Behind Every Blade of Grass

"According to the 2007 Small Arms Survey by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies, the United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, owning approximately 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms.
According to that same report, about 4.5 million of the eight million new guns
manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States." (The
Invisible Man and His Wife, Concealed Carry Magazine August/September 2009)

“All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same inalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Inherent in those rights is the right to defense, of kith and kin, hearth and home, against those who would deprive someone of them.

To deprive Americans of their guns would be to deprive America of her historic National Security.

We are a nation born of violent Revolution.

Baptized by blood.

Created with the gun.

Created because of the gun.

Sustained and survived because of the gun.

From the earliest pioneers and settlers, we have had our guns, to both provide for the table and defend those seated around it.

They are part of our fabric.

Part of our culture.

Whether some people want to admit it or not, America is greatly a gun culture.

And that is not a bad thing. It is something of which we should be proud. It smacks of individualism, self reliance, defiance and determination. The very character traits that created this unique nation.

I love walking into a gun show. It IS America. Free men and women buying selling trading talking about the very thing that keeps them free. Allows them to do exactly what they are doing.

When I was in high school, and even in some schools today in Pennsylvania, the first day of buck season was always an in service day. They knew most of the kids hunted and wouldn’t be there anyway.

During hunting season my buddies would keep their rifles in their trucks. School was over, they’d go out, put on their hunting clothes (back then a heavy coat, pants and boots, none of this camouflage thinsulate stuff) and leave straight from school to hunt for a couple hours.

Imagine, guns in their trucks on the school grounds. The Horror! It’s amazing they turned out as sane as they did.

Try that now, or even have Johnny draw a picture of a gun, and that kid and his parents are bound for counseling sessions, make sure the child is well adjusted and not a psychopath in training.

Think I’m kidding? That very thing happened to a friend of mine just last year.

And there is a growing cacophony, though I believe they are still a (very loud) minority, who would deny this fact, this right, yours mine and theirs. And it’s from the man in the Oval Office on down.

Several weeks ago Christian Soldier sent me this:

It’s a beautiful day in Pacific Beach as Nate approaches the bronze pelican
statue on the boardwalk. He’s slight and blond, spectacled and clad in jeans and
an army-green T-shirt. He squints. The sun’s so bright overhead that he is
prompted to spray a fine mist of sunblock over his fair skin to stave off a
burn.

I’ve never met Nate before, but I know it’s him (a) because I’ve seen his
picture and (b) due to the handgun that sits on a holster against his hip. I’m
about to get up from where I’m sitting and introduce myself when someone else
beats me to the punch. A scraggly-looking beachgoer, a man of indeterminable age because he is so weather-beaten, approaches.

“What’s that for, bro?” he asks, pointing in the direction of Nate’s gun, a
Taurus Tracker .44 Magnum revolver.

Before Nate can answer, the man continues.

“There are surfers at the beach looking to party, and you show up with
that? That’s not right. Love life! Be mellow!”

This is when I walk up and introduce myself. The beachgoer looks at me for
a moment with wild blue eyes, then looks back at Nate, as Nate is beginning to
explain what he will have to reiterate time and time again to concerned and/or
interested parties: he is open carrying.

The term “open carrying” refers to one who is in possession of a holstered,
unloaded firearm on his or her person, displayed in plain view. Nate begins to
explain the legalities of this to the beachgoer when Sean approaches, video
camera in tow. In shades, a green shirt with double-breast pockets, green cargo
pants, and a Sig Sauer P229 holstered on his hip, Sean looks not unlike a police
officer.

The beachgoer does a double take.

“Another one!” he exclaims, as Sean greets us warmly.

The beachgoer, incredulous, excuses himself — with one final stare — to go
“get baked.”

Soon we are joined by a third open carrier, Sam, who is Nate’s older
brother. He’s a tall fellow in jeans and a T-shirt, and his gun, a Glock 17C 9mm
semiautomatic pistol, sits squarely in a black holster, handle well visible
against the blue of his shirt.

And now it’s my turn.

As the others deal with the beachgoer, who has returned, Nate and I take
off to his car, where he removes from the depths of his trunk a silver handgun
with a wooden handle. This is a Ruger Single Six .22 revolver, he tells me, as
he slides it into the borrowed holster I have fixed to my belt. The gun is
surprisingly heavy, nestled just below my waistline.

Back at the boardwalk, it seems that Sam and Sean are getting nowhere with
the beachgoer, so we prepare to head out.

First, I am given instructions on what to do if approached by the police. I
brace myself as Nate explains.

