Braving Gun Rights Haters' Nails: Lower Merion Township, PA Family Open Carry Rally (video)

Braving nails placed in the street by our car tires by gun rights haters (one wonders if there is no low they won't stoop to) we protested the fact that Lower Merion, PA won't repeal their local gun ordnance despite the fact that it's in violation of the state's preemption law.

Pictures of guns at the rally that killed no one:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures of signs and other expressions of support:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gun Rights Haters: Victims or Aggressors?

Now these perpetual “victims” want to learn about “Powerfully Peaceful Action in the Face of Armed and Aggressive Opposition”. Why do they say they need to do this? Because, according to them, “Almost every group in the gun sense movement has – at some time in the last several years – been confronted by armed and/or aggressive counter demonstrators at one of our public actions.” Though as you can see at the link above no examples of any aggressive behavior towards them are given. Of course, we often counter-demonstrate their events armed but that's not aggression as the zero body count and zero hospitalization rate among attendees show. If being around guns frightens them there is a name for that, hoplophobia. Perhaps a psychiatrist would be more helpful to them than a workshop. 

I wish I knew what aggressiveness they've been facing. Last June we went out of our way not to interfere with their gun rights hating march from Chester to Media, two towns near Philadelphia, PA. Here is video proof that they weren't even verbally insulted.

Facing aggressors from our side isn't what's going on out there. No, they realize that they can't keep abusing us and keep the facade of goodness and victimhood intact. For example, they sure were abusive of me when I tried to flier their rally once:

Gun rights haters in Rhode Island were even worse to liberty activist Dan Bidondi:


Even disrupting a peaceful gun rights rally is held up by gun rights haters as a proper way to behave:


Then there is the vile practice of “swatting” open carriers. This is when gun rights haters call 911 and lie about open carriers' behavior so the police will stop, arrest, or even kill them.

Who really are the aggressors here? Certainly not gun rights advocates. We want only to peacefully have our rights respected. It is the other side, the gun rights haters, that want to send armed thugs with badges to infringe on our rights. Let's be very clear on this point, it is the gun rights haters who are the aggressors. They, in the form of their agents in the government, are coming after us not the other way around.

My impression is that they're stung by years of defeat in the legislatures and courts. Not to mention years of being proved wrong by the dropping crime rates that have occurred in recent decades despite the fact that there are more privately held guns than ever in the US. Just as they think that sounding more knowledgeable about guns will make them more credible and effective activists (see here for a write up of their meeting on firearms) they now think that hiding their hate will help their cause. It won't. More than a marketing problem what they have is a reality problem. They've been proved wrong and all the sweet talk in the world won't change that.

Gun Rights Haters Try To Learn About Guns

The cover of the handout containing the presentation's PowerPoint slides

You read the title correctly, Delaware County United for Sensible Gun Policy (Delco United) held their “Firearms 101 Presentation” Monday night (02/02/2015) in Springfield, PA. They figure if they gain a little book knowledge about guns they'll have more credibility. OK, stop laughing, you have an article to read.

A page from the handout questioning
the nonexistent gun show loophole

As you can see by following the link above, the presenter, 
Larry Glick, is well credentialed being a former law enforcement officer and a former National Rifle Association member. Unfortunately, my request to video his presentation was denied. Let me start with one of the most most important things that he said, “there is no gun show loophole”. He went to great lengths to explain that the idea that there are many gun sales going on at gun shows with no background checks performed is false. Glick very directly told the Delco United people not to pursue that angle. Let's let that sink in for a moment. At a meeting of one of the major gun rights hating groups in the Philadelphia area the speaker debunked one of the biggest lies that gun rights haters put out.

The evening started out interestingly enough. When I first got there Terry Rumsey and Robin Lasersohn, Co-Chairs of Delco United, recognized me as the leader of the Open Carry Counter-Rally For Gun Rights that stole the thunder from their march and rally for universal background checks in Media, PA last June. They took me aside and expressed their concern that I might try to disrupt their meeting. “We don't want people being afraid of being mocked when they ask questions”, is how I recall Robin Lasersohn putting it. After agreeing to behave, which was my intention all along, I was allowed to stay.

The presenter, Glick, hit on the de rigueur propaganda notes. “It's for the children”, he said at one point. Tellingly, Glick said that he knows that crime rates, including murder rates, are falling as are rates of gun accidents. He must also know that this is happening as the number of guns in the US is higher than ever and rising. It doesn't matter, he still thinks we need more gun control. “If we can only save one life it's worth it”, he said dramatically. Hey, who needs facts and logic when you can tug at the heartstrings? I've written several articles covering the dynamics that drive the murder rate and it's not the availability of guns that matters. They can be read here, here, here, here, and here.

