Legal Checkmate on your “Military Type” Firearms Ban

Guest Post By Robert Greenslade

Progressives at the state and federal level are rushing to enact legislation that would ban firearms they claim are “military type” weapons. If they want to classify these weapons as “military type” firearms, then they have a problem, irrespective of the Second and Ninth Amendment, because a militia clause in the body of the Constitution bars them from enacting any general ban on these weapons.
The Militia Debate—Arming the Militia

During the debates in the Federal [Constitutional] Convention of 1787, there was an extensive debate concerning the militia. On August 23rd, a committee report was delivered to the Convention. The following clause was under consideration:

“To make laws for organizing, arming & disciplining the Militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the U.S. reserving to the States respectively, the appointment of the officers, and authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed-

Mr. King “by way of explanation…the Committee meant…by arming, specifying the kind size & caliber of arms….”

Mr. Madison “observed that ‘arming’ as explained did not extend to furnishing arms….”
Mr. King “added, to his former explanation that arming meant not only to provide for uniformity of arms, but included authority to regulate the modes of furnishing, either by the Militia themselves, the State Governments, or the National Treasury…”
There was no dissent from the Committee’s definition of the word “arming.” This provision, with a slight modification in verbiage, was adopted as Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16 of the Constitution for the United States.

Mr. King’s statement shows the intent of Clause 16 was to give Congress three (3) options for “arming” a State militia when called into federal service. First, Congress could require the individual to report with their personal military weapon. Second, it could require the militiamen to report with military weapons supplied and paid for by the individual State governments. Third, the federal government could supply and pay for the weapons.

This raises several interesting questions. How could citizens be constitutionally obligated to furnish their own military weapon, when called into federal service, unless there was an existing right to manufacture, purchase and posses such a weapon? And how could the States furnish arms to their militias unless they already possessed the “collective right” to arm their militias? According to organizations like The Brady Campaign, it took the so-called “collective right” Second Amendment, which was adopted 4 years after the Constitution was written, before the States and the members of their militias were “afforded” or “guaranteed” the right to keep and bear arms. As shown by Mr. King’s statement, these so-called rights existed prior to, and independent of, the Constitution or the Second Amendment.

A State cannot Negate the Arming Provision in Clause 16

Since the word “arming” in Clause 16 includes individual citizens providing their personal military weapon, independent of State control, no State can pass a general statute that negates or interferes with this constitutional provision. Thus, a general ban on “military type” firearms by a State is an unconstitutional encroachment on the exclusive power of Congress to prescribe the mode for arming State militiamen, when called into federal service, pursuant to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16.

The Federal Government cannot Amend Clause 16 by Statute

A general federal ban on “military type” firearms would constitute a legislative revision of the Constitution because it would alter the arming provision enumerated in Clause 16. If members of the militia cannot purchase or posses “military type” firearms, then they cannot report when called into federal service with “military type” firearms. Thus, Congress would be modifying or removing one of the 3 options incorporated in Clause 16. That body cannot pass any statute that alters or defeats a constitutional provision. Since the Constitution can only be changed through the amendment process enumerated in Article V, the arming provision of Clause 16 supersedes any statute passed by Congress and prevents that body from negating it.
The Federal Government has no Authority over a State Militia when not in Federal Service
The only powers granted to the federal government concerning the militias of the several States, other than the power to call them into the service of the United States (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 15), are found in Clause 16. When not in the service of the United States, the federal government has ZERO authority over a State militia, their individual members, or their firearms. There is not a single provision in the Constitution that grants the federal government the power to prevent State militias or their members from acquiring or possessing firearms. In fact, Clause 16 specifically requires the States to maintain armed militias, independent of the federal government, because Congress can call them into the service of the United States at any moment and require them to be armed pursuant to Clause 16.

The Federal Government has no Power to Disarm a Militia or its Members

Federal control of the militias of the several States was the subject of heated debate in the individual State Ratifying Conventions. The following excerpts from the 1788 debate in the Virginia Ratifying Convention refute any assertion that Congress can disarm or prevent a State militia or its members from possessing “military type” firearms:

Mr. JOHN MARSHALL “The state governments do not derive their powers from the general government… The state legislatures had the power to command and govern their militia before, and still have it, undeniably, unless there is something in this Constitution that takes it away… But the power given to the states by the people is not taken away; for the Constitution does not say so. The truth is, that when power is given to the general legislature, if it was in the state legislatures before, both shall exercise it, unless there be an incompatibility in the exercise by one to that of the other, or negative words precluding the state governments from it. But there are no negative words here. It rests, therefore with the states. To me it appears, then, unquestionable that the state governments can call forth the militia, in case the Constitution should be adopted, in the same manner as they could have done before its adoption… All the restraints intended to be laid on the state governments (besides where an exclusive power is expressly given to the Congress) are contained in the 10th section of the 1st article. This power is not included in the restrictions in that section. But what excludes every possibility of doubt, is the last part of it– that “no state shall engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.” When invaded, they can engage in war, as also when in imminent danger. This proves that the states can use the militia when they find it necessary.”

Marshall’s remarks totally invalidate any general ban on “military type” firearms. He noted the Constitution (Art. I, Sec. 10, Cl. 3) forbids the States from engaging in war, “unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” The Constitution, through the above clause, authorizes the States to use their militia to engage in war without consulting Congress. How could the States, as noted by Marshall, engage in war to protect their borders if Congress had the power to prevent their militiamen from possessing a military type weapon? This State power is independent and separate from the powers delegated to the federal government concerning the limited use and control of a State militia.
As the debates continued, Marshall, who would later become Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court stated:

“[T]hat the power of governing the militia was not vested in the states by implication, because, being possessed of it antecedent to the adoption of the government, and not being divested of it by any grant or restriction in the Constitution, they must necessarily be as fully possessed of it as ever they had been.”

Marshall noted that the States had the indisputable power over their militias prior to the adoption of the Constitution and they retained that power unless they agreed to surrender it. As shown by Marshall, the States had the exclusive power to arm their militias independent of Congress, the Constitution, or any subsequent amendment. Thus, Congress cannot abrogate the right of members of a State militia to purchase or posses “military type” firearms.

If the federal government had the power to penetrate the sovereignty of a State and impose general bans on “military type” firearms, then it could disarm their militias and render them useless. This would be contrary to and in conflict with Article I, Section 10.

Who are the Militia?

Many Americans might be surprised to learn that they are, were, or will be a member of the militia under both state and federal law. For purposes of federal law, the composition and classes of the militia are defined in Title 10 of the United States Code, Section 311:

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are-

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Since the National Guard of a State is a sub-component of the militia of the United States (i.e., State militias in the service of the United States), and members of the militia can be required to provide their own military weapon pursuant to Clause 16, a general “military type” firearms ban imposed by a State cannot be applied to an individual who meets the statutory definitions above.

In addition, every individual between the ages of 17 to 44 who meets the qualifications referenced above, and is not a member of the National Guard or the Naval Militia (organized militia), is a member of the unorganized militia of the United States. This means everyone from the 19-year-old college student to the 43-year-old doctor is subject to the “arming” requirement enumerated in Clause 16. Thus, there must be a general right to purchase and possess a “military type” firearm or this provision would be an absurdity.
Even if a State had the power to pass a general ban, it could not prevent individuals between the ages of 17 and 44 from possessing this type of weapon because they could be required to report for federal service with that weapon in hand. And since every State in the Union has a companion statute for their militia, and it exists independent of the Constitution or the federal government, Congress cannot ban these individuals from possessing a “military type” firearm. In fact, if a State passed a statute requiring their militia members to posses a military firearm, the federal government would not have the constitutional authority to stop them because that government has no power over a State militia or their members when not in federal service.