“What’s going to happen is, they’re going to want to do a 12031(e) unloaded
check,” he begins. “They’ll say they want to check your weapon. You say, ‘Are
you requesting or demanding?’ If they say, ‘Demanding,’ you say, ‘I don’t
consent to any warrantless searches. But I’m not going to resist.’ And then you
stick your hands out, they check your weapon, and it’s done.”

Sounds easy enough, I figure. I’ve got my tape recorder ready, as open
carriers are urged, via websites like OpenCarry.org, to keep recording devices
on them while carrying to capture any interactions with police (and civilians)
they might have in case their rights are infringed upon.

“You don’t have to answer any other questions. You don’t have to give them
your ID,” Sam instructs. “It’s technically an illegal search under the Fourth
Amendment. The Fourth Amendment says you have protection against unreasonable search and seizure. If there’s a woman pushing a baby stroller down the boardwalk, that does not give the police the right to check if the kid is
kidnapped. So if you’re in full compliance with the law, minding your own
business, they technically don’t have the right to stop you to check if your
weapon is unloaded or loaded.”

Open carrying, Nate explains, is legal in San Diego and the rest of
California.

“[The law says] you can’t carry a loaded gun in an incorporated area,” he
says. “This is an incorporated area.”

“Because San Diego is a corporation,” Sam chimes in.

“So then, [the law] says, ‘Firearms carried openly in belt holsters are not
concealed within the meaning of this section,’ ” Nate continues, referencing
California Penal Code Section 12025(f), which outlines the illegality of
concealed carrying and what is and is not considered a concealed firearm.

“So there you have that,” Nate continues. “And then case law says that ammo
next to the gun is not considered loaded. So, basically, you start out with a
great idea and it gets detracted down to what we have now.”

The nuances of gun laws in California, I find, are difficult. For example,
concealed carrying is not legal in San Diego (and all of California) without a
permit — that much is abundantly clear — and neither is carrying a loaded gun. Having ammunition situated next to a firearm, however, does not amount to
“loaded,” meaning that Nate, Sean, and Sam can carry full magazines on their
belts. . .

. . . why open carry?

As we walk, the trio explains.

“I really believe, and I think that most thinking people believe, that we
are slowly losing our freedoms in this country,” [Sam] says. “Everything’s
become more and more restricted, and nobody seems to know what to do about it. If we would just get back to following the Constitution, America would again be the place it was intended to be, the place where everybody wanted to come. This whole open-carry movement, for me, is really about more than just guns; it’s about liberty and what it means to be a free man.”

Nate, a 22-year-old human biology student, voices another issue: the lack
of CCW (concealed-carry weapon) permit issuance. A concealed-weapon license allows one to have a concealed weapon on his or her person. In California, Nate says, concealed-weapon licenses are most commonly issued to lawyers, jewelers, and traveling doctors.

“I knew I wasn’t going to get a CCW permit. I’m not important enough — I
don’t make enough money, I don’t have a good enough ‘cause,’ according to
California — so I said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll just start open carrying,’ ” he
says. “Another reason I started doing it is that it’s a political statement. I’m
not important enough for my right to self-defense, so what we do is we just take it out in the open. This is what we have to do.”

“I’ve always been somewhat of a gun-rights activist,” [Sean] says. “I’m
really in it more for the activism more than anything else. I’ve noticed that a
lot of the guys are younger, and the police seem to react differently to folks
who are in their 30s than to folks that are in their 20s. So I feel it’s a good
idea to keep the reactions moderated a little bit.”

. . .He makes the point that, in areas with stricter gun-control laws,
crime is higher.

“[In] places where the laws allow the citizens to take their security into
their own hands, violent crime goes down significantly,” he says. “Look at
Chicago and Washington, D.C., where the citizens are essentially forbidden to
own handguns, and the incidents of violent crimes are enormous.” (In June 2008, the Supreme Court struck down Washington D.C.’s ban on handguns.)

. . .Though he knows the laws regarding guns aren’t always in the favor of
gun owners, Tom speculates that they can only get so rigid.

“To completely eliminate all access to guns is going to be kind of tough
because we live in a country where the founders have determined that it’s a good thing for the citizens to be armed,” he says. “And we agree.”

. . . “The whole point is to try and make people aware and comfortable that
law-abiding citizens can carry guns without the world coming to an end,” he says simply, “without having to provoke a SWAT incident. We’re very meticulous in
obeying the law. We’re very careful about what the law says, what we’re allowed to do [and] what we’re not allowed to do. And the police have endorsed that, verified that.”

Though Tom may be in a minority, there is a growing open-carry movement in San Diego. Tom estimates that there are between 75 and 100 active open carriers locally.

