It's just a sign.
They have one painted on the entrance to our
local Blockbuster, and there's another on the
glass front door of my doctor's office, as well.
The notice usually reads "No Firearms Permitted"
or something to that effect, and is often accompanied
by a graphic: the outline of a pistol or revolver
superimposed by a big red European "forbidden"
symbol.
As surely as a baseball cap turned around backwards,
it is a sign of unadulterated stupidity at work.
It might even be funny, if it weren't responsible
for the sudden, violent deaths of eight innocent
individuals this week at a shopping mall in Omaha,
Nebraska, not to mention countless others in the
recent past and many more in the future.
On countless occasions, I have challenged various
proponents of victim disarmament -- known in the
common, inaccurate vernacular as "gun control"
-- to put a big cardboard sign in the windows
of their homes:
WE HAVE NO GUNS IN THIS HOUSE
For some reason, nobody has ever taken up the
challenge. Could it be because a sign like that
is an open invitation to robbery, rape, and murder
and that the lying hypocrites I challenge know
it perfectly well?
The signs attempting to prohibit personal weapons
within public places, however, amount to the same
thing. Many decent individuals, respecting private
property and the rights of its owners, will obey
them. To those intent on harming others, they
say something else altogether:
OPEN SEASON
The only good thing about all this -- about all
the murder and mayhem such signs have caused over
the past few years -- is that more and more people,
right across the political spectrum, are beginning
to understand what's really going on here: that
empty-headed ideologues are willing to see their
customers writhing in pools of their own blood
on the faux granite floors of the nation's
shopping malls rather than know they're carrying
with them the means of preventing it.
The breakover point was the attack on a college
campus in Virginia, where personal weapons were
banned and a measure introduced in the state legislature
meant to overturn that policy had just been defeated.
For once, the media were full people willing to
recognize the fact that gun laws are only obeyed
by the law-abiding, who are then offered up as
human sacrifices by ideologues, to monsters who
won't.
But there's more -- much more -- that members
of the public have to learn about incidents like
this, and it won't be a bit easier to convince
them than it was with regard to the importance
of being armed.
Ordinarily, when this sort of thing happens,
I tell those who want to know why that
there is no reason, that the responsible parties
were evil or insane, and there is no rational
way of accounting for anything they do. It's more
important to learn what made such a thing possible
(an entirely different question) and the answer
is usually that government has deprived people
of the proper means of defending themselves.
But they say there's an exception to every rule.
Consider for a just moment: in 1992, when Robert
Hawkins -- who killed himself this week at the
age of 20, after shooting eight other people to
death -- was only five years old, U.S. Marshalls
and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
murdered Randy Weaver's wife and son and not only
got away with it, but got commendations and promotions.
Nobody could avoid hearing about it. it was all
over the news.
In 1993, when Hawkins was six years old, the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives,
along with the FBI's "Hostage Rescue Team"
massacred an entire churchful of innocent individuals
-- more than eighty of them, including two dozen
helpless little children -- in broad daylight,
on national television, and got away with it completely.
And again, it was all over the news.
In 1995, when Hawkins was eight years old, the
Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was
destroyed, 168 people were killed, and more than
800 were injured in an explosion that military
ordnance experts have testified could not have
occurred in the manner asserted by the government,
and which some scholars claim the government knew
about weeks in advance and let happen anyway,
purely for political purposes.
Once again, nobody could avoid seeing the horrible
images,
In 1996, when Hawkins was nine years old, the
President of the United States had a sleazy affair
with a White House intern, and responded to his
critics by bombing a pharmaceutical plant in the
Sudan.
Standup comics made jokes about it on TV.
In 2001, if the government is to be believed,
Muslim terrorists retaliated against decades of
American interference in their part of the world
(the government claims that it was because "they
hate our freedom") by hijacking four airliners
and flying three of them into the Pentagon and
the twin World Trade Center towers, killing at
least 3000 people -- although controversy continues
concerning the veracity of the government's account.
The government's response was to invade two countries
that had nothing to do with the incident, an act
that has so far resulted in the death of hundreds
of thousands of innocent people.
We continue to hear and see it every day.
At the same time, the current administration
began illegally detaining people, "disappearing"
them into secret prisons for indefinite terms
without trials or legal representation, and torturing
them.
They don't want us to know it, but we do.
One cynical reason offered for the invasions
is that they were more concerned with securing
petroleum sources and pipeline routes than with
the World Trade Center. A crude t-shirt slogan
exhorts the government to "kick their ass
and take the gas", to use force to get what
we want, even -- or especially -- when it belongs
to somebody else.
So when Hawkins decided his life was no longer
livable, and that he should "go out with
style", what example did he have to draw
upon? You want something? You hate somebody? You
don't like what they're saying?
Lock and load.
But that isn't the worst.
Here it comes.
Get ready.
Incidents like the one in Omaha and those that
preceded it are simply too damned convenient --
to the victim disarmament crowd -- for them to
be accepted any more as merely the random work
of individual psychotics.
There it is. I said it, and I'm glad.
More and more it appears to even the most neutral
observer that, just when Congress, the state legislature,
or even a city council is debating a new law that
infringes the right of the people to keep and
bear arms -- in this case it's the U.S. Supreme
Court taking up the question -- some lunatic comes
along, using whatever gun the liberals currently
want most to put political pressure on, and kills
a bunch of people.
It almost never fails.
I wrote about this phenomenon twenty years ago,
myself, although I only half-believed it then.
But after the all-too-convenient killings in Dunblane,
Scotland that gave Parliament what it needed to
outlaw all privately-owned guns in Britain, and
after a similar atrocity in Tasmania produced
similar legislative results in Australia, I stopped
doubting.
Go to: http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2006/tle388-20061008-02.html
How many more Robert Hawkins will be sacrificed
-- along with their innocent victims -- until
the enemies of freedom finally have their way?
If that's too conspiratorial, if it sounds too
weird or hysterical, remember what's at stake.
It's equally hard believing there are people who
see a positive value in the extermination of as
many of their fellow human beings as possible.
And yet each generation seems to produce enough
of them to mess the world up for everybody else.
The Ottomans. Hitler. Stalin. Mao. Pol Pot.
Every great slaughter in history has been preceded
by the mass disarmament of those who are to be
slaughtered. Australia is ready for genocide now.
So is Great Britain. Is America being softened
up the same way? Would those evil, crazy, or corrupt
enough to kill millions even hesitate to arrange
something like what happened in Omaha this week?
Go to: http://shop.jpfo.org/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=8
And: http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/deathgc.htm#dgc
There may be a way to stop this evil process.
What if everyone affected by the Omaha shootings
sued the mall? What if anyone who ever left a
gun in his car and had it stolen because they
weren't allowed to carry it inside, sued the mall?
What if anyone who was ever robbed, raped, or
hurt at the point of a gun stolen from such a
car, sued the mall?
Is there a liability lawyer in the house?
Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith
has been writing about guns and gun ownership
for more than 30 years. He is the author of 27
books, the most widely-published and prolific
libertarian novelist in the world, and is considered
an expert on the ethics of self-defense. His writings
may be seen on the following sites:
