A Three Percenter

I am a Three Percenter, but not in the sense that you may or may not have heard the term used before.  Rather, I’m a Three Percenter in the sense given by Sebastian in this post:

If 3% of gun owners were as involved in political activism as they supposedly are at preparing for civil war, we’d be an unstoppable political force.  There would be no need to argue about where the line is, because it would be political suicide for any politician to get anywhere near it.

I’m part of the 3% that we’re trying to get active and involved in political activism. You know why getting 3% of gun owners actively involved in political activism would make us unstoppable? There are as many as 80 million gun owners in the Estados Unidos, and 3% of that number is 2,400,000. Two million, four hundred thousand political activists would be an army the likes of which the modern political system has never even seen. Essentially, it would be like mobilizing the entire NRA membership of the NRA to become involved in the political process – doing things like going door to door, working to elect pro-gun political candidates, and changing the system.

You give me 3% of gun owners willing to do that, willing to do the thankless grind of political activism, willing to even occasionally lose battles but not the war – you give me that 3% and we’d change the system for you.

22 Comments

  1. Here’s an interesting thought with the battle/war analogy:

    If we had that many willing to do that kind of political action, we’d have very few battles to lose. Most of the country wouldn’t dare pick any battles. In fact, our only real battles would be in the extreme anti-gun states. What’s even better is that with technology, we could get people involved in those states without them ever having to leave the couch.

    At the federal level, we could leverage our financial support for the most active pro-2A folks. They could set up (or boost) leadership PACs in order for them to donate to other pro-gun members of their party and boost themselves into leadership. (A DC friend explained that the big reason Waxman won wasn’t as much Pelosi pulling strings, but because Waxman has been maxing out PAC donations to freshmen Dems for a while, and Dingell has been relying on the old school political rules that favor seniority and familiarity with issues. Think about what we could do using that model to boost pro-gun members of both parties.)

    In essence, there would be no war, only skirmishes with a few bassackwards states.

  2. I think it’s happening slowly. But it will certainly take more work to break the inertia of inaction. I’m living proof of that, really. I’ve been in the NRA for a while but I never did anything more than write a check. But yesterday I made phone calls to politicians for the first time ever (to oppose a one-gun-a-month bill).

  3. Folks:

    It’s a pretty big assumption that those seeing the world as does Vanderboegh are NOT involved in the political stuff.

    I’m a life member in NRA/GOA/JPFO/CCRKBA, a regular member in Georgia Carry (no life membership yet), and just threw another Ben at CCRKBA this week.

    I write and call my Fed and state reps regularly (spoke to all 3 Congresscritters this AM), run a useful RKBA blog, conduct baic marksmanship and practical shooting classes whenever possible, helped in putting on four weekend-long proactical medical courses this year, and provide material financial and other support to worthy freedom and RKBA causes whereever and whenever I can.

    I’m also a lawyer who works in the Federal regulatory sphere, and in the past have tried criminal jury cases, conducted extensive long-term electronic surveillance-driven investigations into international criminal organizations, written appellate briefs, drafted legislation in multiple jurisdictions, and lobbied those bills into law in NY, NJ, MA, PA, and elsewhere.

    I told you all that so I can tell you this:

    My considered legal/political/regulatory opinion, based on my experience and training as described above, leads me to the following conclusions:

    1) We’re screwed.

    2) There’s gonna be a (real bad ugly) fight against the ones who screwed us.

    3) Let’s win.

    I’ll keep playing along with the political stuff, largely to balm my conscience when the inevitable comes.

    But I know for sure how that is going to turn out.

    Meanwhile, I’ll train, organize, support, and prepare.

    No Fort Sumters, for sure.

    But there is going to be a war.

    If folks were honest with themselves, they’d recognize that it’s already started with the armed confiscation of from 25% to 50% or more of your earnings each year, along with the government school indoctrination of your children and grandchildren into global socialist values.

