The Last of the BOHICANS
How You've Been Conned into Surrendering Your Gun Rights
And How You Can Turn the Tables
By Aaron Zelman and Claire Wolfe
"BOHICA!"
screamed the e-mail alert. "Bend over, here it comes again!"
It was a familiar story. Politicians were about to pull yet another colossal
act of betrayal, about to break yet another compromise with gun owners, about
to put thousands more citizens at risk of prison for obscure technical
violations of law.
BOHICA
has become a way of life for people who care about the Bill of Rights,
especially the Second Amendment.
So what did the group sending the urgent e-mail alert beg everybody to do?
"Call your representative!" -- again -- "Write the governor!" -- again -- "Tell
your friends to call their representatives!" --again.
Let's be realistic: Do we honestly believe an arrogant group of known liars and
oathbreakers is suddenly going to morph into Patrick Henry just because they
receive yet another batch of desperate, angry pleas from people who've been on
the losing side of every gun-law battle since the National Firearms Act was
passed in 1934?
"BOHICA,"
indeed! If you keep bending over like that, they'll keep doing "it" again.
So why do
so many of us keep on bending over -- making the same predictable responses to
political chicanery -- long after we've seen that our desperate, hopeful
actions don't win us freedom? We do it because we've been conned. It's that
simple. We've been buffaloed into believing that "politics as usual" is our
only option. We've even been told that being political puppets is our
"responsibility" as citizens.
It's not. There are more effective things we can do. But first, look at the
devastation caused by this political con we've been suckered into.
Throwing away your money, your efforts, freedom, and your future
How many billions of dollars have freedom groups spent financing political
campaigns, lobbying, or struggling to change laws through legislative
letter-writing blitzes*? How many checks have firearms manufacturers written to
how many lawyers and lobbyists? How many hundreds or thousands of your own
hard-earned dollars have you poured into politics? How many thousands of hours
have you simply thrown away writing begging letters to politicians, standing at
rallies, voting, campaigning, sending faxes, and making calls to
"representatives" whose bored office staffers don't even bother to pass along
your messages and whose bosses wouldn't listen if they did?
How many times have you helped send some guy to Washington or Albany or
Sacramento thinking, "There, now he'll take care of us" -- only to have him
come back a month later telling you, "You just don't understand how things are
done on Capitol Hill" – as if he were representing the government, not
you?
We rally 'round Party R, alarmed by the terrible things Party D wants to do to
our Second Amendment rights. Party R marches into office, banners of "reform"
flying high. In the name of "compromise," Party R then does exactly what Party
D threatened to do – and comes back looking for more contributions and
votes! "Think how much worse it would have hurt if Party D had done it to you!"
they say. BOHICA!
And how many times have you felt sick as the public applauded the latest law or
regulation against freedom -- because peoples' hearts belong to the other side,
and their minds are uneducated about the real issues behind the feel-good
language of "safety," "preventing crime," and "reasonable measures" to "protect
children"?
Yes, you may have had an occasional, temporary victory, particularly at the
local or state level. (Even a card sharp knows he sometimes needs to let the
marks win to keep them hoping.) But in the end, every one of your political
dollars, every one of your countless political hours, has not only been wasted,
but has actually helped your opponents beat you in a rigged game.
The illusion that you're doing something to protect freedom has kept you
occupied like a sucker trying to spot the shell with the pea under it while
fast- talking politicians and remote bureaucrats carried out long-term
anti-freedom plans that your eye couldn't follow.
Fighting to lose your gun rights
Second Amendment fighters: What have you gained by relying on politicians?
-
You've lost the right to own some firearms unless you pay a tax and submit to a
government license.
-
You've lost the right to purchase a gun through a catalog and have it sent to
you.
-
You've lost the right to own some firearms, simply because politicians and
regulators thought they looked ugly or scary.
-
You've lost the right to carry a gun with big enough magazine capacity to be
useful in a serious firefight.
-
You've lost the right to defend yourself in schools, churches, city hall,
airports, parks, and hundreds of other places.
-
You've lost the right even to drive or walk in the neighborhood of a school.
-
You've lost the right to own guns if you were convicted of even certain minor
crimes decades ago (and along with that, you've lost the ex post facto
protections of the Constitution).
-
You've lost the right to carry concealed and exchanged it for a revocable,
government-granted privilege, complete with fingerprints and criminal
background checks.
-
You've lost the right to buy a gun quickly to protect yourself against someone
who's threatening you.
