Mr. President, I noticed that someone on your immediate staff visited my web site today.

I’m good with that, and I hope you are too.  It isn’t the first time, and I’ve also had visits from the Supreme Court and Senate.  It’s just a function of the open society and information sharing collective in which we live.  I would rather feed the collective than be fed, and while I’m sure you don’t like a lot of what I advocate, we need to talk.

You see, I know that the recent flurry of activity on gun control has nothing whatsoever to do with safety, protecting the children or keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.  Criminals get their weapons regardless of the law because, well, they are criminals.  You know this too, and you know that I know this.

I know that the very touchstone of gun control for progressives is universal background checks, because in order to control the collective, you must know where all of the guns are and who has them.  You know this too, and you know that I know this.

I know that you have almost lost the gun control battle, and that the polls are all a lie.  They depend on the specifics rather than broad outlines and ethereal platitudes common to polls.  Even your own press, the Washington Post, knows this.  So you can’t spin it with me, and you know this.  And you know that I know this.

You and I both know than an assault weapons ban would have no effect whatsoever on crime, whether person-on-person or mass shootings.  Furthermore, you and I both know that the trend in crime these days is multi-man home invasions, and for this one needs access to all of the firepower he can get.  You don’t care that the plan to prevent ownership of certain types of weapons and magazines endangers home owners for this very reason, but you don’t care.  And you know that I know that you feel this way.  But you’ve given up on this feature of the proposed rules for the collective because you know it won’t pass.

You’ve focused on universal background checks, which as we’ve discussed is the holy grail of gun control even though it won’t effect crime in the manner you have sold to the public.  But now, even this is in trouble, hence your word search involving remoteness being an exception to universal background checks.

Exceptions to universal background checks isn’t a selling point for us.  We don’t care about remoteness.  We care about our rights, and allowing you to develop a national gun registry would be intolerable to us.  I know, I know, that can’t happen according to the rules.  But it can, and I know that you have a veritable army of lawyers sitting inside the beltway at the ready for rule making via the federal register.  You know that we don’t have any control over what your lawyers do, and that no one does.  You know that I know this, and I know that you know that I know this.

So we’ve opposed your proposed new law and all of the rules that would be forthcoming from it.  And for the most part, we’ve been successful at making the Senators and Representatives believe that we really do understand this and will hold them accountable.  That’s the part that you’re just now learning.  This is news to you.

You’re losing this battle.  Even though this fact is hard for you to digest, I am here to help you along all I can.  Please visit again, and take note of the fact that you cannot possibly craft selling points sufficient to convince us to go along to get along, compromise, or worse, stand down on our God-given duties.

No retreat, no surrender, no new gun laws.

Kurt Hofmann:

… like Mr. Codrea, am not ready to believe that Gottlieb is the second coming of Vidkun Quisling. I am still convinced that Gottlieb truly believes his course offers the best chance for a net gain for gun rights advocates Heck–seeing rabidly anti-gun Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in full spittle-flecked fury is always fun.

But however good Alan Gottlieb’s intentions are, and even if events end up showing him to be a tactical genius, securing major net gains for gun rights advocates, I argue that strategically, this is a serious mistake.

It’s always nice when someone understands the difference between policy, strategy and tactics, policy leading to strategy and strategy leading to tactics.  Kurt makes an interesting point, and it is that the strategy of giving a little here to take a little there is all wrongheaded.

Furthermore, earlier in his essay Kurt makes the following point: “Taking a very quick and cursory look at some of the “tactical” objections, many point out that what is perhaps the “flagship” provision of S. Amd. 715, the 15-year prison sentence for officials who attempt to abuse S. 649’s record keeping requirements in order to build a national gun registry, depends on the Department of “Justice” prosecuting itself for wrongdoing.”

Rather like asking Napoleon the pig to watch over the other pigs and keep them accountable, no?  Read it all at Examiner.

