Nov/Dec. 98

Holiday Gifts
By Julianne Versnel Gottlieb, Publisher

Dear Self-Reliant Reader:

As the holiday season approaches, my thoughts turn to gift giving.

Like our writers, there are a few special items that I would love to receive.

I would love to have dinner and conversation with John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, Dave Kopel, author of The Samurai, The Mountie, and The Cowboy, and Gary Kleck of Point Blank fame. Sarah Brady of Handgun Control, Inc. would have to answer all questions truthfully and be served only lima beans and Brussels sprouts.

The present that I would like most to receive and the one that I would like to bestow upon our readership—and all women and men— is the right to choose not to be a victim.

There are several dozen bills that have been introduced in Congress ranging from extending and expanding waiting periods to bans on various specific firearms. And even one calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

With the increase in violent youth crime associated with gangs, drugs and the like, there have been incessant cries that honest, law-abiding citizens must be willing to do "something" to help stop the mayhem.

Even if that "something" involves major restrictions of individual rights.

Justice George Sutherland wrote, "For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished freedom is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time."

Does anyone really believe that additional laws making criminal penalties stiffer are going to stop drug dealers?

Does anyone really believe that banning baseball caps and gum chewing is going to stop the heinous occasions of youth carnage?

Does anyone really believe that the Brady Bill five-day waiting period has stopped youth violence and random shootings?

Does anyone really believe that stopping the importation of AK-47s has kept our society safer from youth violence?

I don’t patronize drug dealers or socialize with users. It is my choice.

I wear baseball caps with pride. My favorite is one that states" Queen of Everything!" It is my choice.

I own a handgun. A waiting period is not going to effect me. It might adversely effect someone in imminent danger. I am not going to tell anyone that she/he must wait before obtaining the means to self-defense. It is my choice.

As this time, according to the current lists of guns to be banned, I wouldn’t have to give up any of my firearms. Who knows what could be on the next list? The firearms I own have been carefully chosen by me to suit my particular uses, both sporting and self-defense. It is my choice.

Each one of the proposed laws is an infringement on my choice and your choice not to be a victim.

Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "And it is also immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

The last sentence is one of many quotations inscribed on Cox Corridor II, a first floor House corridor in the U.S. Capitol. I’d like to take Carol Moseley-Braun, Ted Kennedy, Major Owens, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, and another hundred or so of our elected and self-appointed Representatives to look at these words, read them and understand them.

There are so many people who have written and spoken so eloquently on the issue of freedom—which is ultimately the right to choose. Some of the ones that I believe speak to the essence of this debate are:

• "The essence of Government is power; and power lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." - James Madison.

• "Every Communist must grasp the truth: ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’" - Mao Tse-Tung.

• "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few . . . The hand entrusted with power becomes . . . the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity." - Wendell Phillips.

Happy Thanksgiving. As we celebrate the blessings of this rich land, my wish for you is the freedom to choose not to be a victim. The same freedom sought by the women and men who first came to these shores.