Pickens, S.C., Range day, because shooting is a persishable skill.

My oldest son Josh.

He uses a modified Weaver stance.  He is better with a pistol than I am, but I still have him beat as a rifleman.  Below, Heidi is by the fire trying to stay warm.

My son Joseph is drinking coffee by the morning fire.  We were on the Foothills Trail in South Carolina up around Jocassee Gorges.

In this article I have three objectives.  First I want to discuss what would happen to a lone wolf fighter if he tried to be effective without aid and assistance.  Next, I want to distinguish between thinking tactically and strategically concerning survival.  Finally, I want to describe things that might catalyze the need to invoke such plans, from rogue, illegitimate groups to patriots who will not relinquish their second amendment rights, regardless of the consequences.

In Tactical Considerations For The Lone Wolf we saw how good tacticians can provide broad outlines for tactics, equipment and knowledge of procedures for small unit maneuver, and can enable a lone wolf fighter to be effective for a short period of time.  But I said, and still hold true, that this is a bad paradigm for operations, and represents tactical rather than strategic thinking.

The lone wolf fighter faces a daunting set of problems.  From a small child, between riding and training horses, working, camping, hiking, shooting and hunting, I have spent thousands of days and nights in the wilderness.  I have experienced some or a lot of what I am going to describe, and seen others experience the balance of it (or in extreme cases, I simply know of people to whom this has happened or know that it can happen).

Within a couple of days of being in the wilderness, your personal stench is merely disgusting.  By the end of the first week, the putrid, toxic paste that develops around the groins of men becomes a risk to health and safety and can cause serious diseases.  Within another week your feet develop a cocktail of fungal infections, and within another week the skin begins to fall off of them.

Around this time sores develop across your entire body, and the clothing you wear and carry, from underwear to socks, to pants and shirts, to boots and sleeping bags, is fit for nothing but putting into a pit and burning.  Listen carefully.  You cannot carry enough baby wipes to prevent this process from occurring.  You can only slow it down.

In the winter, the cold will sap the energy and even the life out of your body.  It is even difficult to maintain proper hygiene in harsh weather like this.  I have been backpacking in such cold weather than my toothbrush froze into a solid block of ice between the time I pulled it out of the river and the time it reached my mouth.  Without proper dental hygiene, various dental diseases can develop, and these can be debilitating to anyone, much less someone in the wilderness.

In the heat the problems only multiply.  Dehydration is a constant concern, and the time it takes to boil water is precious, if you are able to get a fire going or carry an isobutane canister.  Rarely, there is a Godsend like fresh, naturally-filtered water.

Our Nalgene bottles are sitting under moss at the bottom of a steep rock face collecting potable water.  My 80 pound Doberman Heidi is drinking.  I almost lost her that weekend at Jones Gap.  She almost went down a waterfall, and my son Josh managed to catch her collar with his trekking pole.

I have also been backpacking in such a downpour that nothing would burn, and it would have taken a gallon of gasoline to achieve a fire that lasted for longer than ten minutes.  Assuming that you can find a potable water supply at all times, food presents yet another problem.  You simply cannot carry enough freeze dried food to meet your needs.  There are no Gunny Sergeants ordering up coffee in the morning and rations all day as long as you are in the field doing training.  There is no training.  This will be for real.  The lack of food energy is debilitating, and eventually deadly.

In the summer heat, there are snakes.  I have been bitten by a Copperhead before, as has my dog.  A Rattlesnake bite almost always involves loss of limbs, and in the field without medical attention, would be deadly.

My XDm .45, Ka-Bar folder, sleeping bag and one man tent.  The tent is barely big enough for Heidi and me.  I probably need a good, small two-man tent.

Ticks bring tick-borne diseases, and they can be deadly.  After every summer backpacking trip, I and my sons strip and search each other for ticks (or I have my wife do it, but it must be done soon from the field).  Lack of a partner to perform this inspection can be deadly.  Eventually without showers, washing, and proper hygiene, the body can get lice or scabies.  Without Ivermectin this is untreatable in the wilderness.  Marines will routinely shave their entire bodies of hair before deployment in order to avoid lice, but without this possibility in the wilderness in the absence of water and other sanitation, lice will be hard to avoid.