“We had between 75 and 100 people who said they were going to come [to the
February 28 event],” he says. “So there are at least 75 to 100. There have been
other meets where we’ve all gotten together for lunch down at El Indio, and
there were 20 to 25 people at each one of those. And there’s some overlap, and some people came to the first and not the second, so I’d be surprised if there were less than 100 active people in the San Diego area.”

He attended the El Indio lunch and reports that everyone in the restaurant
was respectful and supportive.

“A couple of girls came in and had lunch and asked about it,” he says.
“They said, ‘Why are you guys all wearing guns?’ ”

He pauses, laughing at the story.

“And we explained the program to them, and they said, ‘You know, I bet this
is the safest place in San Diego right now!’ ”

So it begs the question; What good is carrying an unloaded gun?

There's several ways to look at this I think.

First is the defiance angle, Actively exercising your Second Amendment Rights. And that's a good thing.

But there's something more insidious going on here on the part of the government. This is actually MORE restriction on gun rights. The government has, effectively, disarmed the people. As surely as if they had taken the gun from their hand.

Why do I say that?

Well, what's legal here? Open Carry of an unloaded firearm. What good is carrying an unloaded gun? Not much self defense use. You might as well be carrying a hammer. It's far cheaper and heavier and therefore a better defensive weapon.

The government knows this but still has to put on the show of checking someone carrying openly. It serves two purposes for them. First, it allows the person carrying to think they are exercising their rights and can stand up and do so without fear of persecu/prosecution. Secondly it allows the government to give the appearance of keeping the peace, doing their job, making sure everything's just fine and safe and dandy. When they know they really have nothing to fear from that unloaded weapon on your hip.

But were they to suddenly find that gun loaded the equation would change quickly and dramatically. Arrested. Charged. Jailed. Gun confiscated.So what the State of California has done is written a law that actually restricts how you may carry a gun. "We say you may carry it openly IF it's unloaded." That's a restriction, and a pretty severe one, to my thinking. Open Carry is legal if. . .

Now, contrast that with Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania there is no waiting period, but there is a background check to purchase handguns. None on long guns if you are not going through a dealer.

Want a concealed carry permit? $25 (varies a little by county), background check and 2 individuals swear (it’s a form) that you are basically of sound mind. If you have all that, the county sheriff MUST issue you a license.

That’s it. No tests, no classes, no training required (though it’s a good idea).

Want to carry openly? THERE IS NO LAW AGAINST IT. Loaded or otherwise.

You can walk down the street carrying a fully loaded firearm and know you are completely within the law. Cops may here and there stop you and ask what are you up to but really can't say much about it, and if they do, it's not likely to hold up. And in a lot of towns you might not even get a second look from anyone.

I do open carry but more likely conceal carry. I prefer open for comfort but usually conceal for several reasons. Less likely to get hassled but more importantly, if you find yourself in a situation where you may need that gun, if the bad guy sees you with it guess who's first to come under his sights? Better to maintain the element of surprise.

At least they are allowing people to carry and the more people that get used to seeing guns out and about and the more comfortable they get with the idea the better it is for everyone.

Still, the Founders had it right. Self defense is a God given right. Not for the state, or any state, to decide if or how you may do so. In that sense, every state gun law is Unconstitutional. The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed. Period. Can you imagine what they'd say if you told them you could only carry a gun if it is unloaded?

All that said, Obama has shown that he has little interest in what the Constitution states, little interest in protecting it against all enemies, little interest in what the Founding Fathers believed.

Pastorius said to me Obama has done little to go after the guns (which is true) but the problem is incrementalization. The above is an example of such. The State did not try a gun grab but have made that gun on your hip or in your hand pretty much useless.

They may try to force the ammunition stamping, individually coding each bullet to a box of ammo immediately identifiable. The tooling for such a measure would put most ammo producers out of business pretty quickly.

Or an absurdly high tax on ammunition, to the point no one can afford to buy it any longer.

How about the Federal registering of your firearms, including a yearly fee per gun to keep them registered? As well as a license just to own them (for which you need to pass a test), let alone carry them?

And let us not forget the United Nations attempt at a treaty banning small arms trade. Do you really want Cuba having a say in your gun rights?

And the media, of course, are complicit in this. Story upon story of gun violence, gun deaths.

• In 2005 there were 10,100 gun homicides.


• There are an average of 40,000 yearly deaths by automobile accident.


• There are 250,851,833 cars registered in America.


• There are 270,000,000 guns.

10,100 out of 270,000,000.

40,000 out of 250,851,833.

It would seem we are trying to ban the wrong licensed item.

Facts are pernicious pesky things.

