Fascinating tidbit gleaned from another forum. WELL WORTH your consideration, even though IMO it's a touch too political.

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This gem contains a mother lode of quotables.

CLICK HERE

Gun Control's Willing Victims

by IronJack

Like water wearing down a mountain, the new year's crop of gun control proposals is an ongoing attempt to erode our constitutional liberties in the name of safety. Considering the poor performance of similar restrictions in the past, it seems odd that the Left continues to push such ineffective legislation as a solution to crime.

Until you understand that gun control is not rooted in opposition to crime, but in establishment of a Marxist "balance of oppression."

There are two classes of people who own guns. There are two classes of people who drive cars. There are two classes of people who walk into the lobby of your local bank or liquor store with acquisition on their mind.

There is the legitimate class, the everyday class, the get-up-and-go-to-work class that obeys traffic laws, works for a living, and doesnt even litter. Then theres the shadow class, the marginal class, the folks who dont work, but always seem to have a few bucks in their pocket. They live in dingy apartments and hang around bars and racetracks. They're surly, shadowy people who always seem to exude either malaise or menace.

Whatever they are, they are people who have rejected convention. As a result, they are often excluded from societys benefits, especially those that derive from conformity. They dress strangely and keep odd hours, which diminish their chances for success. They dont like rules, either because they dont understand them or because they dont like authority. That hostility contributes to their career stagnation.

So they dont tend to be people on the fast track to corporate success. Yet they see others in society who have earned its material benefits, and they want a share. They just arent willing to pay the price to get it. They arent willing to get up at 6 in the morning and face a 2-hour commute. They arent the type to knuckle under to a boss who's so dense he absorbs light. They dont want to give up their evenings and weekends because a big project is in trouble and they have to bail it out at the 11th hour. They don' t want to miss happy hour, "The Simpsons," or the third race at Santa Anita. How to enjoy all that freedom and still drive a Lexus?

Their path to material well-being is short and simple. To get the finer things in life, they appropriate them from people who have earned them. After all, it's not fair that they have so much while the poor, downtrodden, shiftless lowlife has so little. Since people are generally reluctant to give up things theyve gained so dearly, the thieves need to use force. Being relatively inarticulate in matters of economic dialectic, they need a visual aid to convince their victims of their moral rectitude. They need a gun.

Righteous people conform. If they are required to register before they can buy a firearm, they do. If they have to fill out forms, they do. If theyre not supposed to park in the handicapped spot, they dont. They'll sit at a broken stoplight at 3 in the morning because their conscience is stronger than their ego.

Members of the shadow class make their own rules. If they want a gun, they get a gun. It doesnt matter whether there are laws requiring registration or licenses or paperwork. Rules dont matter to them. Disregard for convention is a defining characteristic of their class.

Regulations which require cooperation from the gun buyer are not likely to trouble them. There is always an alternative method of obtaining any substance desirable. If they want liquor, they can buy it in a store. Or they can steal it. Or they can distill it themselves. Or they can let someone else distill it illicitly and buy it from them.

Pop quiz: Which method would the legitimate class use to obtain a firearm: A) Buy it from a buddy they met in prison who needs the cash to buy crack; B) Buy it from a fence who got it from a burglary just over the state line; C) Buy it from the local gun shop, completing form ABCD/1234 in triplicate, and showing a Gun Purchase License, a Gun Purchase Permit, a drivers license, a Gun Purchase Investigation Clearance, and his kindergarten transcripts; D) Steal it from some liberal's house while he is at a "Free Mumia" rally.

Just as there are legitimate and illegitimate methods of obtaining a firearm, there are legitimate and illegitimate uses to which it may be put. Legitimate uses include target shooting, hunting, home defense, display on the wall of the den, and hiding in a box under the bed. These uses are legitimate on two levels. The Constitution forbids any restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. And no damage accrues to innocent persons when firearms are used for any of the above activities.

Illegitimate uses of firearms include random murder, premeditated murder, coercion and intimidation, robbery, or as a sort of fulminating ghetto fashion accessory, like gold chains or baseball caps worn backward. These activities result in people getting hurt, property getting damaged, or innocent people getting the bejeebers scared out of them.

So feel-good gun control that constrains the legitimate class does nothing to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. Depriving some homeowner of a wall decoration isnt going to stop a gang-banger in Compton from capping a couple of homies. The man who takes his son skeet shooting isnt the same man - or even the same class of man - who knocks over a liquor store so he can buy cocaine. The only people who believe that rules made for one class will affect the other are people who have never seen the dichotomy, and consequently believe that all people think the same way and honor the same values.