One Clause cannot Alter or Negate Another Clause

The federal government claims the Commerce Clause granted it the general power to regulate firearms. Even if this assertion were true, Congress cannot circumvent Clause 16 through the Commerce Clause because one clause of the Constitution cannot be invoked alter or negate another clause.

Conclusion

Irrespective of the pronouncements by legislators at the state and federal level, the right of citizens to possess a “military type” firearm existed prior to and independent of the Constitution or the subsequent adoption of the Second Amendment. The Framers of the Constitution embedded this right in the “arming” provision of Clause 16. Thus, neither government has the general authority to modify or negate it through a legislative act.
[Editor's note: This is all moot, of course, for those of us who do not accept the "authority" of the Constitution, but is valuable information for those who still do accept it and wish to debate the matter with others who use false constitutional arguments.]

Big Government: An Unnecessary Evil That Should Be Abolished

Guest post By Brandon Smith

There are two types of people in this world; those who worship the ideal of centralized command authority, and those who do not.  Those who value freedom regardless of risk or pain, and those who value slavery in a desperate bid to avoid risk and pain.  When I consider the ultimate folly of man, in the end I look to the meek and unquestioning masses who strive to avoid risk, because it is they who always end up feeding the machines of war, despair, and tyranny.  The power thirsty halls of elitism surely instigate and manipulate the tides of this wretched ocean of quivering souls, but ultimately, the weak-hearted and weak minded make all terrible conquests possible.  

They live by the rule of fear, and their fear drives them to seek control; control of their environment, control of others, and by extension they believe, control of the future.  They attempt to mitigate their overwhelming fear by containing the world and sterilizing it of everything wild, untamed, and unknown.  They dream of a society of pure predictability, and zero responsibility.  They are willing to sacrifice almost anything to attain this position of artificial comfort.    

The concept of “big government” appeals to such people for many reasons…

Government in most cases is nothing but an abstraction.  It is merely a tool that serves the interests of a particular group of people at any given time.  Modern politics is an expression of the foolish cat fight between factions of people to decide who gets to wield the weapon of government and impose their ideology on the rest of us.  At least, that’s what it almost always devolves into.  The great illusion of the system, though, is that ANY group of average people ever actually wields any power.  The truth is, big governments are always operated by very small and exclusive clubs of root beneficiaries out of the sight of the population. 

The smaller this dominant group becomes, the more corrupt and criminal the government generally is.  A government reaches a state of despotism whenever its functions are twisted for the sake of an elite few to the detriment of the common man, and when it ignores the natural inborn rights of the individual for the sake of some fabricated collective .  If one were to closely examine the birth of every iron-fisted oligarchy throughout history, they would find a cyclical pattern of centralization; the removal of checks and balances, the removal of legitimate public involvement in the political process, a dependent and infantized citizenry, and the rise of a “bureaucratic class” which regards itself as superior and born to lead.  All steps taking place within Western societies today.  

Unfortunately, the masses tend to view big government as an inevitability of life; as a natural extension of culture.  Rarely if ever do they ask what tangible purpose it serves.  Are they really getting what they want out of their government?  Or, is the government taking what it wants from them?

I have always found the worshipful attitude that some citizens ascribe to government simultaneously fascinating and disturbing, because these people are not bowing down to a wise and benevolent entity.  Rather, they are bowing down to their own delusions of what they believe that entity to be.  The most dangerous and insidious of governments present themselves as a kind of social vanity mirror.  They allow the citizenry to project their collective desires, biases, shortcomings, and fears, and reflect back an image that entices and placates the majority.  The lies and manipulations of big government are designed to satiate our basest fantasies, but what we see as a concrete edifice of political and legal might, in the end, is a mirage mired in the fog of our own naïve expectations. 

So, the question again arises; if the structure of big government is built upon deceit and misrepresentation, what tangible purpose does it really serve?

The answer is no purpose…at least, no purpose that elevates and enriches the public at large.

Big government is not a “necessary evil”.  It is just evil.  Like the ring of Sauron, it lures in the weak with promises of power, but this power is a ruse.  Each side of our false left/right paradigm, Democrat and Republican, thinks that if only THEY were the bearers of the ring they would “finally use it for good”.  But once in their possession, they are overtaken, overwhelmed, and corrupted by personal temptation. 

The Democratic Party, with all of its proclamations of humanism and respect for civil liberties, is a perfect example.  How quickly did the rank and file Democrats turn away from their anti-war, anti-torture, anti-banker, anti-surveillance, anti-tyranny stance once Barack Obama, a self proclaimed Democrat, was placed in office?  Very quickly!     

And what about the common Republican?  How many of them utterly abandoned their ideals of limited government, reduced spending, Constitutional rights, and Christian understanding as soon as Bush and the Neo-Con regime was installed?  Most of them!

And when all is said and done, who has reaped profits and gained dominance during both disastrous administrations?  The corporate high priests and international banking cartels, not the oblivious participants of the fake political theater.  Yet, a masochistic cycle of misplaced trust in the system on the part of the masses continues... 

If these latest signs of big government corruption aren’t enough to make the public question the validity of the establishment, I’m not sure what will…

The Rape Of Cyprus

Even in the face of unmitigated government theft, I still hear the occasional rationalization of the Cyprus debacle.  Defenders of the bailout measures (which the EU demanded) allowing the confiscation of private citizen savings to pay off government mismanaged debt, argue two things:

1) The banks that were targeted contained “Russian blood money” and hidden funds, so confiscation really amounted to a “punishment of rich criminals” rather than the Cyprus public. 

2) It is “better” that the citizens go along with the confiscation of a percentage of their accounts, rather than lose everything through collapse. 

Just to be clear, any sizable Russian funds being stored in Cyprus were removed before the bailout measures were instituted.  Therefore, the assertion that such people were “punished” is a lie and a distraction.  The Russian scapegoat was merely being promoted by global financiers and political elites in order to con people around the world (not just those in Cyprus) to accept the concept of government theft of private funds as being “moral” under “certain extraneous circumstances”.  When a government wants you to set aside your conscience in support of an immoral action that serves their interests, they will almost always conjure a false villain and engineered consequences for you to direct your fear and anger at.  Once they can convince you to abandon your own principles to smite an imaginary enemy or avoid a manufactured threat, even if only one time, it will be much easier for them to convince you again a second time. 

Large and corrupt governments love to use the magic of the false choice.  For instance, “…it is better to sacrifice some of your money and your principles to the establishment than it is to live through total collapse of the nation…”  This false choice process, though, never ends.  The offending government will demand more property and more freedom from the citizenry everyday while constantly warning that if we do not submit, the alternative will be “far worse”.

The truth is, Cyprus is not the issue.  What the disaster in Cyprus reflects, however, concerns us all.  It is a moment of precedence; an action which sets the stage for the final destruction of the idea of private property.  It dissolves one of the final barriers to total government control.  Governments and elitists have always stolen from the public through misspent taxation and rampant inflation, but with Cyprus, we see a renewed feudalistic paradigm.  The EU and the banking hierarchy are sending a message to the Western world:  You are now their personal emergency fund, and nothing you own is actually yours anymore. 

When an institution confiscates property and capital at will from a subdued and frightened populace without consent, they are essentially exploiting the labor of that populace.  In any culture or language, this is called “slavery”.

