William Kostric

William Kostric is the New Hampshire resident and Free State Project participant who made news on August 11, 2009 when he was recorded carrying a sidearm openly while participating in a protest at a town hall meeting of President Barack Obama at Portsmouth High School in New Hampshire.
First noted on the TV news network MSNBC hosted by Ron Allen, Mr. Kostric later gave interviews with several media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, the New York Post, the radio shows Free Talk Live and The Alex Jones Show, the television shows Hardball with Chris Matthews and The Alan Colmes Show, and the Internet video blog The Ridley Report.
Mr. Kostric never attempted to enter the venue of the town hall, but rather stood some distance away, on the private property of a nearby church, where he had permission to be.
He held up a sign reading, "It's Time to Water the Tree of Liberty!", a reference to the Thomas Jefferson quote, "And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Consequences
In Mr. Kostric's interview with The Ridley Report, he mentioned that he wishes for "30, 40, 50, 100 open carriers" at public protests and demonstrations. Just four days later, on August 16, as more Obama supporters and protesters converged on the Phoenix Convention Center "about a dozen" people were noted by police to be openly carrying firearms, one of which was an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, at another public address by President Obama. Just as in Mr. Kostric's case, no gun crimes were being committed and no arrests were made.

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