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THE THIRD
CLOCK It's time for a few more inconvenient facts -- more insight into the
intelligence (or lack thereof), the mental health (ditto), and the character
(three strikes, you're out!) of the gun control lobby. For a long time, the Old Media have stubbornly refused to convey the fact
that only .004 percent (give or take a decimal place) of the 750,000,000
privately owned guns in America are ever used to commit a crime. Compared to the
chances of a privately owned gun being used to commit a crime, finding a
four-leaf clover, getting hit by lightning, being struck by a meteorite, and
breaking the bank at the roulette tables in Las Vegas or Atlantic City are each
a sure thing. Gun control advocates -- no, let's make that "advocates of victim
disarmament", because that's what it is -- all know this. I've never said they're ignorant or uninformed. I doubt that I've ever stated
a single fact in one of these essays that they weren't perfectly well aware of.
Diane Feinstein knows that guns save lives; that's why she carries a .357
Magnum. Ted and Jane know you can "dial 911 and die", which is why
they keep guns on their nightstands. That's why I say that the only possible
explanation for their behavior is that they're stupid, insane, or evil. Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Christopher Dodd understand that "An
armed society is a polite society". But they'd much rather employ licensed
bodyguards carrying machineguns under their coats and live in an impolite
society where their potential female victims can't defend themselves from their
increasingly disgusting advances. Stupid, insane, or evil. Let me repeat myself for the benefit of the Million Morons March. Everything
I say here, the victim disarmament lobby already knows. Each day they labor to
turn 70 million of their neighbors -- peaceful and productive men, women, and
children interested only in the quiet enjoyment of their unalienable individual,
civil, Constitutional, and human rights -- into targets for jackbooted thugs.
Clinton states publicly and straightforwardly that he wants to eliminate
America's gun culture; the technical term for that -- attention Simon Wiesenthal
-- is "cultural genocide". These hired goons in ski masks, Nazi helmets, and black body armor attack in
the middle of the night when they calculate their victims will be deepest in REM
sleep, groggiest, and most helpless. Heavily armed with noxious gas, high capacity pistols, sawed-off shotguns,
and automatic weapons that are forbidden to the ordinary individual, they smash
their victims' doors in with steel and concrete battering rams, drag their
victims by the hair, naked or half dressed, out of their beds, slap them around
and rough them up, scream threats and obscenities at them and insult them, throw
them on the floor and kick them, and shove cold steel gun muzzles against their
temples. They painfully twist their victims' arms behind their backs -- never mind how
old or fragile they may be -- and ratchet handcuffs on their wrists. They
delight in wrecking everything their victims own, stomping their victims' pets
to death before their eyes and laughing about it, stealing or destroying
everything their victims care about, and vanishing into the night when they
don't find what they want, or planting false evidence and trumping up charges
against individuals who've never done anything wrong. That is, if they don't
begin by simply hosing the whole place down with machinegun fire and killing
every living thing inside the house. No, you gun haters out there, this is not just an exercise in paranoia
-- you're not going to assuage your guilt that way, not any more. Nothing can
save whatever tattered shreds of conscience you have left from squirming on the
barbed, rusty hook of your guilt. These violent episodes happen every day in
what was once a free country, and you -- you self-righteous advocates of victim
disarmament -- are more directly responsible for it than anybody else. It is you
doing these evil things; you demanded they be done. They're being done for you. Morally, it is your finger on the trigger. Until now, whenever you risked confrontation with the stark, ugly,
bloodsoaked truth of what you're doing, rather than the pretty pink pastel
Utopia you desperately wanted -- needed -- to believe you were creating, you
could turn your head and look the other way. But no more. From now on you're going to be shown the truth -- your face will be rubbed in
it at every turn -- and the only way you can avoid it is to get off the net, out
of political life, out of American social life altogether, and hide out in some
tarpaper shack up in the mountains like your patron saint Theodore Kaczynski.
Because from now on, the truth -- and your guilt -- will be everywhere
for everyone to see. The really sick, sad thing, disgusting thing is what gun control -- victim
disarmament -- is really all about. As the Shogun (Japanese for Capo de tutti Capi) put it in 1558,
"The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in
their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other type of arms. The
possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues
and tends to permit uprising." Historians and sociologists have been saying for some time (among themselves
-- nobody wants this kind of thing to get out) that there's a point somewhere at
which, if one more percentage point is taken in taxes, there'll be a revolution.