Private Corporations Openly Dictating The Law

As most in the Liberty Movement know, the seeds of Fascism germinate in the soil where the corporate world meets the political world.  This is one of the primary reasons why we will stop at nothing to eliminate entities like the Federal Reserve; a privately run banking cartel that mingles with government yet answers to no one, including Congress or the people.  The Fed has existed since 1913, and has dominated the value and circulation of our currency ever since.  However, today, they are taking on new powers…

As a part of the recent bailout bonanza and the legislation surrounding it, the Fed has begun writing operational policy for other private banking institutions:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/26/us-citigroup-moneylaundering-idUSBRE92P0OO20130326

The transition has been subtle but the implications are dangerous.  The Fed is becoming a regulatory body with expanding influence outside of the electoral process.  It is preparing the ground for other private central banks to become fully unaccountable governing structures.  Right now, they are limited to the banking sector, but eventually, this dynamic will poison every aspect of the financial world until every economic decision will be made without any oversight from the public. 

Moving in a slightly different direction, the Federal Government is beginning to establish law which removes the ability of the public to have any means of redress against particular corporations.  The ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ hidden within the pages of the HR 933 spending bill creates special circumstances that protect the GMO producer from litigation and public examination over the dangerous genetic products it markets.  This legislation, in essence, builds a coalition between Monsanto and the government, and even allows Monsanto in some cases to dictate what the government can and cannot do when dealing with GMO’s. 

The Obama Administration’s support of this bill should be a shock to any environmentally inclined Democrat, and any Democrat who is still willing to defend Obama after learning of this legislation, in my opinion, is a lost cause. 

This move on the part of our government is striking because of its open criminality.  It shows that we have entered a new stage of the totalitarian process; one that will invariably lead us to catastrophe.

Legislation By Special Interest Group

In the halls of big government, politicians do not produce major legislation.  Rather, bureaucrats and think tanks fashion policy while elected officials serve as mouthpieces and middlemen.

How often do we discover after the passage of particularly nefarious pieces of legislation that the politicians who voted for them NEVER read the bills themselves?

This past week, sources within NY governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration claimed that he didn’t actually read the NY Safe Act before championing it, and blamed the vast mistakes and unconstitutional oversteps of the bill on Mayor Bloomberg and the Brady Center.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/gov_faking_care_of_business_execs_9uIcEq5lJPk96ayylaRAGL

Now, I do not believe that Cuomo was not aware of the implications of the Safe Act, even if he didn’t read the bill.  But I do believe that the bill was drafted purely by special interest groups like the Brady Center without any oversight from actual state legislators, who then passed it overnight without a second thought. 

In a big government system, legislative wrangling is non-stop.  A bureaucracy thrives on the endless introduction of new laws and new restrictions, and so it makes perfect sense that political representatives, who now act merely as mascots, never have the time to read all the paperwork.  Why would they read it, when they are no longer making decisions on such policies anyway?  All they have to do is vote how they are told to vote by their handlers, and trust that they will be protected by the establishment from public anger. 

Legislation by proxy is rampant in our government today, and it begs us to consider this - If our government has become so oversized and complex that our elected leaders can no longer oversee the actual writing of legislation and must use private think tanks to write it for them, perhaps we should cut the system down until their work load is manageable.  The alternative is a legal and political structure that is engineered entirely by obscure interest groups with an agenda, and this is highly unacceptable.

Complete Disregard For Individual Rights

In the evolution of big government, there comes a point at which the oligarchy has attained enough power that it feels safe in admitting its true intentions.  Usually, this is done in the name of the “greater good”.  Sometimes, they don’t even try to sugar coat it. 

This past week, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg in an unguarded moment stated the underlying philosophy behind the impositions of government control over the people.  When questioned about the Constitutionality of the growing drone surveillance grid in American skies, Bloomberg had this to say:
“Everybody wants their privacy, but I don’t know how you’re going to maintain it.  It’s just we’re going into a different world, uncharted, and, like it or not, what people can do, what governments can do, is different. And you can to some extent control, but you can’t keep the tides from coming in.”
“The argument against using automation, it’s this craziness– oh, it’s Big Brother. Get used to it.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bloomberg-new-york-eventually-surveillance-city-article-1.1296103
And there you have it.  The new age (for Bloomberg and big government elites like him) is a place in which government is separate and above the people.  The government does not exist to serve the citizenry; the citizenry exists to serve the government.  Privacy is a privilege that governments can take anytime they wish.  Citizens, being slaves, should not expect such privileges.  And, this subjugated nightmare world is a place that we must accept as a natural extension of progress.  Big Brother is the future, so grow up and “get used to it”…

I will not be “getting used to it”, and neither will millions of Americans like me.  We'll tear the whole monstrosity down first.              

Institutions of law and order are supposed to reflect the highest inherent principles of humanity and defend those principles regardless of the nature of the times.  Honor and conscience do not suddenly become obsolete simply because danger looms, or catastrophe strikes.

Big government bastardizes the original intent of the founders, who formed a small subservient central federal structure to fulfill one purpose – as a protector of the natural freedoms of the population.  The federal system was never meant to have any domestic power beyond this task, nor should it.  Today, as we have shown over and over again, the centralized political behemoth we live under is absolutely unnecessary and completely destructive to the freedom and prosperity of the culture it was originally tasked to defend.  It can and must be dissolved, and it is time for average Americans to deeply and seriously ponder this option rather than ignorantly assume that because it exists, it should exist.  Otherwise, like a weaponized cancer, it will devour what is left of the healthy fabric of our society and destroy whatever good remains within us.




You can contact Brandon Smith at:  brandon@alt-market.com
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The Reality of Combat

Guest post By Selco of SHTF School

When SHTF nobody told me how hard is gonna be and what things I will have to do to survive, there was no training or simulations, through most of the stuff I was going for the first time in my life, and I was hoping it is only temporary situation, it is not going to last for whole year.

Few events opened my eyes, and somehow make me survivor right at the beginning, and I can say I have luck to understand in very early stage how hard it is, and what it takes.

During one of the first bigger events of killing in the streets, I was out together with my friend who also was medical professional.

Fire from machine guns was on people who were standing in front of the main city bread factory, and people started to scream and run over each other.

My first impulse was to run to nearest cover but my friend got down to help some lady, so I stayed one meter next to him.

I was confused about my decision and not sure to stay with him or run. Bullets from machine gun hit him over his legs, and I saw how his knee cap exploded, it looked like some bad movie special effect.
He just looked at his legs, then at me, in silence. Even that was just seconds moments like this feel very long.
I took him by the hands and drag him some 20 or 30 meters to safety. Only there I saw that he was missing his leg under the knee. It stayed with dead lady on the street.

And only then he started to scream.
I used belt to stop bleeding, ambulance still worked in that period. He went to hospital and then evacuated from the city. He survived but never came back.
Lessons learned?

In moments of chaos always listen to your instincts and do not hesitate. Especially if you are involved in situation when someone is shooting at you with high caliber machine gun. Just accept that people will die, and you have to survive. To help others is great thing, to survive is even better, also I realized that human being is so fragile and easy to destroy.

Later I learned some things about weapons and how to use them, so I realize that more firepower does not necessary mean more dangerous and better chance to kill.

Owning a weapon is just absolutely necessary in preparing for a survival scenario, even more in urban survival. You just need to go and get as close as you can to the real stuff while you are doing the preparing and training for the SHTF, so it makes sense to go out and check your preps, to check your gear and yourself.
For example pair of boots that you bought and store for bad days will not be used for walking only, it will be use for running, squatting, jumping, in mud, junk, blood, guts maybe or just running trough a shallow river.

Everything that you have prepared and stored for SHTF will be pushed to the limits.

One thing is to go out into woods nearby and do recording of your weapon testing on some beer bottles with your friends, and after that concluding that particular gun or rifle is best for SHTF, and that you are dangerous dude because your accuracy rules. Some people gonna put that clip on you tube and go home convinced that they are ready and prepared.

In reality you do not know if you are prepared.

A lot of survival stores that sell things sell idea of buy this and you are safe. No you are not. Also you learn more about real urban survival scenario in my survival course and this helps you to mentally be better prepared but real deal when SHTF always comes as surprise.

