* Keep The Issue Clear!
Bernard Levine, Box 2404, Eugene OR 97402
Not copyrighted -- please circulate

Most of the arguments for and against gun bans address such
marginal issues as the protection of hunting and target shooting
versus the prevention of crime. They avoid the central issue,
which is the protection of liberty against the inroads of
tyranny. In fact the Constitution is equally silent on sport
shooting and on crime prevention. The Constitution's Second
Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear arms strictly as
the means of last resort by which a free people can and ought to
resist tyranny, whether the threat of tyranny be foreign or
domestic, military conquest or political subversion.

Certainly guns are dangerous. So are cars. Certainly guns, like
cars, should be kept from the hands of the irresponsible and the
deranged. Nonetheless guns, like cars, are an essential
ingredient of our freedom. When the Bill of Rights states, "the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed", it does not mention "sporting" arms or any chimerical
"right" to hunt. If you are "pro-gun" but think that hunting and
target shooting are the real issues, then you, like President
Bush, have naively surrendered the moral high ground to the foes
of liberty in a pusillanimous and futile attempt to appease them.

Whatever high-sounding or devious excuses they might offer, gun
ban advocates really want to support tyranny. This is true of the
press and broadcast moguls, who profit most from a frightened,
passive, helpless audience. It is true of the radical
legislators, who rightly view an armed public as the ultimate
deterrent to their revolutionary agenda of redistributive "social
justice". It is most especially true of police chiefs and senior
police officials, the very men who always assume absolute power
in the police-states that spring up whenever radical revolutions
succeed.

The news publishers, the radical legislators, and the police
bureaucrats are natural allies in promoting gun bans. The advance
of the states monopoly on power (which is what tyranny means)
enhances their individual influence, strengthens the power of
their organizations, and advances their shared dogma, that an
"enlightened" police-state (namely one with them in charge) is
more "just" to the "poor and downtrodden" than is a government
based on individual liberty.

By themselves the publishers, the legislators, and the police
chiefs could not subvert the Constitution and enact gun bans.
Therefore they drum up the support of the most readily swayed
part of the public, all the tremulous dewy-eyed naifs who are
ignorant of history and mystified by our political and economic
system. These frightened followers are unable to grasp the nature
of cause and effect, so the media have taught them that guns
cause crime. They are unable to tell right from wrong, so they
have been led to believe that self-defense is an "injustice to
the poor". They cannot distinguish statesmanship from psychosis,
so they glorify violent criminals as "free spirits" and the
"shock troops of the movement". These innocents form a powerful
team with the would-be tyrants and their journalistic apologists,
for without an ignorant, foolish and self-destructive public that
is intoxicated by wishful thinking and seduced by government
programs (remember Weimar Germany?) there can be no tyranny --
and no tyrannical gun bans.