Vanderboegh: Now That's A Letter to the Editor

In response to this column on the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader's website praising the Quisling AHSA organization and calling for "some intelligent compromises to protect responsible gun ownership and make communities safer," Mike Vanderboegh replies:


TO: Tom Eblen, a Kentuckian who ought to know better.

Dear Tom,

Let me introduce you to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Sez you:

"If Second Amendment absolutists keep standing up and daring others to pry their guns from their "cold, dead fingers," eventually somebody's going to do it."

Ah, the big, bad gun "confiscation" boogeyman.

It may scare you. It may scare certain weak-kneed "sportsmen" willing to compromise our rights for theirs. And, perhaps, it may scare some poorly educated children under the age of twelve.

It does NOT scare us, the intended target of your editorial missive. The way we see it, "eventually somebody's going to TRY to do it." Liberals' biggest problem (and perhaps yours as well) is that they're always extrapolating from their own cowardice. They think that if the government told them to do something, they would do it, so everybody else will too.

Wrong.

Let's boil down the threat of gun confiscation to its mathematical essence:

1. There are as many guns in this country as there are people, something close to 300 million.

2. No matter what law you pass, some percentage of American gun owners will refuse to give theirs up, even if the penalty for doing so is death. Shall we say 3 percent of 100 million gun owners? That's the same percentage as active combatants in our first Revolution, so let's say that's 3 million "pry it from my cold dead hands" types.

3. Now, I'm sure you will agree (intellectually at least) that a man who is willing to die for his beliefs is most often somebody who is willing to kill for them too. This being the case . . .

4. When the government comes to take these citizens' guns, the citizens -- these 3 percenters -- will do their dead level best to kill the thugs sent to do so. Some of them will realize that killing the bureaucrats who sent the thugs is probably a good idea too, so a number of bureaucrats will die. Some of these citizens will also realize the justice of killing the tyrant politicians who told the bureaucrats to send the thugs, and that's even more dead added to the butcher's bill.

On a more personal note, an even smaller (yet still significant) percentage of these citizens will remember that Bill Clinton expanded the laws of warfare in the 90's to include the news media of your enemy as a legitimate target of war, so a number of reporters, editorial writers (uh, what did you say you do for a living?), anti-gun bloggers, and perceived "traitors to the Republic" will die as well, even if (as I'm sure it is in your case) they don't deserve it. I mean, I'd never shoot an editorial writer myself, I have too much love for the 1st Amendment. However, there are others out there who doubtless lack my scruples, especially when they're being shot at themselves. And since Bubba Bill already said it was OK, they'll think, "Hey, why not?"

All told, gunnies and gun grabbers, the casualties will be at least in the low millions making it the worst war America has ever fought -- indeed, the dead would total more than all of America's wars combined. This is especially true since we "cold dead hands types" intend to make it more than a one-to-one ratio. And, you may remember, we're the ones with the firearms already at hand and the ones more likely to know how to use them effectively.

5. Given that, and we understand it even if you don't, please refrain from trying to scare us "bitter enders" into compromising our God given rights. It can't be done. You can't convince us, you can't intimidate us and we're not going away. You can kill us, but you can't change our minds. Thus, stacking up millions of dead bodies in your proposed civil war seems an odd way to ensure "public safety," especially if one of those bodies is unintentionally yours. Is this really what you had in mind?

Welcome to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Sometimes, my young editorialist, there IS no principled middle ground and to stand there is to invite being shot at by both sides with equal gusto -- and I don't mean by mere words and phrases.

Thus endeth the lesson. I hope now that I've explained things in the light of day that you'll recover soon from your silly fright at the big, bad, bogus boogeyman of gun confiscation.

Because it ain't happenin' - not without the worst bloody fight you can possibly imagine.

Have a nice day. ;-)

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com