Was there ever a more appropriate title for a major newspaper’s editorial? In the September 3, 2006 edition of The Los Angeles Times, this was it: Deadly, Intentional Ignorance on Guns. Man, oh man!
The piece writes about the President’s lock down on gun data and Congress’s taking it further. The complaint is that they won’t be able to access data on any connection between gun sales and gun crime.
Alright. But what if there is no such connection to be seen? We know – and some states know it so they repealed their one-gun-a-month law – that crooks don’t buy their weapons through legal channels. Duh.. Talk about ignorance . .
But they do steal weapons bought through legal channels, and newspapers mislead the public by saying that the guns were bought legally. Kind of forgot something, didn’tcha? Kind of left something out . .?
Here is my complaint: the last paragraph, if I may, says, “The gun industry says this kind of information has no value to the public at large and that law enforcement agencies could use it to harass dealers. That’s nonsense. What they’re probably worried about is that such information could show how to make gun-control laws more effective.”
This is where that ignorance on guns comes in: gun control laws are not effective, unless you’re trying to disarm the law-abiding, then, as unAmerican as they are, they are effective. They are effective at disarming the citizen to put them at the mercy of the thugs in Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. Brilliant. That’s your idea of Order?
Not surprising that the gun makers are for the freedom of the people in guns, but so are many other liberty civil rights groups. As I said in my last piece, the Second Amendment is absolute, as it guards against disarming the citizenry by way of so-called reasonable due process. [See Thank You, California Legislature, Mens News Daily and elsewhere.]
There is no legitimate due process anywhere in America which can legally disarm citizens short of a Constitutional Amendment Repeal, and that’s not likely in a post 9/ll era – with the exception of taking the right from felons, and of not selling weapons to under-age persons, not selling to non-citizens (they don’t have a right if they’re not a citizen) and people with restraining orders and so forth. That’s fairly reasonable, but that’s where it ends. We have our share of responsibilities just like the First Amendment does. Meanwhile, gun control is a method of fooling the non-gun-owning public into thinking that the subject is open to discussion.
It is not. I bet you can think of several privacy or sovereignty rights you would assert are not even open to discussion, if you thought about it. I’ll bet you could think of several not open to discussion.
Imagine, a newspaper advocating unwinding a civil right while it insists on keeping its own rights.
Los Angeles Times, please name any civil right subject to being unwound by due process, beginning with editorials. Just one, please. It would be a shameful example of having such an open mind that your brains fall out. You unwind someone else’s right and you’ve already begun to unwind your own.
Let’s try the First Amendment first, beginning with the cause that people engage in false advertising, mail fraud, lying under oath and other abuses of their right while hiding behind that right of freedom of speech. Why should The Times, which advocates unwinding another civil right, keep its own amid such widespread, irresponsible abuses nationwide?
Show us how it’s done, Times, first, please, so that we can understand just how people should let their civil rights be open to discussion, open to being talked out of their right. Just a little bit more adjustment for modern times. Please submit yourself to opening the freedom of speech to discussion by your enemies. Set the example.
Because if the reasons of censors sound more reasonable than you had expected, and if they invoke due process and push fairness, you just might talk yourself out of your right to a free press. Your failure to see how your rights are backed by force in the citizenry is proof positive that you do not understand the nature of the relationship between the official and the governed: namely, that officials take orders from us, and that no official can legally oppose the People. [How often has The Los Angeles Times taken positions against the LAPD and prevailed as evidence that the People can effect change from here? The citizenry is still quite powerful for those who use their authority. Why silence them? Ah, that is the question.]
Meanwhile, political opponents fool cooperative citizens into thinking that the subject is open to discussion, but it’s not. The Times has been fooled into thinking that gun control is reasonable and can be enacted through a due process frontal attack for the sake of community safety and Order, but they are in fact attacking a right and not attacking crime or violence. Gun control doesn’t work, unless you have an entirely hidden objective, then it works, and how!
Gun control won’t stop crime. Gun control is nothing more than unwinding a civil right.
While the Press keeps their rights. And their jobs, and their readership and their advertisers. It’s another complex which feeds on crisis and can take either side, editorially, and even if the right is snuffed out, the business remains..,along with the jobs, the readership and the advertisers. It’s wrong to take the side of the criminal by disarming the victim in the name of Order or anti-violence.
If you want reasonable, look at the majority of states who have their citizens walking around carrying guns and look at the difference in crime problems between those states and California.
If someone is really interested in Order, and in the law, then the only way out is to respect the rights of the honest and to understand that these people are the first line of defense and always have been. The legal, authorized and practical first line of defense.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, two witnesses to a teen rape were shot to death by the rapist. Check it out. They were seen by the rapist, then hunted down as they tried to hide in a grassy area, and were shot to death.
Gee, folks, do ya think an armed citizen  with authority and training as hundreds of thousands of gun owners have – would have been able to hold the bastard for police? In case The Times didn’t know it, the FBI already has a great deal of data on crime and guns every year, and shows in its Uniform Crime Report that though about 47,000 people are shot to death each year – these dead witnesses now to be included this year – citizens stop a crime in progress more than 2.5 million times a year. On their legal authority, and often without firing a shot.
It’s really something the interested head of household should look into. Imagine the editors at major newspapers going home to their loved ones and saying that they cannot be counted on to protect them in time of violent crime. “Well, dear, don’t you know what I do for a living? I can’t be counted on to use force to protect you and I stop other people from protecting their loved ones. That’s what I do at work, dear.”
Ask yourself, not as Editors, but as fathers, husbands and heads of household: Do you really believe the idea of personal self-defense should even be open to discussion on someone else’s idea of what is Order?
The Times, intentionally ignorant on guns?
You bet they are.
And how do you imagine that kind of ignorance impacts Order and our governance?
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John Longenecker is author of Transfer Of Wealth – The Case For Nationwide Concealed Carry, now in its second edition available in bookstores late September, 2006. See www.TransferOfWealth.net
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