A member of TTAG’s Armed Intelligentsia writes:
I am very disappointed with the rattling of sabers at TTAG over the unjust laws in CT. In my humble opinion having SWAT teams confiscate guns and the resulting firefight would be devastating to our cause. No matter what, if a gun owner fires on cops, whether they are storming his house or not, he will be played in the media as a paranoid and dangerous gun nut with an arsenal. This will pave the way to more laws, more confiscations, having gun owners being derided as nuts, or terrorists, and forcing public opinion against us. It will also divide and conquer other gun owners since some will decide a flash bang raid conducted by cops with machine guns is not worth the fuss. Therefore . . .
TTAG should stop fanning the flames.
Instead gun owners in CT and elsewhere need to take a page from Martin Luther King Jr’s playbook with nonviolent assertive civil disobedience.
During the civil rights movement King pushed civil disobedience to show the unjust, capricious, barbarity of Jim Crow laws. By sitting at all white lunch counters and refusing to move to the back of the bus they forced the police to act while simultaneously making their cause known and winning the war of public opinion.
Gun rights activists in slave states need to do the same. Here is how:
Using social media activists need to coordinate a civil disobedience action. I like to call it the ‘Spartacus’ strategy. All over CT or other slave states they need to pick a date, preferably a weekday when the most media coverage is gained.
Each activist needs to bring a 30 round mag, and there needs to be a group buy of those 10 rounders that look like a 30 rounder. All the mags are mixed together and everyone picks a random mag.
Then wearing a prisoner Halloween costume and carrying signs reading ‘my government made me a felon’ they march on the nearest government building. No need to gather everyone in Hartford. Make logistics easy and have them march on the nearest courthouse or government building carrying American flags, Gadsden flags, and the Battle of Gonzalez come and take it flag.
When they reach the courthouse the leader reads a short speech about unjust laws, and civil disobedience, and stresses how everyone there is a law abiding American who works hard and pays taxes. Then they read the 2nd amendment.
At the end everyone holds up their mag, and stands there quietly, outside of the government building. The local government now has to decide whether to act with force against peaceful protesters or ignore them. If they act with violence our cause is bolstered in the war of public opinion. If they ignore it they communicate that the law is unjust and unenforceable.
As an added bonus when the police advance everyone drops their mags. Now there is plausible deniability as to who had the felon making mags and the oh so safe mags. This further erodes the CT laws and show them to be arbitrary and absurd.
Of course for this to work people must be willing to risk arrest. However, this is a much better strategy then waiting for the cops to come knocking at night.
Please don’t confuse my call for peaceful civil disobedience in order to get out ahead of the gun grabbers agenda with compliance to it. I am also not belittling those in CT who are saying they will not comply. I simply think a mass strategy has a better chance of political and media success than individuals.
I believe there will come a day when armed revolt is necessary if we keep going down this path. I do not believe that day is here yet, therefore we should try to avoid it while winning. However I pray I will be able to stand up and fight when the day comes.
In response to the growing crisis in Connecticut, the Internet is already abuzz with Molon Labe declarations and disinformation (i.e. the “satirical” story that Connecticut politicians decided not to confiscate guns after they discovered that a significant number of police failed to abide by the “assault rifle” and “high-capacity magazine” registration laws).
TTAG is in the thick of things. The question is, how should we play this one? We’re gathering and posting pics of gun owners supporting their freedom-loving brothers and sisters in Connecticut. We’re selling Stand Strong CT T-shirts. And we’re publishing posts predicting disaster. Have we gone over-the-top? [The Sipsey Street Irregulars figure I’m soft on CT defense of 2a.] Do we need to dial it back or is it steady as she goes?