David Codrea weighs in with an analysis of Gottlieb’s support for Manchin-Toomey, along with a number of links to reactions.  There is this:

But really, all this is just arguing over dancing angels and heads of pins — the only acceptable answer for hard core gun owners is going to be “No,” and arguments about “goodies” and “Christmas tree ornaments” are hardly going to be persuasive to men and women who take their Bill of Rights seriously, because they know it was secured with powder, lead, steel and blood.

Read it all at Examiner.  This is the reaction of most serious firearms owners.  Witness reddit/guns and one commenter:

… nothing except removing NFA regulation for SBRs, SBSs, and suppressors, repealing the post ’86 full auto ban, and full 50 state CCW reciprocity would make me even VERY BEGRUDGINGLY support this bill.

The bottom line for me is unless you’re a prophet or son of a prophet, you don’t know how all of this will be interpreted and applied by armies of lawyers, judges, law clerks and law enforcement across the states.  The mere fact that so many good minds are coming up with so many different interpretations and potential problems doesn’t bode well for the law.  I warned you about this.

Finally, here is the most serious warning.  I work with the federal government on at least a semi-regular basis, and when not, I am doing things that follow federal regulation, even though highly technical (the specific nature of what I do is not the subject and won’t be discussed).

For most people who never work with federal agencies and departments, ignorance is bliss.  But for those who do, they know that the nasty little secret about the federal government has to do with lawmaking by regulation.

Laws are passed by the Senate and Congress.  But after laws pass, thousands of lawyers inside the beltway go to work writing regulations based on those laws, or not, using the law as a pretext for further regulation that Congress didn’t specifically intend.  At times, Congress has even had to pass laws undoing regulations because the regulations don’t meet the intent of the law, and yet the executive branch won’t stop enforcing that regulation (or class of regulations).

Regulation is passed merely by entering them into the federal register, allowing a waiting time for public comments (which are nothing but a chance afforded to the authors of the regulations to ignore them or write sarcastic rebuttals), and then after the waiting period, it takes on the force of law including prosecution, fines and imprisonment for failure to follow them.

This happens every day, all over the nation, and in the DOT, NRC, EPA, DOJ, ATF, DHS, and other departments and agencies that the reader cannot even name and didn’t know existed.  Any law giving the executive branch the authority to further regulate firearms will be an opportunity for abuse, overreach and exploitation.

Take it from someone who has seen it.  Don’t trust the Leviathan.  It is a monster and it has monstrous intentions.

This law doesn’t deserve the support of any serious gun owner.  It empowers the Leviathan, and as I have warned you, don’t trust the Leviathan.  If you do you’re a fool.

Prior: No, There Is No Compromise On Guns

Washington Examiner:

“You know, they make fun of my saying about use a shotgun if someone’s invading your home – guess what, use a shotgun  someone invading your home and you don’t kill your kids – use an AR-15, it goes through your wall and it can kill your kid in the bedroom.”

Now I point you to Box O’ Truth concerning shotguns and rifles through drywall.  I’ll let you read the whole thing, but the bottom line is that rifle rounds and shot penetrate drywall.  To be clear, my opinion is that if this had been tissue (or ballistic gelatin), the AR-15 rounds would have begun to fragment because the drag coefficient is so much higher.  They are after all frangible rounds and they are designed to do this (except for steel core such as PMC green tip and similar rounds).  But if you miss, drywall is no protection regardless of what you’re shooting – handgun, rifle or shotgun.

Know you backstop.  Use of a gun anywhere is dangerous, and you must observe the rules of safety.  It is a gun. It is dangerous by definition. And for heaven’s sake, don’t listen to the court jester concerning anything.

Prior:

5.56 mm Ballistics

The AR Is A Legitimate Home Defense Weapon

I asked my former Marine son Daniel if the Marine Corps taught him to shoot uphill.  He has in fact shot at ranges with elevations before, but mostly there was little formal instruction, even for designated marksmen like he was (other than things like Kentucky Windage type adjustments).  I suppose that Scout Snipers go through some sort of training on shooting up or down elevations, but most Marines do not.  I have also talked with our reader Jean (who commanded troops in N2K), and there was no particular training for Soldiers to teach them how to target Taliban up a hill.