    IMHO, the pure politicals have to answer the following question, if only to themselves:

    What objective basis do you have for believing that freedom (of which the RKBA is a necessary but NOT sufficient component) is advancing in today’s America?

    What is YOUR plan when the political route further fails?

    Is there any point at all where you will, to quote Mencken, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats?

    I hope to see you on the line.

    Respectfully,

    Your comrade-in-arms

  4. Concerned American,

    I respect your opinion but I don’t agree with your pessimism. To answer your question about whether freedom is advancing in America I submit the following:

    *District of Columbia vs. Dick Anthony Heller

    Heller will be a gift that keeps on giving in my view. Once you recognize a constitutional right you must be more free than not to exercise it. Yes, there will be many judges who try to wiggle out of it but there will also be many who don’t.

    I do agree that our freedom is threatened. There’s little doubt there. But I simply don’t agree that our backs are against the wall. We lost an election in my view largely on the basis on the winner’s persona. We haven’t even lost a legislative fight yet.

    Can we at least commit to try using democracy in order to save it?

    Thanks
    Dod

  5. I can’t believe the Three Percenters still don’t understand how offensive the phrase “No Fort Sumters” is.

    I’ve perused M.V.’s blog. The commentators seem to have an appreciation for the Confederacy…

  6. Hmmm. I’ve been active as hell in politics. What has that got me? McCain Vs. Obama? hahahahaha. Let’s get serious here folks. I have now officially given up on the ballot box. Good luck in getting your political views enacted though. I stand behind you, or maybe that is in front of you?

  7. It’s worth noting that it was the ballot box that brought us the Heller decision as well as right to carry legislation.

  8. Alcibiades, perhaps you could expand on why “No Fort Sumters” is offensive to you??

    I am very much against slavery, but when Mike talks about No Fort Sumters, he has a very valid point.

    Please read the following from Mike Vanderboegh:
    http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2008/11/vanderboegh-resolve.html

    If you don’t want to read the entire thing, scroll down to the bold heading “No Fort Sumters” and read only that section. I’m legitimately confused as to why you think that Mike and folks like me that understand where he is coming from and stand with him are “appreciative” of the Confederacy.

    I too have been involved as much as I can politically for the simple reason that I’d rather not have to get to the point where things get physical. However, at what point do we declare the political battle lost?

    As Mike has asked repeatedly in the last few days – where is your line in the sand? Ask yourself that question, and answer it honestly.

  9. http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2008/12/lines-and-lies-in-sand-or-sensible.html

    Lines, and Lies, in the Sand, or, A Sensible Request Rejected

    A fellow named Dock had a sensible request over at Snowflake’s house, which you can find at http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2008/12/04/the-line-in-the-sand/#comment-34695.

    It went like this:

    Dock Said,
    December 4th, 2008 at 5:51 pm

    “Instead of fracturing our community, is there any way that we can instead try to mend fences with the 3 percenters? I know, I know, they’re (insert bad thing here) and they are intractable and everything else. Fine. Someone has to wear the big boy pants and be smart enough to realize that we can no longer afford internal warfare of any kind. The modern political reality has robbed us of this luxury. Sebastian, I admire your cool head and your ability to see the big picture – it’s a large part of why I started my own new blog. Will *you* be the one to try to mend fences? Just a thought.”

    To which a prag named Chris replied:

    chris Said,
    December 4th, 2008 at 6:33 pm

    “Dock, that would be kinda like getting Islam to tame the terrorist groups among them… not impossible, but it would be easier to loudly let everyone know that these wackjobs do not represent the rest of the shooting community.”

    Now wasn’t that a nice slap, comparing us with Jihadists? But, Dock, ever hopeful, replied thusly,

    Dock Said,
    December 4th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

    “Easier, sure. But is it better? I’m not so sure. It is a worthy task. Perhaps it is wrong of me to call anyone to that duty, because it really is a tough one.”

