Jim,
I'm a little late posting this as i have only recently found this thread, but i thought those who have not read this column may enjoy it.
orlandosentinel.com
The not-so-hidden agenda of those million moms marching
By Charley Reese
Columnist
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on May 21, 2000
Contrast Mothers Against Drunk Driving with the Million Mom March against guns.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or rather its founders, recognized in a rational, intelligent manner that the cause of their grief was not the automobile. The killers of their children were human beings who drove the automobiles in a criminally reckless manner. They have been quite effective in persuading state legislatures to toughen the laws against drunken driving.
The Million Mom March, however, ignored the problem -- the humans who used firearms to commit murder -- and focused instead on the gun, which, like the automobile, is an inanimate object incapable of acting on its own.
Two explanations are possible. One, they are just ignorant and superstitious or, at best, thoughtless and ill-informed about their own country's history. Two, they know quite well what they are doing -- pursuing a hidden agenda to disarm the American people.
Certainly any group that picks Rosie O'Donnell, a loud, beefy comedian who confuses volume with intelligence, is not exactly an advertisement for rational people engaged in a thoughtful debate.
None of the people who have used guns to commit crimes, whether career criminals or the temporarily or permanently psychotic, would be affected one whit by new laws. Who can imagine that a person intent on violating the law against murder would be deterred by the prospect of violating a law involving possession of a firearm?
Only the thoughtless.
These women, organized by a friend of the Clintons, were just staging a political charade to further the Clinton agenda to gut the Second Amendment rights of the American people.
When they piteously say that 13 children a day die, they conveniently forget that 85 percent of them are 15- to 20-year-old thugs, usually engaged in drug wars or turf battles. In fact, only 20 children younger than 5 died in firearms accidents in the last year for which numbers are available. Only 142 younger than 14 lost their lives in firearms accidents. That puts firearms accidents dead last as a threat to children in the accidents column.
Besides, the ugly fact is that most children who die in firearms accidents are children of low-class, low-intelligence parents who are far too irresponsible to obey any laws requiring locks.
As for licensing handguns, anything that is licensed is not a right, and the American people have a clear, unquestionable right to own and keep firearms. When the government starts to license speech, press, assembly and religion, then you will know that you no longer live a free society.
The gun has been a constant in American history, both in our Colonial period and in our national period. There would be no America without the gun. It is to us, our history and our culture what the sword is to Japan.
Look at the phrases in our language derived from guns -- "lock, stock and barrel," "shoot your wad" and "hit the nail on the head." Yes, the last referred to a marksman hitting a nail and driving it the rest of the way into a board or a tree. That was a common target for shooting matches on the American frontier. Americans in those days were good shots. Their lives depended on it.
The fundamental difference between a free society and an unfree society is an armed citizenry. No unfree society allows its citizens to be armed. Even today we can paraphrase Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli and say that America and Switzerland are the most armed -- and the most free -- countries on Earth. Heed the Constitution not some overweight comedian. It's your liberty they are threatening. |
