Advertisers and Sponsors of
Sixgunner.Com™
|
Richard Poe, Journalist, New York Times Best Selling Author, Editor of FrontPageMagazine.com, Slap Hillary.com and other important works. I n 1994, Wayne La Pierre opened something of a literary floodgate with his authorship of Guns, Crime and Freedom. Before the publication of that important work, the literature of gun control was decidedly anti-gun in character and generally consisted of a chapter or two in some leftist crusader’s cookbook for societal reform. Published in June 2001, The Seven Myths…, is the newest of the rapidly growing body of work setting the record straight on the subject of gun rights.The book was delivered to me at a time when I had a number of projects on tap and was in no mood to dig into another book on gun rights. Its like, giving me a pro-gun book is the very definition of preaching to the choir –the choir having already heard most of the same words set to different music. Even the choir gets bored. Nevertheless I flipped the tome open and started to read finding myself hooked by the time I had gotten through the Forward by David Horowitz and the Author’s Notes which precede the book proper. The two djinni of the book are interesting characters in and of themselves. Poe works for Horowitz, editing and contributing to his slick conservative webzine, FrontPageMagazine.com. He also edits the comic relief site, slaphillary.com, where the besieged conservative can vent his spleen cyber-slapping the mucus out of New York’s junior senator. He can then shift gears and apologize to Bill Clinton for intruding into his sex life or appreciate Dan Rather in his role as one of the Three Media Stooges. Poe is a dedicated Libertarian of immigrant Jewish/Mexican- Catholic lineage who chose to deal with the lot of the Marginal Man through personal accomplishment rather than entitlement and assumed victimhood. . Horowitz is a former Marxist, raised in an American Communist family who became radicalized by the leftist movements in the ‘60s and is now staunchly, creatively conservative. You will find the story of his political apotheosis in "Seven Myths.." and a fascinating tale it is. However one might compare the Seven Myths with other recent pro-freedom books, the work stands in sharp contrast to the maundering of the anti-gun polemists who went before. Most of those leaned heavily on statistics coped from the flawed Kellerman Study or on numbers simply made up by their authors. A prime example of this is Crime In America by Ramsey Clark, the fruity attorney general of the Johnson Administration. While old Lyndon promoted the registration of "far-harms", Clark called for more prohibitive measures with a chapter with the gay-sounding title: " Guns- The Violent Killers!" It was an exercise in stupidity that he repeated many times. He finally managed to lay any suspicion of personal credibility to rest by remarking in a debate that he would rely on LOVE instead of handguns to protect his family. Amatai Etzioni, the deeply boring Socialist Sociology Professor and former Kibutznick, attempted to set himself up as the priest-king of the Clinton-Gore era by issuing a Communitarian Manefesto which among other Orwellian themes, dwelt upon general disarmament of the populace. Currently, we have the Anti-American Marxist Macrobiotic Goofball, Noam Chomski whom David Horowitz delights in vivisecting in his articles in FrontPageMagazine. Poe’s work is obviously written for the critical reader- the reader with an analytical bent. The reader not accustomed to uncritically accepting any premise. It is carefully and comprehensively end-noted in a manner that allows verification and preserves the much-guarded integrity of the writer. In other words: it relies upon the intelligence rather than the gullibility of the reader for its ultimate success. Until recent years, the anti-gun crowd enjoyed a media monopoly on the subject of firearm ownership. They could go into print with just about any sloppily constructed drivel without of publicized rebuttal. The result is a complex of factoids which, in the absence of critical examination, have become widely accepted. Poe defines these as the " Seven Myths Of Gun Control" and uses them as the framework of this book. 1. Guns Increase Violent Crime: The notion that America is the most violent nation in the world is so widely held that few have disputed it until very recently. Poe is able to demonstrate that, in the realm of government sanctioned homicide, the United States is not even in the running compared to the numbers of unarmed citizens- foreign and domestic, murdered in cold blood by the governments of our European and Asian neighbors. It is an interesting comparison as Mr. Poe’s sources estimate that the United States, during the 20th Century, has killed approximately 583,000 civilians residing in other countries during various wars and police actions. Another 12,000 or so have died on American soil as a result of partially sanctioned violence by such groups as the KKK. This compares rather favorably to the estimated 170,000,000 civilian victims of "democide" worldwide. The point is made that many of these civilian casualties are a direct result