My Grandpa O'Neal worked in the coal mines in Weir, Kansas 50 years ago or more. I've still got his carbide lamp and the cap he wore it on. From what he told me about those mines, I doubt they had ROOM to have a cage with a canary in it to warn them of gas. But it is certainly true that miners over the centuries used canaries and other small animals to warn them of bad air or gas. They were more sensitive to the danger than their human masters, and when they keeled over the miners knew they were running out of time. We are starting to see the political equivalent of those canaries fairly regularly now.

This isn't the first time I've made this observation, nor indeed am I naive enough to think I'm the only one who's noticed what is happening. Both the economic hard times and the concern of a lot of the citizenry about the ratcheting up of oppression contribute to the kooks coming out of the woodwork. I always refer to guys like Roeder, von Brunn, or Muhammad (just to mention the latest 3) as 'windup wackos". Not because I think there's some sort of sinister plot using them to further some grand design, but because the press seizes on them and trots out the same old tired advocates of victim disarmament every time, like clockwork.

Make no mistake – disparate as the twisted motivations and targets of the three vile accused murderers I mention are, those shootings are all related to the climate of the times. As good citizens contemplate and discuss current events to reach consensus whether “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism”, the less virtuous elements of our society watch this discussion, and are less prudent, indeed, about being “disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable”. I rather suspect that Thomas Jefferson saw the same sort of things happening around him in the years leading up to him penning those immortal words.

Much as I despise the perpetrators of these crimes and what they stand for, and reject any linkage of their assorted pathological ideologies with the ideals of freedom that I and the other heirs of the American Revolution promote, we do have to understand the warnings inherent in these sorts of events. I've been reading Stephen Halbrook's “The Founder's Second Amendment” lately, and he mentions a couple of incidents of madmen unleashing violence on innocents during the turmoil and unrest leading up to the Revolution. He wasn't particularly seeking out such incidents, either, and I suspect there were a LOT more of them than the couple he mentions. He included a couple of them simply to highlight the Founder's attitude that such things happen, and to show that the way THEY dealt with them at the time was to quickly grab their personal arms and put a stop to the madness right then and there.

The hand-wringing apologists for statism are ALREADY trying to accuse liberty-loving Americans of “paranoia”, “fomenting a climate of fear”, and eagerly trotting out the DHS report on “right wing extremism”. All the while, of course, ignoring the glaring fact that it is the “climate of oppression” fomented by their glorious leader which is giving these sick individuals their twisted justification.

The statists and their lackeys in the media ARE right that the discussions and preparations of prudent citizens are a contributing factor to the recent spare of shootings. So is the ongoing “war against terror”, and the decades-long argument about abortion. What you are NOT going to hear any of them admit, save perhaps a few on talk radio and maybe Fox, is that the real root cause of ALL these ills is the odious concept of statism and coercive force itself. The best solution to all these ills is not more intrusive laws, it is FREEDOM.

Note that in all three of the crimes I've mentioned, the perpetrator was ultimately stopped or apprehended by an underpaid, overworked employee WITH A GUN. Police officers in the first two instances, and private security officers at the Holocaust Museum. Israel has been dealing with political violence for decades, and a large part of their solution was to involve an armed citizenry in helping stop the violence.

That needs to be our message here. Rather than counting on the police to catch the madman after he's committed his crime, we need to encourage responsible civilians to be trained, and armed to meet the threat. That strategy is proven in many venues, and it is a far better answer to a dispersed problem like this than any other.

Hunter's Seventy Seventh Rule: The measure of the menace of a man is not what hardware he carries, but what ideas he believes.

"I swear, by my life and my love of It, to fight against all forms of tyranny. I recognize that the enabling idea that underlies and sustains tyranny is the idea that the socially organized and institutionalized initiation of the use of force against non-consenting and unwilling people can be justified, is desirable, and must be given sanction in order to avoid chaos. I further recognize that no lasting liberty can be achieved until the falsehood of this idea is widely known and pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor to exposing this falsehood.

"To this battle I will turn my creative energy, I will give my time and I will devote my very being, while never allowing my self, my efforts or my cause to become the aggressor, never conceding the premise of the enemy by becoming the enemy."

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