There are the very rare cases of those who become beached on a deserted island and live long enough to tell their story, or survive on the open ocean by drinking turtle blood.  But in the main, you simply cannot last for long as a lone wolf fighter, and if you think so, you’re delusional and like to nurture fantasies.  You can stay out for several days, but eventually you and your family must ensconce somewhere.  It might be in your neighborhood, it might be in the mountains or wilderness somewhere else, or it might be with multiple families.  But you cannot stay lone wolf for long.

In Tactical Considerations For The Lone Wolf we discussed standing down a SWAT team on your front porch, ready to breech.  This is a highly controversial issue, and there are those who will perish defending their second amendment rights, or more correctly, God-given rights.  They will choose to perish in their own home during an armed standoff with governmental forces.

But it must be remembered that those who advocate such measures are thinking tactically.  The SWAT team is also thinking tactically.  But the SWAT team reports to supervisors, and those supervisors report to managers, and they are all thinking strategically.  A thousands deaths at the hands of SWAT teams means only one thing.  Losses.  That is a losing strategy.

I’m not advocating against this sort of approach, so much as I’m observing reality.  I’m not saying that it should not happen this way, so much as I’m saying that it won’t happen this way.  The first bloody corpse dragged from a home invasion by government forces hunting for firearms will be the occasion for some deep soul searching by millions of firearms owners across the country.  This may happen sooner, when confiscatory plans are announced.

Americans are generally very adaptable.  Turning for a moment to a warning I had about foreign terrorists in the country, I observed that there are deep vulnerabilities in our infrastructure.

The most vulnerable structure, system or component for large scale coal plants is the main step up transformer – that component that handles electricity at 230 or 500 kV.  They are one of a kind components, and no two are exactly alike.  They are so huge and so heavy that they must be transported to the site via special designed rail cars intended only for them, and only about three of these exist in the U.S.

They are no longer fabricated in the U.S., much the same as other large scale steel fabrication.  It’s manufacture has primarily gone overseas.  These step up transformers must be ordered years in advance of their installation.  Some utilities are part of a consortium to keep one of these transformers available for multiple coal units, hoping that more will not be needed at any one time.  In industrial engineering terms, the warehouse min-max for these components is a fine line.

On any given day with the right timing, several well trained, dedicated, well armed fighters would be able to force their way on to utility property, fire missiles or lay explosives at the transformer, destroy it, and perhaps even go to the next given the security for coal plants.  Next in line along the transmission system are other important transformers, not as important as the main step up transformers, but still important, that would also be vulnerable to attack.  With the transmission system in chaos and completely isolated due to protective relaying, and with the coal units that supply the majority of the electricity to the nation incapable of providing that power for years due to the wait for step up transformers, whole cites, heavy industry, and homes and businesses would be left in the dark for a protracted period of time, all over the nation.

Bob Owens takes this down the grid to the next components.

They don’t understand asymmetrical warfare in the slightest, much less how it would be waged here. Let me give you just one small example of how a lone wolves or small teams can strike well beyond their size against a near defenseless leviathan.

After the Dot Com bubble burst in the early 2000s, I took a job in upstate New York for a subcontractor of Central Hudson Gas and Electric. I was part of a crew sent out to map electrical transmission line power poles and towers via GPS, check the tower footings for integrity, check the best routes for access, etc.

It meant I rode quads (ATVs) through mountains, swamps, forests, neighborhoods and farms all over southern New York, in winter’s icy chill and blowing snow, and in summer’s melting heat. It was exhausting work, often in beautiful scenery.

We probably averaged 20 miles of line a day, and that over the course of the contract I easily rode a thousand miles. I can tell you stories of flipping quads, sinking quads, going down a mountain without brakes, almost hitting deer at top speed, and parking on the remains of an electrocuted bear, but that isn’t really what I remember most about the job.

No, what I remember most about the job were the days we spent up near the Rondout Reservoir. What I remember in specific was discovering how powerless the government was to protect key utilities.

[ … ]

Substations like the one above could be accessed not just from surface roads, but from access trails under the power lines by people with UTVs, ATVs, and motorcycles.

