"Hey, Henry!" a voice called in greeting. "You bring your Colt Monitor this trip?

Shoot Landies' parachute flares out of the sky and piss him off again?"

"Of course. What would Knob Creek be if we couldn't irritate Bob?" "How 'bout your Minimi?"

"Yep. Got one of Reed's fancy suppressors on it. Supposed to outlast an M16. I'm going to see how it holds up on a real gun." The man grinned at this reply and moved on.

"Who was that?" Steve Brush asked.

"Some guy that's here every time. Half the people that say 'hi' to me, they've never told me their names." He looked at the crowd. "We better get the rest of the stuff unloaded and get the vehicles moved. The parking gestapo here have no sense of humor." Henry opened the back of his vehicle and started unloading the five guns he had brought with him.

"Follow me," Henry said when he was done. "I'll show you where we can park that's not to hell-and-gone from here."

"Is it okay to leave your guns right there on the ground?" Steve Brush asked with a worried look.

"Do you think anyone's going to steal guns in the middle of this bunch?" Henry asked, waving his hand at the hundreds of people milling around the firing line, over half of whom were carrying loaded handguns on their persons.

"You got a point. Okay, lead on."

"Hey, Henry Bowman!" another voice called. "You gonna turn your FN-D red tonight, like you did last year?"

"Probably," Henry said with a smile as he looked up at the man. The man turned to his companion.

"This guy Bowman here, he likes BARs. Shoots shit out of the air with 'em. Put his Belgian one on a tripod last fall and ran-what? Twenty magazines?-through the damn thing fast as he could. Turned as red as your electric stove and never missed a beat."

"BARs are like that," Henry said cheerfully as he got into his vehicle.

"Can you believe they're not even going to charge that FBI asshole?" one of the men said in disgust.

A lengthy cease-fire was in effect while targets were set up, and the men and women at the range were, as always, talking about what guns people had brought to shoot, who had the best bargains on ammo, and which statist politicians needed to be thrown out of office in the upcoming Congressional elections. In addition to these standard topics, talk that day at Knob Creek Range often turned to the disastrous FBI raid in Idaho that had ended seven weeks earlier.

Randy Weaver, his friend Kevin Harris, and Weaver's three daughters, aged ten months to sixteen years, had remained in his cabin for nine days after the FBI sniper had killed Vicki. During the standoff, and at the urging of neighbors, thousands of citizens had converged on the area to keep an eye on what the feds did and to implore Weaver and Harris to surrender so that they and the girls would not also be killed by the federal agents. Messages to Weaver had been smuggled in to the cabin by friends and sympathizers, and after considering that his friend Kevin Harris was seriously wounded, Weaver had come out peacefully on August 31.

The entire Weaver incident, starting with the wood buttstock that was 3/8" too short, had disgusted everyone at the Kentucky shooting range. Ever since the Ken Ballew raid, however, serious shooters had come to expect disaster when the ATF claimed a paperwork or tax violation had been committed. Weaver and Lawmaster were only the most recent examples in a long list of this kind of storm-trooper behavior.

Up until the Weaver incident, however, citizens had always understood that even if the tax agents destroyed a man's house or smashed his door in and shot him in the head without a proper warrant, the gunowner's family was off-limits. Federal marshals killing fourteen-year-old Sammy Weaver by shooting him in the back and an FBI sniper blowing Vicki Weaver's brains out as she nursed her baby were a new development. The people at Knob Creek, and at ranges, gun shops, and sporting goods stores across the nation, found this escalation of federal force extraordinarily repellent.

"Ought to at least slap that FBI bastard with a manslaughter rap," the man continued. "Hell, in Time magazine, feds claimed their HRT guys could put a bullet within a quarter inch of where they wanted at two hundred yards."

"Maybe that was a misprint," one of the other men suggested derisively. "Maybe what the feds said was two yards." He thought a moment, then added, "Or maybe that guy did put his bullet exactly where he wanted."

"Yeah, killing a man's wife while she's nursing their baby daughter is a damned effective negotiating tactic. I can't believe that Yamaguchi fucker, or whatever his name is, gets to just walk away without so much as a ten-dollar fine."

