This article was printed from KeepAndBearArms.com.
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As a novelist, I have a higher soapbox to stand on than most
when it comes to talking back to the enemies of liberty. Yet it
makes me just as mad when ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, and NPR not
only lie consistently and blatantly about the individual right to
own and carry weapons, but insert their lies into "news" and
programs billed as entertainment.
It's been going on for decades. You know when a politician's
lying -- his mouth moves -- but broadcasters lie with a twitch of
an eyebrow or the slant of a shoulder. They load questions for
the "man in the street" and get the public to lie for them. They
even lie by making sure the badguy in a series episode has rifles
and game trophies on his wall.
The most infuriating part is that you can't talk back.
Broadcasters take advantage of the fact that any amateur, offered
a chance to be on TV, is easily made to look foolish. Ask those
who've tried: I give speeches where people laugh in all the right
places and grown men have wept. The one occasion I tried replying
to a TV editorial, I looked like Archie Bunker. Most anti-gun
propaganda can't be dealt with in this manner anyway, because the
other side's too dishonest to present it as a straightforward
editorial.
Since the Bill of Rights protects a broadcaster's freedom
under the First Amendment to attack our freedom under the Second,
the next thought that occurs to the irate viewer is to get back
at propagandists through their wallets, boycotting programs or
their sponsors. I've never been impressed with the tactic. True,
you deprive the enemy of income; you also deprive yourself of
whatever he produces, maybe something you really need. Sometimes
it's worth a sacrifice, sometimes it isn't, and individual
opinions always differ.
The main problem is that for a boycott to be effective, you
must persuade thousands, even millions of others to go along -- a
lot of work and usually not very successful. No matter what this
country's self-appointed political and religious leaders claim,
self-sacrifice has never been what America is all about and it
doesn't work as any kind of incentive. Robert Heinlein put it
best when he said it's pointless to appeal to someone's "better
nature". He may not have one. Better to appeal to his self-
interest.
Which is where my thoughts had led me many times (and dumped
me out at what seemed the end of the line) when one day I asked
myself the right question: if boycotts don't work, what's the
opposite of a boycott? Obviously it isn't doing more business
with the enemy. How about doing more business with whatever the
enemy opposes?
Call it a negative boycott.
Since then, when I find myself subjected to anti-gun drivel
disguised as "news" or "entertainment", I drop a quarter (or a
dime, a nickel or a penny) into a coffee can I keep beside the
chair where I watch TV. Given the rate at which propaganda fills
the air, it's no time at all before the can fills up. When enough
accumulates, I don't give it to the NRA or any other organization
whose policies I neither control nor necessarily approve. I spend
it the best way I know, in the free marketplace of ideas -- and
hardware -- acquiring another gun I wouldn't otherwise have bought.
Think about it: another gun you wouldn't otherwise have bought.
Many benefits are generated this way with minimal effort and
no pain. Appeal to the self-interest of enough gun owners, and
hundreds of thousands -- maybe even millions -- of unforeseen gun
purchases will occur. This will strengthen the firearms industry
relative to the rest of the economy and even put some spine back
into outfits who've taken the cowardly, historically discredited
route of appeasing an oppressor. It didn't work with Hitler; why
does Bill Ruger think it'll work with Hitler's spiritual kin,
Howard Metzenbaum?
Spotting anti-gun propaganda could make watching network TV
interesting again -- a minor miracle in itself -- and might even
develop into an educational game for the whole family. Kids would
learn what the public schools never teach and desperately doesn't
want them to know: ways to identify logical fallacies, fuzzy or
missing verbs, and improperly weighted qualifiers in otherwise
authoritative-sounding arguments about homelessness, urban street
gangs, acid rain, ozone depletion, global warming, and the war on
drugs.
The primary effect will be felt by our opponents as their
own soapboxes slowly dissolve under their feet. Even now, each
time the greatest sporting-goods sales team in America -- Handgun
Control Inc. -- open their mouths about gun control or push for
new legislation, thousands of individuals go out and buy guns of
all descriptions "before it's too late". Some estimate that the
last flurry of semiauto hysteria sold a quarter of a million such
weapons in Colorado alone.
Until now, anti-gunners have encouraged the media to keep the
public ignorant of this interesting, inconvenient effect. But as
word of millions of coffee cans filling up with coins -- and
suddenly being emptied -- gets around, an inexorable certainty
that anti-gun propaganda actually causes more guns to be bought
will put a damper on broadcasters' enthusiasm to saturate the air
with lies.
The best part (and most frustrating from the other side's point
of view) is that nobody is in a position to think, speak, or act
for you. It's your TV, your chair, your coffee can. In your home
you're the only judge of what constitutes anti-gun propaganda. You
decide how much to drop in the can. You're the ultimate beneficiary.
So let your local TV stations -- and the networks -- know what you
are doing. And do it. Then trust in liberal guilt to do the rest.
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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