This Saturday, February 7, open carry activists will meet at the Washington state Capitol and some of them plan to risk arrest. This is in response to fiat decrees from both the state House and Senate forbidding OC in their galleries.
They invite others along for moral support, to film events, or simply to listen to speakers (of which there is an impressive roster, including Mike Vanderboegh and Rep. Matt Shea, who has introduced a bill to repeal the ghastly Bloombergian I-594).
I’ve got complicated thoughts about this event and will not be there. But David Codrea asks us fence-sitters (and even many nay-sayers) to pony up something for the defense fund. Will do, David. And salutes to those bold enough to take the risk, even if I doubt that OC in the state house is the worthiest issue.
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ADDED: Yeah, what Kevin Wilmeth says.
Yep, what Kevin says.
I can point people here. I can point people to Bear. To Wendy McElroy… I can point people a hundred places. I get little discussion resulting.
John Mosby @ Mountain Guerrilla and Mike V are the two that I see constantly providing a jolt. Those guys I get discussions out of. Changes in (my perception of) commitment, too.
I hope Mike is around and free a good deal longer. He’s needed alive, I think, more than he realizes. At least more than he admits.
I live in Washington State. I would not send $1 to support any of these people. The tradition in Washington State is that you don’t open carry where is likely to upset anyone – like downtown Seattle or Capitol building. This is (or maybe was) also the law. The gun blogosphere can sneer and rant and beat their keyboards to dust deriding our traditions – I don’t plan to make it my problem. I don’t see any outcome to this rally that benefits firearm ownership anywhere.
The best outcome is that it doesn’t divide and isolate individuals with different approaches to armed self-defense. We can’t afford to lose anyone. There are more gun-hating Progressives arriving every day in Washington State – most from California. They have a system for taking control over huge areas. In rural counties they only have to occupy a single population center like a county seat. The conquest is almost complete in western Washington State. I’m not an expert in military strategy, but I’m guessing the best plan to survive an invasion does not involve getting captured and stuffed in a cage.
Claire, I found this interesting article by Kurt Hoffman:
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That, indeed, is the first lesson: background check data can be used as a de facto registry, and the registry can serve to find guns and owners.
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http://www.examiner.com/article/assault-weapons-registration-and-the-lessons-of-connecticut
I had missed earlier that the Courant had pushed this “solution” to the Connecticut problem. It essentially proves my earlier point, that NICS is a registry. We are not attempting to stop a registry; that horse has already fled the barn. We are at the next point, stopping the confiscation. The only thing that stops it is the only thing that can stop it, the determination to resist by going to war, if need be. That is all that deters the tyrants.
Respectfully, Mari: I’m pretty sure that Washington traditions also do not include using “the political means” to force upon others what they will not accept by “the economic means” of persuasion. You lament this yourself in describing what I have seen for years labeled as “Californication”.
Why is it then that the path to success–or even simply relief–must somehow lie in playing our antagonists’ game, in their house, by their rules? You may certainly do with your dollar what you wish–I don’t think anyone here expects otherwise–but why the angst at people who have concluded that asking nicely, for generations now across the country, does nothing to diminish further calls for forcible disarmament, and who would at least like their warning to be heard, clearly, before being pushed all the way to blows? Speaking for myself, I cannot criticize their actions as somehow making a claim on or for me, without feeling the weight of some serious moral hypocrisy over my own open frustration with others who claim that my own exercise of my own rights somehow burdens them with a society that they “don’t want to live in”. Either both of those things are okay or neither is; I can’t justify one and not the other.
Believe me, I understand the tradition of polite, which is what I think you’re really getting at. The art of minding your own business, after all, is what binds most freedomistas together, and is the one I follow whenever humanly possible–if only because it feels most human to me. (And frankly, it continues to amaze me just how polite and compliant the gunnies have been thus far, given multiple generations of increasingly dehumanizing vilification.) This is the world as it should be, but isn’t.
Please understand, I don’t claim to have everyone’s answer, but nor can I quite bring myself to insist that those who have a need to demonstrate their resistance, stop doing so. I’m happy to smack down the truly stupid, but what is happening tomorrow is not stupid in and of itself. It can only be considered stupid because of what we all know the potential response of the tyrants could be.
What would you have people do instead, that they have not already tried for generations, and arrived here to show for it? Please, I am not trying to pick a fight here–I actually sympathize much more with what I think you’re trying to say than these words may suggest–I’d really like to know what you think might be better, as I’m not sure I can see it.
And I would offer one additional observation. You said “I don’t see any outcome to this rally that benefits firearm ownership anywhere.” I would argue that if you really believe that, you are not considering the full spectrum of people observing the event, nor the full set of outcomes that may arise from it. I would absolutely agree that Leviathan and the Disarmament Now! crowd sees it only in that light–but that doesn’t mean we must, nor that what the disarmers say here is going to be any more prescient than their usual reflexive claims of blood-will-flow-in-the-streets upon any sort of “failure” to further tyrannize the peasantry.
One way or the other, I’m with you on this: I don’t want to see any sort of bloodshed or further division. Plenty of nasty people remain hard at work on the latter, no matter what we do or don’t do, and we all know how little it takes to get the Consecrated Slugs Of Authoritah flying all over the general vicinity, at participants and noncombatants alike. Sure as hell I’d prefer to avoid that.
May everyone involved comport themselves in a manner they can be proud of on Sunday.
I have the same reservation that Codrea has about it – that it makes little sense to demonstrate you won’t back down, won’t be disarmed, by being arrested and disarmed. I think the only way to show that is by refusing (with deadly force if need be) to be arrested and disarmed. But, I suppose we have to go through this step before people get to that final understanding; and who knows, maybe things will work out anyway. For example, the state police may see this progression, not want to go there, and decide to stop enforcing at this point rather than at that more stringent future one.
Is it time yet…
Looks like the ruling tactic is to ignore them, rather than to throw them in cages. Probably the best move on their part, but the question of “who won” this encounter remains to be seen. Yeah, this small event probably won’t make it into the organs of the Ministry of Propaganda outside Olympia (if even there), but it sure will get exposure on the Internet. More people will show up at the next one, causing more ruling class heartburn. I’m thinking a trip to Yakima is in the cards this summer…
Marxist bake sale on college campus gets owned:
http://chicksontheright.com/blog/item/25044-facebook-bake-sale-for-college-democrats-turns-hilarious