Tyranny deserves a response, and David Codrea outlines the first one for us.

Addressing a responsive and enthusiastic crowd yesterday at a Connecticut Citizens Defense League Second Amendment rally held at the State Capitol in Hartford, citizen journalist and right to keep and bear arms activist Mike Vanderboegh summed his message for responding to “gun control” edicts with four words, “Defy. Resist. Evade. Smuggle.”

“I’m a smuggler,” Vanderboegh began his speech.

[ … ]

“On Thursday I smuggled a half-dozen 30 round AR-15 standard capacity magazines into Connecticut in deliberate disobedience of the new state diktat,” he “confessed,” admitting that act is a “‘D’ Class felony.

David also relates some of his own expriences in this article.  It certainly does my heart good to see this.  It’ll be interesting to see where this goes, but I titled this smuggling as a first reponse to gun laws for a reason.  The state of Connecticut doesn’t want to see what will happen if they begin the process of gunning down men in their homes for having guns and magazines that the tyrannical rulers forbid.

This is true for more reasons that I will outline here, but I’ll mention just one, and it’s a more theoretical reason and one that should concern the state a great deal.  No tyrannical state lasts forever.  The rulers end up ruling by and from fear (they want the people to fear them, and they end of fearing the people), and the healthiest nation-states are the ones which understand balance, gracefulness, wisdom and the need both to understand their people and provide them with the liberty that is required for people and nations to flourish.

The state of Connecticut doesn’t need to be in the pitiable position of having its people entirely lose respect for its lawmakers.  There is after all a reason for the existence of the state, i.e., punish legitimate criminals like theives and murderers, and provide for interstate commerce.  On the other hand, arresting, or worse, imprisoning or killing men who follow the constitution and keep their weapons is tyrannical and will further ratchet up the violence and brinksmanship.

Mike Vanderboegh is not in a bad position.  Mike has been clever enough to place the state of Connecticut in a bad position, and the best action for them at this point is to rescind their ridiculous gun laws.