Daniel also tells me that in his opinion there are more important things for Marines to learn.  If we’re targeting enemy fighters up a hill at 300 meters and beyond, we’re doing the wrong things the wrong way.  In his opinion, even though he scored at the very top of his Battalion every year he qualified, his time at ranges all over America did little good for him.  In his opinion we ought to be training Marines more on their run and drop drills (e.g., squad rushes), their development of enfilade fires, the use of combined arms, and especially bounding drills and movement to contact for small unit maneuver warfare (and for urban combat, satellite patrols and room clearing).  If the enemy is in the mountains, it makes little sense to shoot at them from 400+ meters.  Go and fetch them out of the mountains.

But for us, planning on potential end of America scenarios, we don’t have combined arms, and we don’t have access to fire teams, squads and platoons of fighters.  It might be more important for us to know how to do things like shoot uphill or downhill.  Many good shooters already know all of this, but some do not.  I don’t propose that the Taliban, those backward, pagan, culture-less, woman abusing pedophiles, know Newton’s laws, but it’s possible that they learned their downhill shooting by trial and error.  We can do better because we understand trigonometry and Newton.

Basically, we know that if you use your BDC (bullet drop compensation) hash marks versus distance while shooting uphill, you will shoot high.  The force of gravity must be divided into its component vectors in Cartesian space (two dimensions).  Let’s say that you’re shooting uphill at a 45 degree angle, and at a target 500 meters away (up the hill, not horizontal distance).  Cos(45) X 500 = 354 meters.  So you need to use your BDC for 354 meters (or the closest mark you can find), not 500 meters.  If you’re shooting uphill at a 30 degree angle, and at a target at 500 meters, you need to use the BDC at Cos(30) X 500 = 433 meters.

My iPhone (turned sideways) has virtually all of the mathematical functions of most calculators, including the trigonometric functions.  If you happen to have a range finder and iPhone with you, you’re set.  If you need more rudimentary fixup, there are some helpful rules of thumb.  That’s all assuming that you have ammunition with which to practice.

One writer at Toledo Blade weighs in with a plea:

I’m still picking buckshot out of my hide from gun-rights advocates — I didn’t say “gun nuts” — who hated my March 31 column about how easy it is to buy an assault-style rifle with 30-round magazines.

Many readers even accused me, and The Blade, of breaking federal law by making a straw purchase of the AR-15 assault-style rifle I bought at a gun show last month. They also asked what the hell I planned to do with it.

To clear the air, it was my gun — not The Blade’s — though the company reimbursed the $1,200 I paid for it. Last week, I donated the weapon to the Toledo Police Department, handing it off to Sgt. Tom Kosmyna and Officer Roger White at the police range in the Scott Park District station.

It sounds to me like he is confessing to a straw purchase, but we’ll leave that issue behind for a moment.  He ends his rambling rant with the the following demand.

… we have to agree to do something. Maybe if we stop screaming at each other, we can find some common ground on guns.

You’re right. I am crazy.

He says that he wants many more gun laws, and so do some Senators.  They have a plan to persuade the others to go along with them.

One of the senators behind the compromise proposal to expand background checks on gun purchases will mount a Senate floor sales pitch Monday, part of a lobbying effort to ensure passage for the key piece of a larger guns bill when it comes to a vote this week.

When the Senate convenes Monday afternoon, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.) plans to take to the floor to go through his proposal piece-by-piece to dispel what he considers misrepresentations from critics of tighter gun laws. He’ll then challenge colleagues who have any questions to come to join him in the chamber for an open debate, and stay there for as long as it takes to satisfy concerns.

Manchin’s move to mount a kind of reverse filibuster in favor of his proposal aims to get ahead of critics as the Senate opens what could be a weeks-long process of considering alternative proposals that would either strengthen or weaken the legislation.

Manchin’s plan is essentially the same as the aforementioned writer.  Talk enough and everyone will eventually agree to agree, or agree to disagree but go along, or something like that.  And despite the fact that I have pointed out the inherent weakness in the language of the bill (see “notwithstanding”), Alan Gottlieb, Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation staked an authorship claim to the bill.

