My Favorite Threeper is now in full fledged Verbal Defiance Against The Man! And I am apparently the Man. Our club has been blessed with a great amount of new shooters wanting to try IDPA. A sizable number of these new shooters have very little experience with handguns and even though our cadre of New Shooter counselors have been doing a heck of a job, there has been a couple of incidents that forced us to revise and tighten the range rules. The new rule that Mr. Threeper finds insulting to his individual freedoms is that we are not allowing any ammo whatsoever in the Safe Area. Initially the rule stated that there would be no ammo manipulation in the Safe Area which allowed the shooter to carry the ammo in magazines or speed loaders as long as they remained in the pouches firmly attached to the shooter. But after a couple of booboos and an AD, the Board of Directors decided that in order to avoid the experience of having somebody test in the flesh the effectiveness of QuikClot or Celox during a match, the old rule had to be tightened to its new form.

Mr. Threeper basically blew a fuse and made no bones about it in the club’s forum. His latest rant went like this:

ok. this is not a suggestion. i’m on record. repeal this stupid rule. it’s dumb. it’s a collectivist approach to controlling the behavior of the individual. that can’t be done. i assure you. as an example, try to control me. just try. it can’t be done.

Anarchy is all cute and well when you are 19 and still living with Mom and Dad, but it has no place in a gun range., specially when you have new shooters who are not yet experienced enough not only to be 100% safe but quickly recognize when something is about to go wrong and take proper action to avoid it. Injecting politics in a subject that clearly is uncalled for is stupid in so many levels many have troubles understanding this individual and it is exponentially stupid in a club whose membership includes people of many political views, races and brands of cigars (Forget about 9mm v .45, You should see some of the cigar discussions about lengths, girths, country of origin and even wrapping.)

And yes, I wish that all our shooters were proficient enough we could have a hot range and did not have to keep an eye on everybody and make sure they were not about to give somebody else a ballistic piercing, but life suck and you must make do. We have plenty shooters that I feel comfortable enough around them they could carry their gun and manipulate ammo around me and I know they will be safe, but I also know some shooters still require that extra help and they must be brought along till they reach that level of safety. We tout ourselves as a teaching club and as such we must teach that Gun Safety comes first and that goes well above politics, conspiracy theories and the suspicion that the Trilateral Commission is paying me big bucks to disperse mind control devices among the club members.

My favorite <snicker> Low Fat Patriot attended the Armed Restore the Constitution rally at Greensboro and came back with his usual load of BS renewed. I did get branded as collectivist ann another member got tagged as waffle and made a disparaging comment about his mother (classy).

So what are these Threepers after? They seem to make no bones about wanting a Civil War which leads me to believe that they have no fucking idea what a Civil War looks like. I am guessing in their minds all wars are clean affairs in which good guys win, all bad guys die and they get to schtump the blond with the prodigious frontal protuberances while sipping their favorite alcoholic beverage. Civil  War must have the additional appeal of being a “neighborly” war where they can go home after 5 pm, soak in the jacuzzi with a beer firmly clutched in their hands while commenting on the points…er… body count they obtained during the day and the availability of fresh parking at the local mall after their raids.

Unfortunately Civil wars, as somebody has pointed out, are rather uncivil. And please, do not compare military service in a war zone with being involved in a civil war unless you are a 200+ year old Civil War Veteran (If you are, I do wanna know the secret of your longevity, email me.) Civil wars have no rules, no fronts, no back home support, no JAG, no tribunals worth a damn (Anybody check lately the great advancements of the Balkan War Crimes Tribunals?) Nothing will screw your brain faster than realizing the guy you have known for x amount of years who lives next door and you shared BBQs and carpools with is intent on raping your wife, slashing the throats of your kids and practice buck skinning on your hide.

I am no speaking out of a theoretical-book-read collection of essays here. My family has lived through several of these shindigs and I personally went through a couple of honest to God Third World temporary suspensions of morals, laws and civility to leave a nasty taste in the mouth. I have sat down with survivors of the Spanish Civil War that after much coaching, opened up just a bit about what they saw, had to do and even the niceties of living in a concentration camp.

Now that I mention the Spanish Civil War, I realize that it is a good parallel. Many people from many countries went to Spain in the 1930’s with eyes bright & full of illusions of justice and fight for the right cause (defined of course alongside the lines of Trotskysim, Fascism, Stalinism, Anarchism and whatever -ism was able to pay his/her fare to join the war and called themselves the true revolutionaries/patriots/comrades, etc.) These people wished for war to prove that their own little intellectual theories were right. They wanted a revolution not for the sake of the People but to buttress their egos, to thumb their noses and the conventionalism or simply because if was fashionable then.

