Lawyers, Guns, and Money, by Victor Milan

Exclusive to The Libertarian Enterprise

There are two pretty crucial points being overlooked in the current flap about firearms manufacturer Smith and Wesson rolling over and showing throat to the Clinton dictatorship, and the similar Glock submission which may precede this essay's appearance.

One is: "smart guns" and "safety" locks aren't meant to protect children. They're meant to kill gun owners.

The other is:

There is as near zero as is possible in nature a chance that such a surrender will spare any firearms manufacturer anything whatever.

The victim disarmers are in the business of disarming Americans. So is our government. They're like the Terminator: they won't stop until their mission is accomplished.

The goal of America's permanent government, and its remoras in the media and academe, is to render the American population absolutely helpless. Once they get all the guns, they'll start in on knives -- as has already happened in, for example, the United Kingdom, which is rapidly turning into a time-delayed province of Nazi Germany. The goal is manifestly to render the American populace, and ultimately all populations everywhere, completely unable to resist the slightest whims of their rulers. Then the fun will truly begin.

So we can lay to rest the idea of "compromise." In this case -- as in all cases involving freedom versus its implacable enemy, government -- "compromise" means nothing but graduated surrender. The forces of oppression will take what we concede, give nothing themselves, and then demand that we concede more "reasonable" restrictions. This game will continue until they have everything and we have nothing.

Or until we refuse to play.

I say this only because it's always happened. If you don't think that means it always will, that's your privilege. So is voting, and believing in the Tooth Fairy.

Moreover, any compact made with any politician is writ upon the wind. This bargain is made with Bill Clinton. Need any more be said?

The lawsuits against firearms manufacturers, whether directly brought by government or through the transparent front organizations now generally called "non-governmental organizations" -- which are of course wholly subsidized and hence directed by government -- will not stop. They won't slow down. Indeed, since the very threat of them has produced abject surrender from one of the gun-industry giants, this extra-constitutional form of government control -- this end-run around the Constitution and the Bill of Rights -- has been rewarded with early success.

Behavior you reward is behavior you get more of.

But in this case, politics -- which is and can be about nothing but stealing our freedom and our wealth -- isn't the only compelling reason Smith and Wesson's surrender has bought it nothing but a handful of ashes to eat. Probably the major component, at least in active influence, in America's permanent government today is the plaintiffs' bar -- trial lawyers. The ridiculous government-sponsored anti-tobacco lawsuits have brought this already-potent group a windfall of untold billions of dollars. They're not going to stop, indeed, until they've sued every profitable industry in America into bankruptcy; as of today, all aboveground commerce is simply doomed.

It's plain incentive. The plaintiffs' bar functionally controls legislatures -- and the appointment and especially election of judges -- with the huge amounts of money it's able to dispose of in campaign contributions and outright bribes. That's why it's likely the most significant part of the permanent government.

All that money that's out there in non-lawyers hands, they have unlimited access to, vouchsafed by government and complaisant courts. So they're going to turn it into theirs. It's truly that simple. It's just a matter of time -- and, of course, whether we continue to delude ourselves with the fantasy that we can do anything but lose all our freedom and all our wealth by continuing to play "within the system."

So the tsunami rushing down upon us is going to carry away far more than our gun rights. But guns are the flavor of the month for our government and its toady media and rigged polls. So they're going to get washed out first.

There is nothing, politically or legally, you can do about it. Although you can continue to send off your hard-earned dollars so Wayne LaPierre can continue drawing his six-figure salary for promoting hideous gun-grabbing schemes like Operation Exile.

The game is rigged. It's rigged by the nature of politics and government. It's nailed down by the billions more the plaintiffs' bar expects to pillage out of the aboveground economy.

The only thing you can do, if you care about your gun rights or any rights at all, is refuse to obey. To resist: by thought, by word, by refusal to comply. By force if necessary.

If we continue to obey, if we continue to play within the system, we will simply, and with such speed as will suck your breath away, lose everything we value and everything we have.

Victor Milan
[email protected]

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