Cover, as they see it.  Toomey needs it, and thinks it will be enough, and I sense a problem with Manchin.  This has turned into his centerpiece legislation, and he knows that he either needs to convince gun owners that it’s okay, or succeed for Mr. Obama so that he has a place in the administration if he becomes so toxic in West Virginia that he can no longer function or live there.

But the reason our writer at Toledo Blade received such criticism is that the polls are wrong, and there is no cover.  Senator Chris Murphy puts the order like this: “The N.R.A., doing the bidding of the industry, ratchets up paranoia about government so that those people will go out and buy more guns.”

Murphy has it all wrong.  The NRA is hearing from its constituency (that would be us), and the firearms manufacturers do our bidding.  We’re the boss.  A firearm hasn’t been fully vetted until it hits the American civilian market (the military forces its folks to use the bidder of choice), and the manufacturers respond to us.  They make what we want.  They earn our money, and if you think that we sit back and wait for the manufacturers to tell us what to think, just ask Smith and Wesson what happened as a result of their agreement with the Clinton administration.

Having Alan Gottlieb on their side won’t work.  There is no cover large enough to protect them.  More talk won’t convince us to take part in their intentions, or to approve those who do.  As long as common ground or compromise means more gun laws (as opposed to repeal of some of the ones we already have), there is no common ground, and there is no compromise.

No new gun laws.  Period.  No compromise, no vacillation.  It’s more than the proposed bill being a “slippery slope.”  It is that, but it’s more.  The law itself does nothing for crime, and universal background checks (and the corollary national gun registry) empower the government rather than the people.  As one writer put it:

This entire gun-control farce is a rigged, premeditated sham, and the outcome was determined before a single page of this legislative abortion hit the senate floor. The bill itself is a convoluted mess, with ambiguous terms, poorly worded and broad declarations, and is nothing less than an article of outright tyranny that no civil and liberty loving patriot should be able to peacefully tolerate. This is by deliberate design. Easy to follow, clear, and reasonable laws are not a tool tyrants can easily exploit or profit from.

Because this law would empower the federal government and interfere with our rights, it would be what we call an intolerable act.  You cannot talk us into agreeing with an intolerable act regardless of how emotionally you present your case or how long you persevere, and you’re warned to tread carefully.

These are very dangerous times we’re approaching.

Prior: The Coming Federal Gun Registry

UPDATE: David Kopel writing at The Volokh Conspiracy.

The Toomey-Manchin Amendment which may be offered as soon as Tuesday to Senator Reid’s gun control bill are billed as a “compromise” which contain a variety of provisions for gun control, and other provisions to enhance gun rights. Some of the latter, however, are not what they seem. They are badly miswritten, and are in fact major advancements for gun control. In particular:

1. The provision which claims to outlaw national gun registration in fact authorizes a national gun registry.

2. The provision which is supposed to strengthen existing federal law protecting the interstate transportation of personal firearms in fact cripples that protection.

Let’s start with registration. Here’s the Machin-Toomey text.

(c) Prohibition of National Gun Registry.-Section 923 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
“(m) The Attorney General may not consolidate or centralize the records of the
“(1) acquisition or disposition of firearms, or any portion thereof, maintained by
“(A) a person with a valid, current license under this chapter;
“(B) an unlicensed transferor under section 922(t); or
“(2) possession or ownership of a firearm, maintained by any medical or health insurance entity.”.

The limit on creating a registry applies only to the Attorney General (and thus to entities under his direct control, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives). By a straightforward application of inclusio unius exclusio alterius  it is permissible for entities other than the Attorney General to create gun registries, using whatever information they can acquire from their own operations.  For example, the Secretary of HHS may consolidate and centralize whatever firearms records are maintained by any medical or health insurance entity. The Secretary of the Army may consolidate and centralize records about personal guns owned by military personnel and their families.

The Attorney General may not create a registry from the records of “a person with a valid, current license under this chapter.” In other words, the AG may not harvest the records of persons who currently hold a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Thus, pursuant to inclusio unius, the AG may centralize and consolidate the records of FFLs who have retired from their business.

