====================================================================== The Atlanta Declaration: Every man, woman, and responsible child has a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- handgun, shotgun, rifle, machinegun, \anything\ -- any time, anywhere, without asking anyone's permission. ====================================================================== L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER NUMBER 04b == LETTER TO A LIBERAL COLLEAGUE == Dear Adrian*: I'm behind schedule again, so this will necessarily be terse, consisting mostly of assertions you're free to believe (or not) I can back up with evidence and logic which I've neither time nor energy to present now. I've written fully on this topic before and will again in the future. When I do, I'll make sure you get copies. There's quite a range of argument I could muster from (A) the futility of delegating self-defense (see Don Kates' piece in the Jan. 10, 1985 \Wall Street Journal\) to (B) the true effect of prohibition: shifting consumers from outlawed goods like handguns or semiautomatic rifles to machineguns, sawed-off shotguns, bombs, et myriad cetera. I'll limit myself to commenting on the newspaper clipping you sent. 1. First, the right to own and carry weapons is a fundamental, inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right, subject neither to majoritarian processes nor arguments grounded in social utility. 2. The existence of some latter-day "survey" doesn't alter the fact that the prohibitionists I mentioned -- in the recent magazine interview that annoyed you so much -- were lying. 3. The right to own and carry weapons is a fundamental, inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right, subject neither to majoritarian processes nor arguments grounded in social utility. 4.What's more, your study doesn't support the prohibitionists' original numerical contentions anyway. 5. The right to own and carry weapons is a fundamental, inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right, subject neither to majoritarian processes nor arguments grounded in social utility. 6. The fact that prohibitionists have been caught lying (indeed Carl Bakal has \confessed\ to it) on countless occasions makes the value of this present study dubious, to say the least. 7. The right to own and carry weapons is a fundamental, inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right, subject neither to majoritarian processes nor arguments grounded in social utility. 8. Given your own service as a federal bureaucrat, not to mention the cynical sophistication of your fiction, you should be aware how "progress" -- in designing studies to prove whatever you want -- outstrips our ability to collect meaningful data. A case in point we might agree on is the fact that it took prohibitionists of another sort 20 or 30 years to create studies "proving" that pornography causes crime. More naive and probably more honest studies in the 50s and 60s clearly indicate the contrary. 9. The right to own and carry weapons is a fundamental, inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right, subject neither to majoritarian processes nor arguments grounded in social utility. 10. However, another reason to doubt all such studies is that human behavior, as the Austrian School of Economics demonstrates, can't be meaningfully quantified. The attempt to do so -- and then act on such pseudoinformation -- is wrecking our civilization. 11. The right to own and carry weapons is a fundamental, inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right, subject neither to majoritarian processes nor arguments grounded in social utility. 12. The study is also worthless because it incorporates figures for suicide, which is neither a tragedy nor a disaster but an individual right with certain ancillary social benefits. If anything, perhaps suicide \intervention\ should be a criminal offense. 13. Finally, the National Rifle Association people quoted in the article, whatever their shortcomings (and they are many), are correct in this instance: the study is meaningless because the right to own and carry weapons is a fundamental, inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right, subject neither to majoritarian processes nor arguments grounded in social utility. Even if the study were valid, I'd go on with my long-held objective of seeing that anyone can own any weapon he or she prefers and carry it however, whenever, and wherever he or she desires -- assisted by prohibitionists whose yawping moves previously unarmed folks to buy a gun while they still can. Before the '68 Gun Control Act, the "shooting fraternity" viewed handguns (incorrectly) as inaccurate, ineffective toys. There probably weren't six million of them in the whole country. Now, thanks to Kennedy, Metzenbaum, Brady, and their ilk -- America's greatest gun sales team -- we make that many every year. The fascinating thing is that Handgun Control, et al., are perfectly aware of this, so you have to ask yourself what their real motive is. Look: gunmaking isn't an arcane or difficult art. (It's easier to make them fully automatic, by the way, than semiautomatic; the fact that I can still obtain my weapon of preference, the self-loading pistol, is the only thing which keeps me from pursuing this.) Even if it were difficult, there are already \half a billion\ firearms in America, with a "half life" of around two hundred years -- considerably more than that for stainless. Guns are gonna be around a long, long time, whether you like it or not. Regardless of what the law says or any court decides, I'm going to be armed and always work to see that others are, as well. And there are thousands more, Adrian, perhaps hundreds of thousands, where I come from. We can't be stopped by passing laws, we can only be forced to arm ourselves more surreptitiously and, given the alleged difference between full autos and semiautos, perhaps even more efficiently. So what's the point? Regards, Neil * "Adrian" (name changed to protect the guilty) and the author are writers who, at one time, worked with the same editor at a major New York publishing house. ====================================================================== L. NEIL SMITH'S \LEVER ACTION\ LETTER NUMBER 04b 111 EAST DRAKE ROAD SUITE 7032 FORT COLLINS, COLORADO U.S.A. 80525 L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of 16 novels including \Henry Martyn, The Crystal Empire, BrightSuit MacBear, Taflak Lysandra, The Probability Broach,\ and the forthcoming FORGE OF THE ELDERS trilogy, beginning with CONTACT AND COMMUNE. Your contributions to this effort, while extremely welcome, are not tax-deductible. ====================================================================== X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X Another file downloaded from: The NIRVANAnet(tm) Seven & the Temple of the Screaming Electron Taipan Enigma 510/935-5845 Burn This Flag Zardoz 408/363-9766 realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 510/527-1662 Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 801/278-2699 The New Dork Sublime Biffnix 415/864-DORK The Shrine Rif Raf 206/794-6674 Planet Mirth Simon Jester 510/786-6560 "Raw Data for Raw Nerves" X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X