                      THE SHEEP FROM THE GOATS
                       -- by L. Neil Smith --

    Libertarians, gun owners, and Libertarian gun owners have been
arguing lately among themselves over what course to pursue following
the passage of the Brady Bill and the Feinstein ban on certain
non-automatic weapons.  Both laws are blatantly unconstitutional and
-- equally important in this context -- neither would have passed
without the wholehearted assistance of Republicans in the House and
Senate.

    My personal position has been that I will never cast my vote for
any Republican candidate again, on the long-established principle of
war that traitors must be punished far more harshly than any mere
enemy.

    Instead, I will vote for Libertarians whenever I can.

    I will even vote for the lowliest, slimiest liberal Democrat --
a quantity I know all too well -- in preference to the treacherous
Republican who may betray me again without warning, and probably
will.

    If I absolutely can't stomach voting for a liberal Democrat, I
will "cast a blank" -- not vote for anyone for that particular
office -- because I know party organizations pay close attention to
that sort of voter behavior, and sometimes they even get the message
it conveys.

    But wait.

    Perhaps I have been a trifle hasty in urging this scorched-earth
voting policy on others, without offering some more reasonable, less
draconian alternative.  Maybe there _are_ good Republicans and bad
Republicans, after all.  Maybe what we really need is some way of
telling the difference -- assuming that it really exists -- between
them.

    To that end, I recommend that, whenever you're in a position (or
can force your way _into_ a position) to question one of these
_good_ Republicans -- especially if he protests that he had no part
in passing these illegal gun bills, or he claims in general _not_ to
be one of a new breed of _Clinton_ Republicans -- you ask him to
_prove_ it.

    Ask him when -- on what day -- he plans to introduce legislation
to repeal the illegal Brady law and Feinstein ban on non-automatic
weapons.
 
    Ask him when he plans a blanket repeal of _all_ federal gun
laws, not one of which is permissible under the United States
Constitution.

    Ask him when he plans to deny federal funds to states, counties,
and cities that pass and enforce laws of their own which are equally
unconstitutional.

    Ask him when he plans to instruct the Chief Executive to arrest,
indict, try, convict, imprison, and fine politicians and bureaucrats
-- including his colleagues -- who have had any part of passing or
enforcing such laws in contravention of the _highest_ law of the
land, the Bill of Rights.

    Ask him, since Republicans seem so fond of capital punishment,
when he will introduce legislation providing that, whenever someone
dies as the result of government violation of the Bill of Rights,
the responsible public employee will face the ultimate penalty,
himself.

    On a local note, ask him when he'll make himself available to be
photographed -- for public distribution -- holding and shooting a
non-automatic "assault" rifle and a high-capacity non-automatic
pistol.

    But most of all, ask him if he's aware that there's a relatively
new political party -- the Libertarian Party -- waiting in the wings
(the fact is, it's been waiting there for more than 20 years) that
will do each and every one of these wonderful, long-overdue things,
with enthusiasm and style, if he and his "grand old party" continue
to prove unwilling.

    If he sneers at your third party, ask him if he knows that,
since the murders at Ruby Ridge and the massacre at Waco, especially
since the passage of Brady and Feinstein -- written to "prevent"
such atrocities by the nakedly fascist expedient of rendering the
victims defenseless -- for anyone to associate himself with a party
that planned, rehearsed, and helped execute and whitewash these
supremely unAmerican operations amounts to the same thing as a
German of the 1930s voting Nazi, on the grounds that "it's the only
game in town".

L. Neil Smith
Author:  THE PROBABILITY BROACH, THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE,
HENRY MARTYN, THE LANDO CALRISSIAN ADVENTURES, and PALLAS
Editor:   LEVER ACTION BBS (303) 493-6674
Founder:  Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus
NRA Life Member

