Response To Journal's "Bad Behavior" Article

From the Editorial Page of the Montgomery Journal, Friday, March 2, 2001:

http://cold.jrnl.com/cfdocs/new/mc/story.cfm?paper=mc§ion=fp&snumber=34

Letters

TRT kept quiet...

As a member of the Maryland Tyranny Response Team who was at the council meeting on Feb. 15, I have to correct your Feb. 23 editorial, ``Bad behavior.'' The author of the editorial states that members of the Maryland TRT were ``loud, booing boisteriously ... were obnoxious ... were mean: At one point, a man shouted to a woman testifying about a family member who was killed that the shooters had killed the wrong person."

It is true that ``a man" did make such a comment. However, it is patently false that the man was a TRT member. No member of the TRT group did or said any such thing. All of our members agreed to abide by a Code of Conduct distributed before the hearing. And all of our members kept their word. We made our voices heard. But we were not out of order. And we most certainly did not say or do the things that your editorial writer has alleged. Councilman Phil Andrews knows who the perpetrator of this behavior is. If The Journal would do its homework, it would discover that this individual is not associated with the TRT.

MICHAEL KOLLER
Germantown


... but some did not

Regarding the Feb. 23 editorial, ``Bad Behavior'': The ``Tyranny Response Team" did not disrupt the gun show hearing. I did, with my supporters, who were organized independently of Gus Alzona and the TRT. Many of them came from groups several times more radical than the TRT - in fact, Gus asked me the day before the hearing not to do anything disruptive at all. What my supporters and I did, we did deliberately and with malice aforethought, and the County Council should be glad that shouting is all we did.

The attempt to ban guns in this county is just a local manifestation of a larger scheme by the proponents of the international corporate New World Order to take away all the rights of all the citizens in this county, and to make us a province of a global government, where a handful of wealthy corporations will be free to steal the product of our labor and suppress our rights at will.

This plot, which is becoming more and more evident to more and more citizens, has people scared - and their fear is leading them to anger. It has become very clear that the government is trying to ban guns. Citizens no longer believe limitations on gun ownership are being made for the purpose of ``reducing crime" or any other nonsense; they are being made so that the people in charge can consolidate the control of the elite.

I make no apologies for saying that the wrong member of that woman's family was killed - he was. I will no longer sit by and allow overly-emotional women to exploit personal tragedy for a political ``gain" that ends up denying hundreds of thousands of people their civil rights. The enemy uses these tactics because they think people like me will not react to them, and I'm not giving in to their perpetual pity-party any more!

The NRA did not endorse my actions. Neither did Frank Krasner. Holding them responsible for the anger of my supporters is a non sequitur on The Journal's part.

WILLIAM A. WHITE
Derwood