When time comes again it gonna hit everyone like a hammer. Good news is that when you know you will get hit like that you can recover fast and use your skills, knowledge and preps to make best out of situation.
Using weapon in real life, in real survival situation is something absolutely different from shooting bear bottles, and if you could do some real training that is realistic that would be maybe going to camping with trash bag as a tent, being on camping for 10 days with 10 small cans of food, and 10 liters of water, walking every day for 10 km.

And then on 11th day run few kilometers and then shoot and see how accurate you are when your body is wasting away.

And still the most important thing is missing. While you are shooting at the beer bottles they do not shoot back at you in order to kill you.

During some of the first battles in city I was moving trough the building behind a guy, we both had rifles. He was sweeping the rooms and shooting, it was the closest urban combat as it can be. In the moment when he run out of ammo he used his rifle as something between spear and bat.
Now someone could say why he did not just switch to pistol? He did not have one, also he did not have time to look for ammo. But there I learned how it is useful to have folded stock of rifle when shooting and moving in very confined spaces.

Also I learned that rifle with pretty sharp parts at the barrel can be very handy. He stabbed guy to the cheek, ripping his face down and finishing him on ground.
One of the biggest misconception at the people who do not have fighting experience is what they need to practice.

It is all about pressure. You need to learn:

1. What your weapon can take

In terms of kicking, throwing, how often and when will it malfunction, and what the most common malfunctions are, and how to fix it, of course how to fix it in middle of fight. If you find yourself in the middle of fighting, and your weapon „jams“ do not be as we called “zblesavljen” or in English is probably looking like idiot.

I have seen that: guy is shooting and in the middle of fighting his weapon jammed, and he surprisingly look at the weapon in a „what the f#ck?“ state. And of course in two seconds he ends up dead.

You absolutely need to know how to manage small weapon jams without looking at the weapon, you need to look at the target while you are „repairing“ weapon (clearing the bullet, switching to other magazine etc.)
Other option would be to MOVE immediately when your weapon jams, move to cover in same second, or to dropping it on ground, or on your back, and switching to your other weapon. But you need to learn to do all of above without thinking. You need to train that this becomes automatic.

Small things like how quickly you can put your rifle on your back and a switch to pistol can be difference between life and death, if you somehow „trip“ yourself while you are trying to put rifle on your back in order to take pistol you can end up dead.

2. What you can take

Remember this: while you are shooting at the bad guys, those bad guys will be SHOOTING AT YOU TOO.
So shooting at the beer bottles in the woods with your buddies will not really do all the training you need. I am doing it often, but it just not covering everything.

Fighting and surviving combat means constant moving and outsmarting the guys on the other side, you gonna need to run, squat, throw yourself in the ditch, lay down in all kinds of sh!t and shoot at the same time, and probably fix your rifle from jams, or switch to another weapon.

Do some basic weapon training and learn about line of sight and how to get out off it.
Very great percentage of shooting is done without aiming, just spraying bullets.

It makes sense to do some airsoft or paintball in the woods to check how constant moving change whole game, and what kind of moving makes sense in order to survive gunfight.

For example how often you shoot from your weapon with both hands, dominant and not dominant? In urban fighting you will need switch weapon around very often (moving through the apartments, rooms, around the corners etc.). When you are shooting behind corner, and you are having rifle in your right hand and corner is on your left side it make sense to transfer weapon to left hand. otherwise it is dangerous to stick your left part of body out in order to shoot form right hand.

For all you who have some military experience this all is basic stuff, but I have seen many guys who were killed in stupid ways.

Real gunfight is dynamic thing. Adrenaline is weird thing too, so people can do tremendous things while adrenaline is pumping, but also with lack of training and common sense guy can do tremendously stupid things. I have seen man who was pointing to something and he stood up from the cover, and got shot.

3. How to train yourself

Training is the key. You can not do anything else today except to train very hard.

You can not experience real stuff today of course, but you can take it as close to real stuff as you can. Go out with your friends and think about all possible scenarios. But think about worst case scenarios. SHTF is not gonna wait for nice and sunny weather, you gonna be maybe hungry, dirty. Maybe have to give up your shelter and food storage on second day of SHTF.

Or you gonna be forced to use other weapon that you are not used to. Maybe you gonna be forced to hide for hours hidden under a pile of rubble and then you are gonna be forced to jump out and „kill“ ten beer bottles. Sounds like fun? This is why resilience and mental strength is so important.

Maybe you are gonna be cold and thirsty and in the middle of the battle. One thing is sure – very rarely it goes the way that you planned. So just be ready for many options and do not panic when things go other way. Want to get some funny sounding advice?

Get good at suffering while still being able to work towards a goal.

4. What weapon, caliber, stopping power etc?

It is very hard question (that I get asked a lot). But think about fact that everything today is about mainstream and commercial. And somehow it is more about what other people say is good and not necessarily about what you need and what is good for YOU.

You and your hand kill, weapon is only tool. I have seen fight when man with knife is killing the guy with rifle. He had mastered fighting with knife and had will to kill. Other guy had a rifle only, and he ends up dead. I also seen more than once people shot with rifle bullets still fighting, running for good amount of time. Some of them were not even aware that they are wounded before someone else pointed that out to them.

What I am trying to say, do not expect miracles if you own weapon that is at the moment most popular, having great stopping power, cool reviews. It is about practicing , weapon mastering and correct bullets placement.

I said bullets for a reason, I have seen many things, but I did not see someone survive multiple shots in correct place at the body. Have weapon that is best for your case, and achieve perfection in using it. Do not expect that people will fly back if you shoot them with one bullet from some widely popular weapon and caliber (not talking about shotguns).

So I am not gonna tell you what is the best weapon because what works for me maybe does not work for you or others.

Having a weapon that is too rare, too good or too bad does not make too much sense for me. Do not find yourself in situation when you lose your weapon and pick someone else and then find out that you do not have clue about it, because your weapon was special and rare.

Just have what everyone else around you has, because of gun parts, ammo and you look like everyone else.
Your weapon is only tool to survive, be ready to lose it if you need to lose it, and pick some other from ground in the middle of fight.

I knew a guy who did some scary stuff with rusty shortened M48. He was old and poor looking dude, he played that part good, until he would take out this old gun from under his coat and rob and kill people. Simple strategy but it worked for him. So look around and think what works for you.

If you have experienced combat or heard what matters from veterans please share in comments.

Finding Entry Points of Consciousness to Overcome the New World Order

Guest Post By Bernie Suarez, MD


What will it take for enough people to wake up? Enough people, that is, to implement a real difference in society and our way of life. Let me reiterate my case for why I believe that truth will prevail. I believe that consciousness is a form of energy that is in motion. This motion is moving TOWARD growth and expansion not the other way around.

Thus, I pose a reasonable hypothesis that goes something like this: If more people are awake today than were yesterday and more people will be awake tomorrow than today, which I believe is the case, then mathematically speaking we can confidently predict that humanity will turn things around and defeat the current ideology of tyranny which is trying to take over the world.

Turning things around will require a paradigm shift; or, more precisely, several small paradigm shifts slowly leading us away from the current political paradigm. Paradigm shifts are happening all around us all the time. We actually have many paradigms (or beliefs) that make up our overall paradigm (belief system) and these paradigms are constantly being challenged. To someone not grounded in some reliable comfort source this idea of paradigm shift can be frightening. My reliable comfort comes from my understanding of the existence of things that we can predict like the natural sciences and mathematics, as well as my awareness of the things that we can’t predict or fully understand like god, the universe, the power and potential of the human being, and spirituality.

