Date: Thu, 14 Mar 96 00:18:00 UTC 0000
From: [j--e--l] at [genie.com]
To: [gr conf] at [mainstream.com], [n--b--n] at [mainstream.com]
Subject: A RUDE AWAKENING
Message-ID: <[199603140034 AA 173013681] at [relay1.geis.com]>

 The following article is under submission.  Reproduction
 in computer file and message bases is permitted for informational
 purposes only.  Copyright (c) 1996 by J. Neil Schulman.
 All other rights reserved.



                         A RUDE AWAKENING

                      by J. Neil Schulman


     They thought that sort of thing happened only in America,
didn't they?  Sure, in Killeen, Texas, you could have a madman
with a gun start randomly shooting dozens of people, then turn
the gun on himself.  In Stockton, California, you could have
a whacko with an "assault" rifle go into a school and start
massacring innocent children.

     But not in Dunblane, Scotland, for God's sake!  They had
gun control laws so strict that Sarah Brady of the American
Handgun Control, Inc., could only dream about them, and use
the low British gun-homicide rate in their fund-raising letters.
Maybe the Americans hadn't outgrown the Wild West, but this
was supposed to be _civilization_.

     It has taken the deaths of sixteen children at the hands of
a madman, who then used the gun to kill himself also, to alert the
townspeople of Dunblane, Scotland that irrational violence
doesn't respect national borders, or the Marquess of Queenberry
rules, or sweet innocence itself.

     Had enough yet?

     How many more innocent people must die this way before those
who count on the goodness in people to keep them safe wake up to
some fundamental truths about the human species?

     We are not good by nature.  Character resides in the individual
capacity for choosing between good and evil, right and wrong, self-
control or its opposites, tyranny and dissipation.  There are wild
people among us who will not exercise self-restraint, and we must
live with the expectation that at a time and place of _their_
choosing, not of ours, they will explode upon us.

     So if you are through playing "if only" and "if I had my way"
with public policy, are you ready to take a hard look at our options
of how to deal effectively with random, savage violence against the
most vulnerable among us?

     Sarah Brady might as well pack up shop now.  Stricter
gun-control laws than she has been fighting for were in place in
Scotland, and they were unable to keep a resolute madman from
getting a gun.

     We can always try to solve the problem of lawlessness by becoming
a police state.  We can surround ourselves with police and throw more
people into prison, throwing away the key after them.  In Japan, there
is no constitutional Bill of Rights which prevents the police from
searching your home at random, holding you as long as they like
before trial, and torturing a confession out of you.  The criminal
conviction rate in Japan approaches 100%, most of them by
"confessions."  And it works, if preventing crime is your only goal.
The Japanese homicide rate is a fraction of ours, as Sarah Brady
will eagerly tell you.

     But the Japanese suicide rate is twice the American rate -- high
enough that the combined homicide-suicide rate in both countries is
the same -- and included in these Japanese suicides are incidents where
a father kills his whole family then kills himself -- not too
different from the gunman's actions in Dunblane.  Laws and police
can't frighten a man who doesn't expect to be alive by the time the
police show up, anyway.

     Or, we can get used to the idea that there are terrorists living
among us, political or otherwise, and the Framers of the Constitution
of the United States understood that when they wrote the Second
Amendment.  It says, "A well-regulated Militia being necessary to
the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and
bear Arms shall not be infringed."

     The militia the authors of the Second Amendment were talking
about wasn't a National Guard or a police department.  It was
every decent adult who knew how to use a gun.  There are about
70 million Americans today who own guns.  A substantial number of
them are qualified with handguns, and if well-intentioned idealists
hadn't written laws subverting the intent of the realists who
wrote our constitution, these gun-owners could be carrying their
guns with them wherever they go.  And, yes.  Some of these gunowners
are even schoolteachers, who could conceal a gun on them while they
are in the classroom.

     A few weeks ago in Israel, a terrorist drove his car into a
crowd of civilians, intent on mass murder.  The Israelis are far more
pragmatic than their Jewish cousins here, many of whom support
civilian disarmament as public policy.  When the terrorist tried
to kill innocent civilians, the innocent civilians took out their
guns and defended themselves.  Result: living innocent people and
a dead terrorist.  It's happened in Israel before, in Jerusalem in
April, 1984 and in Ashod in February, 1994.  The results in all
these cases show that our Founding Fathers knew what they were
doing: when innocent people are armed so that they can protect
themselves, those with the intent to commit random acts of violence
don't live long enough to get away with it.

     A popular saying among gun-owners is a quote from the late
science-fiction author, Robert A. Heinlein: "An armed society is
a polite society."  That is true, but I think Heinlein was
thinking of Switzerland, which has had five centuries of being
an armed society to eliminate the "impolite."

     In the meantime, it is becoming increasingly obvious that
an armed society is the only one which stands a chance of
dealing with the terrorism that a gun in the wrong hands can
create.

                             *****

"You are going to love Neil's book!  It is thought-provoking,
informative without being dry, and humorous without being silly."
     Janada Oakley, PAUL REVERE NETWORK

"GOOD STUFF! Yet another insightful collection of perspectives on
the issues of moral character, political correctness, and the great
American debate over the 2nd Amendment."
     Dennis Santiago, PAUL REVERE NETWORK

"Schulman interestingly and insightfully raises a number of
liberty-related issues that we ignore at the nation's peril.
His ideas are precisely those that helped make our country
the destination of those seeking liberty.  The book's title
says it all: personal responsibility, not laws and prohibitions,
is the mark of a civil society."
     Professor Walter E. Williams, Chairman Department of Economics
     George Mason University

"I kept wanting to share this essay or that poem with someone who
would get the same sense of confirmation I had."
     Andrea Millen Rich, LAISSEZ FAIRE REVIEW

SELF CONTROL Not Gun Control
by J. Neil Schulman
Publisher: Synapse--Centurion
$24.95 U.S.; $32.95 Canada
ISBN: 1-882639-05-7

 PLEASE encourage all gun rights activists to ask the manager or
 assistant manager of their local chain bookstore -- Barnes & Noble/
 Bookstar/BookStop/B. Dalton, Waldenbooks/Borders, Crown, etc. -- about
 when they are getting in SELF CONTROL Not Gun Control.  This will be an
 enormous help in getting the chains to order the book.

    Reply to:
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