Under current law, retired FFLs must send their sales records to BATFE. 18 USC 923(g)(4); 27 CFR 478.127. During the Clinton administration, a program was begun to put these records into a consolidated gun registry. The program was controversial and (as far as we know) was eventually stopped. Manchin-Toomey provides it with legal legitimacy.

Which of course is what I’ve been saying, although not in as much detail.  Read it all.  On and on it goes.  The bill is more than just a sellout.  It’s Fascism, plain and simple.

David Codrea:

The draft of S. 649 that provides the framework for the legislative arguments that lie ahead contains an item that could prove highly controversial, even though no one has, until now, recognized it, let alone raised it as an issue. While there is much to discuss in the entire bill, one particular seemingly-overlooked section could prove contentious not by what it includes, but by what it doesn’t, and that in turn reflects recent and profound political changes that have marked significant milestones in the Obama administration’s “progressive” agenda.

Sort of like the college kids who campaigned for their great god-man Obama, only to find out that the economy sucks, there are no jobs, they have huge loans to pay off with no hope of ever getting their heads above water, drones could be watching their actions from the sky, SWAT teams continue to swoop in and shoot at them for smoking pot, and there is no hope of any kind of support, financial or medical, from a country that is far worse off than flat broke.  Is that the kind of oops we’re talking about?

Read it all at Examiner.

The Toomey (R) – Manchin (D) deal is said to involve gives and takeaways to gun owner rights.  But David Addington at Heritage has written a smart analysis of at least one peril that America faces with the plan.

The STM bill fuzzes up the law prohibiting a federal gun registry. First, the legislation says that nothing in the legislation shall be construed to allow establishment of a federal firearms registry. In addition, it says that the Attorney General may not consolidate or centralize records of firearms acquisition and disposition maintained by licensed importers, manufacturers, and dealers, and by buyers and sellers at gun shows (and makes it a crime for him to do so).

But then, the STM bill takes those protections away by using the all-powerful word “notwithstanding”—”notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, the Attorney General may implement this subsection with regulations.” The courts may construe the “notwithstanding” to allow Attorney General Eric Holder to issue regulations that could begin to create a federal registry of firearms, because the law says he can implement the subsection without regard to the protections against a registry elsewhere in the legislation.

The courts view the word “notwithstanding” as very powerful. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in 1989 in Crowley Caribbean Transport v. U.S. in reference to the phrase “notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter” that “a clearer statement of intent is difficult to imagine” to push aside other laws. The same court indicated in 1991 in Liberty Maritime Corporation v. U.S. that a grant of authority to a department head to be exercised “notwithstanding” any other law generally grants the broadest possible discretion to the department head. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1992 in Conoco, Inc. v. Skinner took a somewhat different approach, in which the judges themselves divine the congressional intent whether to let the word “notwithstanding” in a law override other conflicting provisions of the same law.

It has been postulated that the Republicans have outsmarted the Democrats by forcing a vote on any number of measures that actually make things better for our rights, while giving them only a little of their own demands – or – by forcing the Democrats to vote on an outrageous bill that will force them out of office in the next election.  I don’t subscribe to either view, for a number of reasons.

First, this is more than likely to be yet another “you have to pass the bill in order to see what’s in it” example of ruling by ignorance.  Second, the GOP is full of cave-ins and sell-outs, and has been for a very long time.  Third, the GOP just isn’t that smart.  They’re basically a very stolid, slow, confused bunch, many of whom act without any real principles.  Leave it to the GOP leadership to miscount their own votes, thinking that they can stop the legislation at the end, only to see defections and thus new gun control laws.  When this is over I expect to see GOP leadership looking stunned and shell shocked at what happened to them, just like with Obamacare.

Furthermore, I have warned against laws that can be broadly interpreted within some regulatory framework crafted by armies of lawyers sitting inside the beltway.  Nothing good will come of it, and we all know that nothing they have done really addresses the real problem of ending phony gun free zones.  And finally, we have discussed why universal background checks (and their corollary, a federal gun registry) are a bad thing, the quintessential element of any gun control program, and the goal of every progressive.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

Gun control is evil, at the same time both a function and a sign of wicked rulers.