Just like the residential transformers in your neighborhood, the transformers in substations are cooled with a form of mineral oil. If someone decides to blast a transformer at its base as prepper Bryan Smith did, and the oil drains out, then the transformer either burns out catastrophically, or if the utility is lucky, a software routine notices the problem and shuts the substation (or at least the affected portion) down. The power must then be rerouted through the remaining grid until that transformer can be replaced and any other resulting damage can be repaired.

Were an angry group of disenfranchised citizens to target in a strategic manner the substations leading to a city or geographic area—say, Albany, for example—they could put the area in the dark for as long as it took to bring the substations back online. Were they committed enough, and spread their attacks out over a wide enough area, perhaps mixing in a few tens of dozens of the residential transformers found every few hundred yards along city streets, they could overwhelm the utility companies ability to repair the damage being caused or law enforcement’s ability to stop them. The government could perhaps assign a soldier or cop for every transformer, substation and switch, but they’d run out of men long before they ran out of things they need guarded.

It’s even more vulnerable than Bob hints.  The utilities in America don’t belong to the government (except for TVA), and the government isn’t duty bound to protect them.  They are private assets.  Even if the government could protect those assets (and they can’t), they wouldn’t.

If the DHS had a trillion rounds of .40 pistol ammunition it wouldn’t matter.  With America in the dark for two years, confiscation of weapons would be the last thing on the minds of law enforcement (that is, the LEOs who left their families alone and without protection in order to come to work).

And there you go.  Smart New Yorkers who don’t want to watch their friends perish on their doorsteps might choose to act strategically rather than tactically.  And that brings in a whole host of issues that need our attention.

When such a scenario occurs, are you prepared?  Do you have a place to ensconce your family?  Do you have the weapons and ammunition that you need?  Do you have means to make potable water?  Do you have freeze dried and canned food?  Do you have means to generate power when you need to, to plant seeds for crops, or provide covering and clothing to stay warm?  Are you allied with like-minded families who will assist each other in dealing with a scenario like this?

The questions run deeper than you think.  I sat across from the dinner table with a very dear friend of many years a few days ago, and heard him lament the fact that they hadn’t been able to afford to purchase firearms for family protection.  This family operates on a thin budget.

My thinking began: “Do I give him my .45, no, that’s my premier personal defense weapon … do I give him my .40, no, I have that one because it’s the same caliber as Josh’s gun … do I give him my .357 wheel gun, no, that’s the best CQB weapon ever invented my mankind … I cannot give him my rifles … ” and so on, and so forth.

Should I go buy a relatively inexpensive polymer frame semi-auto handgun and some ammunition in order to be able to assist friends and loved ones in their time of need?  We need to think through these issues.  Are you a diabetic?  Do you have the insulin you need for a protracted period of time?  Are there other medications you need?

And it might not take firearm confiscation to pull off catalyzing a scenario such as this.  Mr. Obama has created an America that is as bifurcated as it has been in more than 100 years.  More than 40 million people are on food stamps.  This roll is growing at more than 11,000 per day.  We owe so many trillions in unfunded liabilities that we will never be able to meet our commitments.

Ben Bernanke, the most notorious Keynesian economist in history, has clearly said that his printing money like he was drunk will not recover employment.  Translation: Keynesian economics is failing, and I am admitting it to the Senate today.  Yet I will keep doing what I’m doing.

Even states that think they are rejecting Obamacare because of opting out of the plan aren’t really opting out.  I know these things because my daughter is a Nurse and lives in this world.  She knows that the smaller hospitals will cease to exist.  They will be driven out of business.

The larger ones will stay in business, but they will bear the brunt of the penalties.  The penalties that America doesn’t yet know about involve penalties for treating and releasing homeless people, only to have to re-admit them later, or any of a large group of things that cause the hospital to have to pay the federal government money.  Obamacare will get its way, and we will all pay the price for it even if we opt out of participation.  States have no say-so, regardless of what the talking heads are telling you.

