Date: Wed, 8 Nov 1995 13:45:36 -0500 From: jneil@genie.com To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Reply to Garry Wills AN OPEN REPLY TO GARRY WILLS _New York Review of Books_ Sept. 21, 1995 p. 62 "To Keep and Bear Arms" by Garry Wills Dear Garry Wills: Ah, yes. George Orwell wrote a novel about guys like you. "War is peace," "freedom is slavery." If you control the media, you can always twist things so that they mean the opposite. If you control the media, just rewrite any inconvenient history to your own liking. So "bear arms" in "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" means that the people have the right to a picture of a rifle on a coat of arms; and "keep" in that context means paying taxes to keep "their" guns at the National Guard armory. And, of course, James Madison didn't really believe in any of that stuff he was writing in Federalist Paper No. 46 when he wrote that the ultimate authority resides in the people; he was just trying to outsmart the Anti-Federalists so that we could be saddled with a Constitution that would be more tyrannical than anything old King George the Third could imagine. Well, I guess that crafty old Madison pulled a fast one on us all, and we'll just have to roll over, get out the vaseline, and take it up the ass. You see, Mr. Wills, ultimately I don't give a rat's dick about whether you like me owning guns or not. If you don't like my guns, come and get them. But you will need some guns, yourself, to try doing that. Someone will likely get shot. It might be me, it might be you. It will be a contest, with a winner and a loser. But you're not going to get my guns without first picking up a gun and entering the contest. Of course, you're a cowardly piece of statist shit who doesn't have the balls to try and get my guns yourself. No, you'll simply write your little Orwellian lies and hope that some 18-year-old Hitler Youth named Rolf, fresh out of some academy, will be given the orders to try and get my guns. Maybe I'll die, maybe the poor young schmuck will buy it -- but Garry Wills will be safely watching the raid on TV while he's sipping a cafe latte. I don't care whether the Second Amendment says I have a right to a gun or not. Guns are about power. If guys with guns use that power to murder, steal, rape, and tyrannize, you have a society not worth living in. If guys like me with guns use that power to protect ourselves and our loved ones, and our common liberty, then we get a nice place to live -- and useless pieces of shit like you are free to spin your web of lies. I'm keeping and carrying guns to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To disempower me, you must first conquer me. Make your move, if you can. But if you don't have the guts for that, Garry Wills, go fuck yourself up the ass, pal. I write better than you, I think better than you, I'm armed to the teeth, and I can read the history of the United States without panicking. You lose. *** "Schulman interestingly and insightfully raises a number of liberty-related issues that we ignore at the nation's peril. His ideas are precisely those that helped make our country the destination of those seeking liberty. The book's title says it all: personal responsibility, not laws and prohibitions, is the mark of a civil society." Professor Walter E. Williams, Chairman Department of Economics George Mason University Fairfax, Virginia SELF CONTROL Not Gun Control by J. Neil Schulman Publisher: Synapse--Centurion $24.95 U.S.; $32.95 Canada ISBN: 1-882639-05-7 PLEASE encourage all gun rights activists to ask the manager or assistant manager of their local chain bookstore -- Barnes & Noble/ Bookstar/BookStop/B. Dalton, Waldenbooks/Borders, Crown, etc. -- about when they are getting in SELF CONTROL Not Gun Control. This will be an enormous help in getting the chains to order the book. Reply to: J. Neil Schulman Mail: P.O. Box 94, Long Beach, CA 90801-0094 Voice Mail & Fax: (500) 44-JNEIL Internet: jneil@genie.com World Wide Web Page: http://www.pinsight.com/~zeus/jneil/