Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
From: [b--p--t] at [tyrell.net] (Brad Alpert)
Subject: "Proportion"/an article
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1993 15:59:01 GMT

October 18, 1993
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       Permission to reprint granted, with attribution to
         "The BULLET, the Official Publication of the
            Western Missouri Shooters Alliance".
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                           Proportion
                         by Brad Alpert

The depth and breadth of opposition to our gun rights is all but 
unbelievable.   Every media organ incessantly screams the Big Lie 
at us and we can't even buy commercial air-time on the national 
networks.  You can start a conversation with nearly anyone today 
and learn that NRA supports "cop-killer bullets", machineguns for 
all, and assault weapon sales to minors.  You can watch the news 
and learn that it is the "easy availability of guns" that causes 
urban violence.  And so on!

Representative Major Owens' resolution in support of the repeal 
of the Second Amendment - laughable last year, when first 
introduced - is drawing increasing support.  Moynihan's perennial 
"ammo tax" is being seriously discussed.  The government's Center 
for Disease control is operating under a virtual mandate to 
generate anti-gun "research" support of their "discovery" that 
firearm-related casualties are a "public health problem and 
should be dealt with via legislative prescription".

Have you noticed, lately, that government officials and media 
pundits are identifying "firearms use" as bad?  NOT "misuse" - 
but "use"...?

Never mind that the "murder capital" of the United States is 
Washington, D.C. - where handguns have been effectively banned 
since 1976.  Blame Virginia, where citizens still have a right to 
purchase and own them (note that, since Virginia has passed its 
"one-gun-a-month" law, Maryland to the north has become the new 
supposed source of illegal guns in D.C. - so look for a push for 
Virginia-style gun control there).  Why focus on the failure of 
gun control where the problem is, when you can, via deception on 
a mass scale, use that very failure as an excuse to impose more 
doomed-to-failure gun control elsewhere?

We can't blame the anti-gunners for our predicament because the 
enemies of freedom are always at work - it's a natural, 
historical process.  As inevitably as rust attacks bright and 
shiny steel, corrosive elements will always work to tarnish 
essential Liberty.  Who, then, is to blame?  Why, it is the 
apathy of the American gunowner that has landed us in the current 
mess and which is, moveover, KEEPING us there!

While we were cleaning our guns, paying our taxes, going to 
church and raising our families, the collectivists (operating 
under whatever banner was/is convenient) have eaten our lunch.  
We sat chewing our figurative cud when GCA '68 - with the support 
of NRA and most domestic arms manufacturers - passed.  We sat on 
our hands when George Bush (who had voted for GCA, '68 while 
serving as a Representative) banned the import of dozens of types 
of fine infantry-style weapons.  We were quiescent when Jimmy 
Carter had the Army destroy over 60,000 M-14 rifles while 
simultaneously halting M1 sales through the Director of Civilian 
Marksmanship.  While BATF sat around abusing its regulatory 
process by inventing tortuous and ridiculous new "laws" designed 
to snare anyone they wanted to "get", gunowners happily went 
pheasant hunting and trap shooting, secure in the knowledge that 
the Second Amendment would protect their 12-gauge.

We're paying a mighty price, now, for our apathy and our 
inattention.  We're up to our rear ends in alligators!  The enemy 
has secured its position on so many fronts that fighting them is 
a full-time job.  The anti-gunners own the media, the public 
school establishment, organized law enforcement, the legal 
system, the national church groups, the established "civil rights 
movement", women's groups, on and on.

Such shredded ribbons of our Second Amendment liberties as remain 
are hanging by a thread.

How much more oppression can we gunowners take?  At what point 
will we reclaim our heritage as free-born American citizens?

I do not know what will happen when the day arrives that 
Americans are told they must turn in their guns.

I do know, however, what I will do.

How about you?

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