Unintended Consequences

[wrm]

All of y'all should be reading this.

Here's the bit where it turns from mostly history to mostly speculation.

"Our culture is important, and we're willing to pay for it. We have above -average educations, above -
average incomes, and almost nonexistent criminal involvement. We pay far more in taxes and receive
virtually no subsidy payments. You'd think Washington would be happy, but instead they are doing
everything they can to destroy our culture.

"In the '20s, soldiers sat on their bunks in the cold at Camp Perry, cleaning the handmade .22 target rifles they would compete with the next day. When the President proudly announces that today, seventy years later, he is ordering these same guns thrown into a blast furnace, we in the gun culture feel powerful emotions. They are the same emotions a Native American would feel if the President proudly ordered the destruction of war clubs and other sacred tribal artifacts. They are the same emotions that Jews felt watching newsreel footage of Nazi Sturmtroopen gleefully burning intricate copies of the Torah.

We offer to buy the government's surplus guns, and instead they pay to have them cut up. We offer to buy
their surplus military ammo, shoot it, sell the brass to a smelter, and give the government the proceeds, and
instead they pay to have it burned.

"These government slugs ban our guns and they ban our magazines and they ban our ammo. They ban
suppressors that make our guns quieter and then they ban our outdoor shooting ranges because our guns are
too loud. They ban steel-core ammunition because it's 'armor piercing', then they close down our indoor
ranges where people shoot lead-core bullets because they say we might get lead poisoning.
"The people in the gun culture have a better safety record than any police department in the nation, but in
several states actually prohibit us from using guns for self-protection, and in all the other states except one
they make us buy a license. They tax us so we can have more cops, and when crime still goes up, they tax
us more and ban more of our guns.

"People in the gun culture endure waiting periods that no other group would stand for. We undergo
background checks that no legislator, judge, doctor, or police officer has to tolerate, and we submit to it not
once, or once a year, but over and over again. Then, after we yield to this outrage, they smile and forbid us
from buying more than one gun in a 30-day period.

"If we sell one gun we own that's gone up in value, they can charge us with dealing in firearms without a
federal dealer's license, which is a felony. If we get a dealer's license, they say we are not really in business,
and report us to our local authorities for violating zoning ordinances by running a commercial venture out
of a residence.

"If the steel or the wood on our guns is too long or too short, they make us pay $200 taxes and get
fingerprinted and photographed. They make us get a law enforcement certification from the local police
chief. If he refuses to sign we have no recourse. If he takes the forms in the next room and brings them
back out, signed, he can later claim the signature is not his, and the feds will charge us with the felony.
"We in the gun culture have played all their stupid games on NFA weapons for over half a century, without
a single violent crime being committed by any person in the system. So when a bill comes up to keep
travelers with guns locked in the trunk of their cars out of jail, what happens? A scumbucket from New
Jersey, where NFA weapons are illegal already, puts an amendment on it that closes down the whole NFA
process.

"Then, if they even suspect we've ignored the $200 tax process altogether, on the guns where the wood and
steel is too long or too short, they'll spend over a million dollars watching us for months, then they'll shoot
our wives and children or burn us all alive. When the public gets outraged by these actions, the government
issues letters of reprimand and sends the guys who did the killing on paid leave. In the decades that the feds
have been raiding and killing people in the gun culture over suspected non-payment of $200 taxes, not one
federal agent has been fined a single dollar or spent even one night in jail." Fleming stopped for a moment
and took another drink of tea.
"And you know something else that's never happened, Ray? To this day, not a single person in the gun
culture has ever dropped the hammer on one of these feds. Not once.
"Then, after these statist bastards have done all these things, they grin and tell us how they like to hunt
ducks, and how the only laws they want to pass are 'reasonable' ones." Henry and Ray both looked at their
friend. Neither had anything to add at that moment. It was Ray Johnson who finally spoke.

"I now know everything you say is true," he said. "I still can't quite believe it." He was quiet again, then
asked a question. "What do you think is going to happen?"

"One of two things," Fleming said with a sigh. "One of the political parties is going to have to wake up,
smell the coffee, and start restoring and reaffirming all the articles in the Bill of Rights—the Second,
Fourth, Fifth, and Tenth Amendments."

"And if that doesn't happen?" Ray asked gently. Fleming took several moments before he spoke, though it
was obvious he knew exactly what he was going to say.

"Then we're going to have a civil war."

[Flossy]

a fantasic book!!

[Chrisvw]

I wish this was on MY complaints list:
" they smile and forbid us from buying more than one gun in a 30-day period."

[Gunna]

Read that a while ago... really good book. Lent it to someone and never got it back.

[GameFarmer]

Good read, thanks.

[wrm]

PDF is on the web.

[prepare2win]

apparently out of print and near impossible to find a hardcopy, but as wrm said it is available in pdf. I don't condone piracy but in such cases I feel the information is too important not to be shared

[hagar]

One thing I can say after living in the US for the last 28 years, when I came here you could buy all the guns you wanted, but not carry them for protection in most states. Now it's legal (with a concealed weapons permit) in almost all states. Illinois is the last holdout, they have NO provision for any carry permit. That will fall in the next couple of years. And it's working, the criminals are getting their arses shot off here on a regular basis. On the other hand, when I left SA, I carried my Browning EVERYWHERE, took me 3 weeks to get a license and it was good for life.

Either way, option #2 will probably happen here in the next decade or 2, and it's going to be ugly, but long term it will be for the good.

[Wanderin' Zero]

And it's working, the criminals are getting their arses shot off here on a regular basis.

:-) Which is just as it should be!

[Pirate]

Just finished it.... sh-i-i-i-d...


:- P