-
You've lost privacy in all but a handful of gun purchases (and are soon to lose
that, thanks to dogged and dishonest efforts to "close the gun- show
loophole").
-
And you've ended up living in a culture that demonizes you as a violent,
cretinous, "gun nut."
Despite short-term compromise "victories," the bottom line is that you've put
up with a steady erosion of rights that hasn't stopped since you father's,
grandfather's, or maybe even great- grandfather's day.
And now we rejoice because, with the Clinton regime gone, we believe politicians
are going to be a LITTLE LESS QUICK about taking the next round of our
rights. We get excited
when we learn that Attorney General John Ashcroft says the Second Amendment
protects an individual right to own firearms -- so excited that we overlook the
fine print, where he says next that Congress has the right to enact "gun
control" laws "for compelling state interests."
What exactly does "compelling state interests" mean? Who defines it? Who'll
enforce it -- and how brutally?
What kind of mentality have we developed, that we get excited
over something like that? Have we adopted the numbed mindset of the carnival
mark who walks away feeling victorious because he won some cheap piece of junk
not worth one-tenth the money he invested in the crooked game?
Have we come to expect to lose our freedoms? Have we come to believe
there's no realistic alternative? Good news: There is an alternative --
and a powerful one. But first, we've got to get over this BOHICA thinking
and the BOHICA,
"politics as usual" actions it leads to.
The key to understanding what's going on
Long ago, and for a very short time in America, what your teachers told you was
true. You could
change things by voting and campaigning and writing letters to your
representatives -- because they actually were your representatives.
An informed citizenry and a legislature made up of ordinary fellow citizens
could protect rights -- for a while. But that system was doomed to exactly the
fate it has met. A professional class of politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, and
lobbyists took over, and citizens (increasingly uninformed or dis-informed)
were left out in the cold. While the professional class still pays lip service
to "democracy," their fundamental relationship to us is to 1) get money out of
us, 2) make us dependent on them, and 3) keep us pacified enough that we don't
pick up pitchforks and tear their little con castle down.
Now, when a teacher, politician, U.N. worker, bureaucrat, or some other
government supporter preaches about your "responsibility" to vote and otherwise
"work within the system" she's basically conning you. She's either ignorant of
reality or trying desperately to prevent you from exercising the "pitchfork
option." She's like the carnival pitchman whose patter and flamboyant gestures
are designed to keep you from noticing what's going on behind the curtain.
A few fundamental facts to keep in mind:
-
Just as the press is free for the man who owns one, "The System" works for
those who run it. And that isn't you. That isn't any group you belong to, not
even the biggest and most powerful. "The System" works just fine - but doesn't
work for your interests.
-
The one or two politicians who actually care about your rights are vastly
outnumbered and rendered powerless by established ways of doing business. Their
bills rarely even make it out of committee, thanks to manipulative leaders and
procedural chicanery.
-
The whole process of "law-making" is about making more laws, not repealing
them. It's about centralizing power, not distributing it.
-
Even if your representative claims
to favor your rights, she almost certainly votes against them in huge, unread
bills passed late at night.
-
Freedom can't be won back exactly as it was lost, through a long, slow process
of lawmaking and regulation. The thousands of bureaucracies and
special-interest fiefdoms that cling to government are easy to build, almost
impossible to tear down. They'll only be dismantled if there's a vast change in
the American consciousness -- which we aren't achieving through all our
politicking.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that those posturing politicians
you're begging to aren't even the ones in charge anymore. As Mark
Bateman put it so well in a letter to Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership:
We defeat them in the ballot box. We defeat them in the legislature. We defeat
them in the courts. However, here is where they CAN AND ARE WINNING: the
bureaucracy. The bureaucracy has for quite some time been the NEW lawmakers
in our land and the ability of the BATF to simply make a ruling that turns YOU
into a FELON for possession of what was once legal is creating law
without representation. This is BANNING (through economics) and REGISTRATION
by bureaucratic ruling!
All the voting, rallying, and political letter writing in the world won't reach
this class of professional bureaucrats and enforcers. They're not elected by
you. They're not answerable to you. They don't care about you and your pathetic
little claims of "rights," and "justice."
Reality has changed. And if you don't change with it, your rights will soon
perish.
Changing the culture
"But if we don't keep doing this," the freedom fighters cry, "things will get
worse!"
Well, duh, things are getting worse ANYWAY.
In the ghettos of Europe, the "wise" men of the Jewish councils advised their
communities to play by the Nazis' rules – to go along to get along. "If
we don't," they warned, "things will get worse." People were loaded into cattle
cars. People were taken into the woods and shot. People were enslaved,
imprisoned, gassed, and flung naked into mass graves – and still the
"wise" men counseled cooperation because otherwise, "things will get worse."
