From: [k--o--r] at [delphi.com] (Ken L. Holder) Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns Subject: L. Neil Smith: Time to pull the plug on Date: 14 Feb 1995 06:07:18 GMT Area # 1 Discussion 10 Feb 95 07:36 Message # 2279 From : L. Neil Smith To : All Subj : Time to pull the plug ... THE PARTY'S OVER, NRA -- by L. Neil Smith -- You'll be happy to know, rather than repealing unconstitutional gun laws rammed through by the Clintons over the past couple years, that Newt Gingrich and his "revolutionaries" (the same band of Merry Pranksters who just stripped you of your Fourth Amendment protections by rescinding the Exclusionary Rule which forbids illegally-obtained evidence from being introduced in court) have decided on public hearings -- in a few months, when they get around to it -- which will miraculously undo, overnight, six decades of unrelenting, vicious propaganda against gun ownership. Only then -- or when Hell freezes over, whichever comes first -- will they begin to bring federal law into compliance with the Bill of Rights. Pardon my cynicism. You'll be even happier to know that, in your name, the wise and glorious leaders of the National Rifle Association have enthusiastically agreed to this paint-job, because -- to all appearances, at least -- what they get out of it is nationally licensed concealed carry, which will bring us just one short hop away from compulsory gun registration and licensing of ownership. Next stop, if my interpretation of their long-term goals is correct, will be legislation that makes owning any kind of gun illegal -- if don't also happen to belong to the NRA. Paranoia? No, just extrapolation of long-established trends. It's what I'm paid to do for a living. It's what made it possible for me to predict, a decade in advance, things like the invention of the digital watch, the turn to violence in the "right to life" movement, the collapse of the Soviet Empire. The NRA has always tried to make its membership believe that its chronically dimwitted fumblings and wretched failures of courage were titanic victories, somehow, in the eternal struggle against ... well, whatever it was they were struggling against at the time instead of gun control -- usually some idiotic and illegal piece of legislation they'd written themselves, so our enemies wouldn't have to do the job. Now, in attempting to convince us that it represents brilliant strategy to allow Republicans in the House to separate the semiautomatic weapons and large magazine prohibition out of the crime bill (so they can be vetoed separately, with neither the President nor his Republican "adversaries" having to pay any political consequences for this vile exchange of bodily fluids) all they've managed to prove, to anyone who doesn't have half his brain tied behind his back, is just how dimwitted, cowardly -- and thoroughly corrupt -- they've gotten to be over the years. Do the NRA leadership really believe that, out here in the field -- in "fly-over country" as we hear it condescendingly referred to by professional Potomac parasites -- we're as stupid as they are? Do they think that we're as pusillanimous as 60 years of sipping cocktails with the enemy and leading from behind have made them? Apparently so. It has become the obvious function of the NRA to hold our shoulders steady so that our heads can be cut off by those who are supposed to be our friends. Or, if we prefer, they'll _shave_ those heads and slit our pants cuffs, for the electric chair. The fact is, I'm surprised that their last junk-mailing contained the usual worthless insurance offer, rather than a blindfold and a final cigarette. Am I hollering "conspiracy"? No, not at all -- just "politics". Then again, of course, all of politics _is_ conspiracy. But the party's over. The long, free ride has come to an end. It's time for the NRA's leadership to do something honest, something decent, something intelligent for a change, and go home -- forever. It's long past time for its three-point-something million card-carrying members to collect their courage -- or at least their dignity -- and burn those cards. It's time for the NRA to dissolve itself before its pathetically clumsy machinations do any more damage to the Constitution, and to distribute its assets -- its rotten, bloated, Vaticanoid assets -- to groups that will use them the way its members always thought they were being used. And it's time, too, to get ourselves another political party -- the truth is, we've left a good one waiting in the wings for the past 20 years -- that will stop screwing around with its phony contract, keep the unwritten promises that really got its people elected, and enforce the highest law of the land, the Bill of Rights. L. Neil Smith is the award-winning author of 19 novels including _The Probability Broach_, _The Crystal Empire_, _Henry Martyn_, _The Lando Calrissian Adventures_, and _Pallas_. He is an NRA Life Member and founder of the Libertarian Second Amendment Caucus. His e-mail address is: [l--e--l] at [lever.ncdl.com] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted by: -- Ken L. Holder ------------------------------------------------------- [k--o--r] at [delphi.com] | "Society" is a convenience for those who need an Try L. Neil Smith's | excuse to control the lives -- or steal the LEVER ACTION BBS: | property -- of others. --- L. Neil Smith, LEVER (303) 493-6674 | ACTION BBS, Dec 7, 1994, Message # 2243