Pat Dollard

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NY Post:

Michael Timlin, owner of the Smoke N Gun Shop in Mount Vernon, New York, as well as a gun training school, security company, and shooting ranges, says his store is struggling to meet demand. “Common stuff that normally wouldn’t be on a waiting list handguns, ammunition, assault rifles, pretty much anything there’s a good chance you’re going to be waiting for it.”

But the demand is not, Timlin insists, coming from what some on the Left may label a “fringe element.” It’s homeowners, businesspeople, many who have never owned a gun before. And they aren’t “stomping their feet and screaming.”

“They aren’t angry nowadays,” Timlin says. “People are scared.”

He adds: “Gentleman called me today from an affluent area of Westchester County and he’s looking for a shotgun for his home. He never even considered it before. His wife is not very excited about the fact but he’s telling me he didn’t realize before that his neighbors, his colleagues, they all share that same philosophy.”

You see it, in the gun shops and the gold buying, the Tea Party Protests and the Internet discussion boards a general unease, a sense that the nation is slipping away, and the government isn’t up to fixing it. There are the groups calling for secession or impeachment, which can be dismissed as radicals. But there are also those who don’t know what to do, but believe what’s happening isn’t right.

More than 170 Tea Party-themed protests are now planned across the country to coincide with tax day on April 15, organized mainly by local activists.

At least six are scheduled in locations around New York State, including New York City, Albany, and Rochester. There is also a protest planned in Gardiner, a town with a population of around 5,500 in the Hudson Valley.

“This is about as grassroots as it gets,” claims Pam Odell, the organiser of the Gardiner event. Odell first got involved in local politics because of “zoning changes and what I felt were personal property rights that were being violated.” She anticipates a turnout of about 100 on April 15, “which may not sound like a lot, but for this rural backwater town in the middle of nowhere, that would be a huge success. I’ve already heard from 10 or 15 people from a radius of 50 miles and it hasn’t even been in the local paper yet.”

With the national Republican Party still flailing after November’s defeat, the Tea Party movement seems to strike a chord.

“People on the right have been feeling very lost since the election,” Odell says. “This is giving people a feeling that they’re not alone. But of all the people who have contacted me, not one has mentioned party affiliation. I speak to a lot of lunchpail Democrats who think more along the lines of small government, lower taxes. A lot of people bought into Obama and now they’re having big-time buyer’s remorse.”

The general feeling of those who contact her is that “we don’t like the way the country is going, and we want to put some brakes on. It’s terrifying people. I don’t even sleep at night. I’m actually more terrified now that I was after 9/11, and that’s saying something. I really feel like the foundations of what our country stands for the free market, small government, entrepreneurship are being undermined. In Washington, every day’s another nightmare. These people are insane.”

The underlying argument from the Tea Party protests and other groups is a reassertion of state’s rights.

On the edges of this you find the secessionists, who’ve found an unlikely hero in martial artist and actor Chuck Norris. Earlier this month, he talked about running for president of Texas. “That need may be a reality sooner than we think,” he wrote soon afterward.

But even those not suggesting a new Civil War or President Norris say that states should have more say over their own destiny, and that the Obama administration is making decisions that don’t reflect the good of the whole nation.

Kirkpatrick Sale, director of the Middlebury Institute in Cold Spring, New York, points to a resurgence in Ron Paul libertarianims, especially in the South. “This whole pot is stirring with people who will be aiming towards states’ rights. That will be fertile ground for the seeds of secession. When you say the federal government has broken this and it can’t fix it, that’s when you have to say we need to do it locally. They don’t want to get taken down with the Titanic of the federal economy.”