All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Consequences In Life, Often Unanticipated

 

12. GUNS

“...The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” - Constitution of the United States, Amendment II, Dec. 15, 1791

“Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.” - Thomas Paine

Guns are a compact, powerful means of defending one's self, or assaulting someone else. The first is admirable, and the second, usually not. Politicians deliberately link the words "defense" and "assault," which have entirely different meanings. Rather than punishing the second, far too many politicos attempt to remove the ability to do the first from hundreds of millions of citizens; naturally receiving rapturous applause from the gun-haters. The press gladly goes along with the output of the irrational ones who shriek over and over that, "guns kill people," and we must get them out of everyone's hands.

I have never heard of a gun killing anyone. Guns are merely machined pieces of hardened metal. They must be held, loaded, pointed, and the trigger pulled by someone, in order for them to operate. A gun can kill no one, as it is a totally inanimate object. Other such objects are autos, poisons, bricks, rocks, pens and pencils, airplanes, gas, electricity, nicotine, whiskey, fire, dynamite, fertilizer and fuel oil made into a bomb, or thousands of objects, which, in the hands of a demonized criminal can kill, but not without the aid of a human mind and action. It is impossible for a gun, unassisted, to kill anyone.

Grisly photos and stories are searched out by the biased media to show how evil these inanimate objects are. Several cities are suing gun manufacturers for simply making them. Since automobiles kill over 43,000 a year, I can not understand why these idiots don't sue auto manufacturers, or for that matter bathtub producers, since thousands die from falls in them. 500 kids die in bike accidents each year. Sue the manufacturer? Over 1,000 die in residential fires each year. Over 1,000 kids under the age of 15 die each year from drowning in pools or in boating accidents. Sue the manufacturers? Statistics and polls are presented to show that all reasonable minded citizens would like to have everyone's gun confiscated, even though the entire matter is impossible, and the statistics and polls are total untruths. America has been treated to one of the most outlandish, deceptive, negative campaigns in history...about guns.

The consequences of attempts to make guns illegal, are that innocents may not be able to defend themselves in time of need. Criminals can always get a gun. They can be bought illegally 'on the street,' as dozens of TV magazine shows have proven. Mayhem can be committed by anyone, with any weapon at hand, be it a rock, automobile, knife, or even a telephone. In South Africa, tens of thousands die each year from stabbings, with no guns involved. In most cases of a gun being used to murder innocents, if there had been a gun in the possession of a bystander, the murderer would have been quickly dispatched before he completed his nefarious scheme. Be it on a Long Island Railroad commuter train, in a schoolyard, post office, or restaurant, there have always been innocents handy, who could have stopped the rampage instantly, if they had been carrying a gun.

An absolute fact, is that each year guns instantly prevent over a million crimes from being committed. Unloaded guns, loaded guns, or guns held in experienced or inexperienced hands, but guns in the hands of a would be victim, and pointed at the criminal, stop over a million crimes a year. There is no greater occupational hazard for a criminal, than a gun in the hands of a nervous, terrified householder or storekeeper. "Now look lady, don’t point that thing at me, it may go off! You don’t know how to handle it. See, your hands are shaking. I'll just leave and we'll forget I ever saw you. Sorry I upset you. Now you put that thing down, and I'm out of here!" A criminal getting off that easily would be lucky.

I will not justify a certain town in Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, by naming it, because that town outlawed the possession of guns a few years ago, and any one caught with one was prosecuted. Idiotic citizens by the hundreds turned in their guns, and guess what? Crime escalated by tens of percentage points. Why not? Burglars and thieves didn’t have to be afraid any longer, knowing they probably aren't going to be shot at by a housewife or businessman. I am a life member of the National Rifle Association, (NRA) and Gun Owners of America (GOA) and am proud of it. I mention this only because a member of the NRA gets a monthly magazine titled, "The American Rifleman," and each month I eagerly await reading one of the first features, titled "The Armed Citizen," which quotes actual newspaper stories of gun owners who dispatched criminals with their guns. A typical entry reads, "92 year old Conrad Schwarzkopf had been sleeping in his Long Island, New York home when a punk four times his junior barged into his bedroom, beating him up. Schwarzkopf tried to fight back but was no match for the younger man, and wound up being tossed into a closet. There, as the young man ransacked the house looking for money, Schwarzkopf found his semi-automatic pistol he kept in the closet and emerged from its darkness firing, striking his assailant in the hand and chest. The injured criminal immediately ran to a pay phone where he called the police and confessed to robbing a house and being shot by the homeowner." - The New York Times, 9/7/95.

