UPDATE 1500 EST 5 FEBRUARY 2013: Many thanks to our panelists and our audience. To accommodate folks, we are going to keep the comments going through tomorrow at least and the end of this week at the latest. Moderation will be as frequent as we can make it.
Please make sure to consider purchasing our participants’ books (if you haven’t already). You will find them all well worth your time and study.
Welcome!
I am deeply indebted to our panelists today, who have taken time from their busy lives to share their thoughts on America, circa 2013, with the WRSA readership. Comments are enabled through midnight tonight and will be moderated as quickly as possible during the interactive portion of this exercise, which will end at approximately 3 pm est today. Folks on East Coast time should remember that some of our panel is in different time zones.
They are (in utterly random order):
- David Codrea (DC): David is a Field Editor for GUNS Magazine, writes the National Gun Rights Examiner column and blogs at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. He is a twenty-plus year veteran gun rights advocate. If he wanted to be successful, he’d be writing about Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian.
- Mike Garand (MG) and Jack Lawson (JL) are former Special Operations unit combat veterans who were involved with rapid response Airborne and Heliborne Counter Insurgency Units, overseeing perimeter protection, training and providing bodyguard services in conflicts of Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. They are the authors of “A Failure Of Civility”, a “how to” guide to protecting you, your family, your neighborhood, your community, and America in time of disaster and civil unrest.
Mike Garand holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Science Degree in Urban Studies with an emphasis on Criminal Justice. He has spent much of his life in the U.S. Military as a Marine and Special Forces Soldier and is retired from the U.S. Army Reserve. He is also a retired Detective from a major metropolitan police department. He has worked for years as a Contractor for the largest and most well known of the American private military companies, providing training and security services worldwide. He has seen service numerous times during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mike is a member of a U.S. Army Special Forces Association chapter.
Jack Lawson served in the United States Air Force and was also a member of a Foreign Legion counter insurgency unit during an anti-communist guerilla war in Africa. He was trained by British Commonwealth SAS and Israeli commando instructors and took part in counter insurgency operations and commando raids on communist training camps in a number of African countries. While there he became a bodyguard for a farmer’s association in his off duty time. Jack is an Honorary Member of a U.S. Army Special Forces Association chapter and for seven years served on a metropolitan police department Review Board that judged Officer Involved Shootings and use of deadly force incidents. He was also a consultant to the United States Marine Corps on heliborne vertical envelopment and anti-terrorist tactics. He has authored two other books. “Slaver’s Wheel” is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all major bookstores. “A Question of Time” is available on Kindle.
- T.L. Davis (TL) is the author of “The Constitutionalist” and publishes the “TL In Exile” liberty blog. He is a proud descendant of Kentucky pioneers.
- Claire Wolfe (CW) is a free-market anarchist author and columnist. She blogs at Backwoods Home Magazine, and is a contributor at SWAT Magazine. Some of her favored topics are gulching or homesteading, firearms, homeschooling, open source technology, and opposition to national ID and the surveillance state or nanny state. She is the author of “The Freedom Outlaw’s Handbook – 179 Things To Do ‘Til The Revolution“, “Don’t Shoot The Bastards (Yet)“, “The Bad Attitude Guide To Good Citizenship“, and “Think Free To Live Free“, among other classics.
Matt Bracken (MB) is a self-described freedom addict who loves ocean sailing above all for the pure freedom it often permits. He lives with his family in North Florida and longs for the wide blue ocean. Matt is a constitutional hardliner (and frequent WRSA contributor) who believes in the original intent of the founding fathers of our country, and is the author of the Enemies Foreign And Domestic trilogy, along with his latest novel, Castigo Cay. Matt was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1957 and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a degree in Russian Studies. He was commissioned in the US Navy through the NROTC program at UVA, and then graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training class 105 in Coronado California. Matt served on east coast UDT and SEAL teams, taking a Naval Special Warfare detachment to Beirut in 1983. Matt left active duty after Lebanon, upon completion of his obligated military service, but he remained in an active reserve status through the remainder of the 1980s. Since then he has lived in Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, Guam, and California. In 1993, Matt finished building a 48-foot steel sailing cutter of his own design, on which he has done extensive ocean cruising, including a solo voyage 9,000 miles from Panama to Guam and two Panama Canal transits.
With intros out of the way, we’ll turn to the questions. For simplicity, I have taken each panelist’s initial response and placed it under each question, using their initials. From there, we’ll go to moderated comments between the panelists and the audience:
1) Where are the citizens of the United States today — not just in terms of guns, but all personal freedoms and their relationship with government at all levels?
DC: We are slaves. The advantage the poor bastards being driven with whips to build pyramids and pick cotton had over us is they at least knew they were slaves. Most of our countrymen operate under the illusion they are “free.” Our freedoms and comforts are what are tolerated and the restraints are what can be placed on us without rupturing the illusion and risking a rebellion.
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