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Deja Boob
by L. Neil Smith
[email protected]

Attribute to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

Well, here we go again, dear readers, with the same old "long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evincing a design to reduce them [that means you and me] under absolute despotism" that we've been suffering for more than half a century.

Another wild tsunami of attempted government victim disarmament, propelled by a spectacular mass murder carried out with—what a surprise!—the very sort of firearm the scavengers are trying to outlaw.

Sort of.

It seems that the enemies of individual liberty can't quite get their stories straight between them. In some versions it's an AR-15, in others it's a pump or semiautomatic shotgun, in yet others, it's four semiautomatic pistols. All in all, the Sandy Hook story is beginning to take on the aroma of Barak Obama's birth certificate. No bodies shown to prove that it happened, and the credentials of some of the "parents" are suspicious: one or two appear to be members of the Screen Actors' Guild.

As Lyndon Johnson showed us with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the easiest kind of crisis to take advantage of is one that never really happened.

And screaming out of every television screen and speaker is the socialists' perpetual demand—no matter what kind of weapon was used (if one was used at all)—for legislation against "assault rifles", by coincidence, the very sort of weapon the Founders had in mind to protect us from ... from ... well, a government exactly like we have now.

The left wing's ridiculous and often criminal escapades during this moment of manufactured emergency have left floors sticky everywhere, with lies, omissions, and half-truths. It's up to us to clean the mess up.

Where to start?

Well, just picking at a single loose thread at random, although it's clear that any law against fully automatic machineguns, bazookas, and that kind of thing, is highly unconstitutional, it isn't entirely correct when we proclaim that there's no such thing as an "assault rifle". It's just that none of the artifacts that the fools, crazies, and criminals—in that festering sinkhole that combines the attributes of a cesspool and a snake pit, the United States House and Senate—are calling assault rifles just now, actually are assualt rifles.

The concept of the assault rifle proper began during World War II, when the desperate Germans came up with an automatic rifle (hold the trigger down, the thing fires until it's empty) which used a "subcaliber" cartridge. In this case that means a greatly shortened version of their old reliable 7.92x57mm Mauser, which we Americans, for some unknown reason, call 8mm Mauser; god knows what Brits call it.

The Russians thought this was a peachy idea, and designed the 7.62x39mm cartridge, a short, rimless version of their tried and true 7.62x54mm which they'd used in bolt- and lever-action rifles since the time of the Czars. The new number ended up in the magazines of AK-47s and SKSs. Understand that these are all reduced power cartridges, designed for easier use by women, children, and little old men.

Whenever some politician goes on and on about the vast damaging power of the AK, you know that he's either an ignoramus or a liar. Try shooting 7.62x39 alongside .308 Winchester (which our military used in the M-14) or .30-06 (used in the M1 Garand and the Springfield '03 family). Look these things up in Wikipedia if you're unfamiliar with them.

These short, (comparatively) light weapons with reduced cartridges fired fully automatically and were properly called "assault rifles". America already had a little auxiliary rifle, meant to serve those who had their hands full, like cooks, radio operators, and guys in tanks and such, called the M1 Carbine. It fires what was essentially a .30 caliber pistol cartridge, and was largely meant as a substitute for the .45 pistol, at which it failed miserably for a number of reasons. Someone reworked the design so it became the fully automatic M2 Carbine, and that was an assault rifle. The semiautomtic version is not.

Famous firearms designer Melvin Johnson attempted to refine this weapon further, refitting the M2 Carbine with a folding wire stock, and chambering it for a cartridge made by "necking down" the .30 caliber cartridge to .22. calling it ".22 Spitfire" or .22 MMJ (his initials) but it never caught on. Too bad; I'd like to play with one.

The semiautomatic AR-15 looks almost identical to the fully automatic M-16 used in Vietnam, and it fires the same crappy little .223 cartridge, but it is not an assault rifle, no matter how much the fat, wrinkled, wattle-jowled vulturous anti-gun harpies go on about it.

I have a theory about that, too. It's always liberals like that who yammer about guns being surrogates for male reproductive organs. If I were a Freudian, I'd say that Dianne Feinstein, Carolyn McCarthy, and Diana DeGette are all suffering the world's worst case of penis envy.

And so is Joseph Biden.

Their whole idea, of course, is to employ a vocabulary that will spread panic and infantile dependence on the government. The dumber people are—the mass media, for example— the more they think they know.

Bill of Rights? What's that? Individual liberty? What's that? If most "progressives", in and out of government, had their way, we'd all be outfitted with mechanical hearts that the police could shut off remotely.

Did anybody else notice, listening to Diane Feinstein the other morning, that everything the woman said rang hollow. Whenever she spoke of the emotions evoked by all of the horrendous effects of "gun violence" which may not have happened, but she claims she witnessed, it was as if she were blandly reporting somebody else's experiences. In any genuine, humanitarian sense, there simply wasn't any "there" there.

As I recall, "progressives" are supposed to be the touchy-feely ones, but this inhuman being is an utter fraud, a cold, flinty, unfeeling reptile. Increasingly, this shows on her face. Nothing animates her features or her voice but an entirely undeserved assumption of superiority, and an obscene lust for power over other people.

Hers is the naked face of political evil.

And behind this absurd, repulsive creature, enabling her, propping her up, propelling her, are those who believe a self-righteous display of police state thuggishness is an acceptable substitute for a national dedication to justice; the true slaves who love their chains, clean and polish them daily, and kiss each link before they go to sleep each night.

We've seen it all before, and we'll keep seeing it, over and over again, until we finally do something—something permanent—about it.

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For the record, L. Neil Smith denies that he is a right-wing crazy. He is, he insists, a libertarian crazy.

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