Who is Duncan Philp?
Duncan Philp was born in Palo Alto, California in 1957 when his father was stationed at Moffett Airfield as an aircraft machinist in the U.S. Navy. The family moved around, living in East Hollywood/LA (during the time of the Watts Riots), Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Emporia, Kansas, and Fort Collins, Colorado, where Duncan attended high school. When Duncan was 17 he left home to join the U.S. Coast Guard, and was stationed in Alaska and California. He left the Coast Guard in 1980 and returned to Ft. Collins, Colorado. Duncan was diagnosed with cancer in 1992 (the first of a series of health issues he has had since then), but decided to enroll at Colorado State University (CSU) where he spent six and a half years studying political science, history, and criminal justice. Duncan identifies as "Anarcho-Capitalist a.k.a. libertarian" and considers himself to be a "political agitator." He is a Second Amendment rights activist, a member of the National Rife Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America (GOA), and Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO). He identifies as Cornish and Celtic and is a Christian. He lives alone with his dog outside of Cheyenne and considers himself to be "poor white trash" and a minimalist.
Excerpt from interview with Duncan Philp by Whitney Dow, 2018
When I got out of Colorado State, I became involved with a group called the Tyranny Response Team, which is mostly focused on Second Amendment issues. And I was on their board of directors for about two years. Our focus was the Million Mom March, Hillary Clinton, gun control. Basically it was just a street protest organization where we would wear a shirt that said Tyranny Response Team, parody off of FBI shirts. Navy blue with bright yellow letters. It showed a solidarity, and it showed that we had numbers. And we’d just go to these public events held by gun control advocates and disrupt their meetings. And it was pretty effective.
And we had no compunctions against protesting the NRA and their compromise of our Second Amendment rights or protesting phony Republicans or what they call now RINOs [Republicans in name only], who would compromise away our rights after Columbine. The governor Colorado, Bill Owens, was all too ready to compromise our rights away. And Tom Mauser was the poster child of the decade for handgun controlling, because he had a lost a child in Columbine. And we would take on Tom Mauser. None of these guys were taboo. It’s like, I’m sorry you lost your son at Columbine. But, gee, I didn’t do it. We didn’t have anything to do with it.
In 1998, while I was attending CSU, I discovered I had type 2 diabetes. And then in ’99, I had two heart attacks like a day apart. And they had to put stents in my heart. Somehow I managed to graduate from Colorado State. And then I joined this Tyranny Response Team and went to bat for—
Q: Say it again? It’s Terry Response Team?
Philp: [01:13:48] Tyranny, yes.
Q: Oh, Tyranny Response Team.
Philp: [01:13:50] Tyranny Response Team. Sorry, I have a hard time with speech sometimes. As far as my health goes, in 2004 I underwent a stomach surgery. In—I’m kind of getting off topic, so you may have to edit. In 2012, I had a stroke. It was pretty severe. Put me out of commission for quite a while. And then in 2014, I had a blood infection. And it’s had an impact on my brain function. And a lot of times I will have a hard time talking. Sometimes I end up talking at a whisper, and people can’t hear me. Or I may slur my speech. And it’s become a problem.
After the stroke I haven’t been quite as politically active as I used to here in the state of Wyoming. I took on the state revenue collector at a gun show where I was promoting our Tyranny Response Team. I wasn’t selling anything. He was there to collect revenue from people selling product. And it could be Uncle Joe selling his gun collection, and that doesn’t apply to state law. And this bogus revenue agent was trying to convince us that we need to collect revenue. In essence, he was saying that if you have a garage sale, you must collect sales tax revenue. And the guy was full of shit. And it made front page news in the Casper, [Wyoming] paper three times in a two-week span. And I got a pretty fair shake from the Casper Star-Tribune.
And the governor back then was actually a Democrat, Freudenthal. And he supported—I think he supports gun rights. And I think certain people at the Wyoming revenue department got their butts chewed out by the governor. We committed that action and then during the time this fellow [Terry] Jones was burning Qurans in Florida, I noticed that [Barack] Obama had sent the FBI to instruct this fellow that he couldn’t do that. And I felt like they were having a chilling effect on his right to free speech. And although I may not support Jones’s religion, I support his right.
I mean, the Supreme Court [of the United States] had already decided many years ago back in the ’80s that it was okay for a communist to burn a flag at the Texas State Capitol. And I support that right. That was that guy’s right. He’s got a right to be communist. He just hasn’t got a right to run the government and have government put his communism—or shove his beliefs down my throat. That’s where I draw the line. And I drew that line with Obama. And we were committed to burning a Holy Quran on the capitol steps. And I had to work it out with the highway patrol where they—I wasn’t allowed to burn anything on state property in front of the governor’s office. And so I worked it out so that we would smear bacon grease on the book. And we placed it in a thing we called the Quran can. It was just a trash can.
And one Muslim, local Muslim cleric showed up in opposition. I think he’s an instructor at Elterposee [phonetic]. He teaches Eastern religion, philosophy. Didn’t have a problem with Salim [phonetic]. He had his preconceived notions about me and found out that what he thought was not true. And whatever I may have thought about his religion was not true. And I told him, I said, “I have no animosity for you.” I said, “We’re just here defending the First Amendment from Barack Obama. That if it’s okay to burn a flag and it’s okay to burn a bible, surely you leftists shouldn’t have a problem with me burning a Holy Quran.”
Interview Transcript