Date: Thu, 26 Oct 95 06:34:00 UTC 0000
From: [j--e--l] at [genie.com]
To: [gr conf] at [mainstream.com], [n--b--n] at [mainstream.com]
Subject: Ben & Jerry's Campaign
Message-ID: <[199510260643 AA 153899831] at [relay1.geis.com]>

                BEN & JERRY'S ANTI-GUN CAMPAIGN

     I found myself tonight in a Ben & Jerry's ice cream parlor
this evening with my little girl and a friend with her little
boy.  Three cups of ice cream and a cone ended up costing around
$9.50, and it wasn't until after we sat down at the tables to
consume our treats that I noticed the decorations,if you can call
it that.

     There were signs all around the place promoting child
safety.  Most of it was mere common sense, until I noticed that
at the centerpiece of one of the signs hanging a few feet in
front of me was, "If you have a gun, keep it locked and unloaded,
with the ammunition locked up separately."

     This makes sure that a gun won't be available for any
use, particularly home defense.

     My first reaction was to deface this lethal advice, which if
followed would reduce the 1.6 million gun defenses per year which,
according to the 1993 National Self Defense Survey, take place in
or around the home, and I took out my pen and wrote "Bullshit!"
Then I lost my temper, pulled down the sign, ripped it up, and
handed it to the clerk, saying, "This sign will get people killed."

     Then I noticed a duplicate of the sign hanging a few feet
away.  This sign I didn't rip up.  I wrote on it, "Guns save
people from 2.5 million crimes every year -- one gun defense
every thirteen seconds."  I handed that sign to the clerk.
"This one you can put up again, if you want to."

     I noticed a rack of little pamphlets on a display table.
One of the group of pamphlets was something about writing to your
congressperson to promote child safety.  This pamphlet advocated
passing additional "gun restrictions."  I grabbed all fifty or so of
the pamphlets and when I left, I dropped them in a trash bin several
blocks away.

     Ben & Jerry's is a private business and they have the right
to put up whatever signs they want in their place of business.
They have the right to distribute whatever pamphlets they want.
In the cool light of reason, I suppose I'd have to admit that
what I did wasn't very libertarian.  I violated their property
rights.  If I object to what a business is promoting, I should just
not do business with them.

     On the other hand, I felt cheated that I had just spent
$9.50 on ice cream, the profits of which were going to be used
to destroy my self-defense rights.  My father's life has been
saved half a dozen times by guns he carried.  I guess I just lost
my head and went a little crazy.

     There it is.  Temporary insanity caused by the sugar in
the ice cream.  Almost as good as the Twinkie defense used
in San Francisco.  Hey, nobody's responsible for anything anymore,
right?

      Unless you believe people are responsible for their own
defense, and should help their neighbors, in which case Ben & Jerry's
might be accountable for the deaths of any disarmed person killed by
a burglar after believing Ben & Jerry's lethal lies.

     Hey, I just remembered.  Some Ben & Jerry's ice cream was
found in Nicole Brown Simpson's condo the night she was stabbed
to death.

     Maybe we don't know for sure who stabbed her to death ...
but we know who might have convinced Nicole Brown Simpson not
to have a gun with her that night.

                              ##

 J. NEIL SCHULMAN is the author of two Prometheus award-
 winning novels, Alongside Night and The Rainbow Cadenza,
 short fiction, nonfiction, and screenwritings, including the
 CBS Twilight Zone episode "Profile in Silver."  His previous
 nonfiction book was STOPPING POWER: Why 70 Million Americans Own
 Guns.  Dr. Walter E. Williams says of Schulman's latest book,
 SELF CONTROL Not Gun Control, "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."
      Schulman has been published in the Los Angeles Times and
 other national newspapers, as well as National Review,
 Reason, Liberty, and other magazines.  His LA Times article
 "If Gun Laws Work, Why Are We Afraid?" won the James Madison
 Award from the Second Amendment Foundation.  Schulman's books
 have been praised by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, Anthony
 Burgess, Robert A. Heinlein, Colin Wilson, and many other
 prominent individuals.  Charlton Heston said of STOPPING POWER:
 "Mr. Schulman's book is the most cogent explanation of the gun
 issue I have yet read.  He presents the assault on the Second
 Amendment in frighteningly clear terms. Even the extremists who
 would ban firearms will learn from his lucid prose."


    Reply to:
 J. Neil Schulman
 Mail:                 P.O. Box 94, Long Beach, CA 90801-0094
 Voice Mail & Fax:     (500) 44-JNEIL
 Internet:             [j--e--l] at [genie.com]
 World Wide Web Page:  http://www.pinsight.com/~zeus/jneil/

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