You know it seems the more we talk about
it,
It only makes it worse to live without it.
But lets talk about it --
Oh, wouldn't it be nice?
-- The Beach Boys
Music by Brian Wilson
Lyrics by Tony Asher
Timothy Daniel "Big Tim" Sullivan, sometimes called
"King of the Tenderloin" was a man who was allowed to
live longer than he should have.
It could never have happened in a Bill of Rights Culture.
Part of the infamously corrupt Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party
machine that ruled New York from 1790 to 1960, like many political
criminals, Sullivan was anxious to assure his own safety -- and
racketeering profits -- by taking guns out of the hands of ordinary
individuals so that only his stooges, thugs, and toadies would
be armed.
In 1911, "Big Tim" rammed his so-called Sullivan Act
through the state legislature to achieve exactly that. To this
day, New York is a bizarre twilight dimension where the act of
self-defense -- basic to every living thing -- has been outlawed,
where politicos, bureaucrats, and the most corrupt police on the
face of the earth have shown for nearly a century that they would
rather see a woman raped in an alley and strangled with her own
pantyhose, than see her with a gun in her hand.
The only people who may "legally" own and carry guns
in New York are the cops themselves (some of whom, unlike most
of us, seem to make a perverse hobby of murdering innocent individuals
firing-squad style -- I refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Diallo
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Bell
for two egregious examples), the rich and powerful, and the friends
of the rich and powerful. Not surprisingly, the city suffers a
nightmarishly violent crime rate, and whenever there's even the
tiniest microscopic statistical fluctuation downward in those
terrible numbers, the politicians see in it a cause to get together,
slap each other on the back, and bask in mutual self-congratulation.
All of this because, once word got out concerning what Sullivan
was up to in the state legislature, he wasn't dragged out by a
mob, outraged by this vicious attack on their fundamental rights,
and hanged from the nearest lamppost -- or at least put on trial
for his crimes against the Constitution. (At http://www.amazon.com
you can look up and purchase Lone Star Planet, a splendid
little novel by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire, based on an
article by H.L. Mencken, about a future world where the right
choices have been made in this regard. And don't accept anybody's
word that it was written tongue in cheek.)
For the sake of contrast, just consider the state of Vermont
-- an otherwise extremely liberal state that presently boasts
of an openly socialist congressman -- where there are little or
no laws with regard to owning or carrying weapons, there is no
mechanism -- and no need -- for a licensing system, and where
the most difficult choice a person faces every morning is how
he or she is going to fit that autopistol or revolver into this
particular pants pocket. Vermont -- notoriously -- has the lowest
violent crime rate in the country, and is often identified by
not especially gun-friendly entities like the National Hall of
Immature Businesscreatures as the safest state in which to live.
It should be abundantly clear, then, that Robert A. Heinlein
was correct when he said, "An armed society is a polite society,"
that John Lott is correct when he says, "More guns, less
crime", and more importantly, that the wages of sin -- the
grievous sin of disregarding or suppressing the Bill of Rights
(think about New York again, where everybody expects to get mugged
from time to time in what's supposed to be the center of the greatest
civilization in all the world) -- are death.
The historic tragedy is that it isn't politicians, bureaucrats,
or cops who have been forced to pay that terrible price, but the
very individuals whose rights they have conspired to eradicate.
Things would be different in a Bill of Rights culture, where the
cops would be required to respect and enforce the individual's
Second Amendment rights, and most of the politicians and bureaucrats
would be out of a job.
Please note -- and never forget -- that we're most likely to
lose
our rights when we allow ourselves to be persuaded to deprive
others
of theirs. Aided by their accomplices in the round-heeled mass
media,
greedy, ambitious, power-hungry politicians typically find some
group
of individuals and begin to portray them as an unspeakable menace
to
the American Way of Life. If the group already happens to be poorly
understood or widely disliked, so much the better. Early on, it
was
Catholics and Freemasons who got to be the scapegoats. Later on,
it
was the Irish, the Italians and the Chinese. Until the second
half of
the 20th century, black people were always good targets, and so
were
Jews.
And so are gun-owners.
None of that could have happened in a Bill of Rights culture.
The Sullivan Act, for instance, was a not-so subtle attempt
to
keep guns out of the hands of Irish and Italian workers, especially
because, according to the media, they might all be communists
or
anarchists -- and thus didn't deserve to be protected by the Bill
of
Rights.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 was hurried through by congressmen
(abetted by leaders of the National Rifle Association) terrified
by
black militancy and the terrifying prospect of American cities
going
up in flames -- neither of which would have been a problem if
those
same congressman had ever shown the least respect for the Bill
of
Rights.
The late, unlamented Ugly Gun and Adequate Magazine Ban began
as
an attempt in California at disarming Mexican and Asian street
gangs
-- which only exist because of prohibitions that violate the Bill
of
Rights. If drug laws and the minimum wage were abolished, gangs
would
evaporate.
The Brady Law finally became disgusting reality when politicians
-- led by a President notorious for his abusive sexism, enabled
by the
Senator from Viagra -- noticed that a majority of the pistols
and
revolvers in this country were being purchased by women who had
begin
to exercise their freedom to be "armed and female" under
the Bill of
Rights.
