www.thornwalker.com/ditch/lights51.htm

Published by WTM Enterprises in 2000. Reprinting and reposting.
 

June 21, 2000

Strakon Lights Up
 

The new anthem of Giuliani's New York:

"I am woman — see me run!"
 

If you find this column to be of interest, please send a donation of $3 to TLD. More information appears below.

 

I haven't quite finished with last week's Puerto Rican wilding in Central Park. Rudy Giuliani won't let me.

Usually when something dreadful happens on a politician's watch, or bad stuff emerges about his own conduct, he cools it for a while. Energy Minister Bill Richardson isn't giving out too many hints these days about his availability for the Democrat veep nomination. George W. Bush isn't exactly famous for thundering away about the Tragedy of Cocaine among America's Youth. When his own rape and harassment scandals were at their height, even the shame-disabled Bill Clinton didn't sermonize too loudly about the Nationwide Crisis of Sexual Harassment.

The same rule doesn't apply to Rudy Giuliani, though. Less than a week after the Central Park wilding, he revealed that his regime was going to sue 30-some gun manufacturers in a Central Government court "for negligent marketing and distribution of guns." ("N.Y. City To Sue 30 Gun Makers," Associated Press, June 19)

As Ronn Neff remarked to me, all it would have taken to stop the savages' "fun" in Central Park was for some bystander to pull out a little .32, fire it into the air, and declare, "That's enough." The slavering primates would instantly have loped away into the underbrush, gibbering with fear. Giuliani and his predecessors did their best to make that scenario darned unlikely. Now, a miserable handful of days after the wilding, Giuliani is actually trumpeting  his intention to make such a happy turn of events even more unlikely.

Chutzpah? Nope, none required. Comrade Hillary had no trouble putting former Senate candidate Giuliani on the defensive whenever she accused him of being "insensitive" to welfare parasites. But no one — no one of any importance — is about to accuse the man of displaying insensitivity of criminal dimensions toward those disarmed women in Central Park.

***

What a pity Giuliani isn't going to be a senator. I'm certain he could have done at least as much for the "general welfare" and the "public good" and the "national interest" as his fellow commissar, Charles Schumer. I'll bet he could even have done more than Comrade Hillary will be able to do if she wins.

Just look at how visionary, ambitious, and far-reaching his strategy is. He's aiming not only to reinforce the disarmament of his own citizenry but also, in effect, to export  New York's totalitarian controls to the surrounding region or even to the country at large. His corporation counsel, Mike Hess, complains that "manufacturers sell guns and have guns distributed in states with very weak gun laws, knowing that these guns will be transported from weak gun law states to strong gun law states." That's what is meant by "negligent marketing," and Giuliani wants to put a stop to it.

I'm trying to imagine what "remedies" some Red Judge employed by the Central Government may have on tap. Will a gun buyer in Indiana, a state with "weak" gun laws, be required to sign an affidavit to the effect that he'll never move to New York City or that if he does he'll first dispose of his gun? No, as obnoxious and imperialistic a "remedy" as that would be, it surely wouldn't come close to satisfying the Polizeiführer of New York. His actual goal is either to bankrupt gun manufacturers through astronomical damage awards — New York's suit follows similar ones brought by New Orleans, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, and Gary, Ind. — or to intimidate the companies into signing a ruinous "contract" with the Central Government like the one Smith & Wesson signed. (Those companies should note that S&W's pusillanimity earned it no break from Giuliani: it is included in New York's suit!) In any event, so long as any federalism with respect to gun laws survives out in America, guns legally purchased in flyover country will always illegally flow into New York City.

Giuliani isn't satisfied with repressing gun rights among both his own subjects and those who counted themselves lucky not to live in his Soviet Socialist Republic. Like all good totalitarians, he aims to overthrow free expression as well, according to the AP: "The city will also cite deceptive advertising used by gun makers, such as saying that homes with guns are safer than homes without firearms. Hess said there are numerous studies that prove that theory wrong." But that inconvenient "theory" is itself supported by numerous scholarly studies and a mass of official statistics. The First Amendment apparently will be no defense; it will be interesting to see whether truth is a defense. Don't count on it. We are talking about a Central Government court, after all.

***

The shocking aspect of it, for those of us still capable of being shocked, is that Giuliani seems to be getting away with it. No one is staring at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as they would have stared at Bubba Clinton if he'd launched a self-righteous, high-profile campaign against rape, harassment, and adultery in the summer of 1998.

It's a measure of how drastically people have sold out to totalitarianism, especially on the gun issue. How completely they've absorbed the totalitarian mentality. How thoroughly they've remade themselves into gutless weaklings and serfs. I wrote last time about how vexing it was to see the Central Park victims acting surprised that the police didn't help them. It is doubly vexing to see them stand mute as Giuliani proposes to render them even more  helpless and even more  dependent on a torpid, cowardly police force that couldn't care less about what happens to citizens as long as its own graft isn't disturbed and its bureaucrats satisfy their affirmative-action quotas.

Women in particular have so much at stake in gun freedom — so much at stake in keeping the "great equalizer" available — that it is especially infuriating to see so many of them not merely stand mute but actually celebrate civil disarmament. Their celebration is occurring at the same time traditional families are collapsing and the country's demographics are undergoing radical revision. (I needn't belabor the latter point, surely?) When Giuliani and his villainous gang are finished, American women will be left with only one course of action. We saw a preview of it last week in Central Park:

Run, Jane, run!

But where in the world will they all run to?

***

Speaking of running, I can't bring myself to omit the final part of Neff's scenario. After the bystander fires his .32, Neff says, "the police ... ah, the police ... rush to arrest him.  Yes, that gunshot would have brought them running, all right."

That about sums it up. Ω

June 21, 2000

Published in 2000 by WTM Enterprises.


If you found this column to be interesting, please donate at least $3 to our cause. You should make your check or m.o. payable in U.S. dollars to WTM Enterprises and send it to:

WTM Enterprises
P.O. Box 224
Roanoke, IN 46783

Thanks for helping to assure a future for TLD!


Notice  to visitors who came straight to this document from off site: You are deep in The Last Ditch. You should check out our home page and table of contents.