"I don’t believe people should be able to own guns." — Barack Obama
http://www.lneilsmith.org/
Why Did it Have to be … Guns?
by L. Neil Smith
ln…@lneilsmith.org
Over the past 30 years, I’ve been paid to write almost two million words,
every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and
gun-ownership. Naturally, I’ve thought about the issue a lot, and it has
always determined the way I vote.
People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker,
and a single- issue voter, but it isn’t true. What I’ve chosen, in a world
where there’s never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one
political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any
politician — or political philosophy — is made of, right down to the
creamy liquid center.
Make no mistake: all politicians — even those ostensibly on the side of
guns and gun ownership — hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists
on bringing it up. They hate it because it’s an X-ray machine. It’s a
Vulcan mind-meld. It’s the ultimate test to which any politician — or
political philosophy — can be put.
If a politician isn’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average
constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware
store and paying cash — for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun,
anything — without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn’t
your friend no matter what he tells you.
If he isn’t genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing
that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking
home without asking anybody’s permission, he’s a four-flusher, no matter
what he claims.
What his attitude — toward your ownership and use of weapons — conveys
is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn’t trust you, then why in
the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?
If he doesn’t want you to have the means of defending your life, do you
want him in a position to control it?
If he makes excuses about obeying a law he’s sworn to uphold and defend —
the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights — do you want to entrust
him with anything?
If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if
he calls you names only he thinks are evil — like "Constitutionalist" —
when you insist that he account for himself, hasn’t he betrayed his oath,
isn’t he unfit to hold office, and doesn’t he really belong in jail?
Sure, these are all leading questions. They’re the questions that led me
to the issue of guns and gun ownership as the clearest and most
unmistakable demonstration of what any given politician — or political
philosophy — is really made of.
He may lecture you about the dangerous weirdos out there who shouldn’t
have a gun — but what does that have to do with you? Why in the name of
John Moses Browning should you be made to suffer for the misdeeds of
others? Didn’t you lay aside the infantile notion of group punishment when
you left public school — or the military? Isn’t it an essentially
European notion, anyway — Prussian, maybe — and certainly not what
America was supposed to be all about?
And if there are dangerous weirdos out there, does it make sense to
deprive you of the means of protecting yourself from them? Forget about
those other people, those dangerous weirdos, this is about you, and it has
been, all along.
Try it yourself: if a politician won’t trust you, why should you trust
him? If he’s a man — and you’re not — what does his lack of trust tell
you about his real attitude toward women? If "he" happens to be a woman,
what makes her so perverse that she’s eager to render her fellow women
helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should
you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some
infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun
she doesn’t want you to have?
On the other hand — or the other party — should you believe anything
politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and
make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry
weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring
voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after
another with other countries?
Makes voting simpler, doesn’t it? You don’t have to study every issue —
health care, international trade — all you have to do is use this X-ray
machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find
out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why
they hate it.
And that’s why I’m accused of being a single-issue writer, thinker, and
voter.
But it isn’t true, is it?
Permission to redistribute this article is herewith granted by the author
— provided that it is reproduced unedited, in its entirety, and
appropriate credit given.
–
– Jane Galt
Reporting from Galt’s Gulch, somwehere in Colorado…
"Without America there is no "Free World"."
The reason that Progressivism-Socialism-Communism always fail, is that you
eventually run out of other peoples’ money.
Obama and the Democrats: continuing the "Progressive" socialist agenda of
borrowing, taxing and insanely spending the country into collapse and
global socialism, in a Cloward-Piven fashion.