If you think that the austerity measures in Greece caused a backlash, wait until we implement them in America.  And we will, after hyperinflation hits, price controls are put into place, the supply of goods dries up and your money is worthless.  Gangs will roam the streets looking for anything they can take, the elderly may as well have targets on their backs, and the apocalypse will be upon us.  The government won’t be able to do anything about it.  The government will have caused it.

Are you ready?  Have you thought through the salient questions?  I haven’t thought through all of them either, and we all have some soul-searching to do.

As always, everything I have said in this article has been for educational purposes only.

UPDATE: Thanks to David Codrea for the attention.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to Western Rifle Shooters Association for the attention.  Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the attention.

News from Chicago:

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan told thousands of followers Sunday he was planning to reach out to gang leaders to help “protect” the Nation of Islam.

That came at the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviours’ Day convention. Farrakhan, 79, renewed the call for African Americans to pool money and buy as much land as possible, in order to “control means of production” and produce food and other goods, such as clothing.

Farrakhan said collectively owning land is a way for black people in America to prosper economically. The calls were part of a speech that lasted more than three hours and touched on topics including Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, U.S. Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel and a national push for gun control.

Farrakhan told a crowd of more than 7,000 people at the UIC Pavilion that national lawmakers are using Chicago’s violence epidemic to push for stronger gun control laws but said the Second Amendment has nothing to do with the spate of shootings in Chicago.

“The guns that every one of our young people have, are they legal? No!” Farrakhan said.

Instead, Farrakhan had a different idea for how to address gun violence. In addition to sending letters to black military leaders, Farrakhan said he planned to contact the city’s gang leaders to recruit gang members to “protect” any land the Nation of Islam might buy in the future.

“All you gangbangers, we know you love to shoot, but you’re killing yourselves,” Farrakhan said. “All your weapons are illegal and you’re using them like savages.”

But Farrakhan said gangbangers are “natural soldiers” and could be taught “the science of war” to become protectors of the Nation of Islam’s assets in the future.

“Illegal” guns, whatever that means, are only a problem if blacks are shooting blacks.  The better option is to get control of the situation so that the gangs can behave as protectors of assets, acting according to the “science of war.”  After all, “there is no reason for the American people to be armed to the teeth.”

War … as in the operations one conducts with the implements of war, or in this case, guns.

In Senator Chris Murphy Versus Guns we discussed how Senator Murphy is playing the poll card with his colleagues.  The polls support us, he says.  But I pointed out that they don’t, and (via David Codrea) here is more evidence.

In an ongoing poll conducted of its membership by Gun Owners of America, 96.2% of over 18,500 respondents have thus far opposed Obama’s universal background check proposal.

So many gun owners tried to register their opposition to banning private gun sales that GOA’s server crashed, and many who were opposed this framework for a national gun registry were unable to cast their votes.

Gun owners do not support universal background checks and do not support an assault weapons ban.  In fact, gun owners do not support any further restrictions on guns.  Any poll that tells you otherwise is a lie.  I just don’t know how else to say it.  The numbers, questions, data, statistics, sample population, sample location or something else, or all of the above, are fabricated.  I’m a gun owner and I run among a circle of gun owners, and I know.  Don’t trust the polls.  In fact, don’t trust Obama’s anti-gun campaign which is proven to be a fraud.  Senator Mpuphy is lying to his colleagues, and he knows it, even if his colleagues don’t know.

But Senator Murphy recently got an earfull of anecdotal evidence at a townhall meeting.

When U.S. Senator Chris Murphy appeared at a “town hall meeting” in Manchester on Sunday, things became so heated that police had to be called to the scene, although no arrests were made and the senator still stayed late to answer questions and speak with constituents …

… at several points during the event, which was held at MCC on Main, Murphy was interrupted by members of the audience who kept trying to steer the dialogue back to the Second Amendment and the senator’s views on gun control. Things became so unruly during the event, that Manchester Mayor Leo V. Diana had to intercede on Murphy’s behalf and ask the crowd to remain quiet and orderly as Murphy was trying to discuss other issues and answer constituents questions.

Several videos posted to YouTube (and attached to this article) show Murphy continually being interrupted by members of the audience, and the event eventually deteriorating into a shouting match in the crowd.

“They were totally disrupting the meeting,” said Diana, a Democrat. “At one point, it just got into this shouting match.”