Keeping our goal in mind of awakening enough people to implement a real difference, we should consider finding as many entry points to consciousness as we can. How can we do this? By realizing that almost everything we do connects us to reality and truth. The magic is in seeing the interconnection of everything and realizing that the only reality is your current experience and this very moment, now. The past and the future are not more a part of our present reality than dreams. TV, movies, and all forms of media around us are all just programmed electronic media intended to appeal to your senses and influence your ideology.

With a firm understanding of who we are (free expressions of consciousness), we can then arm ourselves with an effective cognitive plan for success. Finding real-time loopholes or entry points to consciousness is an effective tool for advancing consciousness. Finding ways to relate to people from all walks of life is important. Learn to find commonality in others instead of differences. These commonalities will render real-time interactions much more memorable and influential. See the glass half full instead of half empty. Dive into the knowledge that is available to us about whom we are and use this knowledge as a tool for disarming the ideologies of hate. This knowledge about our own selves includes knowing what it is that you don’t know and acknowledging what it is that you don’t understand.

I speak about disarming the ideology because people ultimately can be distinguished from the ideologies they get caught up in. People can and do change and a person can shed their ideologies when they feel compelled to when the time is right. We choose to commit to our ideologies and use it as an identifier, but this can be penetrated and eventually altered. Often but not always this change happens over time and is influenced by our personal experience as well as knowledge accumulation, wisdom and logic.

Finding clever entry points to consciousness then becomes the challenge. So I offer a suggestion: observe what a person cares about and what consumes most of their time and see if you can connect important truth to what they do, then find the right time and place to deliver your timely message of truth.

Whether it’s discussing the lost retirement funds with grandma, Dad's real estate issues or junior’s student loan nightmares, these are all entry points to consciousness. Keep your entry points general and wide without personal attack. Personally, I leave the more aggressive tones for the actual gatekeepers who know what they are doing.

It’s important to distinguish between a victim of the system and a gatekeeper of the system.

Though gatekeepers need help as well, this article is geared toward reaching out to the average unaware citizen who would reasonably alter their path if they understood the magnitude of the evil being carried out by the globalist monsters.

The globalists have left a mess so large that almost every aspect of life has their fingerprint on it. That has actually made it easier to expose what they’ve done. The average government-Hollywood-mainstream media believer you may know, that won’t listen to any truth and logic regarding 9/11 truth science may be more inclined to listen when you explain the financial collapse, the Federal Reserve banking scam, unemployment, bailouts, or other more perceived relatively important issues. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that someone will believe exactly as you do or that one particular issue must be force-fed to a person who is not ready for that issue. People can and will always find topics to disagree on, so this is an important trap to avoid and be mindful of.

This process of skillfully fine-tuning selective truth to the people in the world around you is an important counter-strategy to the mass brainwashing mainstream media-Hollywood-Government 24/7 lying machine. Look around, we are progressing with every day.

We know that the sum of the parts is equal to the whole so let us acquire and implement small counter strategies like this against the globalists and their new world order plans until we hit critical mass awareness and observe critical change implemented at a significantly noticeable level.

Bernie Suarez is an activist, critical thinker, radio host, musician, M.D, Veteran, lover of freedom and the Constitution, and creator of the Truth and Art TV project. He also has a background in psychology and highly recommends that everyone watch a documentary titled The Century of the Self. Bernie has concluded that the way to defeat the New World Order is to truly be the change that you want to see. Manifesting the solution and putting truth into action is the very thing that will defeat the globalists.

Defeating The NWO

Guest Post By Dave Hodges 


“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” -Jimi Hendrix


We are living in a 21st century feudal society and we are the serfs. Humanity is sliding ever faster into the great abyss of subsistence living. We have heard it all before, the rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer. However, we hear the humanity outnumbers the globalists and their minions. Americans have 300 million handguns and these two factors should allow us to defeat those of far fewer numbers. If this were true, tell me why is humanity losing the war against tyranny?

How does one defeat the New World Order (NWO) with their control over the banks, the military, the corporations, health care and the politicians? In short, they own it all. Is there any way to defeat the NWO? The truth is, I don’t know how to defeat the NWO and neither does anybody else because we do not know how to mobilize society. Below are a few suggestions that I feel we can use to slow them down. I call it the “death by a 1000 cuts” strategy. Following our delaying actions, while we get our house in order, this article concludes on what it might truly take to defeat evil.

Death By a Thousand Cuts

Sun Tzu once said that  “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” The previous parts in this series have clearly demonstrated that we cannot defeat the globalists on the battlefield. We cannot fully count on the police and the military to protect us is we revolt against this unfolding tyranny. However, there are some strategies that we can employ which can slow down the NWO until we can get our act together and fully prepare.

1. Take your money out of the megabanks. Now, there are presently harassing customers who are doing so. Therefore, go to the credit union or state-owned bank and write a sizeable check from your soon-to-be former bank.  At the same time, take out the daily maximum from your account. Keep enough in the bank to pay your bills and no more.

2. Turn off all mainstream media. Control of mass media is the key to the Bolshevik strategy for command and control. Only listen to networks and visit websites like the Republic Broadcasting Network, Rense.com, Steve Quayle, Stan and Holly Deyo and Genesis Communication. Do not watch network news unless you are viewing it as a way to determine what the enemy is up to. Apply the same logic to your local newspaper as they are all owned by Gannett Broadcasting. Most of your radio stations are owned by Clear Channel and they all have the same globalist propaganda.

3. Get your children out of the government schools with their NWO Common Core curriculum along with their zero tolerance policies and transgender restrooms.

4. Never a borrower or a lender be. We are now a nation of debt slaves. Pay cash for everything. If you cannot pay cash, then you do not buy it!  Own your future instead of the banksters owning you.

5. Service your car at the local garage and not use the car dealer’s mechanics.

6. Stay out of Walmart, Kmart and every other slavemart.  Shop at your locally owned store and stay out of the chain stores they are all owned by the enemies of humanity (e.g. Walmart slave labor).

7. Dine out at your “mom and pop” stores. Stay out of the corporate chains as you are only feeding the NWO beast.

8. Buy gold and do not horde cash.  This cuts into the power the NWO bankers have over you and your country.

9. Never vote for the incumbent. The longer the power hungry are in power, the more likely they are to be on the take.

10. Store food and water. Buy privately sold guns and bury them so you have them following the coming gun confiscations. You will need them to protect your food and water.

11.  Try, as hard as it might be, to buy only Made In America products.

12. Make a registry at your local community mail box of which you list the trades and skills possessed by your neighbors so you can trade craft favors. Also, sell your products in the same manner. Trade and barter and get out of the habit of using credit and debit cards as well as cash. This will minimize your tax bill. There are laws being passed against these practices. Ignore these laws. Starve the Federal Reserve beast.

13. Educate your neighbors, family and friends that this government is controlled by those who would do you harm.

14. Have an escape plan. When the roundups start you will need a place to hide out for about six months.

15. Grow your own food and try to conceal that fact as much as possible. Encourage your neighbors to do the same so you are not murdering each other on the fourth day following the coming currency collapse.

16.  Eat organic and avoid GMO’s. Exercise, read and take vitamins. Meditate before starting each day.

17. Let chemtrails become the new symbol of the tyranny that is ruling over us.

18. Do not every get on a bus of any kind where they promise safety and food. History shows that you have a 98% chance of not getting out the new place of “safety” with your life.

19. Your best allies are your families and extended families. Plan according to this principle.

20. Realize that you cannot prepare for all eventualities. Therefore, enjoy each day because the future is promised to nobody and we live in very predatory times.