Glick also went into denial and said that nobody wants to confiscate guns. He may be sincere but is very misguided. Conversations with gun rights haters often reveal that ending civilian gun ownership is their goal. I don't recall him saying much about gun bans, but he sure was talking about the kinds of so called “assault weapons” that we don't need. Let's keep in mind that when certain kinds of guns are actually banned (as opposed to the phony 1994 – 2004 “assault weapon” “ban”) they're going to be confiscated. It makes little difference if all guns are banned/confiscated at once or if it happens in gradual stages. We end up in the same place.

Let's, for a moment, assume that few or no guns will actually be banned/confiscated. Onerous regulations, severe licensing requirements, high fees, insurance mandates, and draconian penalties for minor gun infractions can end up making owning and bearing arms financially prohibitive and legally dangerous. This is a way of de facto banning/confiscating guns without making the guns themselves illegal.

Because of my good behavior, I said not one word during the whole presentation, Terry and Robin were a bit nicer after the meeting. During our conversations I asked if they'd be interested in a debate. They said no but they would be interested in a moderated discussion. That sounds like a fine idea. Stay tuned for updates.

An African Adventure

It all started when YouTube analytics showed that my video PA Gun Rights Haters Show Their Intolerance was embedded at GunSite South Africa. I promptly joined the forum. On May 5th I noticed a thread titled “To vote or not to vote.......” discussing participating in their upcoming May 7th elections. Nonvoting being one of my favorite topics I jumped in urging people to give up voting. After declaring that my post was “...some of the stupidest shit I have ever read” a moderator asked “Are you a 'sovereign citizen'?”. Later, after being accused of advocating inaction, some Lysander Spooner seemed appropriate. Here's what I posted:

...people rule you because you accept being ruled. Politicians have power because people like you think they should have it. Voting is part of the mechanism to get you to accept that rule. Stop being fooled by elections. Remember what the doctors say, first do no harm. Participating in elections does harm. It isn't taking action for good. It is doing what the power hungry govt wants you to do.

Modern democracy isn't about individuals it's about institutions. Politicians come & go, you get to vote for them. Institutions remain, you don't get to vote for them. Power is in the institutions not the individuals. They want you to think that power is with the individual holding office. That is the big fraud that you're falling for.

Nonvoting isn't a protest, it is a first step in rejecting an institution, namely the state. We need to mentally separate people from the govt. Only once they do that will they resist it in other ways. Real power is controlling money. As long as the govt can force us to pay for their operations they control us. Voting doesn't matter. Resisting taxation is the key to restoring liberty.

"That every man who puts money into the hands of a "government" (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will."

--Lysander Spooner, NO TREASON NO. VI. THE CONSTITUTION OF NO AUTHORITY

BTW, an experience that taught me a lot was living in Venezuela. I was there when they elected Hugo Chavez. Tell me again how well voting works.

http://www.gunsite.co.za/forums/showthread.php?47529-To-vote-or-not-to-vote&p=643933&viewfull=1#post643933

From that my nemesis the moderator somehow decided that I was indeed a sovereign citizen! “And surprise surprise he is a sovereign citizen.”, he posted. (For the record I've never had anything to do with the sovereign citizen movement.) In the next comment someone asks “Soooooo. We all need to become anarchists?”. At least that commenter seemed to get were I was coming though his subsequent comments showed that he was just conflating sovereign citizens and anarchists. There followed some of the usual nonsense about 

who would build roads and the like then a comment from a second moderator announcing my banning. (At least I did get one supportive comment.) Now when one clicks on my profile one sees this:

An 88? My first thought was that it was some kind of South African insult. A little research turned up that an 88 is a Nazi. (For the record I am not now nor have I ever been a Nazi.) Had all of this been true it would have been quite an accomplishment being a sovereign citizen, an anarchist, and a Nazi all at the same time! These South African guys have a lot to learn not only about political ideologies but also about free and open discussion. At least their ignorance made for an interesting cyber-safari.

There Is No Case for Gun Control (video and hate mail)

My presention at the Democracy Unplugged Forum Sampler 2 (https://www.facebook.com/events/574562119280696/)

Of course, you know you've hit the nail on the head when you get this kind of anger back:

Open Carrying a Gun in Philadelphia

At the End the Fed (Federal Reserve System) Rally of Saturday, May 18, 2013 Edd Skitz, a local liberty activist, open carried a handgun in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Edd Skitz legally open carrying his handgun in Philadelphia, PA

Edd was stopped by a police officer who checked his papers then let him go. Here is a short video of the detention:

This just goes to show that open carry with a license is legal in Philadelphia. No one should be fooled by cops that lie about the law to harass gun owners. Local law requires a license to carry a firearm for any kind of carrying. Unlike the rest of the state where open carry is legal without one.

