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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 414, April 22, 2007 That Stupid Git
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Victim Disarmament Kills Again
Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise I have something very difficult and unpleasant to say. I promise you're not going to like it. Believe me, I don't like having to say it. But it is the truth, it has to be said, so I'm going to get it over with right up front: the deaths and woundings at Virginia Tech this week were in fact—each and every one of them—self-inflicted. And the shootings themselves were a direct and unmistakable result, not of too many guns in society, as some will say, but of too few. Don't look at me that way. It's the only conclusion any rational individual can come to. Some guy (don't bother asking why; I don't give a rusty fuck and neither should you) comes onto a university campus—where the means of personal self-defense have been strictly forbidden by the administration and the state legislature—armed only with a puny nine millimeter automatic pistol (the boxcutter of handguns), and murders 32 people (at this writing), wounding a dozen more. The campus police perform their usual Keystone Kops act, and nobody fights back, because, in addition to having been disarmed by the university and the state legislature, the victims-to-be have been bound and gagged by a lifetime of saturated exposure to a Culture of Harmlessness. They've been conditioned by their parents, government, and the media to rely, instead, on "authorities" that in every other context, they know perfectly well are evil, stupid, or just plain crazy. Everybody knows what will follow now. This is exactly what Tom Mauser, Sarah Brady, Carolyn McCarthy, and Charles Schumer have been waiting for, just like cartoon vultures perched on the arm of a saguaro: another eruption of senseless slayings that mean nothing more to them than an opportunity to make political hay for left wing socialism, while stripping you and me and everybody else of the astonishing socially beneficial technology that has achieved something that—since the insanely crime-ridden '60s—billions of dollars and all of the cops in the world have been unable to accomplish, causing the rate of violent crime to plummet in double digits. In indisputable point of fact, Tom Mauser, Sarah Brady, Carolyn McCarthy, Charles Schumer, and everybody else like them—with the one notable and noble exception of Texas Congressman Ron Paul, each and every declared candidate for the 2008 presidential race so far is a longtime advocate of victim disarmament—are as responsible for what happened at Virginia Tech as if they'd pulled the trigger themselves. Thanks to them, in an historical era where the violent crime rate is otherwise free-falling rapidly, civilization has become a much more dangerous and deadly place—should you venture into the free-fire zones that they and their ilk have created for the benefit of criminal maniacs. The situation is so obvious, and the policies that generated it are so stupid, that even the most staid and prosaic mind is tempted to wonder if it isn't exactly what the victim disarmament movement wants and has even perhaps arranged. Maybe Virginia Tech was intended to be our Dunblane, Scotland, where a mass-shooting by a disgruntled former Boy Scout leader (I am not making this up) on March 13, 1996, gave the British equivalents of Tom Mauser, Sarah Brady, Carolyn McCarthy, and Charles Schumer an excuse, basically, to outlaw every gun in the land. The same thing worked in Port Arthur, Tasmania, where only six weeks later, on April 28, 1996, another murderous nut killed enough people so that Australians could be disarmed. Since then, England has achieved for itself the highest violent crime rate in all of western civilization, with the exception of—you guessed it—Australia, proving to anyone except useful idiots who let themselves get steered around by the likes of Tom Mauser, Sarah Brady, Carolyn McCarthy, and Charles Schumer, how much criminals appreciate having their victims rendered bound and helpless for them by the do-gooders and their government. Does this absolve the recent victims of blame for their own victimization? Not for an instant. Under the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution—the last time I looked, the Bill of Rights was still the highest law of the land, George W. Bush and his pack of vicious howler monkeys to the contrary notwithstanding—there isn't a single item of weapons legislation in this country, not one, that isn't illegal in and of itself. Moreover, the Second Amendment was only written to protect a basic human right the Founders believed already existed as a part of Natural Law. It should be clear by now that the Founders were right, and, much more to the point, that the wages of obedience to any lesser laws are death. Which is why, in the end, it's the victims' fault. Unfortunately the point is either not clear to politicians and the media, or they have something huge to gain by ignoring it. There are certainly enough "coincidences" and "conveniences" involved to justify a thorough and independent investigation into any possible connections between incidents like this one and the principal advocates of victim disarmament. As for the European press, who reportedly blame what happened on the late Charlton Heston, they can stick it where the the sun don't shine. When we're through here, we're coming for them—England first. But enough about them, what about me? And you. Aren't you fed up with your rights being up for grabs any time some evil sonofabitch decides to hose a bunch of people down with hot lead? Don't you agree with me that America—and western civilization in general—can no longer afford the deadly illusion of "gun control"? Shouldn't we ditch the infantile pretenses of victim