Resistance to Tyranny: A Primer

309 Pages·2010·3.933 MB·English

by  Joseph P. Martino

Resistance to Tyranny
A Primer
Joseph P. Martino
Also by Joseph P. Martino
The Justice Cooperative
In Memory of Patrick Henry
Copyright © 2010 Joseph P. Martino
Published in the United States of America
All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, no portion of this book may be
reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.
Neither the author nor CreateSpace assumes any responsibility for the use or misuse of
information contained in this book.
ISBN 9781450574280
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 Why Armed Resistance
Chapter 2 Probability of Success
Chapter 3 Government Response
Chapter 4 Strategy and Tactics
Chapter 5 The Big Picture
Chapter 6 Overt and Covert Resistance
Chapter 7 Personal Weapons
Chapter 8 Personal Equipment
Chapter 9 Survival Skills
Chapter 10 Land Navigation
Chapter 11Camouflage & Concealment
Chapter 12 Boobytraps
Chapter 13 Weapons Caching
Chapter 14 Logistics
Chapter 15 Training
Chapter 16 Secure Camps
Chapter 17 Safe Houses and Secure Areas
Chapter 18 Communications
Chapter 19 Encryption and Codes
Chapter 20 Getting Your Story Out
Chapter 21 Attack and Defense
Chapter 22 Ambushes
Chapter 23 Sniping and Counter-Sniping
Chapter 24 Assassination
Chapter 25 Sabotage
Chapter 26 Raids
Chapter 27 Strategic Intelligence
Chapter 28 Tactical Intelligence
Chapter 29 Counterintelligence
Chapter 30 Lives, Fortunes & Sacred Honor
Appendix A General References
Appendix B Patrick Henry’s Famous Speech
Preface
According to Freedom Houses (www.freedomhouse.org), of 194 nations in the world,
47 nations, with a population of 2.3 billion people, are “not free.” Residents of Those countries (one
hesitates to call them “citizens”) lack political freedom and civil rights. The oppressive governments
in some or all of those countries deserve to be overthrown; peacefully if possible, by force if
necessary.
If you live in such a country, and you’re reading this book, I assume you’re already
thinking about the possibility of armed resistance to an oppressive government. This book is intended
as a primer, not as a handbook or an encyclopedia. A handbook tells you what you realized you didn’t
know. It answers questions you knew enough to ask. This book is a primer. It’s intended to introduce
you to what you might not realize you don’t know, and therefore wouldn’t think to ask. It provides a
basic introduction to each topic, then identifies resources which can provide you with additional
information.
Most of the material will be presented in terms of general principles. To make the
application of the principles more concrete, specific illustrations will be used. Many of these specific
illustrations will be drawn from past revolutions. However, readers will need to adapt them to
conditions in their own countries, or to their own circumstances. Readers must not allow the
illustrations to mislead them into thinking the principles would apply only to the specific cases used
as illustration. The principles apply everywhere; the application must take concrete circumstances
into account.
As will become apparent to the reader, there is an enormous amount of information
available on various aspects of armed resistance. Even the References at the ends of the chapters only
scratch the surface. While this book is intended for information purposes only, information should
eventually lead to action when action is justified. Readers must not allow themselves to be trapped in
an information-gathering mode, seeking to learn ever more about ever-finer aspects of the topic. If
armed resistance is justified, there comes a time when one must close the book and act.
Chapter 1
Why Armed Resistance?
The Biggest Killer
War was not the Twentieth Century’s biggest killer. Tyranny was. The contest wasn’t
even close. Hard to believe? Look at the numbers.
Comparing the death toll
Professor Rudolph J. Rummel, of the Political Science Department, University of
Hawaii, has made an extensive study of both wartime and peacetime deaths by government action
during the Twentieth Century. His findings are summarized in the following table.
“Government” killings include those persons killed by government officials, or with
government acquiescence in the killing by others. Those categorized as government killings in the
table specifically exclude execution for criminal acts (murder, rape, spying, treason, kidnapping,
etc.). The government killings counted in the table also do not include those killed by police in riots
or other conflict events, nor those killed in bombing of urban targets or through enemy siege or
embargo. That is, those counted as government killings include only official terror, pogroms,
genocide, and similar actions.
War deaths include those killed in any international or civil conflict (guerrilla war,
rebellion, revolution, or terrorist campaign) that brought about more than 1000 deaths (thus excluding
minor riots).
Professor Rummel’s data are complete only up to 1990. The figures quoted in the table
do not include war deaths in the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor do they include the
non-war but government-inspired massacres in Rwanda and in certain of the successor states of the
former Soviet Union. Adding these numbers in, however, would not change the overall picture
significantly.