How to Defeat the NWO Once and For All

 

We cannot defeat the NWO at this time because they are us. Yes, they are indeed evil personified, but they represent everything that is also wrong with us. All of us are the NWO and if we want to not be the NWO we need to stop acting like them. Every time we cheat on our spouses, we are no different than John Corzine who cheated investors out of 1.2 billion dollars of secured investment accounts in MF Global. Every time we spread malicious rumors and lies about another human being, we are no different than what Ted Turner and Rupert Murdock do with CNN and FOX on a daily basis. You see, all of us are the NWO.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

When you come to realize that every human encounter possesses a nexus point with every other human being we encounter.

In each instance, we have a choice to be honorable, compassionate and kind to another or to take advantage of them. You have a choice to chart a new path for humanity or to walk in the evil footprints of those misguided ones who have come before you.

You can pick up the Cross and walk the path of righteousness. Or we can continue to serve and be ruled over by evil.

 If reading the Bible is not your thing (highly recommended), then you can try a more secular approach in reading Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Power of Intention.  Both works espouse the belief that we can manifest our just desires with the correct type of prayers, or the correct seven prerequisite beliefs, in order to manifest a change upon the physical universe. Either way, evil can be defeated through nonviolent means.

Please remember that evil begets evil. Hate begets hate. Violence begets violence. Maybe it is time to try something that really works.

We have a choice my friends, but our window of opportunity is quickly closing.

Preparing For The Worst Can Be Exhausting: 20 Ways to Combat Prepper Fatigue

Guest post By Daisy Luther

While preparedness activities and awareness generally provide peace of mind for me, there are days that I just don’t want to see another mylar bag or read the next scary headline trumpeting our imminent collapse.

Both mentally and physically, the activities that make up the everyday life of a prepper can take a toll. If you aren’t gardening or preserving food, you’re practicing marksmanship or other vital skills. You’re reading alternative news websites and piecing together the information as it applies to you and your family. Some folks are worrying about their locations, their retirement accounts that they are unable to access, and their loved ones who remain unconvinced of the need to prepare.

Feelings of overwhelming exhaustion and/or anxiety are signs that you need a little break from prepping. Don’t let that concept cause you even more panic – this doesn’t mean you are returning to life as a sheep. There is a big difference between sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the global situation, and simply taking a little step back now and then. Many people refer to this mental atmosphere of stress as “prepper fatigue.”

My daughters and I just returned from a wonderful week-long vacation visiting some states in the Pacific Northwest. The holiday served multiple purposes: much needed R&R, getting together with good friends, and checking out some farm real estate in our future desired location. I made a rule for myself limiting my time on the computer and just did the bare minimum. I didn’t scour news websites and wrack my brain for topics to write about. I did keep a list to jot down ideas as they occurred to me. My friends are like-minded so we had some great discussions. When I looked at property, obviously the self-sufficiency ramifications were foremost in my mind. But all in all, it was a break from my usual way of life.

It was rejuvenating, and it reminded me how important it is to smell the roses. It isn’t healthy to be grimly focused on the worst things that could happen every second of the day. It isn’t good for your mind and soul to worry so much about tomorrow that you forget about enjoying today.

It’s hard to let go sometimes and just enjoy the moment, but your ability to do so, even (and especially) during difficult times, will allow you to weather the coming storms in good mental health. No matter how difficult the situation, it’s important to spend some time every day smiling. As a parent, a partner, a friend – consider carefully the time you spend with loved ones and be sure that you are creating good memories, whether you’re digging in the garden together, laughing at how silly chickens look when they run, or staring in awe at a breathtaking view.

I’ve recently read some articles (this one in particular was wonderful) about this sense of enjoyment, and was disturbed in the comments to see a few preppers chastising the writers and telling them that the situation was too grim to consider things like fun. The people who cannot find a way to smile during difficult times will be the ones that crack. Their children will be the ones that are the unhappiest. While being determined is important, survival is about more than shoveling unseasoned beans and rice into your mouth and standing watch. As times become more difficult, episodes of fun and laughter, no matter how simple, will see you through them.

Keeping up your motivation by taking time for some recreation doesn’t have to break the budget or divert you completely away from your prepping principles. For example, during my vacation, I was on a boat with like-minded friends. We were enjoying the warm weather and scenery while discussing how difficult it would be to breach the security of a home on a nearby hillside and brainstorming the retreat value of such a home.

Following are twenty ways to take a break, prepper style:

1. Visit a nearby working farm that doubles as a tourist attraction. Learn about the way the farmer houses and feeds livestock, what he grows and the self-sustainable methods in place there.
2. Go camping and rough it to practice your outdoor survival skills. Bring a field guide and look for plants that you can forage and signs of wildlife.
3. Unplug from the computer for 24-48 hours.
4. Do prepper drills: go a weekend without power, have a paintball ambush, go hiking with just a compass and water filter.
5. Learn a new skill like knitting, whittling, making pottery, or marksmanship.
6. Take a class: cheesemaking, gunsmithing, first aid, or a useful craft.
7. Join a gardening club, an archery club, or another group that provides useful information with a social aspect.
8. Take a walk and/or work on your fitness.
9. Have an all-day food preservation get-together with a like-minded friend.
10. Go to a farmers market or a pick-your-own place. Buy a bushel of fruits or veggies for canning while you’re there.
11. Take a vacation to an interesting place.
12. Attend a seminar, country fair, expo, or trade show.
13. Watch a movie or series marathon with the family – opt for something inspiring like Red Dawn, Jericho, or another survival flick.
14. Read a book like Lights Out, One Second After, or The Stand.
15. Browse the gardening or building section of a bookstore or library.
16. Spend the afternoon at a greenhouse or garden store, checking out new plants.
17. Curl up with a seed catalog and a notebook.
18. Write in a journal – you can focus on prepping, your garden, your faith, or life in general.
19. Play with a pet. (I’m working on some obedience training with my dog before a search and rescue course next fall.)
20. Go hunting or fishing.

How do you decompress to combat prepper fatigue, while still working towards your preparedness goals? Do you feel a sense of renewed enthusiasm after taking a little break?

Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, where this article first appeared, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

Time To Plan For The Worst Rather Than Hope For The Best

Guest Post By Brandon Smith


Preparation for disaster, whether natural or man-made, should be as vital as any ideal found in the various practices of religion and spiritualism. Preparedness should be treated with reverence, discipline and duty. The drive for preparation should be seated in the very heart of humanity. As individuals and as a society, we should hold preparedness dear, for it is an expression of the desire for survival and the key to maintaining our inherent freedoms. Without self-sufficiency, we set ourselves up for endless failure and enslavement.

Preparedness must be approached with passionate resolve; otherwise, there is no point. Halfhearted survivalists are just as likely, if not more likely, to get themselves killed as the average oblivious urbanite and suburbanite. Unfortunately, even in the liberty movement, I have come across many halfhearted and lazy survivalists who would rather hope for the best than prepare for the worst.

The primary issue has always been one of “distraction.” Even those who are fully informed of the very real and immediate dangers to our economy and our Nation as a whole find it difficult not to get wrapped up in the concerns of the old America. Mind-numbing job environments, superficial family dramas, television hypnosis, Facebook narcissism, consumer addictions, improving one’s perceived social status: all of these things waste precious time in our daily lives, making us weak and sapping our resiliency. They encourage us toward apathy. Always, we are telling ourselves: “I did nothing today, but tomorrow will be different.”
I hear many excuses and conflicts in my work as an economic analyst and preparedness adviser. Some come from people who are already in the liberty movement and should know better. Others come from people who for one reason or another seek to dissuade us from personal preparation. Here are just a handful of the many irrational arguments against survival planning that I am confronted with on a daily basis.