of gun control having occurred in countries where personal arms are forbidden and the traditions of the civilian militia and individual worth do not exist. The statistical basis for the domestic " Culture of Violence" so often posited by detractors of America disappears when a certain subgroup is factored out. While other "developed nations" are quite diverse in their ethnic, religious and language groups only the United States has a large, intractable criminal subculture cultivated as the major constituent base of a political party, forgiven any expectation of personal accountability and supported by the public weal. Remove them from the equation and the violent crime rate differs not at all from that of the least violent nations of the world. Interestingly, Great Britain and Australia have recent conducted a loud and comprehensive disarmament of their populations and both now enjoy a violent crime rate that exceeds that of the United States. 2. Pulling A Gun On A Criminal Endangers You More Than the Criminal Thanks to the present and growing loosening of the anti-gun death grip on the distribution of factual data, the public is learning that quite the opposite is true. On the contrary, the criminal so confronted generally beats a hasty retreat refining his victim selection process to favor those least likely to be armed. Ramsey Clark may prefer to protect his family by bestowing love sweet love on the goblins but most of us derive considerably more pleasure from watching them shuffle off into the middle distance begging not to be shot. Treated as a related assumption rather than one of the Seven Myths is the assumption that the United States Has More Guns Per Capita Than Any Other Developed Nation. Poe reports that the Swiss Militia System is still alive and well although under siege by powder-puff leftists who would like to remove the home stored storm rifles and replace universal military training with the option of "Social Work". At this writing, the free Swiss maintain about two million guns in a population of seven million. These include 600,000 automatic assault rifles, about half a million pistols, assorted sporting arms and surplus military ordinance. Concomitantly, the Swiss crime rate is so low as to cause the United Nations Global Disarmament Bureaucracy to leave Switzerland out of the data they use to promote civilian disarmament. At this time, Switzerland continues to maintain it’s militia system, refuses to join the United Nations and opts out of the European Common Market. A heartwarming aside to this subtopic is a frank discussion of the Japanese, including the history and present reality of the Japanese police state. Many Japanese consider westerners to be quite ugly and inferior. If you ever wondered what kind of breed a " Big Nose" is, take a look in the mirror. By contrast, if you have an urge to feel superior to the Japanese culture: ( 2) Read this Chapter, and/or; (2) flip to the Sci-fi Channel on a Saturday morning and catch one of the old Japanese Monster Flicks. Stuuupppiid! 3. Guns Pose A Special Threat To Children Trustworthy data show that about 200 children under the age of 14 die from gunshot wounds each year. More die riding their bicycles and about 950 drown- probably because their parents are afraid to let them learn how to swim. Several thousand boys die from suicide each year-Poe makes the point that this is several times higher than the toll for girls and may very well stem from a cultural push to feminize the boys and eradicate what is seen as negative male behavior. Some of the best examples of leftist stupidity are drawn from the annals of Zero Tolerance in the school systems. These outrages may be the single most plausible explanation for the growing distrust of liberalism among the general public. They contribute to the much- deserved contempt that exists in regard to public education as an engine of societal decay. 4. The Second Amendment Applies Only to Militiamen Pages 147- 152 contain the most concise discussion of the original intent and underlying thesis of the Right to Bear Arms that I have found in print to this date. If the reader decided to skip this book, he would still be well advised to read over these few pages. 5. The Second Amendment Is An Obsolete Relic Of The Frontier Era When I was in school some 40+ years ago, this was the favorite saw of those grade school teachers who were aware of the Second Amendment. " The right to bear arms is outdated because there aren’t any Indians to shoot anymore." Poe quotes and castigates conservative pundit, George Will as a major mouthpiece for this stance. Interestingly, the events of September 11 have caused Will to re-examine his previously hostile view of the Citizens’ Militia. He has recently deemed the Second Amendment more relevant today than ever before. 