From: Ambrovista@aol.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2001 1:32pm
Subject: What good can a handgun do against an Army?

What good can a handgun do against an Army?

Author: Mike Vanderboegh

A friend of mine recently forwarded me a question a friend of his had
posed: "If/when our Federal Government comes to pilfer, pillage, plunder
our property and destroy our lives, what good can a handgun do against an army
with advanced weaponry, tanks, missiles, planes, or whatever else
they might have at their disposal to achieve their nefarious goals? (I'm

not being facetious: I accept the possibility that what happened in
Germany, or similar, could happen here; I'm just not sure that the potential
good from
an armed citizenry in such a situation outweighs the day-to-day problems
caused by masses of idiots who own guns.)"

If I may, I'd like to try to answer that question. I certainly do not
think the writer facetious for asking it. The subject is a serious one
that I have given much research and considerable thought to. I believe
that upon the answer to this question depends the future of our
Constitutional republic, our liberty and perhaps our lives. My
friend Aaron Zelman, one of the founders of Jews for the Preservation of
Firearms Ownership told me once:

"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." - Aaron Zelman, JPFO

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 millions 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 inaccurate 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 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 populace so armed. Mention "Afghanistan"
or "Chechnya" to a member of the current Russian military hierarchy 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.

"A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real
money." --Everett Dirksen

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 camouflage 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 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 a level that 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 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 false
security of a nanny-state which
will tend to our "legitimate needs" as they are perceived by that
government.

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." - Winston Churchill

The Spartans at Thermopolae 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 the help of Almighty God, in the hands of a free
man a handgun CAN defeat a tyrant's army.
Mike Vanderboegh