"Joe, you're not thinking straight," Henry Bowman said to the man. "The FBI has huge public support. Hoover started a massive PR campaign sixty years ago, and it's continued ever since. Jimmy Stewart movies, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. in his TV show-the public and the press love the feds."

"I don't."

"Maybe not, but everybody else does. Most of the adults in this country can tell you exactly where the FBI shot John Dillinger.

"In front of the Biograph theater."

"Right. But how many people know that the FBI also managed to shoot two bystanders in the process? Go to your library and see how much ink that got in '34." Henry shook his head and continued.

"Six years ago, was there one word of official criticism or apology for the way they handled the Miami shootout? FBI's official conclusion was that their guns weren't powerful enough. Did you see one newspaper article about how two of their stakeout agents were too busy banging some waitress to help their buddies who were getting blasted? Did you see Time magazine saying something like this?" Henry lowered his voice in a parody of a news anchorman.

"The FBI has a thorough training program for handling vehicles they suspect contain heavily armed, known killers. Their state-of-the-art tactics include sex breaks to relieve tension, leaving their body armor and shotguns on the floor of their back seats, taking their pistols out of their holsters and putting them on the front seats so they can fly off and get lost, tailgating the suspects to let them know they have been spotted, and ramming the suspects' vehicle off the road in densely populated residential areas to precipitate a gunfight."'

Humorless laughter followed Henry Bowman's mock news segment. Though none of the facts he had mentioned had been highly publicized, they were common knowledge among people seriously involved in the shooting sports. Serious shooters invariably had a number of contacts inside law enforcement agencies.

"Way I see it," one of the other men in the group said, "it's a goddamn miracle Weaver and his daughters are still alive. I'd've expected them all to come off that mountain in body bags, instead of just the mother and the boy."

"Feds must be getting slow," another man in the group offered.

In six months, the FBI would be back up to speed.

"I see your watercooled's working okay," Henry said to John Parker as he sipped from a paper cup full of soda. Parker was sitting on the seat he had made which fit on the extended rear leg of the 1917A1 's tripod. Parker's girlfriend Karen Hill, a paralegal who was with him for the weekend, sat on one of Henry's ammo buckets. Henry and Steve were leaning against one of the concrete benches. They were waiting while the dynamite crew went downrange to make sure there were no unexploded charges left from the three o'clock shoot.

"Yeah, I'm glad you talked me into buying a ' 17 instead of an A4. You were right- with the muzzle supported in the front bearing of the water jacket, it's a lot more accurate at long range than the aircooled guns. As I think I demonstrated,"Parker said with a grin. Using the click adjustments of the 1917A1 tripod, John Parker had managed to hit two of the fifteen dynamite charges the crew had set out downrange. That was exceptional, considering that there were over fifty belt-fed machine guns on the line, and they had all begun firing continuously as soon as the range officer had given the command.

"Haven't seen a single Bush bumper sticker," Henry Bowman said calmly as he took another drink of his soda. John Parker nodded.

"No shit. I think he's going to lose."

"Lose, hell," Henry said. "He's already thrown the election." Parker raised an eyebrow in a questioning gesture. Henry continued. "We'd've been much better off with Michael Dukakis, from a civil rights standpoint, at least."

"What do you mean?" This came from a slender man in a khaki shirt who had overheard the conversation.

"Bush banned semiauto imports by executive order in '89. Got his 'Drug Czar' buddy to say it was a wonderful idea. Could Dukakis have gotten away with that? Hell, no. He wouldn't have dared try it, because the Republicans in the House and Senate wouldn't have played ball. They'd have screamed bloody murder. Bush got away with it, though, 'cause he's a Republican, and now it's going to cost him the election."

"Come on, Henry," Parker said, forcefully but without rancor. "Bush has all kinds of problems. The economy is lousy, and people haven't forgiven him for breaking his 'no new taxes' promise."

"And let's face it," Karen Hill added, "a lot of voters, particularly women, don't like his anti-abortion stance. Those are the things that're going to end up costing him the Presidency." Henry Bowman was shaking his head. A crowd was starting to gather, but no one interrupted.