"Prepping Is For Crazy People And Chicken Littles"

Catastrophes occur all the time. Sometimes they are regional, sometimes they are national, and sometimes they are global. Since the age of the baby boomer, America has been spared widespread disaster for the most part, and this has bred in us a deep-rooted normalcy bias. We wander about in ignorance, thinking that tomorrow will always be just as comfortable as today and that because we have never witnessed real pain and suffering, we likely never will. To me, this attitude is far more unbalanced and insane than the forward-thinking mindset of the average prepper.
Hilariously, survivalists are called “crazy” simply because they refuse to operate on foolish assumptions like the rest of society. We know from modern historical example — from the Great Depression to Weimar Germany to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bosnia, Argentina, Greece, etc. — that the prepared and independent live, while the rest often die. We refuse to assume, especially in light of recent events, that such calamity will not occur in the United States.

"Survivalism Is Stigmatized By Unpleasant Associations"

It’s true, propaganda organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center have gone out of their way to attack and marginalize survival culture. They seek to draw false associations between us and racist, extremist domestic terrorist, blah, blah, blah. In the end, none of this matters. The SPLC is an irrelevant entity clamoring desperately for relevance, and America’s survival communities continue to grow despite their subversive activities. The truth, once recognized, has a way of steamrolling over groups of liars.
Individual preppers and potential preppers need to stop worrying about what everyone else thinks and do what they need to do to ensure the longevity of themselves and their families. Labels are only as powerful as the credence we give them.

"My Family Is Not On Board"

I hear this one all the time; and, really, it doesn’t matter. If you can’t take preparatory actions without constant approval from your family, then perhaps you need to examine your family dynamic rather than throwing away your survival plans. Doing the right thing is not reliant on the affirmations of a spouse or relative. Doing the right thing means taking action regardless of the obstacle, even if that obstacle is family.
It might not seem like it now, but survivalism is worth all those late-night quarrels, angry stares and sarcastic rolling eyes. If they can’t accept that preparedness is a part of your life, then that is ultimately their problem, not yours. You can continue in the knowledge that, one day, they will thank you for ignoring their ankle-biting and self-absorption.

"I’m Always Too Busy" 

No one is too busy for preparedness. Much of what the average American does each day is designed to distract and entertain him, rather than enrich him in a useful way. The sad reality of the American lifestyle is that it revolves around the desire to avoid being alone with our own thoughts. In fact, the consumer ideology thrives on people’s need to fill the vacuum with incessant entertainment and diversion. Much of what we call being “busy” is actually a self-created matrix of illusory and shallow amusement designed to help us forget the more important and vexing matters of the world.

Turn off the TV, skip a few parties, rethink the career you hate, take your eyes off your damn iPhone for a day and consider what is really important. Stop worrying about what is comfortable and accept that very soon all the conveniences you now find yourself attached to may disappear anyway. Wean yourself off the teat of the establishment now or be forced to go cold turkey later. These are your options. Get used to it.

"I Can’t Afford To Prepare" 

In some cases, I find this to be true. We are, after all, in the midst of an economic collapse, and many Americans are indeed falling into poverty. However, in at least half of the instances where I hear this excuse, it turns out not to be true.

Every survivalist starts out with nothing. He first builds a foundation, usually with a storage made up of essential bulk foods, and then expands. Food is the greatest Achilles’ heel of our culture. With the freight system our country has in place, grocery stores keep little to no real inventory and only a normal week’s worth of supplies on the shelf at any given time. During a crisis, this food disappears within hours, not days. Any imbalance in our freight system (like an explosion in gas prices) would result in a complete loss of national supply. A mere six weeks of disruption (as things stand today) would likely wipe out about 80 percent to 90 percent of the U.S. population through starvation.

Today, a single paycheck ($600 to $1,200) could be used to purchase enough dry bulk foods to last a family of four close to a year. Though variety may be lost, at least starvation is averted. Yet, many people, including those in the liberty movement, do not have even a year’s supply of basic staples, despite their low cost. If every family in the United States used one paycheck to purchase a food foundation, the effects of an economic collapse would be vastly minimized.

"I Like The Convenience Of The City, Even Though It Will Be Dangerous During Collapse"

The city is a distraction addict’s paradise. There is always something to mesmerize the senses at any given hour. On top of this, many cities are slathered with Federal funds, which the cities use to pour into beautification projects that give residents the illusion of economic improvement and progress. On a recent speaking tour in the Los Angeles area, I was reminded of the conundrum of the city environment. Millions of people on welfare and food stamps, exponential homelessness, massive potential for violence and destruction: yet they are surrounded by sharp, sleek, new shopping centers and refurbished business districts. The reality of many cities is that they are financially imploding, but on the surface everything glows like gold. This gives the average person and even some preppers a false sense of security.

If they refuse to move away from their beloved metropolis, preppers should at least have a retreat location relatively far from the area — at minimum, a day’s drive away and several days’ walking distance. If you do not have this, you are not prepared. The bottom line is: more people, more problems. Anyone who claims otherwise has never studied the collapse histories of other modernized nations.

"What’s The Point Of Preparing? You’re All Going To Die Anyway"

This is the nihilist argument, and it’s my favorite. Nihilists are weak-minded and weak-spirited people who realize, at least subconsciously, that they are incapable of struggle and survival. Deep down, they feel shame and self-loathing. But they would never admit to this openly. Instead, they project their weaknesses on the rest of humanity. In their mind, if they can’t survive, nobody can survive. By assuming that their weakness is everybody’s weakness, they protect their own fragile ego and avoid admitting that they are the only ones that have no chance of weathering a disaster.

"Stop Living In Fear: Humanity Is Adaptable, Technology Will Save Us"

This is probably the most idiotically pretentious philosophy being peddled around the liberty movement today, and it stems from what I call “delusional optimism.” You see, looking into the abyss and accepting the fact that you are about to be pushed over the edge is a difficult thing to do. Some people respond to the terror through fantasy. They imagine that the worst could not possibly happen, that there will be no consequences, that the pain of hitting the bottom will not be so bad, that in mid-drop someone will come along and teach them to fly. They search and search for that silver bullet solution that will save them from the wretched horror of full-blown social destruction.

This delusion manifests itself in many ways, but lately I have seen it coalesce in a movement toward technology worship.

Hell, I’m a fan of new technologies, too. And I certainly believe that many of them are suppressed by the establishment to keep the masses physically and psychologically dependent. That said, I am not foolhardy enough to believe that the mere presence of these technologies alone will save us from fiscal collapse and totalitarianism. Given time (lots of time), new technologies could help the masses break away from the mainstream system. This is time, I’m sorry to say, that we do not have. As I have discussed in recent articles on our economic situation, any tremor in the global system will be enough to send the entire edifice crashing down.

Hoping for a slow steady grind until we are able to adopt fantastic new tech is pushing the envelope of logic.
We already have the technological capability for the average person to live comfortably off the grid with electricity and other amenities we have grown fond of; yet the establishment elites are still in power, and they are still engineering numerous misfortunes. Until they are removed from power, no amount of invention is going to change a thing.  The technological fantasy is used by many people to avoid the reality that a very ugly fight is coming, and whether they like it or not, they may have to one day experience and perhaps even participate in that ugliness.

Finally, survivalists do not do what they do out of fear. We do what we do out of love. We love freedom. We love the principles of liberty that founded this country. We love our children and seek to secure their futures. We are not afraid of collapse, because we are ready for collapse. We do not need to con ourselves with false optimism and false hope, because we have already strengthened our souls with reason and courage. True survivalists are exactly what every American should be already; honorable individuals steeped in the confidence of their own ability to handle any adversity, no matter how monstrous it may be.



