Like a Soccer Team With Only One Player -- The Goalie

By Vin Suprynowicz
[email protected]

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

          Last time, I was detailing the way cynical "pro-gun-rights" Republican congressmen play naive freedom-lovers for fools.
          The "bad cop" half of the Incumbent Republicrat Party propose 10 new infringements on our Second Amendment rights, and pass three, and our "heroes" get our campaign contributions and our votes for "fighting the good fight" and "turning back the worst seven parts of that darned, terrible gun-grabbers' package" ... which only turn up again next year, in a new set of 10 insults to the Bill of Rights, of which only three more will subsequently be endorsed by the lying GOP and their gun club affiliate, the NRA, as "the best compromise we're likely to get this year ..."
          Meantime, folks on our side run themselves ragged until they finally lie, motionless, stupefied, and resigned, in a fetal position, like the rat who's been shocked the past 10 times he tried to eat the food.
          I'm already hearing it: "Don't bother fighting the Moynihan 1000 percent ammo tax. I'm told that one's going nowhere." Just go to sleep, little ones. The bogeyman will never really come. They wouldn't dare add that as a rider to some highway bill in the final hours of the session ...
          Duh.
          The "pro-gun-rights" Republican party has been in charge of both houses of the United States Congress for three-and-a-half years. In the so-called Contract with America, Newt Gingrich promised a straight up-or-down voice vote on repeal of the Brady Bill. It's the only promise he never even tried to keep. Why? Because he knows all gun owners will reflexively vote Republican in 1998, regardless. So why endanger the support of any marginal, socialist, pro-big-government, urban voters to please us? We're not "in play." We can safely be ignored.
          Haven't you ever wondered why the "good guys" never submit a bill which would repeal 10 bad gun control laws, and then "settle for a compromise" in which the Democrats and Handgun Control endorse three of the 10 as the "least harmful," whereupon the next year the forces of freedom re-integrate the seven remaining steps toward restored Second Amendment freedom in a new list of 10 bad gun laws to be repealed, making the other side scramble around trying to block seven out of 10?
          With all the money the National Rifle Association has raised, and all the "B-plus and better" rated "pro-gun congressmen" we've elected, how come we never see Handgun Control on the defensive, running around firing off desperate e-mails to their members, going "Ohmygosh, 34 different bills have been introduced this session, attempting to close down the BATF and effectively re-legalize the public carry of machine guns without a permit ... even in federal courthouses and airports! Help! Help! They keep slipping in funding for free distribution of surplus machine guns as riders on farm bills! The DCM is now authorized to sell surplus full-auto M-14s, BARs, and water-cooled 30-caliber Brownings for $100 to anyone who sends in a postcard, with an automatic waiver of the $200 'transfer tax.' And we didn't even know about it; turns out it was buried at page 666 of the Equal Rights for Blind Ambulance Drivers bill. Oh, what ever shall we do?!"
          How come it never works that way?
          Unless, maybe, there aren't any good guys.
          Duh.
          Gun owners -- anyone who cherishes the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights -- have to stop running this treadmill, immediately. Just step off. Stop donating to Republicans or to the NRA (sponsor of both the Brady Bill and the Gun Control Act of 1968). Let them know your vote isn't "a given." When you can, give your money and your votes to radically pro-Bill-of-Rights Libertarians, and to the Milwaukee-based Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (414-769-0760.)
          Failing that, fund and vote for a democrat (at least they're reliably pro-choice on one issue), while advising the GOP candidate (and the local newspaper) in writing that you are doing so to punish the Republican party for not repealing the Brady Bill, and the National Firearms Acts of 1968 and 1934, which they have the votes to do, today.
          Tell them: "I'd rather vote for an honest gun-grabbing socialist, than for a lying Nerf Republican who won't even stay bought."

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at [email protected]. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127.

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