A shouting match.  Try to take the guns away.  It’ll be more than a shouting match, and your lying polls won’t be any consolation.

Colorado Springs Independent:

Today we will dip our toes into the gun discussion. Specifically, the high-capacity ammunition magazines for assault weapons and how such items tend mostly to be the realm of people without much education or any sort of consistent dental care who live in trailers with 30 cats and have an NRA sticker on their $400 car.

Harsh? Perhaps. But if you believe the massacres at Columbine High School and a theater in Aurora and the numbing execution of 20 wide-eyed little school kids in Connecticut — in part because of these high-capacity magazines —- should not have any bearing on your “right” to shoot trees and your “right” to blow up propane tanks in the woods with a withering barrage of bullets as you guzzle beer, well, you’re probably accustomed to life being harsh.

[ … ]

Maybe Magpul could make up for the lost revenue by manufacturing a device that could hold a bottle of gin on your dashboard for the drive home from work. Or a heavy stick to beat your spouse. Or a plastic water barrel to drown kittens.

Then the writer goes on a masturbatory high on trying to get Magpul to pull out of Colorado (a move which I have advocated, along with Remington and Kimber out of New York, and Springfield Armory out of Illinois, etc.).  But I haven’t noticed any lack of dental hygiene among my buddies at the range.  I’ll have to run around inspecting their mouths like I would my dog.  If the writer is accurate, they won’t mind because they’re too stupid to know what I’m doing.

Where does this rag find the screeching, hysterical bitches to write stuff like this?

Prior:

Tinfoil Hat Bircher NRA Peckerwood With A Long Gun

Stone Age Vigilantes

WBUR:

“Smart guns,” or guns that will only fire for an authorized owner, are back on the radar.

The White House has called for pushing ahead with smart gun technology.

James Bond has one in the movie “Skyfall,” but in the real world, the technology is not quite there yet, according to smart gun activist and investor Jonas McCord.

McCord’s company Biomac Systems is working on smart gun technology, and he’s not alone.

The New Jersey Institute of Technology has been working on a gun that will recognize the owner’s grip.

Trigger Smart, an Irish company, relies on radio frequency embedded in the gun and in a ring or bracelet the owner is wearing. Without the owner’s ring or bracelet, the gun will not fire.

Armatix GmbH, a German company, has a personalized gun it hopes to put on the market in the U.S. this year. The gun will only shoot if it’s in range of a radio device which carries the owner’s biometric data.

I hope they spend a lot of money on it and get it on the market soon.  Let the market tell them what something like this is worth.  Like I said before.  When hell freezes over.

Rolling Stone:

For gunmakers, the political fight over assault rifles and high-capacity pistols is about more than just profits – it’s about the militarization of the marketplace and represents a desperate bid by gunmakers to prop up a decaying business. The once-dependable market for traditional hunting guns has fallen off a cliff. To adapt, the firearms industry has embraced a business strategy that requires it to place the weapons of war favored by deranged killers like Adam Lanza and Jared Loughner into the homes and holsters of as many Americans as possible. “They’re not selling your dad’s hunting rifle or shotgun,” says Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a top industry watchdog. “They’re selling military-bred weaponry.”

The Violence Policy Center.  But who else would Rolling Stone go to but the Violence Policy Center?  Of course.

So this article makes it sound like gun manufacturers are just struggling to stay in business, and have had to adapt to give people what they want, which is not really old fashioned rifles, but rather, these awful, evil black guns.  If this is true, I guess the cost for a nice Remington 700 series rifle has dropped like a rock.

Oooopppps!  I guess not, since the MSRP is still $800 – $1200.  Not good.  A broken narrative.  But let’s continue.

Less than 20 percent of Americans born after 1980 report having a gun in the home. “For the industry, the problem is ‘Who is going to buy the guns?'” says Sugarmann. “To borrow the language of the tobacco industry,” he says, “they need to find ‘replacement shooters.'”

