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 Truth never changes 
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 Post subject: Truth never changes
PostPosted: Mon Jul 13, 2009 7:46 am 
Wise Elder
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Joined: Thu Aug 11, 2005 7:48 pm
Posts: 2782
Location: St. Paul
Joe,

This subject is one among many Paul Craig Roberts and I discussed during
a lunch at his Georgian townhouse during the 90s. I asked him then to
write about gun control and he did. Some of you may recognize parts of
this piece contain info first published by him about 15 years ago. Even
so, it's good to read it again.

-Dan-
******************************************************************************************
Quote:
As the first successful gun-control advocates were criminals, I have
often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and
propagandistic gun-control organizations and their donors and sponsors
in the United States today. The propaganda issued by these organizations
consists of transparent lies.


What is the gun control agenda?
By Paul Craig Roberts
Syndicated columnist and former assistant treasury secretary
Asheville Citizen-Times
July 12, 2009
<http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090712/OPINION06/90702084/1006>



Some years or decades ago, I researched and reported on the Sullivan
Act, one of America's first gun-control laws.
Advertisement

New York state Sen. Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician,
represented New York's Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing
through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed
robbers. In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers
armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from,
robbery. Sullivan's outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce
a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks and
daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims.

The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no
intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business
activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was
precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier.

As the first successful gun-control advocates were criminals, I have
often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and
propagandistic gun-control organizations and their donors and sponsors
in the United States today. The propaganda issued by these organizations
consists of transparent lies.


Consider the propagandistic term "gun violence," popularized by
gun-control advocates. This is a form of reification by which inanimate
objects are imbued with the ability to act and commit violence. Guns, of
course, cannot be violent in themselves. Violence comes from people who
use guns and a variety of other weapons, including fists, to commit
violence.

Nevertheless, we hear incessantly the Orwellian Newspeak term "gun
violence."

Very few children are killed by firearm accidents compared to other
causes of child deaths. Yet, gun-control advocates have created the
false impression that there is a national epidemic in accidental firearm
deaths of children. In fact, the National Center for Child Death
Review, an organization that monitors causes of child deaths, reports
that seven times more children die from drowning and five times more
from suffocation than from firearm accidents. Yet we don't hear of
"drowning violence," "swimming pool violence," "bathtub violence" or
"suffocation violence."

The National Center for Child Death Review reports that 174 children
18 years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2000. The National
Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports that 125 children 18
years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2006. In 2006, there
were 77,845,285 youths in that age bracket. [That's 0.00000224 or
0.224 per 100,000 children (most of whom are in the 17, and 18 year-old cohort.]

In 2006, violence-related firearm deaths of 18-year-olds and under
totaled 2,191. A large percentage of these deaths appear to be older
teenagers fighting over drug turf.

According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy,
drugs are "one of the main factors leading to the total number of all
homicides. ... Murders related to narcotics still rank as the fourth
most documented murder circumstance out of 24 possible categories."
According to the National Drug Control Policy, trafficking in illicit
drugs is associated with the commission of violent crimes for the
following reasons: "competition for drug markets and customers, disputes
and rip-offs among individuals involved in the illegal drug market (and)
the tendency toward violence of individuals who participate in drug
trafficking."

Another dimension of drug-related crime is "committing an offense to
obtain money (or goods to sell to get money) to support drug use."
Obviously, decriminalizing drugs would be the greatest single factor in
reducing incarceration rates, the crime rate and the homicide rate. Yet,
gun-control advocates do not support this obvious solution to "gun
violence."

Those who want to outlaw guns have not explained why it would be any
more effective than outlawing drugs, alcohol, robbery, rape and murder.
All the crimes for which guns are used are already illegal, and they
keep on occurring, just as they did before guns existed.


So what is the real agenda? Why do gun-control advocates want to
override the Second Amendment? Why do they not acknowledge that if the
Second Amendment can be overridden, so can every other protection of
civil liberty?

There are careful studies that conclude that armed citizens prevent 1
million to 2 million crimes every year. Other studies show that in-home
robberies, rapes and assaults occur more frequently in jurisdictions
that suffer from gun-control ordinances. Other studies show that most
states with right-to-carry laws have experienced a drop in crimes
against persons.

Why do gun-control advocates want to increase the crime rate in the
United States?

Why is the gun-control agenda a propagandistic one draped in lies?
The NRA is the largest and best-known organization among the defenders
of the Second Amendment. Yet, a case might be made that manufacturers'
gun advertisements in the NRA's magazines stoke the hysteria of
gun-control advocates.

Full-page ads offering civilian versions of weapons used by "America's
elite warriors" in U.S. Special Operations Command, SWAT and covert
agents "who work in a dark world most of us can't even understand" are
likely to scare the pants off people who are afraid of guns.

Many of the modern weapons are ugly as sin. Their appearance is
threatening, unlike the beautiful lines of a Winchester lever-action or
single-shot rifle, or a Colt single-action revolver, or the World War II
45 caliber semi-automatic pistol — guns that do not have menacing
appearances. Everyone knows that they are guns, but they are also works
of art.

A little advertising discretion might go a long way in quieting fears
that are manipulated by gun-control advocates.

The same goes for hunters. Recent news reports of "hunters" slaughtering
wolves from airplanes in Alaska and of a hunter — indeed, a poacher —
who shot a protected rare wolf in the U.S. Southwest and left the dead
animal in the road enrage people who have empathy with animals and
wildlife. Many Americans have had such bad experiences with their fellow
citizens that they regard their dogs and cats, and wildlife, as more
intelligent and noble life forms than humans. Wild animals can be
dangerous, but they are not evil.

Americans with empathy for animals are horrified by the television
program that depicts hunters killing beautiful animals and the joy
hunters experience in "harvesting" their prey. Many believe that a
person who enjoys killing a deer because he has a marvelous rack of
antlers might enjoy killing a person.

This is not a screed against hunters. There are many families with the
tradition of bringing in the venison once or twice a year. With the near
extermination by man of deer predators, deer are so abundant in many
localities as to have become a nuisance and a danger to motorists.
Nevertheless, the defense of gun rights has little to gain from TV
programs depicting the fun of killing Bambi's mother.

In the United States, shooting is a hand-eye coordination sport. It is
likely that 99 percent of all ammunition is fired at paper targets,
metal silhouettes or clay and plastic discs. It is a sport for amateur
physicists who are interested in ballistics and who experiment with
different combinations of powder and bullet seeking the most accuracy
for their rifle or pistol. Few of these shooters hunt, as their interest
in shooting is unrelated to killing.

Shooting is a sport that offers comradeship and competition in which
even old people can participate, people who do not or cannot play golf
or tennis or bowl. There is a vast variety of events, from black powder
muskets to antique military and frontier weapons to distance shooting.
Sports shooters punching holes in paper targets comprise the vast
majority of active gun owners. They are a threat to no one. Accidents
are extremely rare at gun clubs. A large network of small businesses
provide the parts and supplies necessary for shooting. There is no
reason to strip gun owners of their hobby and possessions and family
businesses of their livelihood, as has been done in Great Britain and as
the gun control lobby intends to do in the United States.

The NRA is correct to insist that "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws
will have guns." We have known this since the Sullivan Act.

To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate
web page at www.creators.com.

_________________
President of AACFI, GOCRA, CCRN, and A2A


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