So I was over at a family friend's house last night, drinking tequila with beer chasers as we talked gun stuff and I picked up his new Ruger MkIII .22 that he'd just picked up and offered to let me borrow for a couple of weeks. As I left, he gave me a bunch of his old gun mags that had been laying around the house. One of them was the April issue of Guns & Ammo, and in it was something I'd meant to blog about before but couldn't find on the Web -- something rather outrageous as far as content of your typical gun mags goes. Now, we've all heard about how most gun magazines rarely give even a hint of a negative review of a gun; an excellent spoof of a gun test and subsequent gun mag review can be found here.
You would think, though, that gun writers would more or less have things fully figured out when it comes to gun politics. You would think that they would all see right through people like Sarah Brady, Josh Sugarmann and the like. However, if you thought this, you would be wrong.
John Hay Rabb, who writes the "Second Amendment" column for Guns & Ammo, wrote in the April issue of "The Dark History of Gun Control," in which he discussed the issue of gun control's ignominious history of keeping guns out of the hands of black people and other disfavored groups in society. Now, this is something that really should be discussed, and it does indeed provide a possible motive about which we should question those who would impose ever more strict controls on the gun business in America. But Rabb gets off to an absolutely atrocious start, one which absolutely blows the entire premise of his column all to pieces:
For all the antipathy gun owners may feel toward those who would like to take away our guns, we have no cause to question their motives. After all, we have a common fundamental objective: a country in which citizens are safe, wherever they live, work or play. But while it may not be legitimate to question motives, it is entirely appropriate to question judgment...
No cause to question motives. May not be legitimate to question motives. If this is the case, then why even bring the subject up? The gun-grabbers cannot claim ignorance on this matter anymore. We on the pro-liberty side have been screaming from the rooftops about gun control's sordid history and the past and present effects of gun control for literally years now, and no matter what, those who would take our guns still fight on. The facts are in, ladies and gentlemen:
Gun control is racist, classist and sexist.
It leaves the weak at the mercy of the strong, the law-abiding at the mercy of the lawbreakers, and the poor and downtrodden at the mercy of the rich and well-connected.
The results of the policies the gun-grabbers advocate in this country have been plain to see for, well, a long, long time now, from Nazi Germany to Cambodia to Great Britain to Washington, D.C., Chicago and New York. Gun Control Does. Not. Work. In. Any. Form. Or. Fashion.
Yet in spite of all that, in spite of the fact that the 20,000 gun laws in this country, including the much-heralded Brady Law, have been shown to have done little or nothing to reduce crime in this country, they still press on. Not legitimate to question the motives of the gun-grabbers? The HELL IT ISN'T! Not only is it entirely legitimate, especially in light of the disarmament conference being held this week in New York, but it's absolutely essential. If we automatically assign benign, benevolent motives to those who would take our guns away, whether they're natives or foreigners, that in itself is a form of complacency, and that is something gun owners can ill afford even in the best of times. Not only to we have every right to question their motives; we have an absolute duty, to ourselves, our children, our fellow human beings and all who have fought and died to preserve that liberty and all the others.
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