Here are two tales of people who finally had enough. I’m not advocating anyone emulate their actions, but the history is very edifying.

First up is a man called Carl Drega. Vin Suprynowicz has a good run down of this case. I urge everyone to go over and read the whole thing.

The back story:

In 1981, 80 feet of the riverbank along Drega’s property collapsed during a rainstorm. Drega decided to dump and pack enough dirt to repair the erosion damage, restoring his lot along the Connecticut River to its original size.

A state conservation officer, Sergeant Eric Stohl, claimed to have spotted the project from the river while passing the Drega property on a fish-stocking operation. (The river’s natural ecology harbored huge runs of shad and Atlantic salmon, as well as native pike, pickerel, and brook trout. So most New England states — these devoted acolytes of environmental purity — now routinely stock bass, and brown and rainbow trout, none of which is native and few of which survive long enough to reproduce.)

The state hauled Drega into court, attempting to block his tiny “project.”

This was piled atop earlier actions by the town of Columbia, some dating back more than 20 years, and starting when the town hauled Drega into court and threatened him with liens, judgments and (ultimately) property seizure over a “zoning violation” which was comprised of his failure to finish a house covered with tarpaper within a time-frame which the town considered reasonable, former selectman Kenneth Parkhurst told the Boston Globe.

Drega tried for years to fight the authorities on their own terms, in court. Needless to say, as a quasi-literate product of the government schools, and no lawyer, his filings became a laughing stock both in the courts and in the newspapers to which he sent copies, begging for help.

The last straw:

But they didn’t come for Carl Drega at home. On Tuesday Aug. 19, at about 2:30 on a warm summer afternoon, New Hampshire State Troopers Leslie Lord, 45 (a former police chief of nearby Pittsburg) and Scott Phillips, 32, arrested Drega in the parking lot of LaPerle’s IGA supermarket in neighboring Colebrook, N.H.

(“Arrest” comes from the French word for “stop.” Whenever agents of the state brace a citizen, stop him, and demand to see his papers, he has been “arrested,” no matter whether he has been “read his rights,” no matter what niceties the court may apply to the various steps of the process.)

Why was Carl Drega arrested that day? New Hampshire Attorney General Phillip McLaughlin pulls out his best weasel words, reporting the troopers had stopped Drega’s pickup because of a “perception of defects.” Earlier wire accounts reported they were preparing to ticket him for having “rust holes in the bed of his pickup truck.”

The end result:

But Carl Drega had had enough. He walked back to Trooper Lord’s cruiser and shot the uniformed government agent seven times. Then he shot Trooper Philips, as the brave officer attempted to run away. Both died.

Drega then commandeered Lord’s cruiser and drove to the office of former selectman — now lawyer and part-time Judge — Vickie Bunnell. Bunnell reportedly carried a handgun in her purse out of fear of Drega. But if so, she evidently had no well-thought-out plan to use it. Bunnell ran out the back door. Drega calmly walked to the rear of the building and shot her in the back from a range of about 30 feet. Bunnell died.

Dennis Joos, 50, editor of the local Colebrook News and Sentinel, worked in the office next door. Unarmed, he ran out and tackled Drega. Drega walked about 15 feet with Joos still clutching him around the legs, advising the editor to “Mind your own (expletive) business,” according to reporter Claire Knapper of the local weekly. Joos did not let go. Drega shot Joos in the spine. He died.

Drega then drove across the state line to Bloomfield, Vt., where he fired at New Hampshire Fish and Game Warden Wayne Saunders, sending his car off the road. Saunders was struck on the badge and in the arm, but his injuries were not considered life-threatening.

Police from various agencies soon spotted the abandoned police cruiser Drega had been driving … still in Vermont. As they approached the vehicle, they began taking fire from a nearby hilltop where Drega had positioned himself, apparently still armed with the AR-15 and about 150 rounds of ammunition. Although he managed to wound two more New Hampshire state troopers and a U.S. Border Patrol agent before he himself was killed by police gunfire, none of those injuries were life-threatening, either.

The next case comes from the state of Colorado, and concerns a man called Marvin Heemeyer.

Here’s the back story:

In 1992, Heemeyer bought 2 acres (8,100 m2) of land from the Resolution Trust Corporation, the federal agency organized to handle the assets of failed savings and loan institutions. He bought the land for $42,000 subsequently agreeing to sell it to the Docheff family, which wanted the property for a concrete batch plant. The agreed price was $250,000 but according to Susan Docheff, Heemeyer changed his mind and increased the price to $375,000 and later demanded a deal worth approximately $1 million. This negotiation happened well before the rezoning proposal was heard by the town council.

In 2001, the zoning commission and the town’s trustees approved the construction of a cement manufacturing plant. Heemeyer appealed the decisions unsuccessfully. For many years, Heemeyer had used the adjacent property as a way to get to his muffler shop. The plan for the cement plant blocked that access. In addition to the frustration engendered by this dispute over access, Heemeyer was fined $2,500 by the Granby government for various violations, including “junk cars on the property and not being hooked up to the sewer line”. Heemeyer sought to cross 8 feet (2.4 m) of the concrete plant’s property to hook up with the sewer line.

