horrible
corollary of the Law of Unintended Consequences as it applies to the Clintonistas
and their destruction of the rule of law. Because such people have
no cause for which they are willing to die (all morality being relativistic
to them, and all principles compromisable), they cannot fathom the motives
or behavior of people who believe that there are some principles worth
fighting and dying for. Out of such failures of understanding come
wars. Particularly because although such elitists would not risk
their own necks in a fight, they have no compunction about ordering others
in their pay to fight for them. It is not the deaths of others, but
their own deaths, that they fear. As a Christian, I cannot fear my
own death, but rather I am commanded by my God to live in such a way as
to make my death a homecoming. That this makes me incomprehensible
and threatening to those who wish to be my masters is something I can do
little about. I would suggest to them that they not poke their godless,
tyrannical noses down my alley. As the coiled rattlesnake flag of
the Revolution bluntly stated: "Don't Tread on Me!" Or, as our state
motto here in Alabama says: "We Dare Defend Our Rights."
But can a handgun defeat an army? Yes. It remains
to be seen whether the struggle of our generation against the tyrants of
our day in the first decade of the 21st Century will bring a restoration
of liberty and the rule of law or a dark and bloody descent into chaos
and slavery.
If it is to be the former, I will meet you at the new Yorktown.
If it is to be the latter, I will meet you at Masada. But I will
not be a slave. And I know that whether we succeed or fail, if we
should fall along the way, our graves will one day be visited by other
free Americans, thanking us that we did not forget that, with help of Almighty
God, in the hands of a free man a handgun CAN defeat a tyrant's army.
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