The"American
Wisdom Series"
presents
Pamphlet
#212
WHAT
GOOD CAN A HANDGUN DO AGAINST AN ARMY.....?
By Mike Vanderboegh
"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.)"
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.
Mike Vanderboegh
P.O. Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
Mo10Cav@aol.com
Copyright 1998.
Contributed by Cope Reynolds
With author's written permission.
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