-Caveat Lector- http://www.devvy.com/dangerzone.html#SOFC What I Saw at the Devolution Sarah Thompson, M.D. My husband and I always thought we knew what bigotry was, what it felt like, how it could affect a person's life. Some of my earliest memories are of being beat up by local thugs for being a "Jew kid". My father wasn't permitted to attend the local university. My husband is Asian-American. He grew up in a small town where all the other children had blond hair and round blue eyes. He was taunted mercilessly. Not all that long before he was born, Japanese-Americans were herded into a concentration camp at Topaz Mountain, not far from his home. But neither of us ever experienced anything like the sheer vitriolic hatred that was shamelessly expounded in the legislature of the State of Utah last week. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be the victim of blind hatred and bigotry, I suggest you purchase a gun, and carry it with you. Then, pay attention. Two major gun control bills were heard by the legislature last week, and I attended both hearings. One bill, sponsored by Democratic Representative (and Salt Lake Mayoral candidate) David Jones, proposed to ban all guns at schools, churches, private residences and Olympic venues. These bans would be effective regardless of the wishes of the church, school, or private property owner. The other, sponsored by Republican Senator (and former gun rights supporter) Michael Waddoups, proposed an Olympic gun ban, with the discretionary power to ban guns from churches and private residences. The details of the legislation are not that important. What was striking was the discussion. Listen to bill sponsor David Jones: Rep. Jones openly admits that his bill would do nothing to stop crime. The bill is intended to make people "feel good" and help the children "feel safe". Jones doesn't want "those people" in his home. "Those people", of course, are law-abiding citizens who have passed an extensive background check. He is frantically distraught at the current law which places the responsibility on him to ask a visitor to his home if he's carrying a gun. Jones would prefer that gun owners be required to shout "Leper, leper!" as they approach his, or anyone else's, private residence. Curiously, Jones is not at all interested in asking prospective visitors if they've ever been convicted of murder, rape, child molestation, or whether they abuse alcohol or drugs. While Jones professes a nearly paranoid concern for his children, his skills as a parent appear to be lacking. One of his major concerns is that if someone were to bring a gun into his home in a backpack or purse, his children would have the contents emptied in a matter of minutes, and thus have access to a firearm. One can only wonder why he hasn't taught his children not to ransack others' belongings. Parents like Jones are yet another reason why children need firearms safety training such as Eddie Eagle - not to protect them from gun owners, but to protect them from incompetent parents. Ever wonder what they're teaching our kids about the Constitution in our public schools? Listen to the PTA lady who looked and sounded as if she'd just been dropped into a nest of vermin: "We don't want "those people" in our schools. "Those people" are just waiting for an excuse to shoot "the children". "Those people" shouldn't be allowed around children! (Almost all of "those people" are parents. Most of them teach their kids firearms safety at an early age. But I guess they're better off in foster homes than being brainwashed by the "evil gun culture".) After all, the children need to "feel safe". Surely, the good Christians and Jews and other religious folks, the ones who fight so hard for the rights of oppressed minorities, have more sense. Well, no. Listen to the representative of the Coalition of Religious Communities: "Children need to 'feel safe'." "Those people" don't belong in houses of worship. "Those people" are immoral. "It is morally the right thing for you to do. Bringing a weapon into a holy and sacred place violates everything that a holy and sacred place stands for." So much for religious tolerance. I guess she doesn't know that Sikhs are required to worship with weapons, or that Jews are required to practice self-defense and defense of others. Or maybe she does know, and believes that members of religions that allow guns should be gassed and incinerated like the Branch Davidians. Keep listening, as she grows more hysterical and irrational: "What message does a father send when he takes his child to school with a gun in his pocket; what message does a mother send taking her child to Sunday school with a gun in her purse?" She concluded that such behavior terrorizes children and makes them fearful, and insinuated that if it wasn't actually child abuse, it should be. When did taking your child to school or church become child abuse? The truth is that children need to be safe. "Feeling safe" comes from the knowledge that one is safe. Children already know that the world isn't safe, that there are people who may hurt them. Children feel safe, and are safe, when they know that their parents are willing and able to protect them from even the "biggest, baddest, bad guy". What kind of message does it send when parents haul their toddlers to the church or school to be photographed and fingerprinted so they can be identified if kidnapped or murdered? While religion is founded on faith, not logic, it is inappropriate for religion to exclude reality. Yet the Coalition of Religious Communities is adamant that a woman with a gun is more likely to be killed or injured if attacked than is a woman without a gun. Every reputable study to date shows exactly the opposite; carrying firearms protects women more than men. Once again, religion appears to be willing to "sacrifice" those "heretics" who insist that the earth revolves around the sun. When asked if she'd be interested in reviewing any of those studies, this "fine Christian woman" got angry and insisted she "already knew what was true". When asked if she'd share her data, she refused. After almost an hour of "those people" shouldn't be allowed to participate in civilized society, the committee voted to table Jones's bill. Is this a victory? Not really. Committee members agreed for the most part that gun owners are a threat to society; they simply felt the bill went too far. Keeping gun owners