I have two rifles; both are pre WWI, a 7mm and an 8mm Mauser rifle.

When I was 15, I got my first guns.

My best friend and I would go to our private range underground, and shoot .303 Enfield 1917, 7.62X54R Mosin Nagant, 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano, and a .22 Remington LR.

We would wrap up fruit with duct tape, and make it explode. We would make head and shoulder targets. We would shoot phone books stacked in front of each other.  We would purposely buy hallow-points.

We would actually pretend to be Lee Harvey Oswald, and re-enact the JFK assassination. This was reinforced from our peers, who like us were in cliques within the counterculture of the Civil Air Patrol, Navy Sea Cadets, and NJROTC Academy, which we were in.

I kept a sign, "GUN CONTROL MEANS HITTING YOUR TARGET." 

This was reinforced at the local bowling alley near my Mom's house, where we sat and listened to men who fought in Korea, or in Guadacanal, or Vietnam. We met more of these right-wing extremist grndfather's at the local doughnut shop, and believe me, they love young talent.

Here, old men past their prime lectured on the way things used to be, how they believed and served their country, and how the country has become a fascist construct of Jews, Blacks, and Catholics.

They hung out at military surplus shops, which always were not far from the local KKK or WAR PO Box address.

They worked at gun shops, back in the day when there were plenty, and in almost every neighborhood.  They warned of the day when they would be closed, and the day their guns would be taken thereafter. 

Now there is only two in a neighboring county, and none in my own.

I got these guns at local gun shows, where young people (white) are not looked after nor deemed suspicious, and it is not hard to leave the premises with a gun at that age, chiefly due to the patrons collective views of gun control.

Antique weapons like mine, some of which I still posess, can be bought with cash, and no paperwork at all. They all fuction properly, have well-oiled actions and can shoot tight groupings at great distances. I have found them more reliable than those of more recent make.

There are racist groups which loosely function via PO Boxes, magazine clubs, and at gun shows and civil war re-enactments. There are some that recruit even at flea markets, selling nazi and confederate items as a front.

These people did not go away.

They believe that they are the true-blue red-blooded Americans, and that we are destroying their way of life.

They believe that for years the government has been run by communists, socialists, and Jews.  They believe that by using African-Americans and other minorities, that they are manipulating elections, and uprooting social cues and tradition.

Ask yourself; who is it that Rush Limbaugh is speaking to when he says that Al Queda better hurry up if they want to destroy America, because Obama is doing it first?  Who is he appealing to?  What is his point for phrasing it just this way?

He is speaking to those I met at truck stops and gun shows.  Those who ache for the good old days.

It is the same people Palin was warning last year when she said that Obama "pals around with terrorists."  It is these Americans that some on the extreme right are appealing to when they ask to see Obama's birth certificate, and imply that he is not really an American, or that he is a muslim.  It is these ones that Rush Limbaugh is comforting when he says, "I hope he fails."

It is those who believe that ACORN, Jews, and Socialism are responsible for Obama's agenda.

Who listens to Rush religiously?  Who hates the changes Obama has already made?

Who in America is bitter, and "cling to guns?"

The same people I used to know.  The old veterans and retired policemen who rose up in bars, lodges, and gun shows after Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City, and cursed their own "government."  These are the people who join militias not to protect America, but to maintain their version of it, from of all entities, "the government."

Now the head of that government is a black man.

But these men wear no warning labels.  These are veterans, lifelong workers, union men, and grandfathers who proudly took care of their families.  These are the sons of Confederate Veterans, and sons of Union ones as well.  These are proud papa's, of small children who wear camo onesies, and proudly hold toy machine guns.  These are people who run a farm, drive a truck, or are now unemployed.  They go to church, vote, and are abreast of every issue that comes before our nation.  They are involved.

These are people who live both inside and outside of reality, of sanity, and of oblivion.  They live in the margins where only a loud yell and a loud bang can call attention to their fears, their hopes, their cause.

Langston Hughes said it best when he said, "What happens to a dream deferred?"

Though in the mind this typically conjures up the plights of African-Americans, it could just as easily apply to the white racist in 2009.  Or to the Anti-semetic.  Or to the militant right wing extremist.  Why: A black president, who is popular, and sucessful.  A bad economy.  The poet could have been talking about any man who feels he has lost, or has been denied his own beliefs, his own respect, his own sense of safety.  In 2009, whom in America is that?Who thinks he has lost his own voice?  His country?

What happens to a dream deferred?  What does it do; it explodes. 

