Free Stater Wishes Death on NH Governor

Over at the NHPR Facebook page there's a discussion going on about SB 116, the bill to repealed the need for a permit to carry a concealed pistol or revolver.

The comment section is filled with gundamentalists making the usual arguments about THEIR RIGHTS. One of those gundamentalists had this to say:

For those of you who are unaware, Rich Paul moved to NH as part of the Free State Project, the group of armed miscreants who are moving en masse to NH with the stated goal of taking over and eliminating our state government, then threatening secession.

Rich Paul lives in Keene with the Free Keene cult. He's in his 50's, and spends a chunk of each year in the county lockup for marijuana related offenses or probation violations. He's unemployed and unemployable.

Rich Paul is regarded as a heroic activist in libertea circles because he smokes pot in public, and dares the police to arrest him. He was arrested for selling pot, which apparently also makes him a hero in the eyes of his fellow Free Staters. They wail about how he was "targeted" because he's pro-marijuana. Apparently it hasn't occurred to them that maybe he's just bad at being a dope dealer.

The Free Staters love to natter on about how peaceful and nonviolent they are. They claim to adhere to the libertarian "non-aggression principle." Here we have a "peaceful" Free Stater wishing death on our governor. Here we see how seriously they take that non-aggression philosophy.

It's clear that Rich Paul doesn't have even a slight grasp of how NH state government functions. Governor Hassan hasn't ever arrested anyone that I'm aware of. She didn't write the federal drug laws. The conceal carry permit statute has been in effect for a century without impacting gun ownership. He's not ever going to be considered one of the great thinkers of the FSP. And, at least he's only wishing death on Governor Hassan. So far. 

Some more of the greatest hits of Rich Paul:

He's a real man o' peace, that Rich Paul. 

This is what the Free State Project is bringing to our state. Phony peaceniks, armed to the teeth. 

The "he's only one guy, don't judge us all..." crowd will be coming by to comment. Thing is, he's NOT just one guy: 

Free Stater Muni Savyon murdered his son, then killed himself. 

Free Stater (kicked out for show) Chris Cantwell cheers on cop killers and wants to violently overthrow the government. 

Free Stater Vin Suprynowicz wrote a book attempting to turn NH mass murderer Carl Drega into a folk hero. 

Free Stater Darryl W. Perry is "not opposed to using force if neccessary" to "reclaim freedom." 

Free State signer Larken Rose reads his essay "When Should You  Shoot a Cop" a video that is from the Cop Block website. 

Free Stater Bill Bochyinski owns the Twin Mountain Country Store. 

It's not just one guy. 

**** See Rich Paul's Rebuttal in the Comment Section! 

Carl Drega, Folk Hero to Free Staters

Those of us who lived in northern NH when Carl Drega went on his murderous rampage see something like this and get the chills. The chills mixed in with some serious pissed off. 

Carl Drega was a guy from Bow who had a small vacation place in Columbia - a small town near Colebrook. He was not a beloved member of the community. Drega was an angry man who was sure everyone was out to get him. He'd had code enforcement problems in Columbia. He wanted to use tarpaper as siding on his house. His house was on the riverfront, and a flood had washed some of his property away. His response was to dump a load of fill in, to "replace what he'd lost." Dumping fill into the riverbank wasn't met with applause. When there was an issue with a tax assessment, he shot over the heads of the selectwoman and tax assessor who came to speak with him. (The selectwoman was Vicki Bunnell)

After that, he started putting motion sensors up all over his property and stockpiling weapons. On August 19, 1997, he went out and started killing. He killed 4 people, and wounded several others. He killed 2 state troopers, Officers Scott Phillips and Les Lord. He killed Vicki Bunnell, the judge at Colebrook District Court, who was a Colombia selectwoman. Bunnell had a restraining order against Drega. When she saw him and his gun, she stopped to warn others in the building. Drega shot her 8 times in the back. He also shot Dennis Joos, the editor of the Colebrook News and Sentinel. He tried to disarm Drega after he killed Vicki Bunnell. 

Drega went on to wound NH Fish and Game warden Wayne Saunders, NH State Troopers Jeffrey Caulder and Robert Haase, and US Border Patrol agent John Pfeifer, before he was finally killed by State Trooper Charles West and US Border Patrol agent Stephen Brooks. 

I remember all this. I was working the night shift at a restaurant, and we were glued to the news. This kind of senseless violence on such a big scale wasn't something any of us were used to seeing in our relatively quiet and crime free state. 

Time Magazine did a half decent story about Drega and his massacre. 

Why am I bringing this up? In an email exchange last night, a friend mentioned Carl Drega while we were discussing the BearCat tank the Concord PD wants to get. I remembered the story, of course, but I googled Drega anyway, for a refresher. 

What I found was that to a certain segment of the population, Drega has become a hero. One of those people who have turned Drega from a domestic terrorist into a poor heroic victim is a guy named Vin Suprynowicz. He penned the tome you see in the picture above; The Ballad of Carl Drega. 

A Google search of Vin Suprynowicz revealed something of great interest. Vin's a Free Stater. That's right - Vin is a signed member of the Free State Project. He signed up in 2002. In fact, in 2002, he proclaimed himself one of the most famous and respected FSP members, on the FSP internet forum where he was holding forth about how poor Carl Drega was a victim, a man who'd had too much and had "only one option to find justice." 

Forgive me, but there's only one thing to say about Vin: what an asshole. 

Suprynowiscz also wrote a piece called Live Free or Die: How Many More Carl Dregas? that was published in the Libertarian Enterprise, the same publication where the founder of the Free State Project, Jason Sorens, published his original manifesto a few years later. 

It's painful to read - to see this guy attempting to turn Drega into the heroic man o' the people who'd been done wrong by the Man - instead of what he really was - a violent,  paranoid nutcase who hated everyone and thought he was above the law. 

A far better read is this point by point refutation of Vin's nonsense by a guy named Jim Macdonald who actually lived up there and knows the story far better than a long distance libertarian from Nevada. 

This is Vin Suprynowiscz. He's a Free Stater. This is the kind of person that the Free State Project wants to bring to our state. 




(For additional, unrelated fun, Vin's blog is filled with the kind of misogyny and racism that always make my heart sing.)