Originally posted from 10-21-03 to 10-26-03
An Interview with Matthew Bracken
by Lady Liberty

Matthew Bracken is the author of a book entitled Enemies Foreign and Domestic. After reading the book (see the book review), I wanted to hear more about the book and its plausibility directly from the author himself. Mr. Bracken kindly agreed to answer some questions for publication. Those questions and his answers follow.

Lady Liberty: What originally served as the inspiration for the plot of Enemies Foreign and Domestic?

Matthew Bracken: I kept reading various Free Republic Second Amendment and Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA) threads. I began to wonder what would happen if a "super Colombine" happened? Just by the laws of probability, it will; it has to in a nation of 300 million. What if this "super Columbine" happened under a 'rat (Democrat) President and a 'rat Congress?

Well, I think there would be very serious consequences, and our lawmakers could be stampeded into passing some very foolish laws, which would not be accepted by millions of gun owners. This would set up a very dire situation indeed, as outlined in Enemies Foreign and Domestic. It would be a formula for starting a civil war. The next step was to remove this "super Colombine" from the realm of chance, and wonder who might actually benefit from engineering such an event. That was the genesis of Wally Malvone.

Someone in a "counter terrorist" law enforcement position might stand to benefit greatly from a rapid acceleration in acts of domestic terrorism. The ATF plays the distant second fiddle to the FBI. The fibbies get the glamour (and budgets) associated with going after Al Qaeda and foreign terrorism, while the ATF is left with the "militias" and other assorted redneck domestic losers. This is not much of a consolation prize. So Malvone designs a Super Colombine which will be blamed on "right wing militia gun nuts." He knows that the result will benefit him in his position at ATF, and it will eventually make him the President's own "go to guy." Malvone is "the man with the plan." He should be: he engineered the "super Colombine" in the first place, while also creating its antidote, the ATF's "Special Training Unit (STU)."

LL: Okay, so you had an idea. What made you actually put pen to paper and write the book?

MB: I worried about something like a"super Columbine" being engineered. I wanted to innoculate as many Americans against the panic virus as I could by showing them exactly how and why such an event could be stage-managed. After Enemies Foreign and Domestic, any such event will be examined in greater detail, and will be less likely to be accepted at face value.

LL: Just how realistic do you think your story is?

MB: I think it's extremely realistic in its characters and events. Of course as a novelist, I need to cause the main characters to have their fates coincide. But otherwise, there can be no novel.

LL: There are a number of really bad and dishonest federal agents in your book. How likely is it that there are agents and/or supervisors this corrupt who are already out there, working toward their own agenda?

MB: There is no doubt at all that there are hundreds or thousands of federal law enforcement agents who have this "ends justify the means" mentality already today. Just do a search on wrong address SWAT raids, asset forfeiture SWAT raids, and so on. The difference in Enemies Foreign and Domestic is that Malvone thinks up a way to stock a new unit with only such "bad apples," where their negative attributes will be reinforced and rewarded.

Malvone's "harmless training unit" offers ATF supervisors a place to dump their problem children and disciplinary cases. In other words, he distills a unit of only the most brutal jack-booted thugs, who agree (for one example) that it makes perfect sense to "help a case" by planting illegal weapons and so on. And 95% of Malvone's STU team members sincerely believe they are going up against genuine domestic terrorists. They won't hesitate to operate outside the bounds of the Constitution, not in my novel, and not in real life. Only three psychotic villains in the novel, (Malvone, Hammet and Bullard) know that they are perpetrating out and out heinous crimes. The others are just gung-ho SWAT cowboys with itchy trigger fingers, who truly believe they are saving America from "domestic terrorists."

LL: There are also some ordinary citizens who take matters into their own hands in ways that are very much unsanctioned. Do you think it's probable that Brad and Ranya - or people very much like them - exist in the real world?

MB: I don't know if there are many Brads, Ranyas, Phil Carsons, etc. in the real world. I hope so. If there are not, then the triumph of tyranny is guaranteed in another generation. You'll notice the generational attitude theme is strong inEnemies Foreign and Domestic. Most of the freedom fighting heroes are over 50 years old.

LL: We see in your book what happens to push some good and decent people over the edge. How far will things have to go, do you suppose, before real people will take comparable action in the real world?

MB: There are different trigger events for different people. Vin Suprynowicz wrote an entire book about this called The Ballad of Carl Drega. In many cases, these folks are already on too much of a hair trigger.

LL: Some of the surveillance you describe is pretty frightening. Do you believe such techniques will ever really be developed and used against American citizens? How close to reality is the technology in your book?

MB: All of the surveillance methods in the book already exist. They are being used in the war against (Islamic) terror; eventually they will be used against us all as computers become faster, public video cameras become more and more prolific, and so on. The TIA "brilliant data mining" programs for behavior predicting already exist. Madison Avenue uses them every day to learn where to precisely target their promotions. It's a trivial matter to adapt them to find future "enemies of the state."

All of the cell phone tricks described either exist currently, or are technically feasible. Phones do not need to be "turned on" to be used to track you. This is all true. We will find out ten years from now just what tricks the NSA was playing with our cell phones today. For example, they will certainly not admit today that they can use your cell phone for a microphone without your knowledge! (Did we admit we were reading German and Japanese codes during WW2? Same principle.) But there is no technical bar to such use. If such methods will help the FBI and NSA and CIA to find and stop Al Qaeda terrorists, you can bet they will use them, and keep it completely secret. Then in time the same tools will be used to find other categories of "enemies of the state.

LL: What, if anything, can be done to prevent the world you descibe from becoming reality?

MB:: What can be done? Educate more of the brain-dead sheeple into becoming free citizens, who are aware of the subtle and creeping threats to what is left of their legacy of American freedom. Enemies Foreign and Domestic is my contribution to this effort.

