Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

The Atlanta Declaration: Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.
-- L. Neil Smith, WeaponsCon I, Atlanta, Georgia, September 1987

Boys and girls, it's Remarkable Coincidence Day at the Mickey Mouse Club!

Just as the political fluid they'd sucked out of the Columbine murders was running dry (and hadn't produced the legislative results desired by the creatures of the night dedicated to eviscerating the Second Amendment as a prelude to "reducing us under absolute despotism") by the Remarkable Coincidence mentioned above, a loose screw in Atlanta obligingly filled his family and everybody else in sight full of holes (I know, he bludgeoned his family to death, but it's the thought that counts) providing the Darksiders with enough go-juice (eight quarts to the corpse) to get their anticonstitutional parade another block further down the road to serfdom.

For my part, I'm long past believing that any of this is mere happenstance, although I resisted the idea for as long as I could.

Look at the facts: we've all heard of steam engines, right? Well international victim disarmament -- the gun control industry -- is a blood engine, consuming thousands of acre-feet of the stuff every year, helpless to advance its agenda a millimeter without plenty of formerly-warm bodies to wring out like crimson-saturated sponges and drain into its insatiable maw. If enough victims fail to die, then how can international victim disarmament -- the gun control industry -- hold its press conferences and photo opportunities decrying "violence in America" and demanding that the killing be stopped (by making it harder for those who don't kill other people to exercise their right to own and carry the only proven means of preventing the killing)?

If violent crime increases, then international victim disarmament -- the gun control industry -- wins. If violent crime decreases, international victim disarmament -- the gun control industry -- loses. You tell me: will international victim disarmament -- the gun control industry -- ever propose any measure that decreases violent crime?

(The same formula applies to the National Rifle Association: if victim disarmament is forever on the rise, then the NRA wins -- using the perpetual menace of its sister organization, Handgun Control Inc., to frighten gun owners into pouring rivers of mazuma into their already overstuffed pockets. If victim disarmament is ever finally discredited, tossed on the ashheap of history where it belongs, then the NRA -- and its six-figure executives -- will be out of work.)

As a direct result, more innocents die, as they did at Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, where victim disarmament laws worked just as they're supposed to, failing to keep a murderer from his appointed rounds, but assuring the deaths of his victims who had law-abidingly left their guns in their cars. In Littleton, teachers and students, exercising their right to own and carry weapons, could have ended the killings at two: Klebold and Harris. Knowing this, Klebold and Harris might never have plotted to murder their fellow students.

It's this sort of thing that international victim disarmament -- the gun control industry -- wishes to prevent at any cost.

They want your death.

They need your death.

There can be no question that international victim disarmament -- the gun control industry -- makes those corpses, every helpless one. The only question remaining is whether it does so only indirectly, by suppressing your right to the machinery of self-defense, or by deliberately staging the incidents in which that killing -- so very centrally important to their wishes, hopes, and plans -- gets done.

As I say, I resisted the latter idea -- that some or all of these marvelously photogenic killing sprees were planned and carried out to achieve political ends. Trouble is, as suspicious as I am of coincidence, I'm even more suspicious of convenience.

How is it that the specific hobbyhorse that international victim disarmament -- the gun control industry -- happens to be riding this week always manages to rock its way into schools, post offices, or other places where folks have been stripped of their right to self-defense, just in time to write the supremely desired conclusion in carmine exclamation points? If this week it's "Saturday Night Specials", then the designated dingbat kills a bunch of people with a snubby ".38". If next week it's submachinegun lookalikes, he shows up with a KG or a Kel or whatever the hell they call them nowadays.

But I admit, I'm prejudiced, having been subjected to the bigotry, prejudice, harassment, persecution, outrageous lies, and 25,000 Jim Crow laws that international victim disarmament -- the gun control industry -- have imposed on me and my fellow gun owners over the past half century, most recently with the wholehearted, enthusiastic support of the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association.

Being prejudiced -- and fully as subject to wishing on a star as anyone else who's been involved with politics for a long time -- let me tell you what I'd do about this situation if by some bizarre turn of events I found myself elected President of the United States.

First, I'd appoint what's termed a "blue ribbon commission", made up of people whose integrity I trust, to investigate every shooting over the past few decades that was used to stampede passage of laws that violate our rights. In the majority where the killer had recently been under psychiatric "care", I'd want to know what "therapy" was involved and by whom it was administered. Special attention would be accorded those incidents in which the perpetrator tidily killed himself before he could be arrested and interrogated. Maybe we'd find out once and for all if there's a conspiracy.

Nor would this be a gaggle of nameless faces and faceless names, like the ones who decided that Lee Oswald found a way to shoot around corners in mid-air, or that David Koresch had it coming because they believed he'd found a way to molest children they hadn't thought of. If you're reading this, you might find your own face (and parts south) on such a commission, along with those of your friends and comrades.

More generally, there's a greater need for a similar set of blue ribbon commissioners to investigate every item of legislation passed since about 1912 where an artificial panic was generated to push the bills through. The laws in question would be repealed, nullified, or otherwise set aside, and the people of this country would regain freedoms taken from them under false -- or even real -- pretenses.

Those responsible for taking those freedoms would be dealt with under due process of law. It's a bit late to punish the Sullivan who disarmed New York, but the vision of sending federal marshals to haul Diane Feinstein and Charles Schumer off the Senate floor in manacles, belly chains, and leg irons -- putting new creases in their thousand dollar outfits -- is one of the things that keep me going these days.

And ultimately (but not finally) a libertarian president's best asset would be a Bill of Rights Compliance Commission, given the task of identifying which government activities meet the tests of the 9th and 10th Amendments and which don't, the latter to be terminated.

Opinions vary as to how much government that would leave. I think we should determine the answer empirically, don't you?

 

Reprinted from A Conspiracy Theory -- Sort Of for August 15, 1999