Good grief.  Maybe he should have focused on people born between 1980 and 1990, since people born much later are prohibited by law from owning firearms.  What a dumb ass.  And any shooter knows just how hard it is to order firearms now, what the demand is, and how many new and young shooters there are at ranges.  But this author isn’t a shooter.  He is a dumb ass.  The narrative has changed too, from one of simply meeting creepy customer demand to making that market themselves by a slick strategy.  Does this guy have an editor?  Was he drunk when he wrote this crap? But going backwards in the article, we get this little gem.

AR-15 enthusiasts brag they can fire up to 400 rounds in 60 seconds. Paying roughly 50 cents a bullet, such shooters are blowing through $200 worth of ammo in a hot minute.

Maybe he should have gotten up with me.  I could have told him that the going price for 5.56 mm is about $1.00 per round.  I want to know what store told him they could sell at 50 cents per round?

Oh well.  This is what you get when writers at Rolling Stone weigh in dramatically and breathlessly on things about which they are ignorant.

UPDATE: Oh look!  It’s like watching a train wreck.  Rolling Stone was picked up and parroted by … you guessed it … MSNBC.  The only thing better than progressives choosing to look like dumb asses is progressives falling in line to be like each other and looking, well, like dumb asses.  Daily Kos, anyone?  What other progressive rag will run with this meme?  How rich.

Max Velocity Tactical has an interesting and thought provoking article up entitled Tactical Considerations For The Long Wolf (hat tip Western Rifle Shooters).  This is must reading and well worth the time he has put into this.  I find it improbable that you read his article without picking up something that you need to think about.

The article sets the stage with a clear and present danger to your family, and rather than being coupled with other like-minded defenders and partners, you are alone in your quest for self defense and family safety.  A bit of his article is reproduced below.

Area of Operations: you need to consider that if the enemy is in any way switched on, and are keeping any sort of incident map, then if you simply operate close to your retreat they will build up a picture that may well lead them to your home and family. Thus you should be unpredictable and move further away or from unexpected directions in order to prosecute your attacks.

Navigation: you will need to be able to accurately move by map and compass across rough back country terrain to get in and out of your objective. You will take separate routes in and out and use deception.

Movement: You must use cover and concealment to move. You will have to move slowly, at a jungle patrol pace, in order to effectively scan ahead and around. Cover means using the ground (hard cover) to conceal you, such as moving in draws or behind terrain features. Concealment means using vegetation to hide you from any observers. You will need to plan a route accordingly, also avoiding any settlements where there is an increased risk of compromise and where dogs will bark at you.

However, do not move on obvious features or along trails and tracks. You can handrail (parallel) them at a distance if you need to or if you need to use them for navigation. It is often best to ‘cross-grain’ the terrain thus making your moves hard to predict. Valley bottoms and trails/streams are good places for you to walk into an ambush. Use techniques for avoiding ambush such as hand railing and moving partway up a valley side (contouring), thus giving you the benefits of cover and concealment but avoiding natural ambush sites and places where others will travel.

You must be very careful at any kind of obstacle, vulnerable point, channelizing feature or linear danger area. Examples of a channelizing vulnerable point include crossing a bridge or moving through a track or trail junction. A linear danger area is any kind of open feature that you have to cross such as a road, river or trail, even a power line through the woods. You must be very careful to observe in detail prior to crossing and find a point where the crossing is best concealed, such as in a depression or even by crawling through a culvert, for example.

As you move, you need to stop regularly for listening and observation breaks. Scan and listen. Do this before moving through the next natural part of the terrain, cross it then stop again. A real game changer would be having a portable FLIR thermal imager (such as the FLIR Scout), with which you can scan around and into the brush to spot anyone concealed.

He makes you consider whether you or your enemy have FLIR or night vision, he covers the concepts of enfilade and defilade, food, water purification, firearms, concealment while sleeping, etc.  Again, the article is well worth the time and if you don’t read anything else today you should read this article.

He discusses taking multiple weapons with you: “You may carry two rifles, a hunting rifle slung on your pack and an AR-15 style for while you are patrolling and for closer range self-defense.”

Here I break ranks with him.  It seems to me that you select a rifle, not two or more.  That one rifle needs to sustain your mission.  If you choose a bolt action scoped rifle, then ensure that your shots are stand off long range shots under concealment and that you have a means of egress and evasion.  If you choose an AR-15, then ensure that you have Travis Haley-like skills and you can make your shots count at 800 meters.

