From Reader Mike C comes this email:
Like many Virginia voters, the speed at which the combination of the legislators and governor moving to the Democrat side and the pending legislative session yielding draconian gun laws and possible door to door confiscation caught me by surprise. Politics up to this point has been a bit of a genteel affair, with the Dems and Reps making small changes one way or another and the pendulum swinging slowly this way and that.. until now. As I’m sure you have heard, it’s about to get real here.
So to summarize what I’m sure you already know, they are set to pass gun control laws outlawing evil black guns, any pistol that holds more than 9 rounds, any shotgun that holds more than 6, and similar magazine restrictions on rifles. Apparently it will be a felony to own any of these. Most counties including mine have passed resolutions saying they will not enforce such laws. However, for my purple county, the board of supervisors will turn into a Democrat majority in January and that resolution will be overturned. Since the new laws will not grandfather in previously purchased firearms, it will have the immediate effect of making millions of lawful gun owners instant felons. If that doesn’t make your blood run cold, nothing will.
How does this affect me personally? Well, as perhaps you may recall from previous discussions, I have never liked pistols much as I never was very good with one, even though I was a competitive rifle shooter as a young man and qualified and carried a 1911 in the army. That, coupled with living and working in the pastoral suburbs means I never felt the need to carry and don’t own a pistol, evil large mag or otherwise. I do own a few bolt action classics in various calibers and a few single shot shotguns that for now are safe from prosecution. Having carried and disliked the M16 during my Army days, I am not a fan of nor own any evil black rifles. However I do have what you would call a standard plinking tool, a semi-auto .22 whose round count in the tube capacity will run afoul of the new law and make me a felon.
While I can stow my felony-inducing .22 with relatives in another state, the question is, should I, and what should / can I do to protect myself and my family from this tyranny where millions of Virginians will now face a midnight knock on the door because some neighborhood informant has clued the Stasi in on our felony possession of a semi-auto .22 (which frankly doesn’t shoot that well, is a pain to clean, an antique, and frequently jams and misfires)?
The rebel in me wants to go to the final gun show of the year (or ever) this coming weekend and purchase a evil black rifle lower, just so I can show solidarity with the black rifle brethren. What if a lot of people did that? On one hand, it would definitely send a message. On the other hand prosecutors across the state would rejoice, because they would significantly increase their conviction rates due to better leverage in plea bargain negotiations.
A friend tells me there is going to be a rally on the 20th in Richmond to let the legislators know how we feel. Having gone that route with the tea party on the Mall and seen it have no real effect, and knowing the new legislators and governor are sufficiently bought and paid for, I know such demonstrations are really just pissing in the wind. I would not be surprised to see Antifa and even neo-Nazis show up just to make the legitimate protesters look like kooks for the media. Worse yet, just like the tea party and anti-abortion yearly protest, these demonstrations will probably be ignored by the media, no matter how many people show up.
The question still remains though, what is the right thing for an average guy to do? It’s all well and good to speak of pitchforks, ropes, and trees, but having faced down apartheid, you know better than most how quickly and devastatingly resistance can degenerate into Sarah Host’s dystopian “blood in the streets”. I fear for my state in this. Worse, the police here will be faced with millions of newly minted, hostile felons. What then? On top of that, with so many new “criminal class” citizens, what will be the real criminal class response against the weakened sheep and hunkered down police?
The best case here is that the police will take no positive action as a result of this new legislation. While there will be millions of new de facto felons, they will only be changed incidental to detainment for other reasons – traffic stops, self defense, 911 calls, divorce fights, and Swatting incidents among them. The only real recourse I see for us is to try to do something about our severely compromised voting system and hope that enough Virginians remain enraged enough to overcome the fraud factor in a year or two. Or move, and a few years after that pen a heart rendering ode entitled “Let Virginia Sink”.
Your thoughts?
Let’s address the low-hanging fruit here first. My advice: ditch the unreliable old .22 rifle and get yourself a new one — say a Ruger 10/22 — which has the advantage of being so popular, not to say ubiquitous and which means that (bet on it) that any future legislation will “grandfather” ownership of said rifles. Also, get a boatload of spare 10-round mags (5-10 would be a good benchmark) in case your politicians ban future sales thereof. Also, at least a couple thousand rounds of .22 LR in case the fuckers ban purchase of “large” quantities.
In that same vein, let’s talk about getting an Evil Black Rifle (EBR). Don’t get an AR-15 lower, because these bastards will just include them in the ban and worse, you won’t have a usable gun. Get a working gun — AR or AK — and if you want to circumvent a magazine ban, get an SKS. I know, it only has a 5 10-round mag, but you would be surprised how quickly you can load 7.62x39mm rounds with a stripper clip. Ordinarily, I’d recommend getting a Russian one (as below, with integrated eeeevil bayonet), and not the non-Chinese Type 56 SKS, but if needs must… [sigh]
What’s more important is to lay in not a boatload, but a Carnival Cruise liner-sized load of ammo.
Here’s why I want you to get an EBR: the more EBRs that are out there in citizens’ hands, the more difficult it would be to pass legislation against them, and even greater the difficulty in confiscation thereof.
