I picked up a copy of the AMERICAN RIFLEMAN (August 2002) in a hospital waiting room and found a couple of interesting things to comment on.  One was by Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive Vice President. He wrote that the goal of the “anti-gun-rights crowd this election year is power – total control of the national legislature and they will try to get it by lulling gun owners into thinking the threat has passed.  They want gun owners to stay home election day.”  It looks like they came out in large enough numbers to ensure positioning Republicans to work for the gun-loving folks. A box on the editorial page summed this up by saying: “If the elections give anti-firearm-rights Democrats control, the new leadership will consist of solid NRA-rated “Fs” – the worst of the worst.”

Charlton Heston, President of the NRA, had this to say. “The anti-gun lobby wants to delay or deny firearm acquisition any way it can. But they also seek to dismantle the powerful political apparatus that gun enthusiasts have used for generations to defend their freedoms and defeat politicians –like gore-Lieberman in 2000 – who threaten those freedoms.”  Both Heston and LaPierre have made the point that people who like guns make better political lobbyists than the anti-gun MAJORITY who did not get out and vote in this election.

But this is about THE ARMED CITIZEN, a couple of pages of reports of how people have used their rights to be armed to defeat the bad people who invade and harm them in their homes and businesses.  There are stories after stories which give you the idea that there is an army, an army of individuals, out there who are about to invade YOUR home or YOUR business with guns and therefore you need guns to oppose them. And, in the spirit of Lethal Weapons I through X, use them to gun down the bad guys.

In an earlier essay I made the point that you need not interfere with the rights of people to bear arms, to own them and display them.  If they have a need to carry them around all they need is a permit if the weapon can be concealed.  But, I also made the point that what you have to be afraid of is the BULLETS used in them.  Make bullets a controlled substance and you no longer have the problem of guns killing people.  People have to go out to buy bullets for the guns and you can stop them there and control them if needed in licensed agencies that can record the only legal source of such missiles.

I looked through the RIFLEMAN and discovered that there are a whole range of skills and technical knowledge required of the enthusiast.  I share that interest for it is extremely interesting to follow how problems are solved.  If it weren’t for the animal targets used by the killers who bought the bullets to use in the guns, etc. you’d think it was a pretty harmless hobby. If it weren’t for the bullets used in war, the guns would be pretty useless.