An Associated Press story in November 1993, illustrates what can happen if an honest citizen carries a gun, because one never knows what may happen.

"It seemed like a perfect night for a mugging. The street was dark, the hour late, the Brooklyn neighborhood rough. But the teen-age boys who stalked Arthur Boone as he left a corner market Sunday missed one thing: the 44 caliber Magnum tucked in his belt. One of the muggers, nicknamed "B-Boy," put the barrel of a BB gun to Boone’s head. The other, "Taz," reached for his wallet. Then Boone fired three shots heard ‘round the city. ...Boone shot and killed his assailants with the unlicensed .44. He waited for police to arrive, told them he was a victim of past muggings, and quietly surrendered."

The story goes on for many paragraphs, but the BB gun was an exact replica of a real gun, the perpetrators had police records, and Boone was taking no chances. He went free.

From the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to the 1968 Gun Control Act, America had a lower crime rate than it has since that act became law. 88% of all assaults do not involve firearms; 77% of all robberies do not involve firearms; and 41% of homicides do not involve firearms. An even higher percentage of car thefts, burglaries, embezzlements, frauds, acts of vandalism and arson, do not involve firearms. Gun control legislation is a total swindle, deliberate deception, unnecessary, and disarms innocent civilians, who need to protect themselves and their property.

In May of 1982, Kennesaw Georgia enacted a law requiring every household to own a firearm. I have personally talked to the town clerk and police chief to verify this fact, plus the astounding statistics that have followed. In the first year, crime decreased 16%, something like 60% the second year, and now residential burglaries have decreased by 89%. Why would a criminal be so foolish as to try to rob or burgle, when everyone in town has a gun? Might as well go somewhere else where they don't have such a law...you’ll live a lot longer. Delaware County, New York has a population of 47,000. Those 47,000 people own 44,000 handguns, and 220,000 long guns. According to Sheriff Len Rutherford, "That’s about 5 for every man, woman, and child in the county. If a burglar is planning to break in somewhere, he won’t do it if he knows there are guns in the house." The town of Virgin, Utah has no measurable crime other than dogs running loose, or minor violations of that type. Maybe that's because an ordinance states, "In order to provide for and protect the safety, security, and general welfare of the town and its inhabitants, every household residing in the Virgin Town limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition thereof."

One of the first things a would be dictator does is confiscate all guns. Hitler did it, as did the Marxists after the Russian Revolution. Could Hitler have gotten very far if the German citizens had possession of personal firearms? Hardly, as the Nazis were in the minority, and never did achieve majority status. The Nazis had arms; arms that had been confiscated ("registered") from the citizens they later killed, maimed, and tortured. When you register guns, it is all too easy to say you aren't "qualified" to own it, when you are a would be dictator. Here is a direct 1935 quote from Adolph Hitler, after he registered, and then confiscated the guns. "This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." An armed elite can always rule an unarmed majority...without their consent. Any nation's elite, including America's, live in dread of the majority getting enough of their dictums, and rising up. This is especially true of an armed majority, which America happens to have. Tyrants are always wholeheartedly in favor of gun control. It's not easy to murder and brutalize those who can fight back. Yes, and that includes American tyrants and wannabes. Gun control worked well in Kosovo!

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson

"God created all men, but Sam Colt made them equal." - 19^th Century saying.

Colt invented the revolver. The revolver made skills with swords, bows and arrows, and other crude instruments of conquest unnecessary. Guns require little skill and strength to operate and protect ones self with...a great benefit to humankind.

The problem is not guns, but criminals. The problem is criminals being released by bubble headed judges upon the promise to "go straight," or other such nonsense. Our police work so hard rounding up the scum, only to have their noble efforts unwound by nincompoop judges. Compact machines, (guns) are not the problem. If a person has evil intent, the lack of a gun will not stop him, because he can get one. If he doesn't have a gun, a crowbar, rock, knife, or similar weapon will often suffice, but a would be victim's possession of a gun is the criminal's worst nightmare.