If you are worried about doing this (and I can quite understand your trepidation, btw), then you must get a semi-auto 12- or 20-gauge shotgun, which are pretty much un-bannable because of their ubiquity. I’ll leave the brand choice up to you, but if there’s a money constraint, Mossberg makes an excellent line of budget guns, such as the 930 or SA-20, for around $500. (Get the wooden-stocked “sporting” model so it looks less scawwwy to the gun-grabbing assholes.)
Now all that said, I think the Bastard Gun Controllers [some redundancy] may find it a little more difficult to start their little confiscation reindeer games, if people like this are to be believed (emphasis added):
If the Virginia legislators want to push this issue, it could get ugly. And oh, by the way, plan on seeing the vast majority of the Virginia National Guard become Conscientious Objectors. It will be really hard for them to arrest cops and confiscate guns when none of them will carry the necessary arms to enforce said arrests and confiscations.
How do I know this? I am one of them and will be one of the first to lay down my gun and walk away. I will not be a pawn in a tyrannical game of human chess. Neither will most of the men and women I serve with.
Bravo, my son. Let’s hope it never gets this far.
And for the rest of us, who live in the United States and not Virginia, California, New York or Illinois, etc., we need to be on our guard, constantly, lest our own states start moving in this direction. With the constant invasion of fucking socialists from so-called “liberal” states, what’s happened in Virginia could happen to any of us.
Let’s start talking to our local pols, and remind all of them exactly what they’re up against if they even begin to think of cute little stunts like Virginia’s pols are planning to enact. Start with the city and town politicians, move out to the county government, and make sure they and the state legislators know exactly where they stand. Let’s get into their faces first.
And FFS, join your local 2A organization like the TSRA and such, no matter how ineffectual you think they are, because if their numbers are suddenly swelled by a hundred thousand new (and more fervent) 2A supporters, they will have to change too. Never mind the NRA for the moment — because this battleground is going to be in your area and in your face, not at the national level; and to be honest, the NRA is often worse than useless in any kind of local activism.
“…they are set to pass gun control laws outlawing evil black guns…”
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Find these people, steal them, bind them in a remote rural location, set them on fire.
Then get out of the way of the stampeding communists fleeing the state.
Couple of things:
1. The SKS mag is 10 rounds, so even better.
2. They did ban semi-auto shotguns of all types in Australia and Britain and God knows where else so one should not assume those are safe. Bloomberg who is calling the shots here wants them all.
3. In a sane world, the US DoJ would be rumbling about prosecution of state officials for violation of civil rights under color of law. I guess they are too busy with the coup.
In the ’50’s, there was a newsreel or movie short with the line “It could happen here!” Those of you living in Red States, especially Red States that border the evil Blue States, keep forever in mind that Virginia could happen in your states.
With the migration of refugees from Blue State excesses, those border states will be the first to suffer. Those refugees bring with them the disease of Liberal excess; they are leaving because the things THEY VOTED FOR are now starting to pinch them. Restrictions on Constitutional Rights, higher taxes, gun control, to them are “good things” as long as they effect other people.
When they decide to leave, they bring their plague to states like Arizona, Texas, Utah, and others, and they begin to infect the weak-minded at their destination. Their political activism will not fade, they will begin to run for local offices, they will propose changes “for the children,” “for public safety,” or “for the hell of it.” they will bring with them Soros-like funding from anonymous “rights” organizations, and “political activist” groups like Antifa.
The citizens of Virginia will tell you. Crime is increasing, respect for Law is disappearing. Taxes went up in the northeast; residents of New York, New Jersey, and other states, tired of the higher costs with no better conditions, are leaving. Virginia is closer than Florida, so that is where they settle. And the Liberal plague is spreading.
Consider this not just a commentary, but a warning. It can happen here!
“It can happen here!”
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It’s already happening everywhere, though at the beginning it is very slight and then one day you wake up and notice it bigger’n Stuttgart. I’ve been watching all of the things you mentioned, Murphy, happen right here. My wife and I are searching for higher ground but the cost for land everywhere has become stratospheric.
“And FFS, join your local 2A organization like the TSRA and such, no matter how ineffectual you think they are, because if their numbers are suddenly swelled by a hundred thousand new (and more fervent) 2A supporters, they will have to change too. ”
Also any state level election monitoring organizations, such as TrueTheVote here in Texas. You’ll never stop all the fraud in blue heavens like Houston, but you can at least help expose it.
What he said.
And remember that under federal law, anyone who’s a felon under state law relinquishes his right to own any firearm as well as his right to vote, for life, nationwide.
And I’m sure that the left will use that one to best effect to wipe out any leftover conservative elected officials in states where such laws are enacted.
I am seeing complete .556 AR uppers on sale today for $199 and free shipping at Midway, Palmetto Arms has complete lowers on sale w/free shipping for $129 and they are decent lowers with mil spec triggers. Damn for less than $350 you can have a functional AR just to have one. If I lived in Virginia I would go to a different state to order the lower, most states will sell you a long gun if you live adjacent and I would have the upper which requires no FFL sent to a relative in another state, the upper is not a firearm, just the lower. Then I would get at least a dozen P-mags and about 1,000 rounds of .556 and not brag about any of it to anybody if I lived in Virginia.
