When you do this, Sun-Tzu smiles (strategy and tactics)

In a minute, we'll give you four concrete steps you can take to preserve your guns and your gun rights -- and not coincidentally, make Sun-Tzu, the greatest of ancient strategists, smile. But first, an assessment of the position.

We're under attack, but it's not unprecedented. It's just the usual suspects, taking delight in a crisis they won't let go to waste, frolicking in the bloody shirt. If you're young you haven't seen this before. If you're older, you saw it in the mid-nineties. A little older, you saw the 80s hysteria that led to the Hughes Amendment and the Bush import bans. And if you're old enough to be throwing junk mail from AARP in the dustbin, you saw it in the 1960s, when a demand to do something! rocked America after political assassinations and race riots seemed to be early outriders of a dawning chaos.

Keep calm and chin up. We shall fight them in Biden's kangaroo commission, we shall fight them in the Congress, we shall fight them in the courts, we shall never surrender. (And we shall beat them like a rented mule, so we do not need to fight them in all the places described in the original Churchill quote). We are many, we are intelligent, we are articulate, and, most importantly of all, we have reason and right in this fight. They have emotion. As time passes and they continue to wave the bloody shirt to stir emotion, it will become more and more unseemly. And more and more reasonable people will notice that the remedies proposed would not have prevented the crime at issue.

"But," you ask, "what can I do? I am but one man (or woman). My Congress creature, freshly elected, has no fear of nor interest in me. I cannot reason like a lawyer nor write like a pundit." That's all OK. Here are three ways you can add your unique voice to the chorus.

* Join the NRA. (You may want to wait on this until Friday's press conference. If they come out flying the Uncle Fudd flag, throwing some of their members under the bus, you can disregard this one. But we don't think they will). Here's a link. If you're already a member, upgrade to Life, extend your membership, or donate money. The knuckleheads in Washington can't grasp numbers on a balance sheet or income statement, but they sure as hell are numerate about membership organizations and voters.

* Call (don't write) your Congressman or -woman and Senators and make your voice heard. Faxes and emails go in File 13. We bet you've never written your representatives before. Well, now it's time. You can call the switchboard and find out who it is, if you don't know. You can get your Senators' numbers here. You can get your representatives' here. (If you don't know which district you're in, here -- unfortunately it doesn't give you his phone number directly, so you then have to go to the other link. What do you expect? The Government built that). If your representative(s) is/are changing in January, call both the lame duck and the representative-elect. So it might be more calls. The incoming pols may take a little more finding. You will probably get a flunky, or voicemail. Tell them who you are and where you live, so they know you're a constituent. Tell them in your own words that you oppose gun restrictions, and why. Be calm, reasonable, pleasant, brief and direct. (Alternatively, tell them that you want greater gun restrictions because the voices in your head say it's not time until there are more gun-free zones).

* Write your newspaper. Include your name, address, and phone number (many papers used to call to confirm they're not being pranked. Some have stopped because of declining staffing). Don't write the paper that inflamed you with an editorial online, write the one that actually delivers to the neighbors in your street. All the same warnings apply, but also, we underline brevity here. A short single message, and hold yourself to 250 to 300 words or they'll cut you. Write 700 words -- the length of their editorials -- and they won't even read you. Not fair? Maybe, but there it is. Send a real letter and an email in this case. They may be read by different editors, giving you double the chance to get to their readers. Using liberal newspapers to spread pro-gun messages is somewhere between jiu-jitsu an asymmetric warfare. When you do this, Sun-Tzu smiles.

* Buy a gun or guns and ammo. This is the most important of the four (and it may be the hardest, as picked-over as shops look right now). This underlines to the politicians that they have lost control of the arms of a free people -- if they ever thought they had it in the first place. Don't know where to buy? This link will find you a dealer. You can also buy at an auction site like GunBroker, and get your gun delivered to a local dealer for pickup (GunBroker maintains a list of local dealers).

Don't expect immediate results. But as future Senator John Blutarsky famously said, "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

So give it a week and call a new fire mission on the same targets. What would Sun-Tzu do?

Outright confiscation at this moment in history? Not likely. There was a recent thread on here about a guy who bounced the idea off eight contacts he had in the military and law enforcement - they all knew that would be either a suicide mission that no one would go along with, or the start of CWII, or both. CWII is also highly unlikely to go well, as is the calling in of UN troops when ours mutiny or go AWOL, or foreign troops - the logistics of a sizable invasion are extremely daunting even to our military complex.

If you’re worried about all that, just be ready to survive the initial few days of SHTF, and after that there will be enough weapons and ammo lying around to keep you happy for a long time to come.

“And by the way, I see the NRA as a big part of the problem. They are useless.”

Agree. Gun Owners of America is a much better organization. We dropped our NRA membership when they endorsed a Democrat for a senate race in OK. Trying to be “fair”, I guess. They should know that Democrats running in red states pretend to be conservative until after the election, then they vote with their party.

***And by the way, I see the NRA as a big part of the problem. They are useless. ***

Really? Here is what Lyndon Johnson said when he signed the 1968 Gun control act into law.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29197

“If guns are to be kept out of the hands of the criminal, out of the hands of the insane, and out of the hands of the irresponsible, then we just must have licensing.

If the criminal with a gun is to be tracked down quickly, then we must have registration in this country.

The voices that blocked these safeguards were not the voices of an aroused nation. They were the voices of a powerful lobby, a gun lobby, that has prevailed for the moment in an election year.”

The ONLY reason you have a right to own ANY firearm today is the NRA.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.