Posted on 05/29/2003 9:23:28 PM PDT by Mr. Mojo
Over the past 30 years, I've been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I've thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote.
People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn't true. What I've chosen, in a world where there's never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician -- or political philosophy -- is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.
Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.
If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.
If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.
What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?
If he doesn't want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?
If he makes excuses about obeying a law he's sworn to uphold and defend -- the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights -- do you want to entrust him with anything?
If he ignores you, sneers at you, complains about you, or defames you, if he calls you names only he thinks are evil -- like "Constitutionalist" -- when you insist that he account for himself, hasn't he betrayed his oath, isn't he unfit to hold office, and doesn't he really belong in jail?
Sure, these are all leading questions. They're the questions that led me to the issue of guns and gun ownership as the clearest and most unmistakable demonstration of what any given politician -- or political philosophy -- is really made of.
He may lecture you about the dangerous weirdos out there who shouldn't have a gun -- but what does that have to do with you? Why in the name of John Moses Browning should you be made to suffer for the misdeeds of others? Didn't you lay aside the infantile notion of group punishment when you left public school -- or the military? Isn't it an essentially European notion, anyway -- Prussian, maybe -- and certainly not what America was supposed to be all about?
And if there are dangerous weirdos out there, does it make sense to deprive you of the means of protecting yourself from them? Forget about those other people, those dangerous weirdos, this is about you, and it has been, all along.
Try it yourself: if a politician won't trust you, why should you trust him? If he's a man -- and you're not -- what does his lack of trust tell you about his real attitude toward women? If "he" happens to be a woman, what makes her so perverse that she's eager to render her fellow women helpless on the mean and seedy streets her policies helped create? Should you believe her when she says she wants to help you by imposing some infantile group health care program on you at the point of the kind of gun she doesn't want you to have?
On the other hand -- or the other party -- should you believe anything politicians say who claim they stand for freedom, but drag their feet and make excuses about repealing limits on your right to own and carry weapons? What does this tell you about their real motives for ignoring voters and ramming through one infantile group trade agreement after another with other countries?
Makes voting simpler, doesn't it? You don't have to study every issue -- health care, international trade -- all you have to do is use this X-ray machine, this Vulcan mind-meld, to get beyond their empty words and find out how politicians really feel. About you. And that, of course, is why they hate it.
And that's why I'm accused of being a single-issue writer, thinker, and voter.
But it isn't true, is it?
You don't think millions of gun owners would have realized Gore was bad news if the NRA hadn't told them?
Look at October 1996. Do you think it's any coincidence that shortly after the NRA indicated they'd give their whole-hearted, even if back-handed, endorsement to any Republican who was less vocally anti-gun than their opponent(1) the Congress passed by incredible margins (97-2 in the Senate!) the most eggregiously-unconstitutional anti-gun legislation to date(2)?
(1) Feel free to offer your own interpretation of the NRA Board of Directors' statement, but to me, the above cited subtext was abundantly clear. Note that Bob Dole was as responsible for the AWB and Brady Act as Clinton, since he used his position as Senate Majority Leader to get those bills resurected after they'd been successfully killed.Does anyone believe the above is merely a coincidence?(2) The Lautenberg Abomination, which imposes retroactive punishments upon misdemeanants, allows people's rights to be indefinitely denied without so much as an allegation of actual wrongdoing, involves the federal government in state civil matters, and attempts to legislatively re-instate a statute (Gun Free School Zones Act) that had already been struck down by the Supreme Court.
In 1943 Hitler made abortion a crime.
He also outlawed guns for the citizenry.
Which position was a better gauge of the man?
Let's try again -- which position was a better gauge of the man?
I just happen to know that a person's view on the RKBA is far more telling than his view on abortion.
"Too much"? Does that position bother you at all?
Your point might be more meaningful if you pick an example of a position that bothers you at least a little, such as one which favors the total abolition of all restrictions on adult concealed carry (see "Vermont").
Of course, if that bothers you "too much," ... well, then you'll need to pick something else. ;O)
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