    Tough indeed, for Sebastian promptly shot it down.

    Sebastian Said,
    December 4th, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    “. . .I don’t honestly see any way to do that when they think we’re cowards who just want to surrender, and we have different ideas about effective tactics that makes us believe they are a liability to the movement. I mean, I doubt they really even see guys like me as on their side, and I don’t really seem them as on mine. So I’m not sure there’s a fence to be mended to be honest.”

    Dock, I appreciate your trying. I believe it was Sebastian who started this current folderol by calling me a “lunatic” after the Madison letter. I had a similar dustup with Chris Knox, responding to names that he called, and we ended up making a fragile peace, along the lines of understanding that if he was to play the good cop advocating our Second Amendment rights, it might be useful to have a bad cop around to play off of.

    Martin Luther King and the other advocates of non-violent change were unable to interest the federal government in enforcing their own laws until the Birmingham Riots of 1963, and the formation of the Deacons for Defense and Justice by black veterans who not only had weapons but knew how to use them, raised the very real prospect of armed conflict.

    For his part, Sebastion has finally answered the $64,000 question, at least in part. Sez he:

    “The demand to know what we’d do if the line is drawn behind us is rather like someone asking a chess player what he’d do to avoid being check mated if his opponent checks his king. They will be the first, no doubt, to say it’s a cowardly cop out. But it’s how I feel about it. There are circumstances where I would agree violent resistance is the only choice. But we are not now, in this country, anywhere close to those circumstances. I find the rather delighted glee with which with some boast of forcing circumstances on others to be utterly repulsive. If believing that makes me a coward, so be it, but I won’t stand with a group that preaches and prepares for civil war while numerous non-violent options lay unused on the table. If they pass a new assault weapons ban? We’ll fight it in the courts. If they ban private sales? There’s legislative, judicial action, and civil disobedience at our disposal. Confiscation? Heller should take that off the table, and even if not, there’s fifth amendment challenges that can be made. Registration? We already have it with every 4473 you fill out.”

    A court fight takes how long to reach the Supreme Court? And how many Obamanoids will appointed by then? Sebastian must know, and accept, that we will have to forfeit the banned weapons long before it comes to final judgment. And what are we to do then when the decision is against us? It is a fait accompli. Funny how he just gives them registration at the end. I’ll tell you this, if they start picking up all the 4473s the Three Percenters will be in a race with them to see how many we can destroy before they get to them. We’ll burn them in huge bonfires and dare the feds to do anything about it.

    What will it take for the Sebastians, and the Ahabs, the SayUncles and the Linoge’s to understand? This is not the country you grew up in. The old verities no longer apply. The tried and true political maneuvers are going to have to be rethought, and refought — like the Sons of Liberty, not the Kiwanis Club.

    When Sebastian moans this:

    “If 3% of gun owners were as involved in political activism as they supposedly are at preparing for civil war, we’d be an unstoppable political force. There would be no need to argue about where the line is, because it would be political suicide for any politician to get anywhere near it.”

    Not only is he wrongly assuming that all of us Three Percenters have not been fully engaged politically for lo, these many years, he is wishing for a land that has disappeared.

    Look around you, people. Wake up and smell the kindling burning for the ghastly pyres of a future Waco. For it is coming, unless we convince the gun confiscationists that this is as far as they go without violence. Thus, it would behoove the so-called “pragmatists” of the gun world to use us as Martin Luther King did Stokely Carmichael.

    Instead of calling us belittling names and trying to discredit us, you should be saying, “Look, Senator, these people have a point and they’re angrier than we are. We wouldn’t go that far, BUT THEY WILL, and you’d better have the good sense God gave a goose and back off the seizure of control over the private sale of arms. And for your own sake, don’t try to ban another previously legal class of weapons. These people will fight, and they’ve already said that after your first shots at them they’ll take the fight to YOU. Not just the ATF and the FBI, but to YOU. Senator, I beg you, is it worth it?”