An example of the above mentioned judges can be illustrated by a syndicated column written by Mark Patinkin, which appeared in the Dec. 10, 1993 Rocky Mountain News, parts of which are as follows:

"...I give you the case of Jerome Sandusky. Sandusky is 80 now, very alert, a former textile executive who lived most of his life in Manhattan. After the mugging, he felt he had to move, so he’s living in New Jersey today, living out his retirement years on too little money.

"...He was due to have dinner with friends and headed into a subway station near his Upper West Side home. What happened next was very quick. Suddenly, two young men grabbed him. His glasses were knocked off and broken. He was hit on the nose and began to bleed. He was pushed against a wall and immobilized as one of the men put an arm around his neck. The other man began going through his pockets. Sandusky tried to holler, but at that, the man behind him said, "If you don’t shut up, I’ll choke you to death." He felt he was going to die.

"...That’s when a plainclothes policeman with the New York Transit Authority likely saved his life. The policeman and a woman partner heard Sandusky and ran down the stairs. Announcing they were police, they ordered the assailants to stop. They ignored them and began running in opposite directions. The policeman shot one, Bernard McCummings, hitting him in the spine, while the other got away.

"Now let’s fast forward. McCummings was convicted of assault and served two years, serving it in a wheelchair, since he was paralyzed from the policeman's shot. He decided he too was a victim and filed suit for damages against the New York Transit Authority, and was awarded $4.3 million."

Several appeals, running all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulted in nothing. McCummings got his $4.3 million. The Supreme Court says criminals have nothing to worry about, as long as they run away. Crime does pay. The old adage and bumper strip is factual, which says; "When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns." The politicians are trying to make that come true. Speaking of wise sayings, I recently saw a bumper strip that proclaimed, "Teddy Kennedy’s car has killed more people than my gun."

Government insists that we use seat belts, drive within the speed limit, and does every other sort of thing to protect us from real or imagined harm. Our tools must conform to safety standards, as must our homes, businesses, cars, appliances, and even clothes. Simultaneously, politicians attempt to rob us of our ability to protect ourselves from our enemies. In Switzerland, every man is required to own a gun, know how to use it, and have 10,000 rounds of ammunition in his home. There is little crime in Switzerland.

The consequences of confiscating our guns have not happened yet, as Americans fight for these rights tooth and nail, but there would be hideous crime and citizen pummeling by the criminal set, if guns were finally confiscated from the non-criminals. I don’t want to ever see those consequences. Another bumper strip reads, "Sure! You can have my gun...if you can pry it from my dead, cold, stiff fingers."

During the famous Rodney King riots, calls to "911" proved fruitless. The police openly admitted they couldn't possibly protect the innocents, as there was too much crime. That was not a new situation, and it was confirmed by Morgan Reynolds, a scholar at Texas A&M University, who has studied the statistics. His facts are as follows: "The police cannot protect people from crime. The police are the folks who come around to investigate after you have been shot, raped, or robbed. Occasionally, they catch the villain. For example, only 7% of all burglaries result in an arrest, and only 1.2% result in imprisonment for an average of 13 months. That comes to 4.8 days in jail for each burglary."

The Rodney King affair is a dark blot on the U.S. jurisprudence system. After the police were freed by one jury, the federal government, in violation of the double jeopardy clause in our Constitution's Fifth Amendment, and in total violation of the Seventh Amendment, tried them again and saw to it they were convicted. The police went to jail, while King was not only free, but got millions from the LAPD. He was drunk, speeding recklessly through residential neighborhoods, and on probation when the police attempted to arrest him. He has since run afoul of the law several times. Our sacred Constitution’s Fifth Amendment says in part, "…nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The Seventh Amendment was quoted in Chapter 10, and does not allow for people to be tried twice for the same crime in different courts, only once for the same offense. Not satisfied with the first trial jury's verdict, the feds concocted a "deprivation of Constitutional rights through state law" case for the second trial, which was an outrage. If anyone’s "rights" were deprived, it was the police and citizenry of Los Angeles, by allowing Rodney King to be out of jail for even a minute. The LA Police were sorely abused.

A letter to "Dear Abby" regarding the King trial is informative:

"The Rodney King Trial was on TV for 6 hours each day. I heard and saw videotapes and testimony of the normal effect of stun guns—police in training receiving a stun gun shot, and falling like pole-axed steers—yet Rodney King only blinked and kept coming at the officers.

