Previous

Contents

Next

Here We Go Again
by L. Neil Smith
lneil@netzero.com

Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

At my age, I've found that time flies whether you're having fun or not.

The intervals between Christmases grow shorter (they seemed like eons when I was a kid), those between birthdays blur past altogether, and even those in between Presidential elections seem startlingly briefer.

Now, here we are, confronted with a brave new year. Eventually, this 2008 election season—with whatever it has to offer or inflict on us—will be over and done with, and there are roughly two chances in three that we'll find ourselves right back in the same old fight again.

If, by one of those chances, Ron Paul is nominated and wins, all of us old Second Amendment warriors can take a vacation from politics—many of us for the first time in our lives—knowing there's a man in the White House who will veto any gun bill that comes across his desk. Maybe he'll even manage to repeal, nullify, or dispose of one or two.

Then again, the real libertarians among us may have to stay on the job and fight him over the issues of abortion and open immigration. Oh, well. I never really know what to do with myself on vacations, anyway.

But if—as seems far likelier—anybody from either wing of the Boot On Your Neck party wins, the strugggle to preserve the individual right to own and carry weapons will grow bitterer and nastier than ever before, if only because it represents the last gasp of the Old Order. There can be no doubt that freedom is on its way to our corner of the galaxy—libertarians see it as a light at the end of the tunnel, but badguys see it as an oncoming train, and they're getting hysterical.

That's why, no matter how satisfying it is to work for a candidate like Paul, and no matter how much hope he has brought to the freedom movement, we can't afford to invest ourselves solely in him, or to put all of our eggs in his basket, as it were. Intelligent beings prepare for the future, and that includes making plans right now for after the election.

This time—to get the ball rolling—we have to make it much tougher on the proponents of victim disarmament. We must expose them, over and over again, as the cold, agenda-driven trash that they are. I've found the phrase "victim disarmament" very useful in that effort, as is T.D. Melrose's electrifying definition of victim disarmament ideologues as those 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".

Use them in good health.

This time, especially knowing everything that we do now about the Warmongering, Kidnapping, and Torture Party, we have to assiduously avoid wasting time or effort trying to enlist the aid of those brain- fogged neorepublicanoid zombies, the mind-slaves of the National Rifle Association.

The "NRAzis", as I like to call them.

This time we have to make it clear that the solution to America's problems, both with crime and national defense, lies with repealing weapons legislation, not passing more, and that what's being pushed by Schumer and McCarthy and Company is cruel, inhumane, evil, and deeply fascistic.

(By the way, if you want to find out how truly dedicated your "progressive" acquaintances are to peace, point out to them how easy it is for a nation with a heavily-armed populace and a teeny little professional military to defend itself, and how hard it is to go "adventuring" overseas. You'll probably discover, as I have in most instances, that they'd still rather take your guns than have world peace.)

It's always interesting and instructive to me the frequency with which anti-self-defense politicos end up being crooked in other ways. The first that I recall was Congressman Mario Biaggi, but there have been more since then. Charles Keating comes to mind, along with the "Keating Five": Dennis DeConcini, Alan Cranston, John Glenn, Don Riegle and John McCain. Thomas Dodd, who brought us Nazi gun laws that he simply had translated and relabled "Gun Control Act of 1968", left the Senate under a cloud of accusations of corruption that his equally disgusting son, Christopher Dodd, has struggled vainly to overcome for years.

And of course there are Rudy Giuliani's problems with his crooked employees. A formal study ought to be made—by some individual or institution with the resources to undertake it—of the possible correlation between gun control advocacy and involvement in criminal activity.

But we libertarian hooligani must go much further than that.

Given the symbolic—as well as very practical—significance of privately-owned weapons in maintaining the peace, freedom, and civil order of society, it ought to be a felony for anyone connected with the government, in any way, at any level, to destroy a weapon, to order it destroyed, or to record its description or serial number. And unless it can be clearly demonstrated to be evidence, any weapon taken from any individual—for example, in the case of his arrest for a nonviolent crime—ought to be returned at once to him or his next of kin.

Likewise, it ought to be a felony for anyone in the government (I consider corporations, in this context, to be extensions of the government; they would be subject to this law, as they ought to be made subject to the Bill of Rights) to possess or operate any device intended for, or capable of, the detection of weapons on an individual's person. Let's think clearly here: the Founding Fathers didn't want to play games about the definition of the word "search", they simply didn't want the government to know what we have in our pockets.

And if we're really serious about "the security of a free state", then perhaps we need to institute a death penalty for politicians who agitate for gun control or any other blatant violation of the Bill of Rights.

If any of this seems radical or extreme to you, never forget this basic truth: the only reason anyone ever has for wanting to steal your guns is that they're planning to do something to you your guns could prevent.

Remember it, act on it, and we'll all have many happy new years to come.

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics of self-defense. He is the author of 25 books, including The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website "The Webley Page" at lneilsmith.org.

Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel Pallas was recently completed and is presently looking for a literary home.

Neil is presently working on Ares, the middle volume of the epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Roswell, Texas, with Rex F. "Baloo" May.

The stunning 185-page full-color graphic-novelized version of The Probability Broach, which features the art of Scott Bieser and was published by BigHead Press www.bigheadpress.com has recently won a Special Prometheus Award. It may be had through the publisher, at www.Amazon.com, or at BillOfRightsPress.com.

TLE AFFILIATE

Help Support TLE by patronizing our advertisers and affiliates.
We cheerfully accept donations!