If the Virginia Legislators have their way, will Virginia turn into one of those states like New York, Neu Jersey, Maryland, etc. that jacks up out-of-staters traveling through their little Garden of Eden with weapons that are perfectly legal everywhere else, but verboten in the Garden?
I remember when Governor Terry McAwful arbitrarily decided that a number of other states’ CCW licenses were no longer reciprocal with Virginia.
And fuck you Bloomberg.
It can happen here…..
We are seeing this now in rural NV, as the Californicators have taken over Clark County (Las Vegas) and now control the Legislature.
The first step has been the imposition of “Universal Background Checks” and requiring ALL private party transfers to be conducted through FFL’s. A second step was just announced in that a P/P sale where the buyer is a CCW holder must undergo a background check (the better to compile that Statewide Firearms Registration Roster) even though if that same CCW holder bought a new firearm from an FFL, he would be exempt (how does that work Mr. Lawyer – Seems like a gross violation of Equal Protection?). Of course, our rural county Sheriff’s have FTMP told Carson City that they will not be bothering themselves, and their departments, with overseeing P/P Sales. Of NV’s 16 counties, only 1 can really be considered non-rural, and that would be Clark. Washoe (Reno) stretches all the way to the ID border, and is largely rural but the population is all centered in the Reno-Tahoe area. Then there is Carson City which is a city/county in all but name.
2020 should be interesting when this all comes to a head on New Year’s Day.
At this point, I’m not sure I’d advise a lower. Get an 80%. PAY CASH. If you can buy a firearm on the secondary face-to-face market legally, do so. Pay cash there, too. Leave no trail.
That being said, the real trick will be to flood Richmond. Both with protestors (IIRC, they are using 20 Jan as a lobbying day), AND when the bills come up for testimony. Especially the latter. The Dems have a majority, but it’s slim. There are enough vulnerable Dems that the worst of the bills can be killed.
Have to second the SKS. A few yrs ago I picked up a Russkie SKS. Look it ain’t no AI tackdriver but it digests 7.62×39 all day and all night long. God help anyone on the muzzle end of one of them. Just a caveat though….like having lots of mags loaded and ready, you NEED to buy right now LOTS of stripper clips. I spent the money and bought a couple of hundred good quality russian clips. Ebay wass a good source. You also need to pick up a good bandolier to hold ten or twenty loaded clips.
Line in the sand.
Voting is not going to fix this.
Over the past few weeks, the Virginia Citizens Defense League has organized and coordinated the huge turnout at county, city and town legislative meetings to protest Governor Blackface’s prefiled unconstitutional gun ban/gungrab/registration gun laws planned for the upcoming Virginia Legislature’s Jan 2020 session. The results so far are that 86 of 95 counties, 11 of 38 cities and 16 towns have declared themselves 2nd Amendment sanctuaries.
Rolling with the flow, VCDL have now organized contact networks, buses to bring people from all over the state to a Lobby Day on the lawn of the Virginia Capitol in Richmond on 20 Jan 2020 while the legislature is in session.
Wonderful!
So what do the self-centered a-holes at the NRA do? After missing the boat on the Northam Follies, they’ve just announced they’re holding the same sort of pro 2A rally at the Capitol on 13 January 2020.
They just had to go and try to upstage the little guys who carried the load here in Virginia, trying to suck off some of that energy for themselves, when they should have supplemented the VCDL’s efforts by putting their bully pulpit behind the 20 Jan effort.
Fuck LaPierre and his high-living toadies. I’m going to the 20 Jan event. The people there on 20 Jan will be grassroots Virginia voters, not the come-here’s in suits from the NRA.
Ah, the NRA doing what it does best; snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Those laws are clearly unconstitutional.
I propose that any politician trying to pass an unconstitutional law should be hung, and any that do are drawn and quartered and the law struck from the books.
There are no worse traitors to the country.
To All: Merry Christmas! Keep up the fight!
More on the SKS–
As Kim pointed out, 10 round fixed mag. Obviously, depending on your political climate, this feature can keep you under the radar. Also keep in mind that you can have the best of both worlds with an SKS. You can literally disassemble one with a rock and a rusty nail. Here is just one of many YouTube videos showing how dirt simple it is to convert one to use detachable mags (note the after market stock as well)–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbiRnHlObqs
I have a stash of metal 30 rounders that I bought in the 90’s (in Kalifornia, no less) and they work great. I don’t recall what brand, and I’m too lazy to go dig them out and look. I have never used any of the plastic mags, so cannot speak to those, although I like the fact that they won’t rust. With my mags installed, I can still feed a 10 round stripper into the rifle. Following the first 10 rounds with a second 10 is a bit iffy.
Not advocating for anyone to break the law. However, it is nice to have the extra capability stashed away. If things get frosty, the law won’t matter, only firepower will.