From: [k--o--r] at [delphi.com] (Ken L. Holder)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: L. Neil Smith: Time to pull the plug on
Date: 14 Feb 1995 06:07:18 GMT

Area # 1  Discussion                10 Feb 95  07:36    Message # 2279
From    : L. Neil Smith
To      : All                                           
Subj    : Time to pull the plug ...

                       THE PARTY'S OVER, NRA
                       -- by L. Neil Smith --

    You'll be happy to know, rather than repealing unconstitutional
gun laws rammed through by the Clintons over the past couple years,
that Newt Gingrich and his "revolutionaries" (the same band of Merry
Pranksters who just stripped you of your Fourth Amendment
protections by rescinding the Exclusionary Rule which forbids
illegally-obtained evidence from being introduced in court) have
decided on public hearings -- in a few months, when they get around
to it -- which will miraculously undo, overnight, six decades of
unrelenting, vicious propaganda against gun ownership.  Only then --
or when Hell freezes over, whichever comes first -- will they begin
to bring federal law into compliance with the Bill of Rights.

    Pardon my cynicism.

    You'll be even happier to know that, in your name, the wise and
glorious leaders of the National Rifle Association have
enthusiastically agreed to this paint-job, because -- to all
appearances, at least -- what they get out of it is nationally
licensed concealed carry, which will bring us just one short hop
away from compulsory gun registration and licensing of ownership.
Next stop, if my interpretation of their long-term goals is correct,
will be legislation that makes owning any kind of gun illegal -- if
don't also happen to belong to the NRA.

    Paranoia?  No, just extrapolation of long-established trends.
It's what I'm paid to do for a living.  It's what made it possible
for me to predict, a decade in advance, things like the invention of
the digital watch, the turn to violence in the "right to life"
movement, the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The NRA has always
tried to make its membership believe that its chronically dimwitted
fumblings and wretched failures of courage were titanic victories,
somehow, in the eternal struggle against ... well, whatever it was
they were struggling against at the time instead of gun control --
usually some idiotic and illegal piece of legislation they'd written
themselves, so our enemies wouldn't have to do the job.

    Now, in attempting to convince us that it represents brilliant
strategy to allow Republicans in the House to separate the
semiautomatic weapons and large magazine prohibition out of the
crime bill (so they can be vetoed separately, with neither the
President nor his Republican "adversaries" having to pay any
political consequences for this vile exchange of bodily fluids) all
they've managed to prove, to anyone who doesn't have half his brain
tied behind his back, is just how dimwitted, cowardly -- and
thoroughly corrupt -- they've gotten to be over the years.

    Do the NRA leadership really believe that, out here in the field
-- in "fly-over country" as we hear it condescendingly referred to
by professional Potomac parasites -- we're as stupid as they are?
Do they think that we're as pusillanimous as 60 years of sipping
cocktails with the enemy and leading from behind have made them?

    Apparently so.

    It has become the obvious function of the NRA to hold our
shoulders steady so that our heads can be cut off by those who are
supposed to be our friends. Or, if we prefer, they'll _shave_ those
heads and slit our pants cuffs, for the electric chair. The fact is,
I'm surprised that their last junk-mailing contained the usual
worthless insurance offer, rather than a blindfold and a final
cigarette.

    Am I hollering "conspiracy"?

    No, not at all -- just "politics".

    Then again, of course, all of politics _is_ conspiracy.

    But the party's over.  The long, free ride has come to an end.
It's time for the NRA's leadership to do something honest, something
decent, something intelligent for a change, and go home -- forever.
It's long past time for its three-point-something million
card-carrying members to collect their courage -- or at least their
dignity -- and burn those cards. It's time for the NRA to dissolve
itself before its pathetically clumsy machinations do any more
damage to the Constitution, and to distribute its assets -- its
rotten, bloated, Vaticanoid assets -- to groups that will use them

the way its members always thought they were being used.

    And it's time, too, to get ourselves another political party --
the truth is, we've left a good one waiting in the wings for the
past 20 years -- that will stop screwing around with its phony
contract, keep the unwritten promises that really got its people
elected, and enforce the highest law of the land, the Bill of
Rights.


L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of 19 novels including
_The Probability Broach_, _The Crystal Empire_, _Henry Martyn_, _The
Lando Calrissian Adventures_, and _Pallas_.  He is an NRA Life
Member and founder of the Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus.

His e-mail address is: [l--e--l] at [lever.ncdl.com]

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-- Ken L. Holder -------------------------------------------------------
[k--o--r] at [delphi.com] | "Society" is a convenience for those who need an  
Try L. Neil Smith's  | excuse to control the lives -- or steal the       
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  (303) 493-6674     | ACTION BBS, Dec 7, 1994, Message # 2243