Defending Gun Rights With Civil Disobedience

NJ Second Amendment Society

The gun owners of New Jersey have had enough! They’ve tried asking for their rights, they’ve tried protesting in the streets. It’s not working. The tyrants in Trenton are going to take their gun rights away regardless. Seeing that “There *IS* no redress of our LEGITIMATE grievances within the three branches of NJ government.” The New Jersey Second Amendment Society has announced the start of a campaign of civil disobedience. “In a SINCERE effort to avoid an unhappy outcome, we must attempt to reach the public through acts of non-violent civil disobedience. This is not easy and it will take time, but the alternative at this point is much less attractive.” They are right and deserve our support.

At first glance the idea of civil disobedience and guns may seem like an unlikely mixture, but the opposite is the truth. Choosing non-violent resistance when one could resist violently is the essence of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy:

Exercise of non-violence requires far greater bravery than that of swordsmanship. Cowardice is wholly inconsistent with non-violence. Translation from swordsmanship to non-violence is possible and, at times, even an easy stage. Non-violence, therefore, presupposes ability to strike. It is a conscious deliberate restraint put upon one's desire for vengeance.

Gun owners choosing not to use their guns aggressively or preemptively is the bravest (and smartest) way they can resist the government’s tyranny. This is fully consistent with the non-aggression principle, which, unlike Gandhi’s Satyagraha, allows for defensive force. It is often wiser to refrain from fighting even when defensive force is morally justified. The Deacons for Defense and Justice exemplify this approach. During the civil rights movement they carried weapons for defense while working non-violently for change. Rarely did they fire a weapon yet they prevented many an attack on civil rights activists.

There is also the passive side, don’t help the oppressor. Make him carry your weight instead of the other way around. In 1849 Henry David Thoreau called for peaceful resistance to oppose the injustices of slavery and the Mexican War. After being jailed for not paying taxes he wrote “Civil Disobedience”. In it he stated:

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, …the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person ... A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight …If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, "But what shall I do?" my answer is, "If you really wish to do anything, resign your office." When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.

Lastly, the hardest part, suffering injustice to hold the moral high ground and destroy the legitimacy of the tyrants. Show the world the evil that they really are. In 1819 Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the poem “The Mask of Anarchy” * about the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, England. His words were an inspiration to Gandhi and the Indians during their non-violent struggle for independence. The mask is the false, benevolent face the government puts on. Their own violence removes the mask. During the massacre the British government used cavalry to attack a peaceful assembly. Some excerpts:

 'Tis to see the Tyrant's crew
Ride over your wives and you -
Blood is on the grass like dew.

'Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for blood - and wrong for wrong -
Do not thus when ye are strong.

[Snip]

'Let a great Assembly be
Of the fearless and the free
On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around.

[Snip]

'Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.

'Let the tyrants pour around
With a quick and startling sound,
Like the loosening of a sea,
Troops of armed emblazonry.

Let the charged artillery drive
Till the dead air seems alive
With the clash of clanging wheels,
And the tramp of horses' heels.

'Let the fixèd bayonet
Gleam with sharp desire to wet
Its bright point in English blood
Looking keen as one for food.


'Let the horsemen's scimitars
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
In a sea of death and mourning.

'Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war,

'And let Panic, who outspeeds
The career of armèd steeds
Pass, a disregarded shade
Through your phalanx undismayed.

[Snip]

'And if then the tyrants dare
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew, -
What they like, that let them do.

'With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.

'Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

[Snip]

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'

 Stand firm, New Jersey gun owners, actively and peacefully resisting liberty’s enemies. If you do this fearlessly and with unbreakable wills you will prevail.

*As a libertarian anarchist I don’t like the way Shelley uses the word anarchy. I would have preferred the word chaos instead. Regardless, the poem is powerful, moving, and inspiring. I highly recommend reading and studying the whole thing.

Darren Wolfe at the Montgomery County Day of Resistance (video)

As part of the nationwide series of rallies standing up for gun rights the liberty minded people of Montgomery County, PA came together. I had the honor of addressing them. In this speech I bring up the fact that in February of 2010 students in Venezuela marched unarmed and were violently repressed. Also brought up was the gun buyback in Bensalem, PA (http://theinternationallibertarian.blogspot.com/2013/02/bensalem-gun-buyback-video.html). The talk finished with the main point that we can't submit to the government when it comes to money confiscation (taxes) and then think we have a leg to stand on when they want to confiscate our guns.