While the figures in the table cannot be precise, especially for peacetime deaths in
totalitarian countries, the results are so clearcut that any likely errors do not change the overall
picture.1 Deaths at the hands of governments, in peacetime, totaled over three times as many as all
war deaths in the same period. Moreover, the peacetime deaths presented in the table may be
underestimates. For instance, Professor Rummel utilized the best figures available in the 1980s
regarding deaths through government terror in Communist China, which came to about 60 million.
More recent information indicates the toll may have been as many as 80 million. Hence the disparity
between deaths through war and deaths through peacetime government action may be even greater
than it appears from the table.
Moreover, the contrast between free and unfree governments is also striking. The total
for “free” governments includes at least 36,000 Algerians massacred by the French, and nearly
800,000 Soviet citizens, Prisoners Of War, and Russian exiles forcibly repatriated to the Soviet
Union by US and British forces after World War II, and then executed by the Soviet government.
Professor Rummel argues that these deaths should be charged against the free nations that acquiesced
in the executions by carrying out the repatriations, rather than to the tyrannical government that
actually carried out the executions. If these figures are excluded, the total for peacetime killings by
free governments drops to nearly zero. The story told by the numbers, then, is that tyranny is far and
away the biggest killer of the century. War is a distant second.
Gun Control and Genocide
But how were tyrannical governments able to carry out such massive killings? After all,
government officials are always a tiny minority of the population. How were these officials able to
kill many times their own number? Jay Simkin, Aaron Zelman and Alan M. Rice, writing for Jews for
the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, offer a very simple answer: the victims were disarmed first.
In their study, Mr. Simkin and his fellow researchers have specifically investigated the most
significant cases of genocide since 1900, and determined the then-existing laws regarding ownership
of firearms. A brief summary of their findings is as follows.
Turkey
The Turkish massacre of Armenians from 1915 - 1917, which resulted in some
1,150,000 deaths, was preceded by a gun control law imposed in 1911. That law completely banned
the ownership, sale, or manufacture of guns, gunpowder, and explosive materials, except for those
with government permission. Needless to say, the Armenians did not receive permission to own
firearms and ammunition. Thus when mass deportations of Armenians were ordered by the Turkish
government in 1915, the Armenians had no means of resisting.2 Even the Armenians serving in the
Turkish army were “disarmed, demobilized, and grouped into labor battalions.” Moreover, each
Armenian community was not only disarmed but also required to produce a specified number of
weapons. If the community did not turn in the specified number, its leaders were arrested for secretly
hoarding arms. If they did turn in the specified number, the leaders were arrested for conspiring
against the government. The result was to remove the leadership of the Armenian communities, further
reducing the possibility of resistance.
Soviet Union
The Bolsheviks imposed their first gun control laws in 1918, during the civil war. In
August of 1918, a law was passed requiring registration of all firearms, ammunition, and sabers. Of
course, gun registration is always followed by gun confiscation. The only reason for a government to
register the firearms of honest people is to know where they are, so they can be confiscated later. The
other shoe fell in October 1918, when the registration certificates were revoked and ownership of
firearms banned. In 1922 the various gun control laws of the civil war era were incorporated into the
Criminal Code. Unauthorized possession of a firearm was punishable by hard labor. By 1929, when
Stalin began his various genocidal campaigns, the population was completely disarmed. Only the
police and the army had any weapons. According to Professor Rummel, over fifty million people
were killed in the resulting genocide. This number doesn’t include those deported from the nations of
Eastern Europe to Siberia after the Soviet occupation of those countries. At least 1.2 million Poles,
and about 127,000 in total from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were deported. Of these, a third to a
half died on the way or in the labor camps. The total killings by the Soviets in Eastern Europe
significantly exceeded those of the Nazis when they occupied the same territories.
Perhaps the most poignant statement of the situation of the unarmed people of the Soviet
Union is that by Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
“How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been
like if every [Soviet] police operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest,
had been uncertain whether he would return alive? . . . [I]f during periods of mass
arrests people had not simply sat there in their lairs [apartments], paling with terror
at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had
understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an
ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at
hand? . . . [T]he organs3 would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers . . .
and notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed [Communist government]
machine would have ground to a halt.”
Solzhenitsyn’s point is a good one. Had the Russian people been willing to resist, even
with household tools, things might have been different. But wouldn’t firearms have been better than
axes, hammers and pokers? And wouldn’t resistance have been more likely if the disparity in
weapons between the people and the “organs” had been smaller?
Germany
The Weimar Republic, in 1919, confiscated all firearms. In 1928, the firearms ban was
relaxed. A law was passed licensing firearms dealers, and establishing a system of permits to
purchase firearms and ammunition. As a result of this law, the police had lists of everyone legally
owning firearms (of course, criminals, Nazis and Communists didn’t register their firearms). When
Hitler came to power, these lists were used to disarm all opposition to the government, particularly
Jews. The Nazi gun law of 1938 essentially banned all private ownership of firearms. However, it
specifically exempted from its ban police and military units, the SA (Stormtroopers) and the SS
(Blackshirts). That is, government officials and Nazi thugs were allowed weapons; no one else was.