"I'll give you the taxes thing, but that's still only a small factor, and I'll prove it to you in a second. Your other issues are curtain dressing. Economy? The economy was terrible in 1982, and the public didn't turn against Ronald Reagan. Reagan was also at least as much against abortion as Bush, and more women voted for him than Carter in '80 or Mondale in '84. The reason George Bush will lose in three weeks is because he sold us out on gun rights." Henry Bowman and John Parker both saw a number of the people around them nodding in agreement. John Parker began to protest.

"That may be a part of it, but-"

"No 'huts', John. I'll prove it to you. Look around. How many guys do you see here right now who you know saw active duty and are proud of it? I don't mean everybody wearing camo-anyone can buy that at K-Mart. I mean guys wearing boonie hats and dog tags with their division numbers on 'em, or guys in Gulf War uniforms, or old guys with tattoos and shrapnel wounds and arms missing. How many do you see around here right now? A lot, right?

"George Bush is a genuine war hero from the Second World War, right? And last year he got a half million men over to Iraq, ran Hussein out of Kuwait, and only lost- what? Eighty soldiers? That's less than I would expect would get killed in a half-million-man training exercise with no enemy." The people gathered around were nodding in agreement.

"So?" John Parker said.

"So Bush is a war hero-I really mean that-and look who he's running against. Should be no contest among vets proud of their military service, right?" Henry grinned wickedly at John Parker. "Just go around and ask some of these vets here if they're going to vote for the President in three weeks. Take your own poll."

"I'm not!" shouted a veteran of Korea who had been listening to Henry's argument. "Your friend's dead right."

"Me neither," spat another. "He sold us out." A half-dozen other veterans grunted in agreement. No one contradicted what Henry Bowman had said.

"Is anyone here-not just veterans, but anyone-planning to vote for Bush?" Henry asked in a loud voice. No one volunteered with an affirmative answer. John Parker's mouth opened in amazement.

"Too many Republicans have this crazy idea that since their party usually isn't quite as much in favor of throwing away the linchpin of the Bill of Rights, they can take our votes for granted," Henry said to what was now a crowd of forty or fifty people. "In a few weeks, they're going to find out that taking us for granted was the biggest mistake they ever made in their lives. Except that the news will undoubtedly focus on the abortion issue, or the bad economy, or how Bush didn't seem compassionate, or some other horseshit, and miss the real story."

"You really think we're the ones going to cost him the election?" a man in his fifties asked. "Not sayin' I disagree with you, but...everyone always acts like all the other issues are the real important ones. You know-the ones that get elections won or lost."

"Let me ask everyone here a question, then," Henry said. It was obvious he believed in what he was about to say.

"Pretend I'm George Bush, and it's Monday, the day after tomorrow. The first debate-which is tomorrow night-is over. I didn't say anything at all about the gun issue in the debate. It's now Monday, okay? Since I'm still the President, I tell the networks I'm going to give a State of the Union address, or a press conference, or whatever you call it on short notice. I'm going to give it that night, since the second debate isn't for a couple of days. I get up in front of the cameras, and here's the speech that goes out over every network Monday night." Henry looked over at John Parker. "Cut me some slack if I get some details wrong; I'm winging it here, okay?" He cleared his throat.

"My fellow Americans, I would like to address a serious issue which faces our country today: the gradual erosion of the individual rights of our honest citizens. Our government, including my administration, must shoulder much of the blame for this problem. It is time for me to acknowledge and repair the damage that has been done."

Henry paused for a moment to collect his thoughts before continuing.

"The Soviet Union has collapsed. People around the world are throwing off their yokes of oppression and tasting freedom for the first time. It is an embarrassing fact, however, that our government has forgotten about individual rights here at home. It is time to acknowledge and correct the infringements we have inflicted upon our citizens in the name of 'crime control'.

"Decent, honest Americans are being victimized by a tiny fraction of the population, and it is our government's fault. It is our fault because we politicians have continually passed laws that stripped the lawabiding of their rights. As a result we have made the crime problem much worse.

"Our great economic power comes from the fact that Americans determine their own economic destiny. It is time we let Americans once again determine their own physical destiny." Henry Bowman saw the audience hanging on his words. He took a breath and went on.