Theirs is a dream too, dismal and dark though it is.  They believe that everything is set against them, and that it takes a hero to stop it.  They believe that their children will not enjoy the dream they once had for themselves, passed down from their ancestors, as God's chosen people.  They believe that the terrorists have won, that America has failed them, and that voting and speaking out only gets them blacklisted, and defeated. 

This is their POV.  This is why they see assassins like the one who killed Dr. Tiller as a hero.  Because he was to them like the young men who face down tanks with only rocks.  And they know they are losing the abortion debate, the race debate, the religion debate, the political debate.  As former President Bush once said, perhaps some people turn to terrorism out of desperation and hopelessness.  But as JFK once said, Americans have the right to disagree with the law, but not to disobey it. 

It is these forlorn sections of our own population that Rush Limbaugh resonates with the most.  That Cheney is a hero to.  In whom Palin is a new hope. 

The people who end up assassinating a political leader, or who blow up an abortion clinic, or shoot a doctor in  church.  These are the chosen instruments of history, the ones who act not out of means, but out of motive.  They are not crazy.  They are not insane.  They are subjugated to a higher aim, a higher sense of belonging and duty than to themself; they are the magic wand, that conquers the enemy, and saves the country from itself.

I of course, do not buy into that.  I can listen to Limbaugh, and be able not to expouse his beliefs and rhetoric as though it were the gospel of the Lord.  I can feel secure in my country, because I can see that the changes now are going in the fair and just direction for all.

Some can't.

John Wilkes Booth was an accomplished thespian, and was present at the hanging of John Brown.  He was rich, sucessful, and good looking.  But he wanted the Confederacy to prevail, and wanted to defeat any efforts for "Nigger Citizenship."  When they surrendered, he was heartbroken, and devastated.  So he said himself that he "acted nobly."  He thought himself a hero, who was killing a tyrant for his country.  He thought that we would celebrate him by now.

The examples could go on.  But these people who acted on behalf of God or Country believed they would be greeted as liberators, and seen as fulfilling a personal destiny out of despair, through violence.  These people stepped out from obscurity, and slayed Goliath.

This is what we are dealing with.  Not lone nut gunmen, which leads one to be dismissive, resign them to ridicule--which tends to lower our guard.  We misunderstand them, and they are our enemy.

The point is lost if we categorize them into lunatics, who simply do this out of a bizarre zealot moment of hubris, unrelated to society and the voices they hear from real origins, and not merely in their own head.

It doesn't always take a cult leader, a guru, or a conspiracy to cause a violent act perfected in the mind of a hopeless person.  Sometimes, in their mind--it takes a hero.  To some people, Charles Manson was inspiring, and heroic.  To many Germans, Hitler was a godlike personage of pride and honor.  Limbaugh is not important, unless you realize the thread of his message, and to whom it is meant for.  He doesn't enable people who are monsters, or terrorists, or criminals.  Though he has millions of listeners who are great honorable men and women, who will never commit a crime nor take everything he says seriously--there are a scattered grouping of Americans of every background who speak his language, and do his bidding, in all the hidden messages inherent in his messages to America.

Voices like his make a boring or tedious afternoon a bit light.  Or, it can bewilder, anger, and give talking points for a week.  But, it can also make lonely, hopeless men with no life, and no use aspire to be a "hero", and sacrifice something for a "higher good."  People who only talked BS with friends, joked over barstools, or made threats over a campfire, may find an outlet for their frustration, and a time for their purpose.  "The Government"--the G-men, are coming.  The war is lost, the world will change.  They will take your guns away, blacklist you, and suffocate you and your values out of existence.  It is you that must rise up.  This is what they will understand; this is the messages only they can hear. 

And this, as before--without ever leaving a trace backwards to what set them off, or gave them a push, a nod, or inspires something they lack in their empty lives--hope.  And people like you or I will say," He always talked about how he wanted to... but I never believed him."

Above all, someone like me who had a similar upbringing, and was put in the environment of aging veterans, truck drivers, and gun-loving neighbors has met the James Von Brunn's of the world, though we never knew what they were capable of.

We enjoyed their company at times, found them interesting, or just felt perhaps that we had no life, and no purpose.

I could have been a pawn in their game.

But luckily, I had a purpose.  I was a contributing member of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and an informant via Klanwatch.  

We still need help to stop these hateful events from ever taking fruition.    

It is as simple as passing along information that you may already have.  By infiltrating and reporting on mere chatter, on activities, or on veiled threats--it is their hope to make a dent in preventing hate crimes, to bring justice against those in racist/terrorist organizations successfully, and to encourage teaching tolerance in all of its forms in a multicultural society, full of diverse POV and beliefs. 

I felt it my responsibility as a true American to join the side that bends toward justice.