If you must take two rifles, one for long range and one for short range, then you’ve already planned poorly for the mission.  You are counting on a combination of stand off shots and CQB, and adding to the weight and ammunition you must carry.  My choice would be to choose your rifle well, and then carry your favorite CQB pistol or revolver.  If I carry more than two firearms, I might carry a backup handgun in an ankle holster.

My only other comment about this article is that the assumption behind some of the considerations is an abundance of wealth.  Who has the kind of money necessary for infrared capabilities, night vision, expensive firearms, optics (e.g., a high end EOTech Holographic sight plus shipping will run nearly $600), backup firearms, and so on and so forth?  You can even invest in fully body armor if you wish, including SAPI plates.  In contrast, hopefully I have given you an inexpensive option for cover if you need to be in the elements for a protracted period of time.

On the whole, though, I am really not a fan of the lone wolf paradigm.  I think such a defense needs two or more men, and I probably wouldn’t make the choice to leave my family alone in order to effect these kinds of operations.  The risk to my family would be too high.

That brings me to another article by Mike Vanderboegh on his fourth installment of William Diamond’s Drum.  As always, Mike is good reading and worth the time.  David Codrea weighs in with the following:

… it can be smart to have a hidden cache and it can be self-defeating to shoot it out when the team shows up at your door.

Living to fight another day, at a time and place of your choosing, not theirs, seems like an option we’d want to leave ourselves, and if we’re taken out of commission, it’s a legacy to leave our children.

Bottom line — there’s no one size fits all response, and different scenarios present different potentials.

David is referring to Mike’s opinions regarding burying weapons rather than fighting now.  Mike prefers the later and eschews the former.  I understand Mike’s point, but frankly, if gun confiscations ever do start, any team entering my home will find a few range toys to confiscate because “I forgot to turn them in.”  The rest were buried at the bottom of lake Keowee in that horrible boating accident several years ago.  I cried buckets of tears over that accident.  “Have a nice day, SWAT team.  I hope you enjoyed tea and crumpets.”

There is no virtue in engaging a SWAT team in your home, endangering your family for no good reason, and fighting a battle that you cannot win.  If gun confiscations ever start, believe me when I tell you that they will never find me again – but they will see the results of my handiwork.  They won’t know it’s from me, and they will never see it happen.

I agree with David.  A SWAT team at your doorstep means they’re dictating the terms.  Live to fight another day.  Do it at a time and place of your choosing, not on their terms.  And thus I see battling down a SWAT team at your doorstep as a fixture in the lone wolf paradigm.  I don’t like the lone wolf paradigm.  There are better ways to do this.

UPDATE: Thanks to WRSA for the attention.  Remember the swamp fox.  I will become a phantom.  As far as they know I will disappear from the face of the earth.  But I will ally with a few like-minded individuals, and they will know what the phantoms do.

So Chuck Hagel is confirmed as Secretary of Defense for the United States of America.  I don’t have a long, complicated assessment of what will follow, or why Hagel is a horrible choice for mowing my lawn, much less being SecDef.

But contrary to the notes I have received, the blog entries I’ve read, and the speeches I have heard the Senators make on how much he concerns anyone with a lick of common sense, it doesn’t really matter whether Hagel was confirmed or not.  It didn’t matter with Secretary of State Kerry either.

Anyone in this post will be implementing Obama’s foreign policy, and that makes for a very dangerous world for some time to come.  But it is noteworthy that Hagel acted so foolishly in front of the Senate, like a bumbling clown.

Together with Kerry, Obama has his insane clown posse, and they will do his bidding for an insane clown foreign policy.

I’m glad that my son is out of the Marine Corps.  The battle is now for the homeland.

I hiked and camped and went shooting and trained quarter horses in my youth.  The woods and mountains of South and North Carolina was my playground.  If I had been raised in the mountains of Virginia I might have made a little untaxed corn liquor in a still.  I have never made moonshine, but I still pride myself on knowing something about my region.