As a last measure, Heemeyer petitioned the city with his neighbors and friends, but to no avail. He could not function without the sewer line and the cooperation of the town.

What happened:

On June 4, 2004, Heemeyer drove his armored bulldozer through the wall of his former business, the concrete plant, the Town Hall, the office of the local newspaper that editorialized against him, the home of a former judge’s widow, and a hardware store owned by another man Heemeyer named in a lawsuit, as well as others. Owners of all the buildings that were damaged had some connection to Heemeyer’s disputes.

Heemeyer’s rampage resulted in 13 buildings destroyed, resulting in total damages estimated at more than $7 million. The bulldozer also knocked out natural gas service to City Hall and the cement plant, and damaged a truck and part of a utility service center. Despite the great damage to property, no one besides Heemeyer was killed.

This is just a taste, and incomplete at that, of the events surrounding these cases. I encourage my readers to do research of their own about these two stories, and more. These are not isolated cases.

Our country was formed after a long train of abuses, laid out in the Declaration of Independence, made life unlivable.  No one should be surprised that some people will fight back when pushed too far, but they always are.

Here’s helicopter video of the second event. More such videos are available on Youtube, but this one is one of the best. It includes a call from a friend of  his and helps explain his motivations.

“How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual …. as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of.”
- Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp

I love this song.

They Were Having a Sale at the Gun Store

(The Jukes Boys)
Lyrics by: Leslie Fish

They were having a sale at the gun store; the Jukes boys decided to go
With the moonshine gone bad, and the poaching gone thin
Their business was doing quite slow
So they bought them a lot of hand-cannons, intent upon robb’ry and more
But they never once thought to consider
That they weren’t alone in the store.

Next in line was a little old lady, and next was a handsome young dame
After her, came a man in a wheelchair
Then a lad with an underweight frame
They watched while the Jukes boys were buying, and considered what such boys would do
Then they looked at each other, they said not a word
But bought themselves hand-cannons too.

Well, that night Billy Jukes went out hunting; he spotted a girl who looked great
But when he pulled her into an alley
She pulled out a big 38.
He thought this was feminine bluffing; “Naw, girl, you can’t shoot me,” he said
Well, the very next second she proved he was wrong
And Billy Jukes quite lost his head.

Well, Joey Jukes went for the money, so he went to a big liquor store
And he hauled out his two-barrelled shotgun
The moment he walked through the door
He aimed at all present, and bellowed “Give me all ya got, or yer dead!”
So the counterboy lifted his 44 mag
And did just what Joey Jukes said.

Now, Beauregarde Jukes chose his pickin’s with more care and planning by far
He jumped on a little old lady
Who was just getting into her car
But she promptly reached into her handbag and used the best choice she could make
For a 25 auto has such light recoil
As even a frail hand can take.

Now Roy Jukes was good at house burgling and still thought he’d escape without harm
When the owner rolled in with a shotgun
Braced on his wheelchair’s arm
“Well, they’ll bust you for shooting–” Roy started, but the man’s shotgun cut off the lot
And he said, as he muscled Roy’s corpse out the door
“There are no ballistics on shot.”

So that was the end of the Jukes boys; the cops had to clean up the mess
So they slandered gun-owning civilians
All over the liberal press
But the victors who might have been victims go silent, although this is true:
So long as there’s one weapon left in the world,
You better have you a gun too.

As might be guessed by the title of the CD, this album is very pro 2nd Amendment.

If you get it, pay close attention to the lyrics as there is a definite message there.

As for music, I’d have to say “Poor Man’s Weapon” is the most listenable and accessible, while “Flight 93″ makes me very sad every time I listen to it.

Last but not least, Oleg Volk did the photography and layout for the cover art, which is exceptional.

Track Listing

• Lock and Load 4:14
• They Were Having A Sale At the Gun Store (Fish, arr. Blake Hodgetts) 4:29
• Vigilante 3:56
• The Sheep Look Back 2:02
• Poor Man’s Weapon 4:28
• PGP 2:12
• No High Ground 4:42
• The Weapon Shops Of Isher 2:13
• The Old Issue (Kipling/Fish & M.Creasey, arr. Fish) 5:48
• Free Fire Zone (Garry Siler) 3:22
• Devil-Devil 3:38
• We Did It To Ourselves (Bethancourt) 4:51
• Gamer 3:47
• Eyewitness (Keller/Fish) 2:02
• Me and My 30-06 (Bethancourt) 3:22
• Flight 93 6:30 ( MP3 FULL SONG)
• Once to Every Man and Nation (James Russell Lowell, 1845/Thomas Williams ["Ebenezer"], 1890) 3:30