>"I heard testimony of Mr. King's throwing officers—two at a time—to the ground like rag dolls. All this was in the 20 minutes before the famous one-minute 'bite' that was all most of the media and a segment of our population saw.

"I was finally given the opportunity to see the tape in its entirety. Here I saw a man who had been hit four times with 50,000 volts of electricity continue to fight and resist police. I saw him lunging at a policeman. I saw him defying all normal reaction to pain. I saw a brief moment when he lay still, and at that moment one policeman reached for his handcuffs. Then the man was up on his hands and knees again."

King was freed, continues to abuse the law, the brave LA Police went to jail, and Los Angeles is out millions of dollars to King alone, not to mention the hideous riots that broke out when the police were freed after the first trial. Politicos successfully outlawed certain automatic weapons in 1995, saying that people didn’t need such weapons. Those hapless storeowners in LA could have used automatic, or any other weapons during the riots. When the riots started, thousands went to buy guns to defend themselves and their property…but were denied. California law dictates that issuance of a gun permit has a mandatory 15 day waiting period. By then it was too late, and thousands of law-abiding businessmen and homeowners lost everything they owned, by not being able to protect themselves. The Los Angeles rioters burned more than 5,300 buildings, caused the death of 58, injury to over 2,300, and the property damage was more than $750 million. Had those innocents all been owners of guns of any type, those riots would have been extremely brief. As it was, they went on and on, with nothing to stop the lawless from robbing, burning, beating, killing, and maiming.

Think about the police and their crime fighting abilities, and you will have to quickly admit that in perhaps 99% of the cases, the police arrive on the crime scene after the crime has been committed, to fill out forms, take pictures, and make reports. Burglar alarms notify the police after the place has been broken into, and by the time the police respond, it is too late. Police mostly ride around in air conditioned cars with closed windows. Criminals can hide in bushes or dark places, climb onto roofs, and in hundreds of ways be invisible to a passing, virtually soundproof patrol car. How can police possibly stop crime? They can’t, openly admit it, and that’s why they urge the installation of alarm systems in both homes and cars.

I can think of nothing finer than to have enough money to hire a "home cop" to protect me. Businesses and factories hire security forces that are armed, and do indeed protect them. Isn’t the best possible home cop, a gun? Think about it. A home cop that requires no salary, no feeding, no deductions, is on duty 24 hours a day, and can even be carried about wherever you go. In confrontations with criminals, armed citizens have their guns taken away in only 1% of the cases. Armed citizens mistakenly kill innocents 30 times a year, compared with the police, who accidentally kill innocents 330 times a year. (Remember that there are over 200 million guns in private hands in America.) The crime rate in the wild, woolly, frontier west, was lower than in many of today's major cities, and I might add, the justice was swifter and fairer. The so-called "Saturday night special" is a complete misnomer, but even a cheap gun will provide adequate protection for the innocents from would be marauders, burglars, rapists, or robbers.

Is there any better way for a 110 pound woman to dispatch a would be 225 pound rapist or robber, than to point a gun at him, and pull the trigger? The would be victim of a criminal can handily eliminate a dangerous situation without getting close enough for actual physical contact, abuse, or overpowering. Know of any other method of doing that?

I do not understand why the liberals, and even many Republicans want to disarm law-abiding citizens, who deter far more crime than do the police. Guns do not kill, people kill. Statistics from the Johns Hopkins Injury Prevention Center show deaths of children from birth to age 14, over a five year reporting period, resulted from the following: Firearms - 2.9%. Other - 97.1%. A study of homicides by the Chicago Police Department showed that 85% of murderers had previous criminal records. There is no reason to disarm the law-abiding citizen. The so-called "assault weapon," includes any semi-automatic, which the gun haters are staying up nights devising plans to confiscate. In an 11-year period, only 11 officers were listed as being killed by them, 58 with some other weapon, 126 with their own gun, and 737 in traffic accidents.