Of course violence has a nasty way to smack the stars out of naive eyes.  Those who could, left in a hurry and the unlucky were buried. Those hungry for power stayed and wreaked havoc on the population and when the Fascist finally won, what was left was a country so destroyed that a massive migration ensued to the Americas. Spain did not recover and became a somewhat free country till the 1970s and only after Franco died.

This is my history, my background. The story of my kin and of their kids they never had and who I never knew because they died and were never able to have a family.

And that some wannabes dressed up like overgrown G.I. Joes think that Civil War is some sort of cool shit is just repulsive. Plus they have the gonads to say they are “restoring the Constitution” but seek to eliminate or silence those who disagree. Sort of weird interpretation of the Bill of Rights if you ask me.

End Of Rant. We return to our regular programming.

It is no secret that I hold serious contempt for  the 3% crowd. From what I have personally seen, most of them are one step removed from Internet Ninjas and those kids that dress all tactical to play with airsofts. No, I don’t know how the movement started or who did it and I couldn’t care less but one thing is certain: the founders of this thing will be facing a shit storm soon enough if they don’t have their kiddies tone down the rhetoric.

I know I am not the only one sick of the NO COMPROMISE hollering and then the sudden silence when one request proof their achievements. We are tired of the innuendos, accusations and falsehoods spread all over the interwebs just because or for whatever idiotic reasons they have to insult and belittle those who are actually are doing something but does not meet their stringent criteria of No Compromise, a criteria that besides impossible to realize, they designed from the comfort of their couches while typing warrior-like posts in their favorite forums.

All that is fine and dandy. You have the right to mentally masturbate as much as you want and live in your life of fantasy telling everybody how you will slay the enemies of the country with the latest and coolest M4gery with all kinds of cute tactical gear attached to the Picatinny rails and one much different is when you cross the threshold and actually threaten the people on your side but who do not happen to share your inflated and imaginary views on how things should be done.

I happen to be the target of a local ThreePer who believes I am the reincarnation of Uncle Joe Stalin. This particular Idjit and I have butted heads in a private forum I administer because I have dared to: 1) Challenge his bullshit and 2) Remove posts that are not in concordance with the forum mission statement (and that you must agree to belong) but he chooses to ignore and 3) Open hostility against any Law Enforcement personnel which is dumb when you realize that about one third of the membership is LEO from local, state and federal levels .  Mr. Idjit is “preparing” for the “upcoming civil war” and I am guessing he is doing his sick version of Santa’s List and checking who is a patriot and who is not under his nutjobbery standards.

So far we have managed to avoid real life confrontations when we are at the range. Mostly I ignore the shit out of him, but the tension is palpable. If you look hard enough you might see a dribble of foam in the corner of his mouth whenever i pass by. I know that he has been issuing less than nice comments about me at the after matches reunions some shooters have at the local beers & wings establishment and some of the fellow shooters have informed me so. It was not the comments themselves (I’ve been called asshole once or twice before and sometimes with reason) but the level of hate and vitriol spewed has been such that people have felt the need to warn me. Initially I did not give too much care about that, but when I started to receive this messages, my view changed a tad:

you need to be removed. you are nothing more than a petty tyrant that uses his position to silence and obstruct opposition. when you go, take rob with you. understand that i will be sending a like message to him. love and kisses.

Another charming message went:

your days are numbered. do you not understand that the men i establish bonds with at (local eatery), (another local eatery) , and (another local eatery) far exceed your influence? i suspect that has a lot to do with it. you have no influence except for your petty tyranny. that and you being a socialist and all. you are a dry twig after the summer. winter will see you fall from the tree

And a third example:

again, your days are numbered. slowly but surely, day by day, deleted posts by deleted post, you dig your own grave. i have but one mission in life now, and that it to see you relieved. you are nothing more than a petty tyrant. *spit*

I am not worrying too much, but then again I am not turning my back when this asshole is around. We have already lost members because of this guy’s attitude and absurd verbal bellicosity. As one other threatened member has said “for all the talk about revolution, this is probably the kind of guy that will dig a deep hole and hide when the bullets start coming his way.”

So what is it to you? You are probably saying: “Dude this is your particular and very local problem. One crazy dude.” The problem is I am seeing more and more of the same blundering BS posted by other 3Pers in forums and blogs across our patch and in every state of the Union. The formula is usually I Hate LEOs-I Hate NRA-I Hate .Gov-I Hate You For Disagreeing with Me. They are visitors of certain No Compromise blogs and brand as traitor anyone who does not agree 1,000% with them. They see those who have a different view as rats against their version of the Cause for Freedom and I wouldn’t be surprised if some are having their own little Robespierre plans on how to deal with us.

The only problem is, we ain’t SanFran Hippies easily cowered by their attitude. Do not wish war, fire and brimstone upon us, you may not like our response.

(more to come)