6 We Should Treat Guns The Way We Treat Cars One of the first of many signs of the mental un-hingedness of the former Vice President Al Gore is his promotion of the Communitarian Position that the private automobile should be abolished or made the sole prerogative of the elite. At the present time however; it seems that access to this significant engine of destruction is regarded as a more fundamental right than that of personal arms. Experience proves that a idiot licensed driver is no more or less deadly than non-licensed idiot driver Accordingly any attempt to deny drivers licenses to the incompetent, demented and/or psychotic would be met with cries of outrage. By contrast, the Clinton Administration has outdone itself attempting to open the mental health records of the nation with a view toward denying gun rights. 7. Reasonable Gun-Control Measures Are No Threat to Law-Abiding Gun Owners. How long has it been since you heard a discussion of Fabian Socialism? Used to be a popular theme in the gun rags during the 1960s and here we find a coherent discussion of historical gradualism with due credit to Hannibal Barca’s old nemesis, Fabian Cunctator. (This is an educational book!). Herein is made the point that the ultimate and oft-admitted goal of the gun control clique is disarmament, subjugation of the individual and elimination of nationhood. Reasonable Measures are merely a prelude to the ultimate goal of total disarmament. Where’s the Hook? All right, Poe is a Journalist. This book is a piece of advocacy journalism- a call for the fateful and the fence riders to hoist the jolly- roger and ride into battle. I looked closely for the central thread of bull-crap generally interwoven in such a work. I’ve seen bull-crap constructed virtually on -site in the wake of the Waco debacle, by at least one prominent guns rights activist and have some experience as to its fundamental texture and smell. I thought I detected the familiar odor in the persistence with which Mr. Poe characterized the key players in the gun control movement as: (1) Communists, and: (2) mental and moral defectives. With this in mind, I played a bit of catch-up with the usual suspects. Checking in on old Ramsey Clark, I learned that any and all Anti-American causes suck him in like the swirling vortex of a thundermug. He published a book a while back about American War Crimes against the nation of Iraq. One current project joined, among others, with Mr. Noam Chomski, deals with blaming American Imperialism for the September 11 attack. Chomski himself, has piled up quite a bibliography of work that would make Phillip Nolan look like a super-patriot. He has already written a book, New York 9-11 (Amazon.com rank 522) that places the responsibility for the terrorist attack on the World Trades Center squarely on the shoulders of the evil American Empire. Old, toad-like, Amitai Etzioni trudges along as the Elsworth M. Toohey of the Communitarian movement, much of his luster diminished by the profligate behavior of Clinton and the unmasking of Al Gore as a characterless dweeb. He’s been labeled a light thinker by his fellow travelers on the left-regarded favorably only as a purveyor of socialist pabulum for the type of college student who never reads a book all the way through. The Dog Ate My Research Notes Relying to the blind eye the popular media turned on any flaws in anti-gun literature, one Michael A. Bellesiles came forth with his Arming America, The Origins of A National Gun Culture. Hoping to enjoy the uncritical acceptance of the liberal elite and join the pantheon of anti-gun celebrities, he published a totally bogus pseudo-study claiming that, prior to the mid 19th century, guns really played a very small part in American life. A new and more honest media handed him his academic head revealing that he had simply made up the data to support his anti-gun views.. The revelations of mental aberrance and political authoritarianism presented in " The Seven Myths of Gun Control" are mild in comparison with their real world scope. Poe shows considerable restraint in dealing with the aberrant nature of the true believers in this movement- the rudeness of Rosie, the psychotic violence of that old Stalinist, Betty Freidan, the Gollum-like cringing and slinking of Wm J. Clinton. Even so, he deals with the phenomena in an entertaining and satisfying manner revealing the anti-gun psyche as fundamentally dysfunctional and perverse. Afterward…. Events immediately following the publication of this book reveal a surprising, lingering distrust of the gun control movement in American thought. Despite the protestations of Sarah Brady and her ilk, the movement remains closely associated with the partisan left. The partisan left continues to be regarded as fundamentally opposed to the American Ideal and all that is good or noble in the human experience. After September 11, all things Anti-American and Anti-Freedom suffered a sudden loss of tolerance from the American public. It became clear that the organizations most identified with the anti-gun movement lost popular support as Sarah Brady’s fund raising schemes underwent a sharp reversal. There are strong indications that the United Nations is now widely viewed with the contempt and distrust it has earned throughout its history. The major networks have lost their death grip on news and opinion, displaced by a newer, more honest media offering visions of America and Freedom far less forlorn than the tired old Marxist formulae that dominated much of the 20th century.
|
Navigation Links on
Sixgunner.Com™ |