Yet scarce mention is ever made of the number of times a gun is drawn in defense and not fired. The crime deterred simply by a single self reliant individual standing up and saying no.

Right now individual State laws are all over the place on gun ownership and carry. From states that have no restrictions, no licensing requirements to own or carry, openly or concealed, to states that allow you to neither own nor carry.

Go ahead and try to carry a gun from state to state. In Pennsylvania carrying a .45 is perfectly acceptable. But as soon as you cross the Mason Dixon into Maryland you are a felon, though you haven’t changed a thing.

In Pennsylvania. you may protect yourself. In Maryland. nnnah. Not so much. The State will take care of it for you.

In each and every case, these laws are unconstitutional.

The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arm Shall NOT be Infringed.

Yet each and every one of these is an infringement. And it appears The Supreme Court may be asked to rule in just such a case. From the NRA:

Two-thirds of State Attorneys General File Amicus Brief Supporting Second Amendment Incorporation

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Fairfax, Va. – Two-thirds of the nation’s attorneys general have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of NRA v. Chicago and hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This bi-partisan group of 33 attorneys general, along with the Attorney General of California in a separate filing, agrees with the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms in the home for self-defense, disagreeing with the ecision recently issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the Seventh Circuit.

“The historical record clearly shows that the Second Amendment was intended
to apply to every American in every state in the country,” said Chris W. Cox,
NRA chief lobbyist. “As the Supreme Court said clearly in last year’s landmark
Heller decision, the Second Amendment protects an individual right that ‘belongs
to all Americans’. Two-thirds of America’s state Attorneys General agree.”

The Seventh Circuit claimed precedent bound it from holding in favor of
incorporation of the Second Amendment. However, it should have followed the lead
of the recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Nordyke v. King, which
found that those cases don't prevent the Second Amendment from applying to the
states through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The Seventh
Circuit opinion upholds current bans on the possession of handguns in Chicago
and Oak Park, Illinois.

California attorney general Edmund G. Brown Jr. is filing a separate brief
arguing that the Supreme Court should take up NRA’s appeal and hold that the
Second Amendment is incorporated against the States.

“It is fundamentally wrong to violate the civil rights of any law-abiding
person based on their zip code,” Cox concluded. “The fundamental right of
self-defense must be respected by every jurisdiction throughout our
country.”

Wait! You say. Let a crazy man, a homicidal nut, a pedophile,a wife beater, own a gun?

No. But let’s enforce the laws. THESE PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE OUT ON THE STREET IN THE FIRST PLACE. Don’t blame the guns, blame the person. Blame the politically correct society who has allowed them out in the name of peace love forgiveness and (fucking Scots) compassion. On the feel good He can be or Has Been rehabilitated he had a hard childhood but he’s ok now no longer a threat.


As I told my daughter when I bought a pre World War II Walther PP, one possibly carried by the Nazis at some point, The Evil is not in the Gun, but in the Hand that Holds It.

Now let’s suppose, for a moment, Obama & Congress really do try a gun grab. I mean let’s ignore the bullet stamping and small arms non-proliferation treaty (only for now!) and let’s suppose Congress actually attempts to outlaw handgun ownership without any grandfathering.

What will you do?

You’ve chosen to uphold your pesky Second Amendment Right and not turn in your small arms to the Regular Federal Authorities, hoping against hope they’ll overlook you until

Knock Knock.

BATFE at the door. (So much easier when they went by ATF).

Mr. Smith, we have on record that you own 2 Marlin, a Remington 20 gauge, 6 Smith & Wesson revolvers, 2 Walthers, 3 Rugers, 2 Springfield 1911s and 2 CZ pistols.

You are required to surrender these firearms pursuant to such and such a statute and have not yet done so.

Please surrender them now or we will confiscate them.

Now, you have your wife and kids at your back. And they’ve just put your back to the wall.

Do you surrender these guns and your Second Amendment Right? Do you allow The State to disarm you, knowing that then The State is in charge of your safety and security?

Do you call a lawyer and fight it out that way?

We saw how resistance ended for The Branch Davidians under far less Draconian measures.

Whoa! You may say. What’s this?! Defending David Koresh and the Davidians? You Scoundrel.
No, not exactly.

Leave aside the cult aspect for now. Leave aside Koresh the man, whackjob and probable child abuser. What the government went after Koresh for was the guns.

I don't think the search warrants were legally obtained. They were for weapons charges and there was no real evidence that there were illegal weapons in the compound, only the hearsay of witnesses and some trumped up stuff about a meth lab. But there were no drug charges in the warrant.

What was eventually found was 150 weapons and under 10,000 rounds of ammo.

