From: [a--y--r] at [nmsu.edu] (Nosy)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,talk.politics.misc,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,talk.politics.drugs,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.society.civil-liberties
Subject: "Gun Owners Won't Give Up Their Rights"
Date: 5 Mar 94 20:11:09


	This crossposting is deliberate. The text that follows is
	one of the most thoughtful observations on the current
	"gun control" mania and the long-term implications
	I have had the fortune to see. IMHO it applies to each 
	newsgroup above, for various reasons.

	BUT NOTE FOLLOWUPS. 

	Topic drift being what it is, I'm setting the followup OUT
	of all but one newsgroup; talk.politics.guns.

	The following is reprinted without permission from the
	Los Angeles Times.

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	GUN OWNERS WON'T GIVE UP THEIR RIGHTS

		BY PHILLIP JACKSON

	L.A. TIMES, DECEMBER, 1993

The passage of the so-called Brady Bill is being heralded by latter-day
prohibitionists as the breach through which further anti-gun legislation
will rush, eventually to deprive me and millions of other Americans of 
my class of the most cherished of our Constitutional and natural rights,
the right to keep and bear arms for our own and the common defense.

I am heartsick.

When I speak of "my class", I'm not talking about wealth or race or national
ancestry. Some of us are wealthy, others poor. Our complexions range from
"black" to "white" and all the shades in between. Our ancestors spoke
Cherokee or Spanish or English or Korean or German or some other of 
the world's thousands of tongues. Some of us can trace our ancestry
on this soil for thousands of years, others remember coming here as 
strangers. Some, like me, are political liberals, others, like my
brother, conservatives.

We are farmers, artists, housewives, soldiers, school teachers, factory
workers, doctors -- nothing grand, but respectable. We are far from
perfect, but we try our best and we have evolved with the consciousness
of the times. It's perhaps not too inaccurate to describe us as typical
of the rootstock of the American nation. 

But the unifying factor that makes us a class is our devotion to this 
country and its traditions, including the tradition that Americans 
have the right to own their own arms, and the duty to know how to 
use them and to come to the aid of their families, their communities
and their nation in time of need.

When called upon, we have entered the military with our skill at arms
and as civilians we have been equally ready to defend ourselves, our
families and our communities in times of riot, insurrection, natural
disasters or criminal infestation. We are, in fact, members of the
militia, the body of the people, armed, as conceived by the Founding
Fathers and as defined by law. We take pride in this and in our self-
reliance, and to be told now that we are not to be trusted, that only
the agents of the state are to be armed, is to cheapen our 
citizenship.

In advocating the disarmament of the American people, the intellectual
elite promoting gun prohibition has considered only possible benefits:
the reduction of gang shootings in the cities and an eventual limitation
of the arms available to criminals through theft and the black market.
But what of the probable cost of these "reforms"? More than half of the
households in the United States contain firearms. While a bare majority
of the public is said to favor "gun control", far larger majorities
reject it when it is defined as meaning that only the police and
military may possess handguns and semi-automatic rifles. 

When faced with confiscation of their arms or prison, some will resist
violently. How many Wacos will result? How many otherwise peaceful 
citizens will die in the noble experiment to make the world a little
safer for gangbangers? I don't know; those aren't my circles, I can
only testify to what will happen when this solid middle-class guy
opens a letter from some agency of the state commanding me to report
to an armory or police station with my arms and surrender them.

I will call my lawyer and the summons will be ignored. There would then 
necessarily follow some process of the authorities obtaining a search
warrant, coming to my house, confiscating any arms they find and then
arresting me as a felon. I would not resist by force, but I would
feel compelled to make my arrest and trial as legally arduous and as
expensive for the state as possible.

Multiply my case by millions and imagine the result for public morale,
law enforcement and the judicial system.

I might add that enthusiasm for such a search-and-seize process would be
almost totally nonexistent among street police officers, who generally
have strong feelings favoring the rights of law-abiding citizens to
own personal arms. 

And after a few thousand resisters have been killed and millions of
Americans have been embittered in the prosecution of this new 
victimless crime, how will justice have been served and how many
lives will have been saved?

All of this activity on behalf of "gun control" may make those who propose
it feel good, but it is a dangerous distraction from our real problems.

What is it in contemporary American society that produces so many people
who are willing and eager to kill? Why do young men join violent gangs
and search for self-worth by terrorizing their neighborhoods? Why does
discontent with a jury decision lead to riot and looting, rather than
nonviolent civil disobedience? Why have so many American families
dissolved and why are so many young men growing up without fathers,
finding their role models in actors in violent movies or anarchic
singers? Why were the previews of the new TV season filled with shot
after shot, explosion after explosion? Is the American public, like
the citizens of the late Roman Empire, capable of being entertained
only by violence and death?

We not only shoot; we stab, strangle, and bludgeon a higher percentage
of our citizens than more peaceful countries.

Have we given up on curing the problems of our society? Would it not
be better to cooperate to discover and attack the root causes of all
this violence rather than to split the country over an issue that,
however serious, is only a symptom?

We ordinary Americans recognize the terrible problem of violence in our
society, and we realize that too-easy access to firearms can be a factor
in the expression of that violence. WE are willing to consider some
legislation regulating access to firearms for the criminal, the insane
and the irresponsible as part of a wider effort to heal America. But 
we will not, can not cooperate in the effort to suspend out 
Constitutional right to bear arms for the sake of a sociological
experiment. 

[Phillip Jackson is a retired school teacher and retired police officer
 who works as a sculptor at his home in Altadena, California.]


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