You can contact Brandon Smith at:  brandon@alt-market.com
Alt-Market is an organization designed to help you find like-minded activists and preppers in your local area so that you can network and construct communities for mutual aid and defense.  Join Alt-Market.com today and learn what it means to step away from the system and build something better.
To contribute to the growth of the Safe Haven Project, and to help us help others in relocating, or to support the creation of barter networks across the country, visit our donate page here:
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The Persuasive Prepper: How to Convince Loved Ones to Prepare

Guest Post by Daisy Luther

If you are a prepper, chances are that you have friends and family who consider you anywhere on the “nuts” scale from a bit eccentric to downright certifiable.

This viewpoint, of course, makes it very difficult for you to talk with these loved ones and bring them over to the “dark side” of preparedness with you.

It’s painful to see people about whom you care, blithely going along, spending money frivolously, buying their groceries a couple of days at a time, and living in places that are totally unsustainable should disaster strike.

Why People Won’t Listen...

It’s important to understand why your loved ones see the world through rose-colored glasses. While they are busy casting mental health disorder epithets your way, it is actually the people who refuse to accept reality who are suffering from a psychological phenomena called “cognitive dissonance”.

Cognitive dissonance (a phrase coined in the book When Prophecy Fails, by Dr. Leon Festinger) describes the mental discomfort that a person feels when faced with two diverse values – the reality of a situation and the moral belief system of the person collide. When this occurs, the person must make alterations to one or the other in order to regain his equilibrium. According to Dr. Festinger theory, “people engage in a process he termed “dissonance reduction”, which can be achieved in one of three ways: lowering the importance of one of the discordant factors, adding consonant elements, or changing one of the dissonant factors. This bias sheds light on otherwise puzzling, irrational, and even destructive behavior.” (source)



It’s very frustrating to watch otherwise intelligent people completely avoid the acceptance of our reality. Those deep into cognitive dissonance are simply NOT going to come around by hearing you preach to them. If anything, it will only drive them further away from you. The concept of, for example, a long-term disaster like an EMP or an economic collapse is incomprehensible to them. Because of this, no matter how fervently you believe these things to be likely in the future, it’s best to water down the reality into manageable bites.

Breaking Them In Gently

Many people find it easier to accept the likelihood of a weather-related disaster that might knock out the power for a few days to a week. You can easily provide recent examples, like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy. For those in regions where events like this occur, you can often persuade your loved ones to stock in at least a two-week supply. Other regions are prone to ice storms, snow storms or earthquakes. This can be a gentle introduction to preparedness. Clearly, a two-week supply is not enough to weather a long-term disaster. However, you may be able to build on this base acceptance and begin to help your loved ones begin to extend their supplies.

Another great tactic is promoting the economic logic behind a well-stocked pantry. Prices are only going up – it doesn’t take a prepper to see this. If you can convince someone of the investment value of a food supply, sometimes you can persuade them to prep without them even realizing that is what they are doing. Then, when that supply comes in handy during a disaster event or a personal period of economic hardship, you can gently reinforce the lesson.

Sending gentle nudges via email is sometimes helpful, but inundating a non-prepper with preparedness advice will generally fall upon deaf ears. Repetition of preparedness concepts without the scare tactics can help break through the normalcy bias, but it is important to limit yourself within the tolerance level of the person with whom you are communicating. Remember, you do not want to be the Jehovah’s Witness of preparedness, knocking on the door during dinnertime while the non-prepper pretends not to be home.

Unfortunately, for the most part, you have to realize there isn’t a lot you can do to convince others that preparing is vital. People have to come to their own realizations, just the way you did. You have to accept that constantly harping on preparedness will do nothing more than drive a wedge between you and those you love.

What If They Won’t Listen?

As a prepper, you have to make a difficult decision. Are you going to prepare for a few extra people, adding supplies and making room for them when the SHTF? Or are you going to go about your preparedness business quietly, embracing OPSEC and building up your supplies with only your immediate family members in mind? Some people state that they have no compunction turning away unprepared family members when disaster strikes, because they spent years warning them to get ready. This is a choice that most preppers have to make, and there are no “one size fits all” answers. It is important to discuss this among the decision-makers of your household and present a unified front, which ever conclusion you reach.

Have you been able to help friends and family see the writing on the wall? If so, how were you able to convince them that it was time to get ready? If not, are you preparing for extra people or are you planning on locking the doors?

Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, where this article first appeared, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

The Economic Zombie Apocalypse

Guest Post by Gary Gibson


The end of civilization is already here. Most of humanity has been turned into an unthinking mass of economic zombies that are looking to feast on the still living flesh of the few survivors. This may explain the increasing popularity or obsession with all things zombie. From fiction to pub crawls, the zombie apocalypse seems to be on a lot of minds, probably as an unconscious manifestation of economic reality.

According to Clemson University professor Sarah Lauro in a recent AP article:

We are more interested in the zombie at times when as a culture we feel disempowered. And the facts are there that, when we are experiencing economic crises, the vast population is feeling disempowered. ... Either playing dead themselves ... or watching a show like "Walking Dead" provides a great variety of outlets for people. 

If you were to ask the participants, I don't think that all of them are very cognizant of what they're saying when they put on the zombie makeup and participate. To me, it's such an obvious allegory. We feel like, in one way, we're dead.

The growing popularity of the genre, along with the popularity of these zombie crawls, may reflect something deeper about people in general. Sure, the average brainwashed Westerner doesn't understand liberty or economics. But they sense something is amiss. They may not know enough to blame the state and its violent interference for their economic condition. But many people probably sense that they are economically the walking dead.

It started with just a few welfare queens in the form of lobbying corporations and the poor who live on the poisonous drug of the dole.

Americans on food stamps: One way to measure zombie population growth

Not only has the number of dole zombies drastically increased, but now the zombie infection has spread and taken hold of just about everyone in the Western world. There are zombies everywhere you look. On average the individual American has:

• $15,266 in credit card debt 
• $149,667 in mortgage debt 
• $32,559 in student debt

But it's not just debt weighing these people down. What's possibly worse is that they also have no clue how to generate wealth on their own. They may be able to take orders, but starting new ventures, figuring out market demand and profiting from filling it? Fat chance. They have varying degrees of dependence on either the government or on an employer the government is trying to snuff out under mountains of new regulations and taxes. Or they're employed by bigger corporate zombie beasts.

The state with its fascistic, socialistic, communisitic nature will always end up with a moribund economy filled with a bunch of debt-wracked, dependency-minded drones, individuals and corporate monsters who can't adapt and can't produce: the mothers on the dole, the laid off worker with obsolete skills on unemployment, the debt-laden budding communist with a degree in medieval art or gender studies, the "too big to fail" manufacturers who can't produce anything the market really wants...

Zombie apocalyptic fiction reflects our fear that our neighbors will en masse turn into hordes of mindless collectivist devourers capable only of tearing civilization apart. Zombies just aren't scary as individuals or in a small group. Sure they are sad and depressing, wandering around as murderous, dim-witted shadows of their former selves. But they just aren't that dangerous unless they vastly outnumber the local population of living humans. Thus the most effective zombie fiction always takes the apocalyptic route in which for every still-living human, there are at least a hundred times as many ravenous undead.

And that's precisely where we are today. If you are productive and forward-thinking, you are being surrounded by growing numbers of those who want to eat you. Take steps to inoculate yourself against the infection and the infected here.


 










Gary Gibson, The Dollar Vigilante’s Editor, cut his teeth writing for liberty and profit as the managing editor of the now-defunct Whiskey & Gunpowder financial newsletter. He now writes for and edits The Dollar Vigilante. In his capacity as managing editor of TDV’s monthly subscription letter TDV Homegrown, Gary insists on playing Russian Roulette by basing himself in the USSA heartland. He braves arctic blasts and black helicopters so he can round up content on how the TDV readers stuck in the USSA can best survive and profit in the increasingly turbulent times in the morally and financially bankrupt empire.