Among nearly 100 people.

And the weapons were all legal, semi-automatics.

I, personally, have 20 firearms (over 10 % what all Davidians had) and nearly that much ammo. All of it legal.

What Koresh should have done was fight the warrants legally.

But instead he came to the door and talked to agents, a gunfight ensued which to this day NO ONE is sure who fired first or why and thus the game changed.

The government overreacted in handling this. It sounds as though it could have been negotiated away. I don't think the Davidians would have fired first had the Feds not sent in the tanks etc. after 51 days. They were apocalyptic, yes, but were not trying to overthrow the government. The fact that during the siege a number of people left the compound shows that they were being worn down slowly. And if the excuse was the feds were afraid of another Guyana fiasco well that worked out pretty well, didn't it.

We can sit here and say Koresh should have honored the search warrants. But if today, Napolitano had a federal search warrant issued for my home on shaky grounds, wanted to see my legally owned guns, I'd be very hard pressed to say I'd honor the warrant, seeing where Obama seems to be taking this country. And how do we know Koresh didn't see things the same way 15 years ago?

For that time and place, what would you have done?

Pastorius and I discussed this a month or more ago. He suggested:

"I would say that if I was served with a warrant, I would answer my door, and say they could search my guns home with one person, and each of us would be holding a loaded gun.

You can't just ignore the law.

If the law says the Feds have a right to search with a warrant, then they do.

If you have a right to carry a loaded weapon in your home (AND YOU DO), then carry the loaded weapon.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

Here's the thing. If they need to "search" the weapon, they can do that visually. I'm sure there is a way to show them that the gun is loaded without giving up the gun.

Another thing is, one could call in a lawyer.

One could answer the door, respond by saying, "Yes, I will honor your warrant, with my lawyer present."

It's not like drugs that you can flush down the toilet.”

They are not likely to let you retain that weapon while they search. Legal though the gun may be they will confiscate it, even temporarily, for their own safety. And from a cop's perspective that's understandable.

In Pennsylvania, if you're pulled over for a traffic violation, you need to tell the cop you have a loaded weapon and let the call up to him. Most will confiscate it for the duration and while running your driver's license will also run your license to carry. Some will let you hold onto it if it's not visible and you are upfront that it's there and produce your license. But that's not the norm.

So, you get the knock knock. I agree you can't just ignore the law. They may be reasonable and let you call your lawyer. Hopefully so although you may be asked to guest over at City Hall until he presents himself.

And as things stand right now, that's probably how I would handle it, although, as things stand right now IN THIS STATE I might just let them search. I have nothing the Feds would object to and everything I bought I bought and store legally (loaded is legal) in this state.

But what if things change? What if it is a gun grab, or severe limitations on what you can and can't own?

Now you get the knock knock. Having a semi-auto pistol is no longer legal though you've had it for years. Do you allow the warrant though you know you'll go to jail or pay a very stiff fine for having it? Fighting it costs money. Do you resist the warrant knowing the same consequences will follow, or worse? Do you give up the guns to begin with and your rights as well?

At what point does it become necessary to physically resist to protect our own liberties? Even if only a few are doing it to make a point?

The Founders knew exactly what they were doing when they protected – not gave – us the right to defense, the right to own and carry firearms. They knew their history and knew what they had just been through. That there will always be some criminal trying to take life or property from you, whether he’s a mugger in a back alley or a petty tyrant running a nation. They left us a right, if we could keep it.

Americans are not going to give up their guns. In their ancestral memory they know exactly what those guns mean. Protection from repression and tyranny. They know “an armed nation cannot be tyrannized”.

And they are starting to remind government about it, toting guns to town hall meetings. When the citizens are armed the government fears them. As it should be.

When the jihadis finally get around to it, will you rely on the government to protect you from Al Qaida coming down your street with a backpack bomb or shooting up a mall? From sudden and violent civil unrest? Or are you going to reach for granddad’s Garand and protect your neighborhood alone until the cavalry arrives? Draw your 1911 and save your fellow citizens, Little Suzy and Johnny, standing in line for ice cream and soft pretzels?

Should we surrender our arms and let the government handle these matters for us? Resist to the point we are carted off to prison?

Or do we poke the business end of that 20 gauge under their nose and say “come and get them”? Knowing full well violence, gunfire and sudden death will likely follow. And your family may well get caught up in it?

How far will we be forced – and willing – to go to protect our God given rights?

And our American culture?

From ALL enemies.

Foreign OR Domestic?

“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

– Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto WWII


A man’s duty? To be ready – with rifle or rood – to defend his home when the showdown comes.

– Edward Abbey