A quick glance through the evening paper should dispel that ivory-tower theory. But a stroll through the bad part of town should drive the point home. Its time for legislators who were born and raised in the insulated environs of privilege to take off their Italian loafers and step into the real world the rest of us live in. Take the BMW for a drive through the east side of St. Louis or Los Angeles. Pull over to the curb and see how many cultural norms you share with the folks chatting on the sidewalk. Then, if you're still suffused with egalitarian good will, you can have the rescue squad take you to an inner-city trauma center.

No gun control proposal is legitimate unless its sole aim and consequence is to keep guns out of the hands of those who would use them illegitimately. But most gun-haters live in a state of denial about the value of guns. That hatred -- actually a phobia -- stems not from a desire to stunt the growth of crime, but from an agenda that requires the disarmament of America.

The latest trend for the gun-haters is to pretend gun violence is invading the suburbs. The anti-gun crowd will point to Columbine and Atlanta as examples of gun mayhem that is not a fixture in the inner city, but has come into the quiet streets where we live and work. They prey on the fears of suburban moms, a demographic known for its hysteria and malleability.

However, the facts tell a different story. Most gun violence, indeed most violent crime period, is wreaked by and against black males aged 14 to 24. Media events like Columbine are far and away the exception rather than the rule. They make headlines not because they're common but because they're rare. It's not even front-page news if some drug dealer on the South Side gets capped. If you want to stop people from killing each other, get the guns out of the ghetto.

But that's not the target of the gun confiscators. Their goal isn't to disarm criminals, but to strip innocent men and women of their last protection against marauding bottom-feeders. The ultimate end of the anti-gun nuts is to bare the throat of the middle class to the depredations of shadow-world predators. It's a move to impress the socialist imprimatur on our culture, by extorting vulnerability from the comfortable burgher and his hand-wringing spouse.

The middle class is anathema to Marxist social engineers. It is "the bourgeoisie," a monolith of self-contented apathy whose inertia must be overcome if the Glorious Revolution is to succeed. Most property is concentrated in the middle class, and a war on property starts with a war on its owners. The proletariat, what I've called the "marginal class," must destroy the snug, insulated environment of the bourgeoisie, then advance into the vacuum waving the Red banner. But that historical duty becomes considerably more difficult if the good townsfolk have a shotgun over the mantle, and a 9-shot home-defense system.

With the predatory, socialist-dependent underclass armed, and the sleepy suburbanite snuggled into his Barcalounger, the Red advance could begin. Disarmament would ease the path. But nobody's going to stand up on an American dais and admit he wants to subjugate the middle class. Ironically, the middle class is the cash cow, the engine that powers the juggernaut poised to roll over it. So the socialists have to sell the idea that lying down before the lion is an angel's cause.

"It's for the children," we're told. The apparatchiks paint angst and concern all over their faces and lament the horrible needless deaths rampant on our shady lanes. They promise that by making us defenseless, our children will be better protected.

We are held hostage to the socialist ideal. The underlying thesis is that we have no right to our property, or to live in relative comfort and safety. We have no right to take up arms to defend ourselves, since property must always be subordinate to people. The Marxist stamp grants a proletarian thug the right to violate your privacy, your dignity, and your life, on behalf of the dialectic. You own property only at the pleasure of the underclass. You enjoy the comfort of your home only by their grace. And once the economic machinery has been converted to serve the proletariat, you have outlived your usefulness.

This isn't a scenario likely to warm the cockles of the average schmo's cholesterol-laced heart. He's soft in the head as well as the belly, so he'll accept delivery of the guilt sent him by "concerned" liberals. Deep down, he buys the party line that his sport-utility vehicle came at somebody else's expense, and that his Dockers deprived some needy family somewhere of ugly, baggy pants. His whole lifestyle rests on the exploitation of others, and it's only fair that he pay some subliminal price for that.

So he willingly disarms. He yields his life and the lives of his family to the predators skulking behind specious logic. And the enemy creeps a little closer to his front door ...

Gun control is a front for the advancement of the socialist agenda. Giving in to the idea that guns are dangerous concedes to the notion that it is better to let some lowlife steal your property, rape your wife, and beat you half to death than it is to expedite his passage into the next world.

Your property was all gained at his expense anyway, so in a moral sense, he's entitled to it as much as you are. That is the core of the socialist doctrine, and you fight that cause when you take up arms to protect yourself.

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), January 23, 2000

Answers

But Dennis, the monster only wants us to give up our weapons for our own good. Right?

-- JB (noway@jose.com), January 23, 2000.

By the way, how is the young one?

-- JB (noway@jose.com), January 23, 2000.

(JB, he's doing very well. Over 10 lbs now, and a month old.)

Here's another little tidbit captured this morning from another board...

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CLICK HERE

Just Another Day With Gun Control

January 16, 2000

by Jim Houck

The movie I went to see today, at the request of my film managers, was Hurricane starring Denzel Washington. I write feature films. I write TV ads for the largest advertising agencies on earth for clients like Toyota, Ford, Sony and Coke. I am the "Hollywood crowd" that the liberal press lies about so often.