Bensalem Gun Buyback (video)

Despite police harassment the champions of liberty saved many guns from destruction at the Bensalem, PA gun buyback. This happened on February 16, 2013 in Bucks County near Philadelphia.

Progressivism’s Violent World

Unfortunately, no discussion of gun rights can take place these days without talking about the horrible murders at Newtown, CT last year. My heartfelt condolences go out to the families and friends of the victims as well as my sympathies to the survivors and the rest of that community for having to go through such a terrible experience.

The gun haters say that because of Newtown the gun rights advocates need to pipe down and accept whatever they want to dish out. I say there’s no better time than now to dispassionately look at how and why there is a violence problem here. The first thing that needs to be faced is that things are never simple. The problem is complex and simplistic approaches like banning guns or putting police in the schools won’t work for a number of reasons. No issue can be looked at in a vacuum. Therefore, as with any issue, we have to start with basic principles and moral implications. That means talking about the one moral imperative that guides us in all human relationships, the non-aggression principle, the one that was so horribly violated at Newtown. It is immoral to initiate the use of force or the threat of force against peaceful people.  In other words, a person has to be actually engaging in aggression or credibly threatening to do so before it is morally justifiable to use force in retaliation. What does that have to do with guns? The mere possession of an inanimate object such a gun aggresses against no one. There is no moral justification for taking guns away from people who adhere to the non-aggression principle since this involves initiating the use of force to separate them from their weapons.

Property rights are part of this equation also. People have a right to their property. Guns are property. Separating people from their guns by force is theft of those weapons.

There is a moral justification for, at times, using force. That is self-defense. Since the initiation of force is immoral the right to self-defense seems obvious. Depriving people of their guns is clearly taking away part of their ability to use defensive force. This is another way that gun control is a violation of people’s rights.

Before anyone says “that sounds nice in theory but doesn’t work in the real world” let’s look at how this plays out in the real world. To write about all the tyrannical governments that have killed, raped, tortured, enslaved, imprisoned, exiled, and stolen from all the people they have disarmed would require a book. Gun control is in reality people control starting from some very racist roots. In Maryland the law read "That no Negro or other slave, within this Province, shall be permitted to carry any Gun or any other offensive Weapon...." In Nazi Germany the law read “Jews are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons”. Whether it was not allowing African-Americans to own guns in this country or not allowing Jews to own guns in Nazi Germany the intent was the same, to have disarmed victims incapable of resistance. In the bloody 20th century, Mao Tse-tung summed it up perfectly, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”  Governments want disarmed victims. This is what Mao had in mind and there are seventy million dead Chinese to prove it, part of the over two-hundred million killed by governments in the 20th century. Governments that implemented gun control have committed all of the major genocides.

That’s why there’s never a good time to talk about disarming the people. What the discussion should be about is disarming the government. There is a massive imbalance between the power of the government and the power of the people.  Not only the military but the law enforcement establishments here are overwhelmingly strong. We need to start shifting power away from the government by putting these functions back in the people’s hands where they belong. One of the lesser known Founders, Tench Coxe, explained it well. Picking up on the same theme as Mao he wrote:

Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom… Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ... the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.

There is only one way to guarantee our lives and liberty. That is to be stronger than those who seek to take them are.

This is why the Founders warned us against having a standing army. They knew that such a force would be used to oppress.  Today, the “standing army” that we have to worry about domestically is the huge law enforcement establishment. I’m talking about not only state and local police but also agencies like the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and ad nauseum. Rather than deploy troops on the streets they use law enforcement to control us. While these agencies exist our liberty will always be in danger. In his greatest speech titled “Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?”, arguing against adoption of the constitution, Patrick Henry warned us:

The honorable gentleman who presides told us that, to prevent abuses in our government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone….Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders?

Patrick Henry was right. Gun owners today can’t stand up to the law enforcement establishment much less the military. People that advocate civilian guns to counter-balance the government’s weapons are engaging in a dangerous fantasy that is rightly ridiculed. In the US since the government can’t disarm us completely they have armed themselves to the hilt. This has a similar effect as disarming us. One only needs look at the militarization of the law enforcement establishment to see this. There is only one answer and that is institutional change shutting down those agencies while building up the private means of defending ourselves. We need to move to a system of private security. There is no need for local police. History has already proved that private security is better at protecting us than the government is. A shining example is Oro Valley, Arizona. In 1975 they hired Rural/Metro Inc. to be their police department, providing the services previously provided by the county sheriff. Crime rates where greatly reduced at a fraction of the cost of a government police force.