All possible opposition to the Nazis was disarmed.4 Despite a significant degree of opposition to the
Nazis among Germans5, there was no effective resistance because of the lack of arms.
After World War II broke out, there was organized resistance to the Nazis in several
occupied countries. Resistance forces included the Maquis in France, the Chetniks and Partisans in
Yugoslavia, the Home Army in Poland and the ELAS in Greece, as well as smaller forces in
Denmark and Norway. These resistance movements used arms retained from prior to the occupation
or captured from the occupying Nazi forces, as well as arms supplied by British and U.S. airdrops.
However, in the main they suffered from lack of arms. One British officer, air-dropped to a Maquis
unit in France, reported:
“The thirty men in the camp were disciplined, well fed and happy. Divided into
groups of five each commanded by an NCO, all the armament they possessed
between them consisted of one Sten gun with a hundred rounds, three French rifles
with five rounds each and ten revolvers with ten rounds each; there were no grenades
at all. The available arms were used by all in turn for instructional purposes, drill,
weapon-stripping and field craft exercises by night. Lack of ammunition prevented
target practice. (Marshall, quoted in Asprey (1975), p. 477).
For all practical purposes, the nations occupied by the Nazis had already precluded effective
resistance by disarming their own people.
A particularly significant instance of armed resistance to Nazi genocide took place in the
Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, precisely because the Jews there had obtained a relative handful of
weapons. For several weeks, the residents of the Ghetto held off a Nazi division, utilizing their initial
supply of weapons, augmented by those captured during the fighting. Think how much better they
could have done had they not been disarmed to start with.
Overall, some fifteen million people were killed by the Nazis because they had no
means to resist.
Communist China
After their takeover in 1949, the Chinese Communists imposed a gun control law in
1957 that prohibited the unauthorized manufacture, purchase, or possession of firearms or
ammunition. When the Red Guards began their government-sponsored campaign of terror in the
1960s, the people had no weapons with which to oppose them. The death toll was (as noted above)
possibly as high as eighty million. Clearly if any significant fraction of those eighty million had been
armed, most of them would have survived. The terror might not even have begun, if the Chinese
government had recognized it faced an armed populace.
Uganda
In 1955, the British had passed a gun control law restricting firearms ownership. After
Uganda achieved its independence, a slightly modified version of that law was passed in 1970. This
law required a government license to purchase or possess firearms or ammunition. It also authorized
the “chief licensing officer” of each district to deny or cancel licenses without cause and without
appeal. Idi Amin seized power in 1971. He first purged the army of the followers of ousted President
Obote. An army numbering no more than 25,000 men, supplemented by a secret police numbering
3,000, then killed some 300,000 Ugandans and oppressed a population of thirteen million. This was
possible, despite the disparity in numbers, only because the population was disarmed. Clearly, if the
300,000 victims had been armed, they would have been able to defend themselves against an army
only one-twelfth their numbers. If the population at large had been armed, they would have been able
to defend themselves against the tyrants.
Cambodia
Cambodia holds the record for genocide as a fraction of the nation’s population. More
than a third of Cambodia’s 7 million people were killed by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and
1979. Gun control in Cambodia dated back to a 1938 Royal Order, which remained in effect after
Cambodia achieved independence in 1953. The Khmer Rouge won the civil war that started in 1970,
and seized power. After that, the Khmer Rouge administrators and troops would enter a village, and
tell the villagers that they didn’t need firearms any longer, since the troops were there to protect
them.6 When the few people who had licensed arms, and whatever number had unlicensed arms,
surrendered their weapons, the Khmer Rouge then herded the villagers out of their homes into the
“killing fields.” A relative handful of Khmer Rouge troops found they could easily massacre large
numbers of unarmed victims. If the Cambodians had been armed, the massacre would never have
started, let alone reached the astonishing total it did.
Afghanistan
If gun control is the prelude to genocide, is an armed citizenry proof against genocide?
Afghanistan provides one example to answer that question. Afghanistan is the genocide that didn’t
happen. The Afghan Penal Code of 1976 had only one article regarding firearms. That prohibited the
knowing supply of firearms to criminals. Other than that, the possession of firearms and ammunition
was completely unrestricted.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in 1979, could have resulted in the same kind of
genocide that had been visited on Eastern Europe after it was occupied by the Soviets. It didn’t,
because the Afghans were armed to the teeth. No, they didn’t have tanks, cannons, and missiles, but
they had rifles. These were enough. The rifles allowed the Afghans to hold out until the U.S. and its
allies, shamed by the Afghan resistance, finally supplied them with weapons capable of dealing with
tanks and helicopters. Not only was genocide prevented, the Afghans maintained their independence
from the Soviet Union.
The evidence is clear. Genocide is impossible when the victims are armed and able to
resist. Disarming the population is always the first step to genocide. Gun registration is always the