Maybe we need beer glass control, because Discover Magazine reports that in the United Kingdom, there are a reported 5,000 attacks on citizens each year...by thrown beer glasses. The liberals captured the British political system in May 1997, and on June 11^th, guns were actually outlawed in England. By a 384-181 vote, the House of Commons voted to outlaw pistol ownership in Britain. The AP story quotes labor lawmaker Austin Mitchell, who said the bill, "doesn’t do anything about illegal weapons, which are a major problem." Australia also outlawed guns in 1998. What will happen to the crime rate now? It has actually happened: Guns have been outlawed, and only outlaws will have guns...in England and Australia. In Australia, citizens, who by law were forced to do so, because they were registered, turned in 640,381 personal firearms. Since the Aussies have collected and made gun ownership illegal, armed robberies are up 69%, assaults with guns up 28%, murders with guns up 19% and home invasions up 21%. Registration gives the names and addresses of lawful owners, making confiscation easy.

The incorrectly titled "assault weapon" is basically an ordinary gun that fires at each pull of the trigger without re-cocking, correctly called a "semi-automatic," which is very common. Semi-automatics are in no way machine guns, which have been outlawed since 1936. "Assault weapon" is merely a literary tool that has been successfully used by the anti-gun lobby, and the phrase has attached itself to liberal politicians like chewed bubble gum on a hot sidewalk. The phrase "assault weapon," is a gross miss-labeling of a modern gun, and nothing else. Outlawing "assault weapons" is merely another step in the seizing of our guns, by those who should know better. In America, more people were killed by baseball bats in 1992, than were killed by so called "assault weapons."

The ratio of "good guys" to "bad guys" in America today, has to be at least 50 to 1. There are very few really bad guys who cause the trouble, make the papers, inhabit the jails, and are a nuisance that has become intolerable. A gun is our best protection against the bad guys, and an instrument that will obviously turn a bad guy, not necessarily into a "good" one, but certainly one that is afraid to practice his trade as much, if at all, because of the inherent danger to his life.

Several states have begun to issue carry permits, allowing citizens to carry concealed guns on their person wherever they may choose to go during the course of their travels. While few permits have been issued, the startling statistics do not lie. A detailed study by the Chicago Law School shows that in counties with populations of more than 200,000, right-to-carry laws have reduced murder rates by more than 13%. Additionally, when women carry a concealed handgun, their murder rate decreases four times as much as men's. Florida heads the list of states issuing carry permits, more than 300,000 between Oct. 1, 1987 and Dec. 31, 1995. Only five violent crimes were committed with permitted pistols, and none of these resulted in fatalities. Ever see a Columbine School rampage at a gun show?

Private ownership of guns has always been inextricably identified with freedom. Freedom from overpowering government or overpowering criminals, who sometimes are indistinguishable, as in Revolutionary times. Privately owned guns made it possible for ordinary farmers and citizens to overpower the British. Without there having been lots of rifles and guns, we might still be ruled by Mother England.

Kids have always played "guns," or "cops and robbers," using toy guns. The anti-gun extremists have gone so far as to severely punish kids who might bring a toy gun to school. The peak of absurdity came in January 1997; when 10 year old Jeffrey Parks brought his 11-inch high plastic "GI Joe" toy to school. "GI Joe" has a one-inch plastic pistol with it, and after the panic-stricken teacher confiscated the one-inch toy, little Jeffrey was expelled from his elementary school. The punishment was later changed to "one year probation." The Seattle School District considered this absurdity, "zero tolerance."

I am sick to death of the continual "civil rights" nonsense, and it is obvious that one of our main civil rights, according to our Constitution's Second Amendment is the right to own a gun. One never hears of that "civil right" does one?

"It is much safer to be feared than loved." - Machiavelli. Maybe that's why, according to a study by the General Accounting Office, (GAO) an astounding 60,000 government employees in 45 different agencies now carry guns as a routine part of their job, and not just law enforcement agents, but bureaucrats employed by the departments of Education, Fish and Wildlife Service, Small Business Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and even poultry inspectors and disaster aid workers. In 1996, 2,436-armed personnel were added to the federal government's payroll. Congressman Ron Paul, one of the really good guys from Texas, blasted the "massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators." How about gun control for the federal government? See why we need ours?

A book published in 1987 titled "The Battle Of Athens," by Stephen Byrum vividly portrays how citizen ownership of guns actually saved this Tennessee community from a band of crooked politicians who had hamstrung the county for years with crooked elections that kept bums in office. No one was killed, but the guns effectively booted them out of office.

