From: [d c d] at [se.houston.geoquest.slb.com] (Dan Day) Newsgroups: soc.culture.canada,talk.politics.guns Subject: Re: December 6 Date: 8 Dec 1994 22:59:29 GMT In article <3c5blf$[p--u] at [nermal.cs.uoguelph.ca]> [a--e--k] at [uoguelph.ca] (Andrew Lesk) writes: > >And speaking of >"self-righteous Canucks", don't you gun types have friends here up >north? Are they self-righteous too? Not nearly as self-righteous as our anti-gun people: ####### Excerpt Don B. Kates Jr.'s "Gun Control: A Realistic Assessment": (Copies of the entire article available upon request) In sum, murderers comprise only a small, highly aberrant (and malignant and irresponsible) subset of all gun owners. Why, then, is it enlightened and liberal: to vilify the 50% of American householders who have guns as barbaric and/or deranged ("Gun Lunatics Silence [the] Sounds of Civilization"{24}), "gun nuts", "gun fetishists", "anti-citizens" and "traitors, enemies of their own patriae"{25}, as sexually warped{26} "bulletbrains"{27} who engage in "simply beastly behavior"{28} and represent "the worst instincts in the human character"{29}; or to traduce pro-gun groups as the "pusher's best friend"{30} and their entire membership as "psychotics", "hunters who drink beer, don't vote and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend"{31}; to characterize the murder of children as "another slaughter co-sponsored by the National Rifle Association"{32} and assert that "The assassination of John Lennon has been brought to you by the National Rifle Association"{33}; and to cartoon gun owners as thugs and/or vigilantes, intellectually retarded, educationally backward and morally obtuse, or as Klansmen?{34} The NIJ Evaluation accurately describes how the anti-gun advocates sees gun owners: as "demented and blood-thirsty psychopaths whose concept of fun is to rain death upon innocent creatures both human and otherwise." It is really quite remarkable for such calumnies to issue from people who, rightly, regard it as egregious bigotry when other bigots: seek to blame AIDS deaths on gays whom they revile as sexually warped, moral degenerates who engage in simply bestial behavior; or blame gay rights activists for AIDS because they lobby against ordinances that would close bath houses; describe abortion rights activists as murderers, "baby butchers" and abortion clinics as "merchants of death"; dismiss all homeless people and welfare recipients as slackers, drug addicted, alcoholic or retarded; or traduce the ACLU as the "best friend" of criminals and drug pushers. The fact that anti-gun crusaders are commendably eager to oppose racism, gay bashing and other evils they recognize as bigotry does not excuse their inability to recognize their own bigotry. On the contrary, it compounds that bigotry with myopia, if not hypocrisy. 24. Braucher, MIAMI HERALD, July 19, 1982; see also his Oct. 29, 1981 column "Handgun Nuts are Just That -- Really Nuts." 25. Wills, "John Lennon's War", CHICAGO SUN TIMES, Dec. 12, 1980, "Handguns that Kill", WASHINGTON STAR, Jan. 18, 1981 and "Or Worldwide Gun Control", PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, May 17, 1981. 26. The psychiatric evidence for and against this aspersion is discussed infra. Its advocates include Harriet Van Horne (N.Y. POST magazine, June 21, 1976, p. 2), Dr. Joyce Brothers, Harlan Ellison ("Fear Not Your Enemies", HEAVY METAL, March, 1981), U.S. CATHOLIC magazine (editorial "Sex Education Belongs in the Gun Store", August, 1979). 27. Grizzard, "Bulletbrains And the Guns That Don't Kill", ATLANTA CONSTITUTION Jan. 19, 1981. 28. "Gun Toting: A Fashion Needing Change" in 93 SCIENCE NEWS 613, 614 (1968). 29. WASHINGTON POST editorial, "Guns and the Civilizing Process", Sept. 26, 2972. 30. Guest editorial by Senator Edward Kennedy, "Pusher's Best Friend, the NRA", March 22, 1989 NEW YORK TIMES. See also P. Hamill, NEW YORK POST, "A Meeting of NRA's Harlem Branch", April 4, 1989, LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL MAGAZINE, Aug. 7, 1988, p. 6 ("The National Rifle Association, its propagandists and it supporters work day and night to make sure that every hood in the country can get his hands on a gun. They couldn't be more guilty if they stood there slipping pistols to the drug dealers and robbers. If justice were done, they would be in prison."). In fact (though it has often obtusely opposed even reasonable controls that affect law abiding citizens), the NRA has consistently supported, indeed is the principal architect of, laws comprehensively barring gun ownership by anyone who has been convicted of a felony. Cf. 82 MICH. L. REV. 209-210 (citing state laws dating from the early 20th Century and federal laws from the 1930s through the present day). 31. A remark by N.Y. Governor Mario Cuomo who subsequently wrote the NRA to apologize because it is unintelligent and unfair" to "disparage any large group." TIME, May 27, 1985. 32. Editorial cartoon, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL, Jan. 22, 1989, p. 12J. 33. Ironically, the assassin, who was himself a gun control advocate, was legally licensed in one of the highly restrictive states that (over the NRA's fervent objection) require licensure to purchase a handgun. Moreover he obtained his license as a security guard, a status that would carry legal entitlement to a handgun under even the most stringent anti-gun proposals. Jacobs, "Exceptions to a General Prohibition on Handgun Possession" 49 LAW & CONTEMP. PROB. 5, 6-7 (1986). 34. Morin (Miami Herald) cartoon, ARIZONA REPUBLIC, March 21, 1989 (showing gun store with sign "drug dealers, gangs, welcome), Herblock cartoon, WASHINGTON POST, March 21, 1989 ("these guys who want to spray the streets with bullets"); SAN JOSE MERCURY-NEWS, March 3, 1989 ("I.Q.-47"), LOS ANGELES HERALD EXAMINER, January 31, 1989 (showing "Crips, Bloods and NRA" as "Three Citizen Groups Opposed to Outlawing Assault Rifles"), Interlandi cartoon, LOS ANGELES TIMES, Dec. 16, 1980. -- "Don't tread on me"