off the bus is too extreme; forcing them to sit in the back is fine. Notably, every Democrat on the committee (including Utah's only Jewish legislator, who ought to know better), those esteemed champions of the rights of blacks, gays, women, and other "oppressed minorities", voted to completely segregate gun owners from the rest of society. All of this occurred at a government sponsored and funded legislative hearing, with cameras rolling. No one noticed the ghosts of white sheets, swastikas, and Grand Inquisitors hovering over the proceedings. This hearing set the stage for Waddoups's SB 122, three days later. Senator Waddoups brought Utah to a new level of Government of the Absurd by announcing that he thought the bill was wrong, and unfairly violated the rights of citizens. One has to wonder why, when asked to sponsor the bill, Waddoups didn't "just say no". But like the good German citizens of sixty years ago, he isn't willing to be accused of being a "Jew-lover". So the week before the hearings, he went on record as saying that anyone who opposed his bill was a "gun nut". The Senate committee didn't waste time discussing whether or not law-abiding citizens with guns were a threat at the Olympics or other places. They simply assumed that all gun owners are either criminals or criminals waiting to happen. The issue at hand was how stringently gun owners needed to be singled out and restricted. Let's listen again: The Commissioner of Public Safety worries that should an incident occur, security would be unable to tell "good guys" from "bad guys". How this is different from an incident outside the Olympics is difficult to tell. The Salt Lake Olympic Committee really doesn't care about rights one way or the other. SLOC simply can't afford to allow citizens to exercise the right to keep and bear arms, or to provide safe storage. The money is apparently better spent on bribes and royal treatment for non-American advocates of universal victim disarmament. (Estimates for "hospitality" for His Excellency, IOC President Juan Antontio Samaranch and his family during the Olympics are as high as $2.6 million.) Utahns Against Gun Violence reluctantly supports the bill, although it doesn't do enough to keep "those people" out of schools, churches and residences. Heroic Senator Lorin Jones: "This is one of the most blatant infringements on the Constitutional rights of American citizens that I have ever seen in my life." He then invoked memories of the Munich Olympics massacre and the Nazi death camps. The Utah Shooting Sports Council, which the Salt Lake Tribune referred to as "Utah's most vocal opponent of gun control": "The bill is bearable, although it's not perfect. It needs to be 'tweaked'". In other words: "May we please have blue armbands instead of yellow ones if we promise to sit in the back of the bus?" Ugh! While the Tribune is not known for accurate reporting, is it too much to ask that they notice that USSC vocally supported the bill, while Women Against Gun Control, the Libertarian Party of Utah, Grassroots (NOT NRA Grassroots) and Nolympics all vocally opposed it? The one "educator" on the committee objected to the use of the term "German" to mean "Nazi". While he's correct that Americans of German descent are not responsible for Nazi war crimes, he seemed unaware that ordinary Germans both elected Hitler and supported the Nazi regime. He was certainly blissfully unaware that he and his fellow senators considered "potential terrorist criminal" and "law abiding gun owner who has passed a background check" to be synonymous. While the committee listened politely to everyone who wished to speak, it was obvious to several observers, including me, that the whole thing was little more than "bread and circuses". It was apparent that each committee member knew exactly how he or she would vote before the hearing began. We had the appearance of citizen participation, but not the reality. The bill was passed favorably, and is nearly certain to become law in some form. What I saw, heard, and felt, was some of the most vicious hate speech I've ever encountered, directed at the "new Jews": gun owners. A frightening number of people are willing to espouse this bigotry openly, while mugging for the cameras. The majority is willing to assume that if so many people say gun owners are a menace to society, there surely must be some truth to it. The rest don't really care. The gun-grabbers have won, folks. We are scheduled for extermination like the vermin these good citizens say we are. Wrapping ourselves in the shreds of the Constitution, or quoting statistics, isn't going to save us. Those who traditionally have balanced the depredations of governments - religious leaders, educational institutions, and rival governments, are united in their wish to see us eradicated. There is no safe haven and no frontier to which we can flee; there's not a nation on the entire planet which allows its subjects to own, carry and use the primary instrument of self-defense: firearms. There is no asylum. There is no escape. Our backs are against the wall. I can't say when the knock on the door or the flash-bang grenade through the window will come, but I know it will. It's time to take a stand - a stand against all those who would disparage us, denounce us, disarm us, and enslave us. I refuse to be called an unfit mother, a danger to society and a threat to my community, especially by my elected representatives. I refuse to be treated like a cockroach, with shudders of revulsion followed by ruthless extermination. It's time to get off the back of the bus. It's time to get out of the cattlecars. It's time to shut down each and every organization that supports our destruction. It is time to say NO! No to tyranny. No to oppression. No to being singled out as second-class citizens. No to discrimination. No to segregation. And ultimately we must choose to say no, even to life, if that life is to be lived as a slave. The time for resistance is now, while we're still armed. No gun control. No compromise. Not for an hour, a day, a month, or ever. Not "for the Olympics", "for the children", "for the church", not for anyone. Any other course is suicide. "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light." Dylan Thomas Copyright© 1999, Sarah Thompson, M.D., The Righter DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! 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