    The gun confiscationists are not going to stop without a reason. We have backed up too fast, too easily, for 70 plus years. We Three Percenters will now provide them with a reason. It is up you pragmatists to convince them of it. Thus, it is in the pragmatists’ interest to acknowledge our position, not to denigrate it or to call us names. Sebastian has said that he, too, has his own “line in the sand.” If he and his fellow pragmatists do not take this opportunity we have given them, that “line in the sand” is just a lie in the sand.

    I am willing to work with anybody to prevent this country from descending into civil war. I am willing to do anything short of compromising my principles, and those of the Founders’ Republic, to do so.

    Dock, you made a convincing plea. I’m sorry it didn’t work. Maybe when things get worse they will change their minds. For things WILL get worse. In the meantime, the Three Percent will continue to prepare for the test to come.

  10. Heller? Hmmmm. Don’t get me started on Heller, I have read the courts decision. It wasn’t the victory for us it has been made out to be. And I thought we already had the 2nd? Heck, I shouldn’t even need a stinkin permit to pack, concealed or otherwise. And voting will not rid us of the swarms of bureaucrats and police, all unelected, which daily attack our God given rights. Please understand that I think what you are doing is commendable, it’s just that I have come to realize just what we are up against and have become somewhat jaded in my beliefs. And again, good luck.

  11. Alcibiades, so you are saying that you have an appreciation for an all powerful federal government, one which if you bother to browse the constitution you won’t find?

  12. I’m a prag, no doubt about it. Just like everyone else, I’ve got a line in the sand. I just don’t particularly feel the need to tell the entire world where my line in the sand happens to be, because that seems tactically unsound.

    My problem remains where it always has been, in that I still believe that if we can win the battle of public perception, we can win the fight. The people who are ambivalent about liberty, who just want their starbucks and American Idol are the people who we need voting for us. And yeah, I’m worried about what those people think when they see people talking about stockpiling supplies for the coming fight, because it’s those starbuc ks drinkers who are going to decide that if some of us are scary, then we’re all too scary to have guns, and that’s when the shit really would hit the fan.

    I’ve got no problem with preparing for a fight that you don’t want – I don’t carry a gun as a fashion accessory after all – but at the same time, I don’t send emails to the very people I’m preparing to defend myself against telling them where I’ll be and what guns I’ll have.

  13. Heller put a stake through “shall not be infringed” once and for all.

    Scalia created out of whole cloth restrictions on dangerous weapons and sensitive areas that, if included in the 1791 draft ratified by the Founding Generation, would have got the author tarred and feathered, or, more likely, scalped.

    All that is being dickered about now in the post-Heller world is the extent of the permissible restrictions by a Federal judiciary (district, appellate, and Supreme) and a Federal legislature that is, for the most part, as opposed to an armed citizenry as are the Brady bunch.

    Dod, your question about democracy underscores the fundamental point. Putting aside that I am, as are many of the no-compromise crowd, still using the tools of political advocacy even as I prepare, can’t you see that democracy/majority rule is precisely the problem?

    If a majority of the voters says that I can come to your house to kill, skin, and eat your dog (or child or wife), can I?

    Would you just bow your head sheepishly and shrug, saying “The will of the people be done”?

    Would you dedicate yourself and commend others to the political exertions needed to change this unfair majority-endorsed law through peaceful means?

    Or would you just say, “I will kill anyone and everyone who tries to hurt what is mine, then I will kill those craven individuals who sent the first wave of looters”?

    To hell — literally — with democracy.

    To hell — literally — with anyone and everyone who tries to take or hurt anything or anyone in my extended family.

    Help us restore the Constitutional Republic, by any means necessary.

    Up the Republic!

    Respectfully,

    Your comrade-in-arms

  14. Gentlemen I have not been as active as I should have these last few years but I have to agree with the 3percenters. The line in the sand is drawn, let the first shot not be ours.

  15. Rep Hall is the only one of my critters that bothers to even send a form letter response to my messages, anymore. The Obama campaign has not acknowledged my message of congratulations/hands off, either. I have decided that I am not accomplishing anything by writing directly to them. I am now telling them in public forums, that I will not take one more step back. Maybe they will see it. Maybe there will be enough of us saying the same thing that someone will take notice and pay attention to the message. In any case, I consider it my moral duty and common courtesy to warn them of the danger of their actions.

    I think my next step is to see if I can talk a news network into asking some of our Generals, on the record, what they would do if they were ordered to confiscate arms in CONUS. No matter what the answer, it is certain to raise some hell. I doubt I will be successful, though, so I will continue with my preparations at home.

  16. Thinking aloud here…slightly off the ‘line in the sand’ topic but I think quite pertinent to the overall issue…

    Those in government–especially Federal government–have every reason to continue their Ongoing War of Incremental Attrition over the presumed Right of American Citizens to Keep and Bear Arms… and no reason not to.
    Their ultimate goal is of course, to eliminate all private ownership of any type of firearm in America.
    Since, in actuality such a goal is not likely to ever be realized, they’ll eventually only settle when the model already in place currently—that of Title II or Class III firearm regulations has been achieved for all firearms.
    Thus any person in possession of any firearm, parts or specified accoutrements not having proper Federal documentation papers and receipt of up-to-date payment of taxes and fees, would be subject to Federal penalties, fines and / or imprisonment.
    ( new ‘bans’ on sport / utility firearms and Federal laws making it illegal to purchase or transfer firearms other than through an FFL are just part of the goal)
    In the meantime however…
    Not only does ’government’ have every reason to unceasingly continue their War of Incremental Attrition on ‘Rights‘— in my humble opinion, they have impeding reasons to further expand and expedite their efforts.
    Virtually ignored as an issue in the recent elections due to the fact that both candidates agree, there’s the absolute intent of those in the Federal government to fast-track millions of illegal entrants currently residing in America to Citizenship.
    Along with ‘Citizenship’ comes ‘Rights’, and in many regions along with those ‘Rights’ comes the Right to legally purchase and own firearms.
    Now if you were in government, would you think it a good idea to quickly allow many who don’t speak the language, don’t know the laws, don’t necessarily always settle their disputes in non-violent manners, and may not always be quite as sensitive to the ‘Rights’ of persons of other colors and ethnic backgrounds as the majority of other Americans are…to legally own firearms?

    If persons already illegally in a country are bold enough to march in the streets demanding their ‘Rights’ as equal to full-fledged Citizens, think it hasn’t occurred to ‘government’ what might happen if such persons didn’t get what they demand as Citizens and are also armed?
    On the other hand, how exactly would ‘government’ go about fast-tracking persons into Citizens but maintain some law which denies them their RKBA?
    They wouldn’t.
    Exactly why I’d expect enactment of more rigorous ‘gun control’ laws prior to those granting amnesty / Citizenship.

  17. There’s something earily familiar with the debate thus far: It parallels history. I believe, in the final analysis, the following answer to an earlier, and similar debate, was given by a much more eloquent man than I could aspire to be: Patrick Henry

    It bears re-reading by all concerned.

    “The War Inevitable”

    A speech by Patrick Henry – March 1775

    They tell us, Sir, that we are weak — unable to cope with so
    formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will
    it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are
    totally disarmed
    , and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistancewe shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of Nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their
    clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable. and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!

    It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen
    may cry, Peace, Peace! — but there is no peace. The war
    is actually begun!
    The next gale that sweeps from the
    North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!
    Our breathren are already in the field! Why stand we here
    idle? What is it that Gentlemen wish? What would they
    have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased
    at the price of chains and slavery! Forbid it, Almighty
    God! I know not what course others may take; but as for
    me, give me liberty or give me death!

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