disarmament and the "expertism" it rests on, and initiate a new age of personal responsibiliy? To that end, I make the following proposals; there will be more to follow: Although there is no ethical way to enforce it, and I myself would bitterly oppose any such legislation, any parents who won't make sure their kids know how to use a gun safely and effectively are guilty of child abuse, and we should point the finger and shout it from the housetops. For as long as we permit the public schools to continue existing, they should be made to train pupils in the safe and effective use of firearms. Concealed carry licensing is merely a means of intimidating people who don't deal well with bureacracy out of exercising their rights. These laws, as illegal as any other gun legislation, must be repealed, nullified, or otherwise disposed of, and universal Vermont Carry, which requires no government permission to exercise a fundamental right, instituted coast-to-coast in their place. What's more, both Canada and Mexico (to begin with) must be persuaded to recognize and respect, by treaty, the right of Americans to go armed wherever they wish. Similarly, every bit of this "security" nonsense at the airports must be brought to a sudden, screeching halt. Nobody is secure when his rights are violated, and we know from Columbine and Platte Canyon High how well relying on the authorities—like Air Marshalls—works. The unconstitutional Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms must be broken up immediately—all registries of privately-held firearms must be destroyed—and any money saved by that measure must be used, first and foremost, to indemnify the 100,000-odd gun dealers they've deliberately driven out of business over the past three or four decades. The Department of Homeland Security must likewise be abolished, or converted into a Department of Bill of Rights Enforcement that will monitor the actions of politicos who habitually advocate violating its precepts. I wouldn't mind seeing the cowardly National Rifle Association broken up the same way, and its assets distributed where they can be put to good use. But again, I'd never dream of advocating it as a libertarian and Bill of Rights advocate, and I would oppose any such legislation. As difficult as that might be. As for you, Tom Mauser, Sarah Brady, Carolyn McCarthy, Charles Schumer, and all the rest of you, don't even think about it. We've got your number now. We know that you're the kind of cold, calculating ideological parasites who would rather see a woman raped in an alley and strangled with her own pantyhose than see her with a gun in her hand. But forget all that. Just for a moment, allow yourself to imagine, if you're familiar with my twenty-six novels, what would have happened the other day at Virginia Tech (or aboard the 9/11 highjacked airliners) in any of the fictional worlds that I've created for my readers over the past 25 years. In the North American Confederacy of Win Bear and Lucy Kropotkin [see The Probability Broach, available in print through the "Webley Page" at www.lneilsmith.org, or as a graphic novel (both online and dead-tree forms) at www.BigHeadPress.com], where children usually get their first gun at their sixth birthday party, the instant that idiot drew his tiny weapon and began to point it at somebody, he'd have been filled full of holes from fifty different directions. It all would have ended as nothing more than a "massacre" of one, at the scene and moment of the crime, at the hands of his intended victims. In the little frontier town of Curringer on the terraformed and homesteaded asteroid Pallas [see Pallas, available in print through the "Webley Page" at www.lneilsmith.org], it would have turned out much the same way, except that, had the criminal managed to survive, he'd have been tried in the barroom court of Judge Aloysius Brody and sentenced to fight a duel with his victims' choice of weapons. In his colony on 523 Eris (another asteroid) or back at home on an historically alternative version of the Earth, Mr. Thoggosh [see Forge of the Elders, available in print through the "Webley Page" at www.lneilsmith.org], a gigantic molluscoid Elder and ardent capitalist, having attended to the capture of the miscreant, would have hired a P'nAn "adjudicator" to restore the moral balance—if necessary with the assistance of his razor-sharp double-edged badge of office. In the Federated States of Texas [see the graphic novel Roswell, Texas at www.BigHeadPress.com], which require every citizen in good standing to carry an effective weapon all times, those who don't want to may apply for a legal exemption which their local government must issue—following a thorough psychological examination, of course, along with a physical, fingerprinting, and placing their names and addresses into the public record book for anyone to see, including the occasional obnoxious reporter who will then print them in their newspapers. Nobody is an unwilling victim in the Federated States of Texas. And coming soon to a monitor screen near you, be sure not to miss TimePeeper [keep an eye on www.BigHeadPress.com for news], the first of a series of stories of the Great Moratorium—where new legislation of any kind has been outlawed for the next 100 years, where personal weapons are as common and unobtrusive as watches and wallets, and violent crime is as uncommon as frog fur and chickens' teeth. I apologize. Sort of. This started out to be a diatribe, not an advertisement, but as you can tell, I've been thinking—and writing—about this very situation for a long, long time, and I've put most of that thinking into the books I write. What's more, I've been right in every one of my predictions. As Heinlein put it, "An armed society is a polite society". And where there are too few guns, instead of "too many", carnage ensues. Invariably.
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