That number's generally believed to be 50%, but there are complicating factors. Hardly anybody is aware of what he pays. Withholding was invented during the
administration of Roosevelt II (by Milton Friedman, of all people!) precisely to
prevent that kind of awareness. In addition, there are so many different kinds
of taxes -- real property, personal property, sales, excise, etc. -- that nobody
can keep track. We passed that 50% mark long ago and hardly anybody noticed. Gun control -- victim disarmament -- is meant by its proponents for when we do
notice. Look at the victim disarmers in the Senate, the House of
Representatives, your state legislature, your county commission, your city
council. They're exactly the same politicians who want higher taxes and other
regulations that turn your life into their property. Taxes and regulations that
privately owned guns might get in the way of. It's funny the way my
semiautomatics were never a threat to anybody until the total tax rate rose
above 50%. You gun haters sneered at the Gulf War because it was "only about
oil" but your sacred cause -- the Gun Control Holocaust you've unleashed on
your unsuspecting neighbors -- at the highest levels and at the bottom line,
turns out to be only about money. Tax money. Stolen money. Somewhere on the net I've heard there's a "Death Clock", counting
the number of individuals who die by gunfire every microsecond or eon or
whatever. I've never looked for it or seen it because I know that, rather than
being built of springs and gears like any self-respecting clock, it's built of lies.
The same tired Old Media lies we've been hearing for half a century. I know that three quarters of the deaths you're counting are suicides,
something it's morally wrong to interfere with and that can't be stopped in any
case. People will use gas or poison or jump off tall buildings if life becomes
intolerable; that's their right. Until gas and poison and tall buildings are
outlawed, I believe I'll continue refusing to take your Death Clock (or anything
else you say or do) very seriously. Another point: some of those deaths, a number you cynically withhold -- are
"righteous" shootings, people killed by other people who were
legitimately defending themselves. The implication, of course, is that it's more
politically correct to submit to evil, to give up and die for the sake of
your demented and obscene victim disarmament ideology than to resist. And why
not? After all, that's the same policy you advocate for rape, isn't it? Elsewhere, there's a "Life Clock", counting the number of times
that individuals successfully defend themselves with guns. I've never seen or
looked for that clock, either. I know that somewhere between two and a half
million and four and a half million people every year -- 40 times the
highest number on the Death Clock -- are alive and well, instead of dead or
injured, because they had that "easy access to guns" which you victim
disarmers decry so dramatically. I think there ought to be a third clock. John Lott offers some impressive
numbers of the people whose lives might have been saved if they'd had easy
access to guns, the victims of victim disarmament who died because of you people
who advocate, introduce, pass, and enforce laws that violate the unalienable
individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right of every man, woman, and
responsible child to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon --
rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place,
without asking anyone's permission. That's right, that's what I said. "The unalienable individual, civil,
Constitutional, and human right of every man, woman, and responsible child to
obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun,
handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking
anyone's permission." And hundreds of thousands of people -- maybe even
millions -- will read it, many of them learning what their rights are, and where
they come from, for the first time. Doesn't that make you mad? Doesn't it make
your stomach churn? Won't it cost you a night's sleep? Won't it shorten your
life expectancy by at least five minutes? A good life consists of small victories. You victim disarmers have a lot to atone for -- the injury and death of
countless thousands -- maybe even millions -- of innocent individuals. From now
on, Sarah, Chuck, from now on, Diane, before you get to talk about what you want
(everybody's sick of hearing about what you want, anyway), we're going to talk
about what you owe. I can think of a good way to start -- and if there's any merit in them, it's
your last chance to show that your ideas about personal weapons work better than
mine. Wherever you live, put a big white cardboard sign in your biggest front
window, as high and wide as local ordinances allow. On this sign, in great big
black letters no less than six inches high, write: WE HAVE NO GUNS HERE Do it. Do it right now. Because until you do, once my challenge gets to be
widely advertised, it's hard to see how anybody'll take you seriously any more. Isn't it? Permission to redistribute this article is herewith granted by the author --
provided that it is reproduced unedited, in its entirety, and appropriate credit
given. If you enjoyed this one, you will also appreciate El Neil's candor
in Murder by Gun Control.
My home on the web, The Webley Page: www.webleyweb.com/lneil/
My e-zine The Libertarian Enterprise: www.webleyweb.com/tle/ |
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