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Former Virginia Governor and complete Who the Hell is That Guy candidate for president Jim Gilmore (who looks freakishly like our current Governor Sonny Perdue with more hair) has spent the past week in the YouTube YouChoose spotlight, and his blood-red-state conservative questions would win him all kinds of races in these parts. The problem for Gilmore is that he’s got less name recognition than anyone in either party outside of his Commonwealth.

The other problem with Gilmore, to a pinko like me anyway, is his positions. For his spotlight video, Gilmore asked us YouTubers to tell him our personal stories about how we feel our First and Second Amendment rights or our right to private property (our “essential freedoms” as the title suggests) have been eroded or threatened.

I loves me some essential freedoms, particularly that there First Amendment (which allows me to be this obnoxious on a blog and not wind up in prison…for now). Unfortunately, Gilmore ain’t talkin’ about that hippie kind of free speech. He quickly brings up the McCain-Feingold act that attempted to reform campaign finance by regulating massive soft money contributions (nice job that did); you can’t be a good Republican unless you hate on campaign finance reform (Obama-envy, anyone?), because everybody knows that some people deserve more speech than others.

Gilmore then goes on to mention the Second Amendment, our blessed right to keep and bear assault weapons and bazooka and maybe one of Gallagher’s ICBMWs (intercontinental ballistic missile Winnebagos). Personally, I don’t know what Gilmore is talking about: even though I personally didn’t feel the need for a 30-round clip to jam into a fully-automatic rifle, the prior Republican Congress let the Assault Weapons Ban (not that it banned much) fade into the sunset anyway, so if anything, we’ve taken a step back. And what the hell do I need an assault weapon for, anyway? To defend my home? I’ve got two pistols and a defensive position that I dare you to provoke in a late-night home invasion. To take down a deer? What, an armored deer? On a moped?

No, the citizenry is supposed to keep and bear military-grade weaponry, as I was reminded (irony of ironies) one night when I infiltrated a Buckhead Young Republicans meeting, in order to protect itself from the rise of a tyrannical government. Some buzzcut-sporting, philandering (that hot Asian babe he couldn’t stop touching was not his wife) young man got up and asked then-candidate for state Attorney General Robert Highsmith (why do you think I went?) if he, as AG, would sign the permit applications for citizens to legally purchase things like “assault rifles and silencers,” because, he argued, the traditional “sportsman” justification for the Second Amendment didn’t go far enough toward its true anti-tyranny principles. Set aside the fact that Uzis in the hands of citizens are only going to do so much to stop M-1 Abrams tanks and such, but this guy was raising the threat of tyrannical rule at a Young Republican meeting during the heady days of Abu Ghraib, Camp X-Ray, illegal NSA wiretaps, and Lord knows what else.

It took all my will power not to stand up and say, “Dude, you need to be coming to our meetings.” If you don’t like tyranny, quit bloody voting for it.

Anyway, without further ado, my response to Gov. Gilmore about my fine-and-dandy Second Amendment rights.

Click To Play

Quicktime format. Episode page.

Oh, and P.S. “Ron Paul.” :-P

P.P.S. Interesting and fun to know fact #79: about an hour after I finished filming this clip last night, I distinctly heard 9-10 shots fired, just several hundred yards south of here. Gotta love the ‘hood.