There is no need for national level law enforcement. Agencies like those I mentioned, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; and the Drug Enforcement Administration are merely instruments of oppression enforcing many unconstitutional laws. One is reminded of Thomas Jefferson's words about the overly powerful capitol,

When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.

Not only is private security better able to protect people, and their property, they have a provider/client relationship with them. Under this scenario there is no incentive for private security to enforce something like the drug prohibition and the government wouldn't have the means to do so.

Bear in mind that policing, as we know it today, got its start in the mid-19th century. It wasn't truly about preventing crime, as crime rates were quite low back then. It was all about expanding the government's power. Fast-forward to today and we find that the greatest threat to our lives, liberty, and property is the government. This is due to their tremendous police power. The only way for us to restore our rights is to take that power away from the government.

There is a foreign policy aspect to this too. While the US government has a huge military to wield against the rest of the world it will remain, to quote Patrick Henry again, “a powerful and mighty empire”.  Moving to a militia-based defense is impossible while there is gun control. All too many who advocate peace also advocate civilian disarmament not realizing that they are actually empowering the military that they oppose.  We can guarantee peace, at home and abroad, only by disarming the government and arming the people.

Digging deeper, though, there are other connections between domestic and foreign tyranny that many don’t see. The Communist Manifesto is a good a place to start this analysis. The four of the ten planks in that book that have been openly implemented in the United States are most relevant to this discussion:

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. - Not only does this furnish money for the government’s use (such as paying for aggressive wars), it provides them with one of its worse organs of plunder and domestic repression, the IRS.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. - The Federal Reserve System, the United States’ central bank, is the greatest enabler the government has. It creates the easy money that finances all its mischief.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. - The corporate media are but the government’s propaganda arm, hyping the wars and glorifying the troops and LEOs at every turn. The government owns the roads, most public transportation, ports, and the airports, giving it control of all movement and vast resources.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. - Government schools are in reality also indoctrination centers. They produce loyal citizens trained to unquestioningly support the state.

It is truly scary how mainstream these destructive ideas have become. Today, we live in a world of the progressives’ creation, somewhere halfway between socialism and liberty. It is a volatile mixture. It is a world increasingly ruled by force; force wielded by a powerfully armed government. Whether it is the force of the income tax, the force of compulsory education, the force of regulation, or the force of law enforcement the effects are clear to all willing to see: a society becoming sicker and more aggressive. We’ve sunk a long way since 1850 when a Frenchman, Frederick Bastiat, wrote in his book  “The Law”:

Is there any need to offer proof that this odious perversion of the law is a perpetual source of hatred and discord; that it tends to destroy society itself? If such proof is needed, look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person's liberty and property. As a consequence of this, there appears to be no country in the world where the social order rests on a firmer foundation.

They’re sure not talking about us like that in France anymore! Progressivism has failed to achieve its lofty ideals. Instead it has created our present situation of crime and murder, war and empire. It is this failure that the advocates of gun control want to cover up. Instead of facing reality they want to blame guns for the problems the implementation of their ideas has created. Before anyone gets too smug, let me emphasize that both political parties have adopted the progressive ideology. Today’s so-called liberals and conservatives advocate different degrees and different aspects of it, but advocate it they do. The liberals may advocate gun control, but it is the conservatives who advocate the police state that can enforce it. Stop and frisk is a great example of this. Gun control is what drives it. While the liberals object to stop and frisk they support its driving force. While the conservatives advocate stop and frisk they oppose the gun control that drives it.

It’s past time for both sides to realize that the killing will only end, society will only heal by turning it away from being ruled by force and toward voluntary interaction between its members. Liberty is the answer. Implementing it means change at the institutional level, disarming the government and keeping the people not only armed but also organized to defend themselves.  Back in 1789 Representative Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts explained it well. During the Floor debate over the Second Amendment he said:

What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberty of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.

Today, society smolders in those ruins. It’s time to put that fire out.

[author's note: some parts of this article were taken from articles previously published. See here and here]  

This article was based on my speech "The Relationship Between Liberty, Power, and Guns"

http://theinternationallibertarian.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-relationship-between-liberty-power.html

Montgomery County, PA Gun Appreciation and Anti-United Nations Rally (video)

Since it was planned before the national and state rallies were we went ahead with our local one. About thirty people came out to support liberty and stand up for our rights.

Below are some pictures of the rally.

Open Carry Meet and Eat - Ridley Township, PA

At a dinner organized by Mark Fiorino he was interviewed by the Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky . Mark became the target of the Philadelphia Police Department last year when he was arrested for legally open carrying his handgun in the city:

Fortunately, things went without incident at the dinner. No arrests where made but, hopefully, new friendships were.