How much worse do things have to get before some people realize you can't win
at a rigged political game? Stop cooperating in the con! If the mark won't
play, the con artist can't win.
You don't even have to take the risks the young ghetto fighters eventually
took. Your solution may be as simple as talking with your next-door neighbor.
But it requires thinking far outside the political box. The solution is a
grassroots reawakening. A rebirth of a Bill of Rights culture in America.
That's is a major change, to be sure. Accomplishing it will take hard work and
time - but no more
time than you're currently wasting on politics. Grassroots change is doable
because, instead of trying vainly to influence unreachable men and women far
away, it involves influencing the people around us -- family members,
co-workers, neighbors, fellow students, children, fellow activists -- people we
can reach.
Do something really dangerous, something that will truly scare our would-be
rulers into taking us seriously -- encourage people to think and give them the
tools to help them do it.
Bob LeFevre, the great, unconventional educator (on whom Robert Heinlein based
his memorable character Bernardo de la Paz in the novel The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress),
once told an audience that, if he could push a button and instantly impose
freedom he wouldn't do it, because unless people had a change of heart, they
would quickly turn around and create a new (and perhaps even worse) system of
oppression.
Once we have a Bill of Rights culture, including a strong, healthy appreciation
and understanding of the Second Amendment, the government will follow. (If it
fails to follow, it will fall.) Even the bureaucracy, unalterable as it seems
now, will be dismantled once people no longer want, and are no longer willing
to pay for, what it represents. On the other hand, if we don't attain a
freedom- oriented culture at the most basic, grassroots level, then all the
politics in the world won't save us.
What you can do
Let's be up front. This section includes an unabashed pitch for you to use JPFO
literature. We're also going to ask you to help us finance a TV documentary
"Innocents Betrayed," based on the new book Death by 'Gun Control'
by Aaron Zelman and Richard W. Stevens.
But don't tune out. Even if you decide never to buy a single booklet from JPFO,
the main thing you need to do to effect a grassroots culture change is the
same.
You need to convey the value of the Bill of Rights, very simply and clearly, to
people who've been "hypnotized and Jenningized" by television, who expect
instant gratification, and who've been soothed into believing that government's
purpose is to be a father and mother to them.
This kind of simple -- but factual and verifiable - pro-Bill of Rights message
is what we at JPFO specialize in.
Our Gran'pa Jack series of illustrated booklets gets across messages like these:
- "'Gun control' kills kids" (Gran'pa
Jack #1 ). Learn how governments use "gun control" to disarm
and murder people.
- "Can you get a fair trial in America?" (Gran'pa
Jack #2 ). Know the historic and present benefit of a fully
informed jury.
- "It's common sense to use our Bill of Rights" (Gran'pa
Jack #3 ). A simple, fun-to-read explanation of the Bill of
Rights.
- "'Gun control' is racist" (Gran'pa
Jack #4 ). Supporters of "gun control" in the black and other
minority communities really need to read this one.
- "The United Nations is killing your freedoms" (Gran'pa
Jack #5 ). See how the U.N. is trying to destroy the Bill of
Rights.
- "Will 'gun control' make you safer?" (Gran'pa
Jack #6 ). Exposes the myths behind "gun control" beliefs.
- "Do gun prohibitionists have a mental problem?" (Gran'pa
Jack #7 ). Learn to communicate more effectively with people
whose mindset has made them fear firearms.
Using the character of wise Gran'pa Jack and his ever-questioning family
members, these booklets convey a ton of specific legal, historic, factual
information while being as easy to read as comic books. They're perfect for
teaching people who've never thought about the issues, but they also contain
enough solid information to help persuade an educated opponent. (Even an
experienced freedom fighter will find new intellectual ammo in them.)
Use them almost anywhere with anybody. Put them on a counter at a gun store.
Hand them out at a school presentation. Distribute them at an information
booth. Give them to your children or neighbors. (Just the other day we got a
call from a National Guardsman stationed at a major airport. He asked us to
send 50 assorted copies for him to share with people in his unit. Realizing how
little some of the others knew about freedom, he thought of Gran'pa Jack as the
simplest way to educate them. We wouldn't be surprised if, after being passed
around among the Guardsmen, many of these Gran'pa Jacks ended up in the hands
of "security" screeners, airline passengers, and air crew members -- some of
whom especially
need to learn about the Bill of Rights.)
