by Angel Shamaya
Founder/Executive Director
KeepAndBearArms.com

July 19, 2002

KeepAndBearArms.com -- The July 18 press release from Handgun Control, Inc., which still tries to get people to buy its new name, offers gushing praise for a report from the Packard Foundation entitled "Children, Youth, and Gun Violence". The Washington Post ran a full length, pro-Brady editorial based on the same report; it just hit the newsstands today. The report calls for numerous things that please the gun prohibitionist groups to no end.

Among the report's recommendations is a call for regulating guns as consumer products.  Most gunowners would be pleased as punch by many facets of such a move if implemented. What other "consumer product" besides a firearm requires background checks to buy one, gets you arrested if you carry it around in ways that displease oath-breaking public servants, or even leads to lengthy prison sentences for mere possession in some cases? The answer of course is none, but Brady's gullible followers don't tend to think about such matters -- they simply latch on to anything that demonizes their targeted inanimate objects.

Stupid Guns

Via heaping praise for this "new" anti-gunner's report, the Brady Klan continues to support any anti-gun group who encourages the implementation of "smart gun" technology -- another facet of this new "study". Their fancy rhetoric for such "only you can use your own property" technology goes as follows: "personalize guns in an effort to prevent unauthorized users from operating the weapon." The dangers of "Smart Guns" are many:

• Were such expensive design requirements placed on gun manufacturers, few could afford implementation, and the dangers of such technology are many and varied. 

• A fallen police officer's partner whose magazine had run dry couldn't pick up his partner's firearm and use it to quell an attack.

• If a man was disabled by home invaders while protecting his family, his own wife wouldn't be able to use the firearm to keep from being raped or murdered.

• The more moving parts a piece of equipment has, the more likely it is to malfunction. In their utopia, anyone but you would be an "unauthorized user," even if your life depends on immediately authorizing the person trying in vain to use your firearm to keep you from getting killed.

• The "ring on your finger" version of "smart" guns can also make "weak hand" shooting impossible. If your firing hand becomes disabled, unless you can get the ring close enough, it will not fire.

• If biometrics are involved, even if you have a weapon capable of being programmed to accommodate multiple authorized users, the recognition devices can easily fail -- get a cut or blood on a fingertip, and you and anyone else are S.O.L. It's also conceivable that you could be wearing gloves if it's cold, you're doing garden work, washing dishes, etc. when a need to defend yourself arises. Criminals rarely accommodate to your schedule when invading.

• An eventual full mandate that all firearms must have such insane technology -- a generation down the road -- could lead to bans on all firearms without it. (That would require war, of course -- but these anti-rights fools do not care about such things, as long as they convince themselves to feel good about making all people easy to prey upon.)

But again, the willing dupes who support making decent people defenseless don't care for such facts; they just hate guns and wish to disarm people who, unlike them, have the courage, ability and willingness to protect their own lives and the lives of the people they love. 

Lock Up Your Life Preserver

Even more sinister, if you've got children in your home and wish to exercise your duty to protect them, these Brady folks and their allies at Packard Foundation are adamant about making it illegal for you to do so. "If they choose to keep a gun in the home, it must be stored, locked, unloaded and separate from the ammunition," the groups opine. Considering all of the many recent and ongoing reports of violent home invasions, this amounts to advocacy for the total surrender of your family's safety. They may as well say:

"If a team of ruthless and murderous home invaders breaks into your home intending to kill you, we want the U.S. Congress and all state legislatures to require you to be defenseless -- even if it means you and your entire family get raped, tortured and then slaughtered."

Their latest press release calls this "common sense" -- words issued by Brady's anti-rights President, Michael Barnes. Jessica Lynne Carpenter could've used a firearm to keep her two siblings from being pitchforked to death right before her very eyes, but her parents followed the Lock Up Your Life Preserver law in Merced, California -- the family is still dealing with the painful kind of loss Mr. Barnes and his kind seek to multiply.

While these gun prohibitionists pretend they stand for the safety of children, the truth is that they are using children as a shield to deflect attention from their chief prohibitionist aims while getting as much gun control as possible passed -- no matter how many children die by their harsh and unAmerican policies.

Sure Thing

"Limiting the flow of illegal guns to youth," is what we need to do, say the gun banners as they praise their new anti-self-defense cohorts. Considering the fact that Britain banned handguns but handgun crime among teenagers and younger adults is steeply climbing there, and considering the fact that hundreds of millions of privately owned firearms exist in America, even a faithful member of the Brady Gang ought to wonder how these measures would accomplish their stated but highly questionable objective.  But they don't even bother to ask such questions, while lawful, peaceable American gunowners know that the ultimate objective of Handgun Control, Inc. is the abolition of private firearms ownership. If that weren't so, the Brady Klan wouldn't have openly supported outright gun bans in the recent past.

In other words, these anti-rights socialists are still very much the enemies of a free people, they should still be monitored, and they should still be exposed for their ugly intentions at every turn.

Let us hope the public servants in government do not follow too many of these people's life-threatening recommendations. If they do, Brady is leading us into a time where longsuffering gunowners ("the people") will have no choice but to fight, physically -- to remain armed, as intended by America's Founding Fathers. Were such an unfortunate time to arise, the disarmed peasant organizations and their sheep who continue to assail our rights would do well to to obtain firearms and ammunition.

Related Reading...

Exposing the Brady Bunch

Exposing the "Million" Mom March, Brady's Buddy

"Smart Guns" Archive

"Safe" Storage Laws Archive

Trigger Locks

Children & Guns