I was watching a recent episode of Discovery Channel’s Moonshiners, and I remarked to one of my sons visiting with us that “those boys are to the West of us from around Murphy.”  Later in the season I learned that I was right.  Like I said, I know my region.  Like the times in which I grew up, around Murphy, your handshake means something and speaking directly to your face instead of going behind your back shows respect.  People are generous, perhaps to a fault, but no one wants government intervention in their lives, or meddling foreigners either.  Minding your own business is of paramount importance.

In what may be the most remarkable instance of “you ain’t from around here, are you” I have ever seen, the local news in Murphy tried to obtain concealed handgun permit information, and was soundly trounced.

The Cherokee Scout of Murphy, North Carolina, has printed an absolutely groveling apology to its readers and to the local sheriff for even asking the sheriff for public records of those with concealed carry gun permits. Publisher David Brown writes, “We never meant to offend the wonderful people of this community,” in a letter noticed by media blogger Jim Romenesko. Again, this is discussing public records that, according to North Carolina law, the sheriff legally is legally required to make public. The editor who made the public records request was subsequently threatened on Facebook.

Last week Cherokee Scout editor Robert Horne asked sheriff Keith Lovin for a list of locals seeking concealed carry permits. Lovin ignored state law and denied the request. He also posted the letters on the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page, a space that appears to be used primarily to post photos of good-looking locals involved in meth busts and robberies. Facebook commenters were furious. “Didn’t they do this up north a couple of months ago. It was a fiasco,” one commenter asked. (The answer is sort of: The Journal News, in suburban New York, published a map of locals licensed to own handguns.) The outcry was big enough to get covered by other local news outlets. Here’s a Facebook comment that was likely exactly what Lovin was looking for: “Thank you Sheriff Lovin for your patriotism and high morale caliber! Will definitely be voting for you again!”

Publisher Brown initially had a different tone. “We should have expected Sheriff Keith Lovin’s posting of his correspondence with Editor Robert Horne, because he knows he can’t win in a court of law but wants to win in the court of public opinion,” he wrote in a letter on February 21. But he was already looking to calm down readers. “The truth is… we never had any desire nor intention to publish any names of any person carrying a concealed weapon.”

In the February 21 letter the editor and publisher sound simply indignant.  They said “We should have expected Sheriff Keith Lovin’s posting of his correspondence with Editor Robert Horne because he knows he can’t win in a court of law but wants to win in the court of public opinion.  He also knows’s that he’s breaking the law because if the list wasn’t open, he wouldn’t have been pushing the state Legislature to close it … However, despite the fact that the Scout would likely win a lawsuit, we have no intention of taking it to court.”

Only two days later they ran with this note to readers.

The Cherokee Scout made a tremendous error in judgment this week, and thanks to our readers we learned a tough lesson.

As publisher of your local newspaper, I want to apologize to everyone we unintentionally upset with our public records request for a list of those who have or have applied for a concealed carry permit. We had no idea the the reaction it would cause.

Sheriff Keith Lovin had the best interests of the people of Cherokee County at heart when he denied our request. The Scout would like to offer an apology to him as well.

To that end, Editor Robert Horne spoke with Lovin on Friday morning to tell him we were withdrawing our public records request. He asked for a written copy of request, and Horne dropped it off at his office that morning.

I realize many people are upset with Horne, myself and the Scout and we can understand that. We never meant to offend the wonderful people of this fine community nor hurt the reputation of this newspaper. We do a lot of positive work that helps make Cherokee County an even better place to live, and I hope more good work will repair our reputation with readers.

Many of you have asked where Horne is from. He is from a small town in south Georgia — Cairo, Ga., to be exact. It is a rural area much like Murphy, and his roots are helping him better understand this community.

“Better understand the community.”  He went after private information, possibly lied about his reasons (why would you want it unless you intended to divulge it), and then tried to invoke the law in his quest to meddle in the affairs of others.

As for Sheriff Lovin, rock on, but leave the gun owners and moonshiners alone.  As for the North Carolina State Legislature, be about your business making the records of concealed handgun permits unavailable to public disclosure.  We’re waiting, and watching, and taking notes.  As for the editor of the paper, you might want to go back to where you came from.  You picked the wrong town in which to tilt progressive, boy.