I arrived early at the Torrance, California AMC 20 Theaters, so I bought my ticket and sat on a bench just outside the front lobby under a palm tree for about half an hour, enjoying the many different faces, the playing kids, the adults.

A flood of Californians streamed out suddenly. A young girl had been attacked by a criminal who had just shot her.

"Is the shooter stopped?" I asked, reaching for my Heckler & Koch USP .45, running for the lobby with the intent to kill the criminal before he could injure or kill more of We the People.

"No, nobody can do anything! He's just walking around like he owns the place!" a California woman cried, trembling like a mouse before the lion. And indeed, the criminal did.

I ripped up my leather jacket and found my holster missing. I didn't have my .45 with me today. I'd opted not to take it just this one time at the advice of the local Californians, avoid the hassle of the California cops if they discover it, I thought, save the massive court costs of exercising my right. "Don't get caught, the street officers will hook you and book you and let the judges sort it out," a friend and local California police officer had told me repeatedly. Besides, it was three in the afternoon next door to Palos Verdes Estates, one of the most affluent and lowest crime areas in the United States.

My decision to leave my self defense at home very likely cost the young man, who would be shot next, his life. I have extensive, combat firearms training. I've been in three gun battles with criminals in New Orleans and Miami in the defense of myself twice and a Miami police officer once, and I've never missed nor have I lost. The criminals did.

Of course the criminal didn't know these things. He didn't know he was in a "low crime" area and he didn't seem to care that it was three in the afternoon on a Sunday. All he knew was that he was operating in Senator Diane Feinstein's wet dream, a theater of perfect Gun Control. Not one citizen in the large crowd of moms, dads, young men or young women had a firearm with which to defend themselves. So they ran. But the funny thing is, they didn't run very fast and the certainly didn't run very far, in fact, many basically hurried and the stood around and complained about not being able to finish their show. You see, criminals being in full control is nothing new in California. It's not news. It didn't excite these folks.

I stopped outside the lobby doors. No gun. No way to fight this criminal, I thought.

The shooter fired again, dropping a young man next. Well, the California people voted this idiocy through, they repeatedly elect servants like Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer as state senators, people who take away their rights to self defense and the defense of their families, I thought, let them deal with the consequences of their decisions. Of course the criminal walked out the back of the AMC 20 Theaters and vanished long before the local police could wade through the Sunday traffic and do the paperwork. At least they were nice enough to come. They didn't have to. They responded as a "courtesy" according to the Supreme Court. They have no legal duty to protect the individual from criminal assault or murder. Something surprisingly few people know, especially in California.

I looked at the downed young man. He would die, judging from my own personal experiences as a shooter of over 20 years, and where the criminal had injured him. The girl, barring very unusual circumstances, she would live - judging from where the criminal had injured her and her loss of blood.

The police put pressure on the injuries to try and reduce the bleeding from the criminal attack. Another courtesy service.

I sat back down on the bench and watched the Californians as they angrily demanded their ticket money be refunded, the victims of the criminal lying ten yards from them, moaning, dying.

A man with his wife in the line of angry movie patrons turned to me and growled, "I'm surprised Feinstein isn't here already. And the liberal mainstream press. You know, we carry our guns anyway and we didn't bring them today because it's such a hassle to have to hide them all the time from the local cops. What a bunch of ****. Just look at that guy. He's probably going to die."

Thanks, Senator Feinstein. As a resident of Florida, in Los Angeles working on feature film scripts with my L.A. based managers, it's interesting to see how your Prohibition on self defense, "Gun Control" works. Of course, had you been there to see The Hurricane, your armed bodyguards would have used their semi-automatic, high capacity "assault weapons" to stop the criminal dead in his tracks, which is what the bastard richly deserved. Funny, Diane, with all your SB 23s and SB 15s and Prohibition on self defense, the criminal still badly hurt and perhaps killed two young kids who just went to see a movie on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Why call it "gun control?" Why not rename it "defenseless sheep" or the "citizen massacre laws?" Or maybe just simple "bull****."

Wish you could have been there Diane to see how your idiotic laws work in real life. It was memorable.

Jim Houck is the Creative Director of Citizens of America

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-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), January 23, 2000.

Good posts Dennis. But not to worry, the criminal will be referred to the corrupt mental health gods for a miraculous healing, heh.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 23, 2000.

If the above story is true, and I'm not doubting it, then it's scarier than any of the current psycho thrillers. Why? Because it indicates that our population reacts to that tragedy the same as they do to any movie...An event that is unreal...can't happen to them...head for the lobby for popcorn. Amazing!

-- citizen (lost@sea.com), January 23, 2000.

to the top....

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), January 24, 2000.