Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 7, 1994 TAG: 9408080056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: New River Valley bureau
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
``If we were left alone, all we would do is hunt and fish and go to work and pay our taxes,'' Bill Stump told about 30 people including friends, family members and reporters assembled in his back yard to hear his statement. ``We're not out here to bother you.''
Agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have charged two club members, James Mullins of Pulaski and Paul David Peterson of Blacksburg, with violations of federal firearm laws.
Mullins is accused of typing onto a computer diskette statements about guerrilla warfare and possible attacks on utilities and services.
``That was not a resolution of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club,'' Stump said. ``If he did write it, he wrote it, and that's it.''
He said his own club activities involved reporting to members about legislation on firearm rights.
The 34-year-old father of two and former Marine holds a job and attends New River Community College. ``Nobody feels any threat from me,'' he said.
He stood behind a picnic table holding what he said was a small part of his personal library - the Bible, volumes by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Malcolm X, and a few with such titles as ``Basic Technical Mathematics'' and ``Machine Tool Practices.''
The table also held one of his rifles, with the magazine removed, and boxes of papers including tracts critical of federal authorities' actions against the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
Stump said he was continuing as a hunt club member and passed around a notebook for people to sign to be added to his mailing list.
Court documents list Stump as being among club members who met May 22 in a remote part of Pulaski County, where Stump is supposed to have displayed two .22-caliber rifles with unregistered silencers.
``All my guns are registered,'' he said Saturday, but added that some people do not want to register their firearms out of concerns that they will be confiscated. He said the crime bill now before Congress would ban guns classified as assault weapons that half the county's gun owners possess.
``It isn't a gun issue,'' said Gary Barker, who met Stump when they attended political rallies. He said the hunt club has to do with basic freedoms.
``We feel like our Second Amendment rights give us the right to have weapons like this,'' he said. ``If we lose our Second Amendment rights, which one's going to be next? ... When it's all gone, the only recourse would be to have a group that's going to take it back - which I'm opposed to,'' because he opposes violence, he said.
Stump said he scheduled the gathering to make his statement in support of Mullins, who organized the club before his arrest, ``because nobody else, none of his other friends, would do it ... Everybody wants to run away when something like this happens.''
He said Mullins told him in a call from jail that if his arrest raises consciousness about the issues involved, it will have been worth it.
Stump said the hunt club was needed because other organizations such as the National Rifle Association tend to compromise too much on gun rights.
``If we count on the NRA to protect our rights, then we may as well turn in our guns tomorrow, because they aren't going to do it.''
by CNB