Michael Brian Vanderboegh

Mike Vanderboegh first surfaced in the Alabama militia, or “Patriot,” movement after the 1993 standoff in Waco, Texas, between Branch Davidian cultists suspected of illegal arms trafficking and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Vanderboegh wrote a post-Waco call to arms entitled, “Strategy and Tactics for a Militia Civil War,” where he discussed the value of snipers who could target secret police and militia watchdogs. Still, he liked to portray himself as a moderate within that often-violent movement. In 1996, he joined some militia leaders in signing a document that tried to distance the movement from racists and neo-Nazis. In the mid-2000s, Vanderboegh briefly took up the anti-immigrant crusade, participating in “patrols” to catch undocumented immigrants along the Mexican border with his very small Alabama Minuteman Support Team. More important, Vanderboegh in 2008 became one of the founders of a Patriot group called the Three Percenters, a loosely organized movement of gun owners who name stemmed from the disputed claim that only 3% of American colonists took up arms against the British. The group, which sees itself as a lineal descendant of those early American patriots, has grown since President Obama took office, according to the Anti-Defamation League, but its exact size remains unknown. Vanderboegh regularly blasts opposition to gun control laws as a leader of the Three Percenters, vowing never to surrender any arms on his Sipsey Street Irregulars blog.