Molon Labe

The Spartans Had The Right Idea – Greece 480 BC

by Marcus O’Dean

It was 480 BC and 300 Spartans along with some Thebans and other Greeks, under King Leonidas, withstood the onslaught of a Persian Army of what is now estimated to have been 100,000 to 150,000 at the pass at Thermopylae.

They held the Persians for many days and eventually all of them died in the effort, but it gave the rest of Greece the time to regroup. When told that the Persian archers would fill the air with arrows, blotting out the sun, Leonidas is said to have replied, “Then we will fight in the shade.”

And when Xerxes’ emissary is said to have offered to spare the Spartans if they laid down their arms instead of fighting, Leonidas, according to Plutarch, replied with “Molon Labe”. This literally translates as , “Having come, take”, or in modern parlance, “Come and get them!” Both those blunt replies are described as “laconic”, which directly relates to the native name for Sparta, “Lacadaemon”, which I recall from my schoolboy Latin and Ancient History.

Those wondering why I am referring to these quirks of long ago can be comforted in the direct relevance to making a silent, but visible grassroots protest, which I will expand on later.

The NFA – Australia 2017

So now Australian legal firearm owners, “free” citizens in a parliamentary democracy, having been metaphorically violated by power-hungry government bureaucrats who would not know one end of a pump action shotgun from another, are being primed to have more restrictions placed on our ownership of inanimate objects to ostensibly “make the community safe” via the iniquitous National Firearms Agreement (NFA).

This perverted rationale has come out of the Martin Place Siege Enquiry, which actually called for considering only further measures to deal with illegal firearms, but bureaucrats are using it to further restrict and punish law-abiding firearm owners through subtle wording changes and the intent to only approve target licensed shooters who participate in events at International level eg the Olympics, World Championships and Commonwealth Games. So, SSAA Field Class rimfire will no longer be genuine reason, nor will Service Rifle or other commonly shot events around this country.

For hunters, they will be tied up in a chicken-and-egg tail chase, having to obtain written permission to hunt on private property before they even possess a firearms licence. These two measures alone are designed to drastically cut licensing and firearms ownership. The bureaucrats have seen how popular shooting has become and they just want to stop it dead!

The Problem – Our Innate Collective Goodness and Law-Abiding Nature

Australian licensed shooters, by their very nature, are the most law-abiding, least-likely-to- make-trouble sector of the whole of Australian society, so we will take any legal means to keep our until-now legally owned firearms and participate peacefully in our legitimate pasttime.

And guess what! When we are led to the figurative slaughter by our political “servants” AGAIN, we will go like lambs, even though our “masters” know as well as we do that new, tougher restrictions on us will make not one iota of difference to violent crime statistics in our country.

So do you think that I will encourage you readers out there to break the law when it is so misguidingly applied? No, I won’t, because I have too much to lose, like almost all LAFOs in Australia (and unlike almost all socialists).

We came to Australia as convict slaves and we never got over it. The Rum Corps still holds sway in my state, my gun owning records are held in an electronic database that has arguably already been hacked by criminals and I cannot do a thing about it.

Pollies and journos who would only have Defence Forces and Police possessing firearms in their ideal totalitarian state would like see total acqiescence to dictatorial rule of you and me.

Those same pollies and journos point to the USA as being no example to emulate, due to their high rate of gun crime. But they never point to South American countries (eg Venezuala) with corrupt regimes, no legal civilian firearm ownership and gun death rates per head that make the US look like a kindergarten. Nor do they acknowledge countries like Switzerland with high levels of civilian gun ownership and very low rates of firearm-related death and injury.
T-shirt on O’Dean

So How Do we Fight These Injustices To LAFOs?

I don’t for one moment think I have all the answers to these vexing problems, but I do have one that may contribute to more justice in future.

We use a graphic symbol that is not original (having been used by 2nd Ammendment proponents in the US for years) but rather representative of our opression and how we feel about it as one of the most unjustifiably targeted and oppressed groups in our land.

That symbol is “Molon labe” under a stylised Spartan helmet and what it symbolises is that as long as LAFOs breathe and live in Australia, we will use every legal means to fight unfair laws to the point of throwing corrupt lawmakers out of office at the ballot box, again and again and again.

We will form unholy alliances to suit us at the time to put a fire under the breeches of smug pollies, journos and bureaucrats and turf them out of their comfortable taxpayer and green-funded stipends.

I release without copyright my own crudePDF I have attached to this article, so anyone out there who wishes to can make their own T-shirts, stickers and transfers to display publicly. It may take years, but
M-L graphic jpg

eventually the antis will see so many of these symbols everywhere they turn, that they will realise the smouldering anger and discontent in their own community and that their totalitarian gun-grabbing party is over.

I am reminded of the scene in the movie Spartacus, where the Romans ask an assembled multitude of Christians for Spartacus to stand up and be apprehended and the whole crowd names themselves individually as Spartacus. In the face of such huge collective peaceful opposition, the Romans could do nothing.

“Molon labe”, baby!