"In 19891 prohibited importation of firearms mechanically and functionally identical to weapons made before the Wright Brothers' invention of the airplane in 1903. I hoped that banning these guns would reduce crime. It hasn't. The only people denied the weapons that I banned are those citizens in our country who obey our laws. These are not the people our government should punish, and I now see what a terrible decision that was.

"Some politicians are now calling for a national 5-day waiting period to purchase a handgun. The riots last spring showed us the tragedy of that kind of policy. One congressman has even introduced a bill to repeal the Second Amendment to our Constitution. The Bill of Rights enumerates human rights, it does not grant them. That is something that we in government have forgotten. Repealing the Second Amendment would not legitimize our actions any more than repealing the Fifth Amendment would authorize us to kill whoever we wanted."

Henry noticed several people smile at the notion of George Bush acknowledging his responsibility for government intrusions in a State of the Union address.

"All dictatorships restrict or prohibit the honest citizen's access to modern small arms. Anywhere this right is not restricted, you will find a free country.

"There is a name for a society where only the police have guns. It is called a police state. The Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights is not about duck hunting, any more than the First Amendment is about playing Scrabble. The entire Bill of Rights is about individual freedom.

"In my recent trip to St. Louis, Missouri, I found that violent criminals have a government guarantee that honest people are unarmed if they're away from their homes or businesses. It's a felony for a citizen to carry a gun for protection. Giving evil, violent people who ignore our laws a government guarantee that decent people are completely helpless is terrible public policy. It is dangerous public policy. Our Federal and State governments have betrayed the honest citizens of this country by focusing on inanimate objects instead of violent criminal behavior, and I am ashamed to have been a party to it. It is time to correct that betrayal.

"Accordingly, I am lifting the import ban on weapons with a military appearance, effective immediately. I am abandoning any and all proposals to ban honest citizens from owning guns or magazines that hold more than a certain number of cartridges. I will veto any bill that contains any provision which would make it illegal, more difficult, or more expensive for any honest citizen to obtain any firearm or firearm accessory that it is now lawful for him to own. I will also encourage the removal of laws currently in effect which punish honest adults for mere ownership or possession of weapons or for paperwork errors involving weapons. I will work to effect repeal of the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the National Firearms Act of 1934 in their entirety.

"Tomorrow I will appoint a task force to investigate abusive practices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. I will ask for recommendations as to how that department can be made to shift its focus from technical and paperwork errors to violent criminal activity. I will demand the resignations of all agents and supervisors who have participated in any entrapment schemes or planting of evidence.

"Our government has betrayed its citizens and tomorrow morning I intend to start correcting that. Good night."

Screams of "Yeah!" "Damn right!," and "That's it!" came amidst tremendous applause from the several dozen people who had been standing around listening.

"Okay, that's the speech," Henry said in his normal voice after the applause had died down. He did not notice the look on John Parker's face. "Then, the next morning on the news, you see that Bush has indeed rescinded the import ban, he's named the people on the Task Force, and he's fired Bill Bennett. A couple of senators have offered to draft legislation repealing the National Firearms Act and GCA '68, and you hear Bush say on camera that he's all for it, and you hear him encourage other legislators to support this muchneeded reform.

"Question number one: What are all of you going to do now?"

"Do everything we can to get George Bush re-elected!" one man yelled immediately. He was joined by a dozen similar responses. Henry Bowman laughed.

"Not bad. And we haven't even asked question number two, and it's the real clincher: If George Bush gave the speech I just gave and did the things I just described, how many people who were already going to vote for him do you think would change their minds? How many people do you think would say 'Boy, I was going to vote for Bush, but now I'm not going to'?"

"Nobody," John Parker said under his breath. "Anyone who didn't like your speech would already be against the President." John Parker was thinking frantically.

"Exactly. So he picks up four or five million votes, and loses none."

"A damn geologist who likes to shoot has just laid out how Bush can pull it off," John Parker said. "I wonder if it's too late." He looked over at Karen Hill.

"You bring your laptop?" Parker asked his companion. "Is it in the car?" She nodded, and a smile came over her face.

"John Parker, are you thinking what I think you're thinking?" the young woman asked her friend. "Bucky?" "You got it. Any objections to taking dictation?"

"Hell, I'll sit on Henry's lap and undo a couple buttons on my blouse if that's what it takes." Parker laughed, and then explained what he planned to do.