Musings on the unintended consequences of a writer's appetite for other people's liberty & property. "A tactical problem in liberty worth the risk ."

Chistopher Evans of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Not as smart as he looks, evidently.

-----Original Message-----
From: georgemason1776
To: cevans
Sent: Sun, Nov 6, 2011 10:14 am
Subject: re: Your plan for another American civil war -- it probably won't work out the way you hope.

Re: Your call for civil war entitled "NRA calls the tune and kids pay pay the price." Or, musings on the unintended consequences of your appetite for other people's liberty and property.

Mr. Evans,

Before I get to heart of your proposal, I would like to point out an egregious factual error. You say:

"The National Rifle Association, that well-funded protector of the people's right to keep and bear arms, is also a felon's best friend.

The group's zero tolerance toward gun registration or any kind of public database that records and tracks the purchase of firearms -- fueled by a paranoia that crooks, killers and rogue government agencies would use that information for evil -- has triggered the kind of collateral damage that politicians, both here and in Washington, should be condemning instead of condoning."

You, sir, have obviously not been paying attention to the headlines. The "felon's best friend" is not the NRA (though I hold no love for them per se) but rather the Obama Administration which has been empowering Mexican drug cartels and American street gangs of late by "letting the guns walk" in what has become known as the "Gunwalker Scandal." (A story that I broke at my blog, Sipsey Street Irregulars, on 28 December 2010, and a story that the Cleveland Plain Dealer has been largely ignoring in its own editorial pages.) The families of ICE agent Jaime Zapata, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and the thousands of Mexican innocents who have lost family members as a result of this deliberate policy could tell you about "collateral damage" from the very people you seek to further empower, were you to get past your preconceived notions to ask them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not recall you personally ever condemning the Obama administration for being the Mexican cartels best friend.

But now, to the important issue at hand, your solicitation of civil war:

Presumably, the weapon entered the black hole of private ownership where guns can be sold or traded without the need of a federal license. The lack of oversight and accountability for those who legally sell weapons from their homes, cars or booths at gun shows infuriates law enforcement.

"What the hell's going on here?" Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath asked in an interview.

MBV: If I may interject, what the hell that is going on here is the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, a document that Chief McGrath swore an oath to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. He seems to have forgotten that.

Last year, according to Cleveland Safety Director Marty Flask, the Cleveland Police Department requested ATF traces on a total of 1,192 firearms.

The ATF is handcuffed from releasing that information to the public, thanks to legislative restrictions backed by the NRA that were introduced by former U.S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a Republican from Kansas.

MBV: Of course nothing prevents the Cleveland Police Department from running the traces themselves and using the information -- they do so every day -- so your problem apparently is that YOU, the anti-firearm rights press, cannot access the information for the purposes of propaganda. Am I wrong?

McGrath, however, will say that 80 percent of those 1,192 weapons were purchased in Ohio.

"It tells us our guns are homegrown," the chief says.

MBV: What it does not tell us is how many of these were stolen from the homes of law-abiding gun owners, which is not a question that the chief is particularly interested in asking because it doesn't fit with his citizen disarmament meme. Nor, apparently, does it with yours, sir.

It also tells us that those of our elected officials who've allowed NRA self-preservation to take precedence over public safety considerations are complicit in criminal acts of violence that target children.

Legitimate, federally licensed dealers who record purchases, do background checks and provide the ATF with the information it needs to trace guns concur with Cleveland police that private sellers should be brought under the same mandates as licensed dealers.

Until that happens, it's time to expose the NRA for what it really is: a front for illegal gun sales.

"A front for illegal gun sales"? Again, you have mistaken the NRA for the Obama Department of Justice. But let us examine the gist of your (perhaps unintended) call for civil war. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems you are calling for the regulation of the entire civilian private sales of arms. That is, if I want to sell a weapon to my neighbor, or will my granddaddy's single barrel twelve gauge shotgun to my son, then I must get the federal government's approval before doing so. Both the seller (or donor) and the buyer (or donee) must register with the federal government, specifically with the same agencies -- the FBI and the ATF -- whose leadership has proven so corrupt and dangerous to the public safety in the Gunwalker Scandal. This IS what you are proposing is it not? Sort of like giving the fireman who has been caught setting arson fires more matches and gasoline, ain't it?

The only problem with that is that there are a number of American firearm owners who will resist this new infringement on our personal liberty and our property rights -- at the muzzles of millions of our rifles. If you point the weapons of federal law enforcement at us over such a bold plan to coerce us into giving up more of our traditional, God-given and natural liberties, we will surely return the favor. We will ignore such a law, we will defy it and we will dare anybody to do anything about it.

Thus, not long after you get your wish by such a proposed law's passage, the shots will begin. In order to enforce your diktat, the body count will be in millions, for there are millions of us and we will not go gently into your collectivist good night.

Believe me, the NRA is not your problem. They would sell their own mothers over a point of public relations. The determined minority of the armed citizenry of the United States is, however, your big problem if you get what you are advocating.

I think your basic failure of understanding is that you are interpolating from your own cowardice. You know that if the federal government ordered you to do something contrary to what you believed in that you would do it because the feared punishment from the mighty Leviathan for not doing it would be loss of your own life. You view that as a given. We, on the other hand, view it as a tactical problem in liberty worth the risk of solution. Unlike you, there are people who will not only die for their liberty and property, but will kill in defense of it too. Even if it means their own deaths.

The very real tragedies of innocents being killed by the offspring of the 60 year experiment of liberal social engineering in the cities (that you dance in the blood of in order to make your tyrannical propaganda point) would pale to insignificance in comparison.

It seems an odd way to achieve "safe streets."

My advice? Find another hobby besides advocating the theft of other people's liberty and property. When it moves from advocacy to action, some people tend to take such things personally. Besides, current opinion polls indicate that you and your citizen disarmament friends are on the wrong side of history. A majority of the American people now support more firearm liberty, not less. Not that we pay any attention to opinion polls. I mention it only because y'all are big on "democracy." Or at least you say so. Personally, I'll take the constitutional Republic crafted by our Founders, who were as suspicious of pure collectivist democracy as they were of kings. You remember the Constitution, don't you? The one with the Second Amendment?

But political philosophy aside, may I quote the old Chinese proverb that applies here?

"Be careful what you wish for, you may get it."

Most sincerely,

Mike Vanderboegh
The alleged leader of a merry band of Three Percenters
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com


LATER: Pretty funny. I just got this response from Mr. Evans. (His computer, anyway.)

-----Original Message-----
From: CHRISTOPHER EVANS
To: georgemason1776
Sent: Sun, Nov 6, 2011 10:14 am
Subject: re: Your plan for another American civil war -- it probably won't work out the way you hope. (out of office)

I'll be out of the office until Tuesday, November 8.

I rather suspect that Mr. Evans is out of the office even when he is in the office, but that may be just me.