SOLUTIONS

"Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety or safety to us, as in our own hands?" - Patrick Henry

Our Government has betrayed us. Americans should be able to not only determine their economic, political, and other destinies, but their physical destiny as well, meaning that they must be allowed to protect themselves. There should be no laws of any kind regarding guns. Everyone should own them, and if that happened, crime would all but disappear. Owning guns are a Constitutional right as specified in the Second Amendment. There were no such laws until that traitorous disaster, FDR, persuaded his Democrat Congress to pass the National Firearms Act of 1934, to be followed by the Gun Control Act of 1968. Has crime escalated since then? You bet! How would I cut crime? Simple. Re-arm the citizenry, and restore our Constitutional rights. Disband the ATF, (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) require everyone to own a gun after passing an instant check for being a felon, or having a criminal or mental illness record. (This is not registration!)

In September 1997, among the crowd at Sam's Restaurant in Jacksonville Florida, were two old geezers who were each licensed to carry a gun...and were doing so. They were eating at separate tables, and didn't know each other. A robber came in and attempted to hold up the joint, at which point both of them arose from their seats and shot the robber, sending him to the hospital and certainly thwarting his chances of a successful heist. The restaurant owner now proudly shows off the two small bullet holes in the wall of his restaurant. The story made NBC News with Tom Brokaw on September 26, 1997. That's a solution for guns, not what England, Australia, and now California have done, which is confiscating all or some licensed guns. The millions of gun owners who had enough sense not to register theirs, are unknown to the law enforcement agents in those two unfortunate countries, and California, who can still defend themselves.

Think about how much time and money, gun-toting civilians can save. If a heinous crime is committed, and the villain is caught by the police, the court logjam, time spent in jail, parole agents, and the whole nine yards, costs a fortune, and most of the time the criminal goes free. If that crime were stopped short, and the criminal sent to his reward by a gun carrying citizen, all that razz-ma-tazz legal stuff would be saved...a mighty savings for the taxpayer! I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot to kill a murderer, rapist, child molester, or a criminal performing other serious outrages. Guns are the honest citizen's friends, and the instant justice they can perform is simply wonderful.

Laws should mandate severe prison terms for anyone using a gun to commit or attempting to commit a crime. Schools should have compulsory courses teaching firearm safety and use, and all teachers should have a gun on them at all times. Some states, including Colorado, where I live, already have laws that allow shooting someone found on your premises without your permission, and such laws should be adopted by all states. "Make My Day" laws should be the norm. Pennsylvania law mandates a minimum prison term of 5 years for anyone convicted of committing a crime with a gun. Carrying legally owned guns should be encouraged. The thousands that are killed, robbed, raped, and assaulted each year would be greatly reduced by gun carrying citizens. Guns are the friends of the law abiding, and in our hands are the archenemies of criminals. Besides the licensed ones, always keep a few that are unlicensed and unregistered.

Registering guns is merely an identity card for future confiscation, and if history repeats itself, even genocide. In each of the seven genocides in this century, taking 56 million lives, there were gun control laws on the books. Genocide is impossible without gun control. To those who say registration is not confiscation, allow me to point out that England, Australia, and California are right now confiscating legally registered guns from innocent civilians, who foolishly believed rotten politicians' promises not to do so. These good faith gun owners handed over their names and addresses to government, who now is confiscating their prime means of protection.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to Charles Maxwell, whose "ABC's of Gun Control" was published on the wonderful web site lewrockwell.com on Sept. 22, 2K. They are, according to him:

• An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
• A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
• Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface.
• Gun control is not about guns; it is about control.
• If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
• If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
• Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
• If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.
• Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
• The United States Constitution © 1791. All rights reserved.
• What part of "Shall not be infringed" do you not understand?
• The Second Amendment is in place in case they ignore others.
• 64,999,987 firearm owners killed no one yesterday.
• Guns have only two enemies: Rust and Politicians.
• You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
• 911 - Government sponsored Dial a Prayer.
• Assault is a behavior, not a device.
• Criminals love gun control - it makes their jobs safer.
• If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.
• Only government is afraid of citizen control.
• You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.
• Know guns, know peace and safety. No guns, no peace and safety.
• Removing people's right to bear arms creates slavery.
• The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

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