Armed and ready: American’s ‘Three Percenters’

For Virginian Travis Fox, militia is a state of mind—and gun control is a carte-blanche. The government is meant to be kept in check with arms. Fox is part of the Three Percenters.

Fox never leaves home without a loaded gun—carried openly on his belt.“If it is between someone else and my family, someone else is going to die,” Fox said. “The definition of tyranny is that which is lawful for government but unlawful for citizens. They have jet fighter planes, they have machine guns, they have howitzers, they have tanks, they have nuclear aircraft carriers,” he said. “The militia today, we are left with semiautomatic handguns and semiautomatic rifles.” Three Percenters—a militia with its own flag, plenty of guns and a manifesto that proclaims it only takes three percent of gun owners to overthrow the government. They gathered last April 19, 2010 on the banks of the Potomac River in Virginia with a warning to those in power: “attempt to further oppress us at your peril.” “People innocent and guilty alike were going to start dying for their own stupidity,” Mike Vanderboegh, a prominent militia advocate and the founder of the Three Percenters told the crowd. David Codrea, who blogs “notes from the resistance” on Waronguns.blogspot.com said the rallies were meant to send a message to the US government. “Americans are beginning to feel increasingly less like free citizens and more like subjects,” he explained. More and more of America’s 84 million gun owners say they’re tired of compromising on their right to bear arms, Codrea said. Vanderboegh, Codrea and other Three Percenters refuse to follow any new gun control laws. “We all have a line in the sand and at some point we would all resist,” Codrea said. The president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), Wayne LaPierre, recently moved closer to the Three Percenters when he refused President Barack Obama’s invitation to even discuss new gun law.“Why should I or the NRA go sit down with a group of people that have spent a lifetime trying to destroy the Second Amendment in the United States?” LaPierre wrote. Former President Bill Clinton was the last Democratic President to propose gun control legislation with the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which by his own estimates cost 20 members of his party their seats in Congress in the 1996 election.Jim Stachowiak from Freedom Fighter Radio said the government is cracking down on “God-given” fundamental rights – gun ownership.He argued the government is forcing the people to pay for their rights to guns, and restricting access to a right granted both by God and the US Constitution. “They are translating rights into privileges,” he argued. “Rights are becoming privileges.”The government is now operating as if it is giving Americans the privilege to carry guns, he explained. But, it is a right, he argued. The right to carry guns is preserved in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. By levying fees and fines or enforcing licenses, the government is restricting American rights.