This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Last summer, Sonny and I were shooting bowling balls out on the Salt Flats. It's a great place for lunatic gunnery because the unobstructed view extends for miles. There's less chance of accidentally hitting someone who matters.
While practicing our craft in the safest way possible, we were descended upon by the #$%&@ Bureau of Land Management.
A heavily armed federal assault team in the form of a lone congenial ranger stopped and asked us to quit punching holes in the Salt Flats.
He was polite about his jack-booted oppression, explaining that hammering holes in the flats wasn't ecologically sound. There was also the little matter of us not having the appropriate permit to be stupid on federally managed land.
Sonny and I (but especially I) don't like being told what to do. We weighed our rights and concluded that blowing [stuff] up for laughs wasn't worth taking hostages or getting shot. So we agreed to stop.
On the way home, we loudly defended our sacred and God-given Second Amendment rights to bear cannon. We worked ourselves into the idea of forming an armed militia. Then Sonny spotted a sign for truck-stop nachos. After that we sort of lost track of things.
Now the matter has raised its head again. In the wake of the violent confrontation between police and the Ammon Bundy bunch in Oregon, I've tried to think of a law so unfair that I'd be willing to pick a gunfight with police over it.
I got nothing. Maybe it's because I'm a pushover. Or maybe — and please just think about this for a minute — I prefer to pick fights that I actually stand even just a tiny chance of winning.
This explains why Sonny and I didn't chase the BLM ranger off and occupy a piece of the Salt Flats. We knew that regardless of how true we believed our cause to be, we were severely outmatched in the long run.
Maybe it's the life I've led, but I long ago realized that when it comes to the threat of violence, there's no such thing as a fair fight. There are only fights you win and fights you lose. And having lost more than a few, I've learned to think at least a couple of inches ahead.
Unlike the Bundys, Sonny and I understood that pulling a gun on a federal officer and not running away and hiding immediately thereafter poses several problems, the first of which is the lack of an air force.
An air force is something to think about when picking a fight with a government that can always one-up you in the violence game. Bring a 30.30 Winchester saddle gun to back up your demands and the government will only bring something bigger. Eventually it's going to be something you don't have.
Rally every gun and friend you have to the cause, and you still won't have an armored division. If it ends badly, as these things so often do, it isn't going to be for the side that does have one.
And another thing, public opinion counts for a lot when trying to foment a successful rebellion. People who find you to be an inconvenient pain in the ass when things are relatively peaceful are going to be less generous when the shooting starts.
But what does a guy know who wouldn't shoot at the police, illegally occupy public property or even take hostages for a cause?
Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.