Each of the groups in question had finally gotten tired of being
pushed around and began to push back until today they no longer
make
good targets, and the politicians have to go further afield to
find
scapegoats.
Today it's "terrorists", especially followers of Mohammed,
who
have become the reason that you and I must lose our rights "for
the
duration". In the process, we are losing a glorious future
that the
idiots, criminals, and lunatics who rule over us are incapable
of
imagining.
Yes, there certainly are criminally violent fundamentalist Muslims
in the world -- although the exact degree of their responsibility
for
what happened in New York on September 11, 2001 has yet to be
properly
established.
Without a doubt, there are also criminally violent fundamentalist
Christians, criminally violent fundamentalist Jews, criminally
violent
fundamentalist Hindus, and maybe, conceivably, even criminally
violent
fundamentalist Buddhists, each of whom wish that they had the
power to
destroy America and everthing and everybody else they happen to
be out
of sorts with. There certainly were criminally violent anarchists
in
the past, criminally violent Bolsheviks, criminally violent Leninists,
criminally violent Stalinists, and criminally violent followers
of
Hitler.
Carrie Nation with her axe was criminally violent.
But here in the United States, there have never been a millionth
of the number -- nor have they been capable of a billionth of
the
murder and destruction -- that politicians and bureaucrats, always
eager to enhance their power over our lives at the expense of
our
freedom -- have claimed there were. In the end, the brilliant
idea
that was America has always suffered vastly more damage at the
hands
of those who profess loudly to be its saviors, than from any threat,
internal or external, that those saviors have claimed to be saving
us
from.
While it may be true that the monstrosity of September 11, 2001
was carried out by a handful of political and religious criminals,
it
is Big Tim Sullivan and his philosphical heirs who are ultimately
responsible. Their pernicious dogma, that the average individual
is
inept and unstrustworthy, and that the means of self-defense should
only be in the hands of government-authorized experts, is what
got
3000 people murdered that day, no matter who was brandishing the
box-cutters.
It could never have happened in a Bill of Rights Culture.
A Bill of Rights culture is a culture in which the first ten
amendments to the Constitution -- commonly known as the Bill of
Rights
-- are the political equivalent of the Ten Commandments, and in
which
every politician, bureaucrat, and policeman on pain of imprisonment,
fine, or in some instances, death, is required to respect them
as
such.
A Bill of Rights culture is a culture in which it's universally
recognized that all human progress and prosperity -- every aspect
of
the human ability to solve problems, including those encountered
during emergencies and disasters -- is a direct result of freedom,
which, if only for the sake of our survival, must never be reduced
or
curtailed.
A Bill of Rights culture is a culture in which no excuse is
sufficient to justify violating the rights of any individual for
any
reason -- unless that individual has violated somebody else's
rights
first.
A Bill of Rights culture is a culture in which each and every
one
us us knows where he or she stands, because our rights are written
in
stone and may not be trimmed, altered, or weasel-worded out of
by
politicians.
It is a time for choices.
Given sufficient freedom, we can accomplish great things, things
never before seen in human history, benefitting not only ourselves
today, but countless billions to come in future generations. We
can
build spaceships and space elevators, go back to the Moon and
on to
Mars, to the asteroids, to the Jovian moons, and, eventually to
other
stars. We can ferret out the innermost secrets of the subtlest
nuclear
subparticle and learn to build warp drives, forcefields, antigravity
devices. We can discover how to regrow severed limbs, overcome
every
paralysis, reverse aging, and reasonably expect to live for a
thousand
years.
Or we can simply watch, from the inside, as Western Civilization
-- the most admirable culture in human history -- tears itself
to
shreds over yet another perverse obsession with a largely imaginary
menace.
Those who have cynically profited -- politically and monetarily
--
by hysterically screaming at us that there are terrorist bogeymen
under our beds can always watch the collapse from the safety of
their
luxurious penthouses in Switzerland, Monaco, Sao Paulo, or Rio
de
Janiero.
Or, if we make the right choices, they can watch us build a
future
of peace, freedom, progress, and prosperity from the misery of
their
cells.
Start by going to http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/bor.htm
and looking over the amazing array of languages -- sixteen so
far -- that our esteemed hosts, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Ownership have had the Bill of Rights translated into. Another
way to start is to celebrate Bill of Rights Day with us on December
15, to commemorate the day in 1791 when those first ten amendments
became the highest law of the land.
Go to: http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/bord.htm
Finally, I never thought I'd say it, but there oughta be a law:
"For the duration of the emergency, all edicts, decrees,
ordinances,
laws, and statutes affecting the trade, purchase, ownership, or
carrying of personal weapons shall be null and void; any attempt
to
violate or evade this measure on the part of an elected or appointed
official or a government employee of any kind shall be punished
by no
less than 25 years at hard labor, without possibility of parole,
in
that prison which currently has the worst record for deadly criminal
violence."
Wouldn't it be nice?
=============================================================
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:
The Webley Page: http://www.lneilsmith.org
The Libertarian Enterprise: http://www.ncc-1776.org
The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel, Roswell,
Texas, and TimePeeper (August 2007): http://www.bigheadpress.com
LNS at Random (blog): http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/
LNS at JPFO: http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/lneilsmith.htm
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