There are nearly one million Gran'pa Jack booklet already in circulation.
Imagine the impact if there were 50 million ... 100 million. As the late Sen.
Everett Dirksen said, "When I feel the heat, I see the light." Let's enlighten everybody.
You can order all the Gran'pa Jacks -- with deep discounts for quantity
orders -- at. http://www.jpfo.org/books.htm
.
Now JPFO is working on the top-quality, one-hour TV documentary, "Innocents
Betrayed." Louis James of the Henry Hazlitt Foundation said this documentary,
"… might well be the stake in the heart of victim disarmament that
destroys the 'gun control' myth and helps restore the fundamental human right
of self-defense in America, and beyond."
TV may be the best medium for reaching our fellow Americans. Unfortunately
it remains the most expensive. This historical opportunity is going
to cost $170,000. So we're asking everyone to make a one-time, tax-deductable
donation of $29 or more between now and June 2002. A $75 donation
gets you a free, autographed copy of the new book, Death by "Gun
Control." For a donation of $100 or more, you'll get Death
by "Gun Control" ($16.95 value, postpaid) and the new book, The
State vs. the People ($19.95 value), which shows how America is
sliding toward a police state. Donate more and you'll get both books
and a copy of the film. (See the announcement on the JPFO Web site
http://www.jpfo.org/ib.htm for details.)**
If you don't want to buy Gran'pa Jack booklets or donate to the documentary,
that's your decision, of course. But please go out and do something that gets
the Bill of Rights message across in ways as simple, dramatic, friendly, and
clear as Gran'pa Jack does it. You can start by distributing this article far
and wide. E-mail it to your friends, link to it on the Web, print copies and
hand them out to people who need to get the message.
Anything you do to create a freedom culture will be worth doing. But take a look
at what JPFO has to offer. There's a huge job ahead for everyone who wants to
fight effectively
for freedom. We've already done a lot of groundwork to give your efforts a more
powerful impact.
Open the eyes of people who've been conned. Make this generation the LAST of the
BOHICANS.
-----
*
References to the uselessness of letter writing apply only to letters sent
privately to politicians. JPFO endorses writing letters to the editor, which
can be an effective means of educating people. We have occasionally published
templates for such letters on our Web site. Open letters to politicians may
also be useful to whatever extent they are widely circulated and read by the
public.
**
All money collected will be placed in escrow. Books will be mailed to donors
when the entire amount has been raised. If we are unable to raise the needed
sum, all donations will be returned to the donors.
If you want to see a blueprint of what America could be like with
a Bill of Rights culture, read Hope, the novel that shows what
a genuinely freedom-loving president would do for the U.S. Order Hope
for just $14.95 (shipping and handling included -- 10% more in Canada)
and receive two of JPFO's famous "Gran'pa Jack" educational booklets:
Gran'pa Jack #2: "Can You Get a Fair Trial in America?" and Gran'pa
Jack #5: "The United Nations is Killing Your Freedoms,!" a $6.00 value,
free when you order Hope (http://www.jpfo.org/hope.htm)
If you want to understand the ultimate progression of "gun control," read
Death by "Gun Control": The Human Cost of Victim Disarmament by Aaron Zelman and
Richard W. Stevens. It begins with "reasonable measures" to control the unruly;
it ends in the death of a thousand cuts – and millions of disarmed
citizens. Order Death by "Gun Control" for just $16.95 (shipping and
handling included -- 10% more in Canada) and receive Gran'pa Jack #6: "Will
'Gun Control' Make You Safer," and Gran'pa Jack #7:"Do Gun Prohibitionists Have
a Mental Problem?" (a total $6.00 value, free when you order Death by
"Gun Control" today. (http://www.jpfo.org/deathgc.htm)
While everyone's busy fighting little skirmishes, the armored column of the
police state is rolling down the middle of the highway, almost unnoticed. If
you want to see the big picture of why America and other English-speaking
countries are losing freedom, read The State vs. the People: The Rise
of the American Police State, by Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelman. Order The
State vs the People for just $19.95 (shipping and handling included -- 10% more
in Canada) and receive three "Gran'pa Jack" educational booklets: Gran'pa Jack
#2: "Can you get a Fair Trial in America?," Gran'pa Jack #3: "It's Common Sense
to Use Our Bill of Rights," and Gran'pa Jack #5: "The United Nations is Killing
Your Freedoms!" (a total $10.00 value, free when you order The State vs
the People
today. (http://www.jpfo.org/tsvtp.htm)
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