The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.

We are not willing to give a little here as long as we can take a little there.  The message has been clear from the beginning – and won’t change now.  No new laws.  Not a single one.  If we have good and laudable goals (such as the repeal of the Hughes amendment), it’s our task to work to make that happen, rather than acquiescing to the very touchstone of gun control – universal background checks.

If we cannot pull this off, then America is truly lost, and the next steps are obvious.

Prior: Toomey And Manchin Sign Suicide Pact On Guns

UPDATE: Thanks to WRSA for the attention.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to Sipsey Street Irregulars for the attention.

UPDATE #3: Thanks to War On Guns for the attention.

Columbia Tribune:

JEFFERSON CITY – The Missouri State Highway Patrol has twice turned over the entire list of Missouri concealed weapon permit holders to federal authorities, most recently in January, Sen. Kurt Schaefer said Wednesday.

Questioning in the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed that on two occasions, in November 2011 and again in January, the patrol asked for and received the full list from the state Division of Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing. Schaefer later met in his office with Col. Ron Replogle, superintendent of the patrol.

After the meeting, he said Replogle had given him sketchy details about turning over the list, enough to raise many more questions. Testimony from Department of Revenue officials revealed that the list of 185,000 names had been put online in one instance and given to the patrol on a disc in January.

Schaefer has been investigating a new driver licensing system. He and the committee grilled the revenue officials for several hours in the morning and again at midday before they admitted the list had been copied. The investigation was triggered by fears that concealed weapons data was being shared with federal authorities.

Under Missouri law, the names of concealed weapon permit holders are confidential. The only place in Missouri where the names of all concealed carry permit holders is stored is among driver license records. Permit holders have a special mark on their licenses indicating they have been granted the privilege of carrying a gun.

The list was given to the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, Schaefer said he was told.

“Apparently from what I understand, they wanted to match up anyone who had a mental diagnosis or disability with also having a concealed carry license,” Schaefer said. “What I am told is there is no written request for that information.”

He said he intends to ask Replogle for full details at an appropriations committee hearing on the patrol’s budget on Thursday morning.

The patrol responded by confirming that it had shared the list of concealed weapons holders with federal authorities.

“The information was provided to law enforcement for law enforcement investigative purposes,” Capt. Tim Hull wrote in an email response to questions from the Tribune.

Ron Replogle and Tim Hull (and whoever else participated in this outrage) are criminals who broke the law, and being in law enforcement and allegedly doing something for “law enforcement purposes” doesn’t give them the right to break the law.  That’s just a myth and excuse, and a bad one at that.  Furthermore, they did so in order to increase the power of the totalitarians ruling the collective which lives in the hive, and so it’s especially loathsome and immoral.  Sometimes laws have nothing whatsoever to do with morality, and sometimes things that are immoral are quite legal.

In this case, what these men did was both illegal and immoral, and they deserve our most sincere contempt and disgust.  Opprobrium and public humiliation isn’t enough for them.  These men need to be in the state penitentiary with the general prison population.

Reddit/guns asks a great question.  My answer?  John Basilone.

During the Battle for Henderson Field, his unit came under attack by a regiment of approximately 3,000 soldiers from the Japanese Sendai Division. On October 24, 1942, Japanese forces began a frontal attack using machine guns, grenades, and mortars against the American heavy machine guns. Basilone commanded two sections of machine guns that fought for the next two days until only Basilone and two other Marines continued fighting. Basilone moved an extra gun into position and maintained continual fire against the incoming Japanese forces. He then repaired and manned another machine gun, holding the defensive line until replacements arrived. As battle raged, ammunition became critically low. With supply lines cut off, Basilone fought through hostile ground to resupply his gunners with urgently needed ammunition. Toward the dawn of the battle, Basilone fought Japanese soldiers using only a .45 pistol. By the end of the engagement, the Japanese regiment was virtually annihilated. For his actions during this battle, he received the United States military’s highest award for bravery, the Medal of Honor.

And you?