Of course, in a careful minuet, Mr. Gore thus carved out a victim disarmament position slightly more "moderate" than that of his Democratic rival, former New Jersey Sen. and NBA Power Forward Bill Bradley, who surely remembers how to execute the old picket fence.

Mr. Bradley calls for the federal registration of every single firearm, historically the last step before confiscation. Presto: Gore the "Moderate."

Regular readers will not be distracted by the fancy ball-handling. This has nothing to do with "reducing crime" -- crime rates are now falling everywhere, except among police officers, who are now getting dismissed at record rates for torturing and murdering innocent "civilians." (But we wouldn't want to disarm them, surely?)

Rather, the goal here is to divide America into two classes. One class will be our rulers and their armed minions, who will dress in battle gear and carry assault rifles and instruct us in our new duties while being "protected by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States."

The second class will be the rest of us -- the tax-paying, disarmed serfs.

It was in this context that I sat down to come up with this year's "Summer Reading List," where regular readers will know better than to expect any escapist romps soon to star Harrison Ford in a multiplex near you. (What is with this "Tom Clancy" guy, anyway? Is that actually an individual, or some sort of collective brand name, like "Pillsbury," or "Smith & Wesson"?)

If you haven't read it in 35 years, the most important book you can pick up this summer, as we contemplate an America where the armed government goons will soon gather unrestricted power to have their way with us, is Leon Uris' classic novel of the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, "Mila 18."

What abuses, indignities, and outright tortures will a peaceful people endure before they finally take up arms in a desperate struggle against tyranny? (One would be tempted to call it "a hopeless struggle," though in fact the ability of a handful of untrained civilians to hold off battle hardened units of the Wehrmacht for two months in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 stunned the world, and was in large measure responsible for the fact that an armed and free state of Israel was even judged feasible.)

The Bantam paperback edition of "Mila 18" is readily available.

Not so easy to find, yet, is the thinner new novel "The Mitzvah," by Aaron Zelman of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership ("Lethal Laws"), and by veteran novelist and Second Amendment advocate L. Neil Smith ("Pallas," "The Probability Broach.") "The Mitzvah" recounts the tale of middle-aged Chicago Catholic priest John Greenwood, who discovers he is actually a Jewish Holocaust orphan, a revelation that forces him to rethink many of his "received" opinions, including the notion that the best solution to an increasingly violent urban America is further victim disarmament.

Mind you, in competition for a permanent place in the literary pantheon, "Mila 18" is the heavyweight. But if you're looking for an outreach tool for folks who might find a modest 243 pages more easily digestible, "The Mitzvah" is $10.95 postpaid from JPFO, P.O. Box 270143, Hartford, Wisc. 53027.

On the non-fiction front, we would be remiss not to mention that the work of Jim Bovard ("The Fair Trade Fraud") keeps getting better. In his latest hardcover, "Freedom in Chains" ($26.95, St. Martin's Press), Jim seems almost ready to join the radicals, declaring:

"The achievements of government will be forever limited by the primary tool of government -- coercion. ... The people are irrevocably labeled as 'free' until the government completely wrecks the economy or slaughters a statistically significant percentage of the population. People have worshipped government too long. ... At this point, marginal reforms should suffice only for those who believe citizens deserve marginal lives -- lives consisting of what politicians choose not to confiscate and bureaucrats deign not to prohibit. To be overgoverned means lives thwarted, hopes dashed, creativity suppressed, potential squandered, character subverted, and dignity destroyed."

By George, I think he's got it.