FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz 'The fight's over. There's no one left to fight' "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged" On June 4, 1997 the trial of the only Viper Militia defendant to face a jury -- after months in jail, 10 have pleaded guilty to one charge or another, while one still awaits trial -- got underway before Judge Earl H. Carroll in the federal district courthouse in downtown Phoenix. ... Defense attorney Ivan Abrams objected to the government's hauling machine guns belonging to other Vipers into the courtroom, since Knight was not charged with owning any such weapons. Objection overruled. I told Knight I'd heard that some of the "unregistered machine guns" presented by the prosecution had actually been built by the government out of spare parts found at the homes of the various militia members. "This is the way the law reads: If they can take parts and with eight hours of professional work by professional gunsmiths working full time in Washington, D.C., make it fire more than one round, then it was a machine gun. There was a guy who published a magazine piece on this a couple of years ago, a guy who took a wrecked Volvo and in about seven hours made a weapon that would fire four or five rounds. So by the legal definition used in this case the Volvo was, technically, a machine gun. We're talking about professional gunsmiths, with access to sophisticated machine shops."