Enemies Foreign and Domestic is available for purchase online at http://www.enemiesforeignanddomestic.com.

Originally posted from 09-07-03 to 09-14-03
Permission Granted, Permission Denied
by Lady Liberty

I have a very close friend who used to tell me that she's a "liberal" and a Democrat. After a number of lengthy discussions, we've discovered that she's actually a libertarian, but one who still suffers a bit of an apparent Democrat hangover. One of those hangover symptoms is her views on guns and gun control.

Interestingly, she has no problem with the fact that I own guns. She and her husband had even expressed their worries about me living alone, and were greatly relieved to learn I had a means of self-defense readily at hand. If she hadn't already been convinced, what happened last Saturday night would certainly have made the point.

I awoke out of a sound sleep just after 3:30 a.m. to the shrill sounds of the burglar alarm. I immediately rolled out of bed, grabbed a loaded .38, and held my breath to listen for any indication that someone had already made it into the house. As the alarm continued to sound, I reached for the phone and dialed 9-1-1. As I tried to explain to the operator that someone was breaking into my house, a loud crash sounded on the front porch.

To their credit, both the dispatcher and police were very professional and efficient. In fact, I think the police were here in less than 90 seconds. The dispatcher stayed on the line with me even after the police arrived. She was probably trying to keep me calm. Strangely enough, that wasn't necessary. Oh, I was concerned. I was angry. But I wasn't afraid nor was I the least bit hysterical. I was, quite simply, ready and able to defend myself if the need arose.

Afterward, I spoke briefly with the police who had a few questions for me. As it turns out, my "burglar" was a very, very drunk young man who thought he was somewhere else and who was quite upset that he'd been locked out of "his" house. No damage had been done, and the police took him to a holding cell to sleep it off. I put my gun in its usual hiding place and went back to sleep. Sleep, believe it or not, came easily, probably because the alarm had been re-set, and the gun was still close at hand in the event it was needed.

My girlfriend was intrigued by my story. She herself had suffered a real scare a year ago when some young vandal or another threw a large rock through her bedroom window. The heavy stone landed on the bed where, if she or her husband had been sleeping, it would have done very serious damage. Although a gun wouldn't have prevented that incident nor would it have repaired her window, it certainly would have provided a little assurance during the time she had to wait, alone and terrified, for the police and her husband to arrive at her home.

She considers me to be a responsible gun owner. Although she still does not have a firearm herself and probably will not ever have one, she believes she would be a responsible gun owner as well. And she thinks that responsible gunowners should have no problem being licensed to prove their responsibility. She also hopes licensing would weed out the irresponsible gun owners.

When she presented the inevitable comparison with cars and drivers' licenses, she reminded me that we get training and take a test to show that we're competant to drive. Interestingly, both she and I knew how to drive - and had done so - before we had any training in school. The test and license were a mere formality. I pointed this out to her, and before I could go any further with my argument, she asked, "Do you think they just license people for tax and for tracking purposes or something?" Did I mention that, aside from being a libertarian, she's pretty smart, too?

Several years ago, Second Amendment advocate David Kopel wrote "Taking It to the Streets", an article in which he noted that "treating guns like cars might not be such a bad idea". Kopel pointed out that regulating guns in a manner similar to the restrictions on cars would actually mean a significant loosening of extant gun laws as well as full reciprocity between the states where licensing privileges were concerned. While Kopel's reasoning was flawless and his conclusions offered far greater Second Amendment freedoms than we currently know, the licensing of firearms is still a frightening prospect. Why?

Forget that once something is licensed, it's no longer a right but a privilege that can be taken away. Forget that licensing can mean significant concessions for those who want one. Consider instead the fact that licensing has nothing to do with responsibility. If it did, no one would ever get behind the wheel and drive while they were drunk. People wouldn't drive at unsafe speeds. No one would run red lights or put on their make-up while they steer with their knees.

Now take a look at some of the myriad laws and invasive practices that have resulted from such irresponsibility. We have red light cameras (which many studies show are ineffective, and which almost all believe are invasive of privacy, but which typically make a lot of money for the locales in which they're installed). We have drunk driver checkpoints (which, it seems, everyone but the police and the courts think is a Fourth Amendment violation). We have seatbelt laws (because the state doesn't want to pay medical bills for uninsured motorists who stupidly get themselves thrown through windshields in accidents). We have mandatory insurance requirements (because too many drivers were unwilling or unable to pay for accidents they caused). Yet even in the face of additional laws requiring responsibility, people still get tickets and suffer license suspensions for ignoring these very rules.

It may be tempting to agree that licensing guns is the lesser of evils. We might even believe, if just for a moment, that a license would ensure a holder was able and willing to handle his weapon safely, and could be counted on to store and care for her gun responsibly. But the bottom line is that those gunowners who are responsible already do these things. And those who aren't don't. A license won't change that. It will, however, take the Second Amendment and degrade it to something a state could regulate out of existence.

Take a look at all of the traffic laws on the books. And then remember that almost everybody considers cars to be good, or at least neutral, objects which are necessary in the day-to-day life of most Americans today. Now imagine the laws that would be passed to regulate licensing for guns, objects that some people consider to be inherently bad things in and of themselves, and which are owned by people that are too frequently stereotyped as the worst kind of violent and intolerant men and women.

It's bad enough that the licensing of drivers is stealing away our privacy and significant portions of our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights. I refuse to let comparisons between driving and shooting take my Second Amendment rights along with them. My girlfriend isn't entirely convinced that I'm right. She is, however, pretty sure that the state is wrong. Like I said, she's a libertarian, and she's smart.