EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S
MESSAGE
WHY WE MUST CONTINUE TO FIGHT
Just today I had a member call
me and ask how much longer the ISRA was going to pester him to call his
legislators about gun control bills.
My answer was, “Until we win.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I need to
speak to you very plainly about what we are facing in Springfield.
What’s going in the Capitol is not some sort of new-age encounter group
where gun owners and gun grabbers are searching weepy-eyed for an
elusive piece of common ground.
No, what we are engaged in is a
nothing less than a good old fashioned street fight. This is the kind
of fight where - in the end - one guy goes home while the other guy gets
carted away in a box. If you and your fellow gun owners do not stand up
for what you believe in, your gun rights will be carted away and dumped
on the scrap heap of liberties sacrificed in the name of political and
social “progress.”
Many of you may believe that we
will win this battle because the facts are on our side. Indeed, if this
was a battle over the facts about private firearm ownership, our freedom
would be assured.
Unfortunately, the battle for
gun rights is not about facts – it is about out and out hatred. The
followers of the gun control movement hate people who own guns, plain
and simple. There is no way around it – if you own guns, you are the
object of the gun controllers’ hatred. As we have witnessed the past
few months, the hatred is so deep that these people will stop at nothing
to eradicate your freedoms.
Why do gun controllers hate us
so much? The answer is actually very simple. The armed citizen is
symbolic of freedom and self determination. As our nation’s history has
shown, that freedom bestows prosperity and well being. As long as a
person is armed, they are free – unrestrained by social convention,
unburdened by the priorities of others, unshackled by the intrusion of
government.
On the other hand, gun
controllers see self-reliance as being an obstacle to social progress.
They view freedom as a selfish pursuit that reaps only inequality and
despair. The gun controllers and their ilk yearn for a society where
the government enforces equity among all citizens at the expense of
liberty.
So, ladies and gentlemen, you
see that the armed citizen just doesn’t fit into the gun-controllers’
recipe for social and political progress. The gun controllers demand
that the underlying philosophy of personal liberty and self reliance be
eradicated. Thus, guns and those who own them must be purged from
society if society is to “progress.”
[Continued on March 29]
2 comments:
I found this anonymous quote that answers the question why the gun grabbers hate us: "A gun in the hands of a free man frightens and angers the autocrat, not because he fears the power of the gun, but, rather, the spirit of the man who holds it."
Another favorite quote from the Women's Firearm Network: "Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound."
ISRA Executive Director Richard Pearson is right. Gun grabbers hate us. The feeling is reciprocated on my part.
While we are quoting people, here's an excerpt from a column by H. L. Mencken, newspaper icon.
"Here I do not indulge in theory. The hard facts are publicly on
display in New York State, where a law of exactly the same tenor is
already on the books the so-called Sullivan Law. In order to get it
there, of course, the Second Amendment had to be severely strained,
but the uplifters advocated the straining unanimously, and to the tune
of loud hosannas, and the courts, as usual, were willing to sign on
the dotted line. It is now a dreadful felony in New York to "have or
possess" a pistol. Even if one keeps it locked in a bureau drawer at
home, one may be sent to the hoosegow for ten years. More, men who
have done no more are frequently bumped off. The cops, suspecting a
man, say, of political heresy, raid his house and look for copies of
the Nation. They find none, and are thus baffled but at the bottom of
a trunk they do find a rusted and battered revolver. So he goes to
trial for violating the Sullivan Law, and is presently being
psycho-analyzed by the uplifters at Sing Sing.
With what result? With the general result that New York, even more
than Chicago, is the heaven of footpads, hijackers, gunmen and all
other such armed thugs. Their hands upon their pistols, they know they
are safe. Not one citizen out of a hundred that they tackle is armed
for getting a license to keep a revolver is a difficult business, and
carrying one without it is more dangerous than submitting to robbery.
So the gunmen flourish and give humble thanks to God. Like the
bootleggers, they are hot and unanimous for Law Enforcement.
... The real victim of moral legislation is almost always the honest,
law-abiding, well-meaning citizen what the late William Graham Summer
called the Forgotten Man....By precisely the
same route the Nation's new law would deprive the reputable citizen of
the arms he needs for protection, and hand them over to the rogues
that he needs protection against. "
From "THE UPLIFTERS TRY IT AGAIN" by H. L. Mencken. Copyright 1925 by The Evening Sun.
Post a Comment