BEEF, GUNS, & SCAPEGOATS

 

Isn’t it queer to watch politicians like Senator Obama and “The Mayors Bloomberg, Daley, and Newsome” (sounds like a cheap law firm doesn’t it?) express their happiness over the recent US Supreme Court decision confirming that the 2^nd Amendment’s simple phraseology meant what it said.  These major gun controllers say they found a pony in all the horse&*# about people having a “right to bear Arms”.  Their imaginary pony is “their right” as government officials to regulate and restrict gun sales, purchases, ownership, possession, and use.  That is to say that “THEY” are still the ones that will “control” our rights as they see fit.  Can this be the same decision that the NRA is using to sue these same three Commissars?

 

Gun control seems to be a virus that can never be completely eradicated.  One of the major, if not THE major reasons for this can be found in Western Europe during the last century and in the recent riots in Korea over the Korean government decision to resume the import of US beef into Korea.  Aside from the academic mention of these two similar problems, there are things to be learned and considered as we debate global warming, invasive species, animal property rights, and a host of environmental and animal rights issues; all of which are and continue to take away rights and liberties every bit as seriously as the machinations of the three Commissars and the Presidential candidate mentioned above.

 

Briefly, up until the 1920’s long guns and handguns could be purchased and possessed and carried anywhere by anyone in Britain and Germany (just as I could as a young boy growing up in Illinois in the 1950’s).  Read the Sherlock Holmes’ stories (early 1900’s) and note Watson pulling his revolver from drawers and pockets at various points in the story. 

 

In the 1920’s the British and German governments watched the communists in Russia mowing down landowners, bureaucrats, royalty, academics, and just about anyone they didn’t like.  The British and German gentry and politicians and tycoons looked at their factory workers and said, “not here” and promptly registered, regulated, and “controlled” guns.  Thanks to the gun registry Hitler’s thugs rounded up all the guns as soon as they took power and to this day we wonder why hardly anyone resisted all the atrocities.  British gun control sped along to where today the idea of American “cowboys” and their precious 2^nd Amendment is a constant object of ridicule and wonder in a nation of citizens under more government controls than most Americans can imagine.

 

In the US a similar gun control campaign took off when cities came under the control of mobs and street crime, corruption, and urban populations took off relative to rural populations.  Mob killings, machine gun bank robberies, crooked mayors and Police Chiefs, prostitution, gambling all cried out for solutions.  Many of the Mayors that got elected in the 30’s and 40’s down to the present did so by selling a phony solution.  That solution was “getting rid of the guns”.  Somehow this was supposed to turn criminals into schoolteachers.  As urban families disintegrated in the 60’s and as welfare concentrated dysfunctional child-raising in urban crime areas, the message about “it” (i.e. gangs killings, drugs, and street crime) being the fault of guns and gun availability only grew.  This only intensified the “need” to “regulate” (i.e. outlaw) guns and when that was seen to be counterproductive the Mayors began singing the tune about “nearby states” selling guns to the otherwise peaceful urban choirboys being the root cause of urban unrest. The only answer from urban leaders was and remained outlawing guns.  Since the Mayors appoint “their” Chief of Police and since the big cities control the Association of Chiefs of Police this organization, their “recommendations” and findings gave “gravitas” to claims that the US Constitution and the Founding Fathers were full of beans re: guns and that any notion about citizen rights to guns should be erased for good.

 

So the gun as scapegoat has worked well for the Daley family in Chicago and for the Giulianis and Bloombergs in New York and the Newsomes et al in San Francisco.  Keep them in power to get rid of the guns so that “our” city can be like some Disney movie set.  Forget about men that go “clubbing” and “impregnating” every weekend, don’t punish offenders, run the police like some sort of neighborhood club and just work hard to get rid of gun shows and gun stores and gun ownership and responsibility and everything will be alright.

 

You can’t turn off this kind of decades-long propaganda-scapegoating machine.  South Korea found this out recently.  After 10 years of blaming the US for everything under the theory that North Korea would “see the light” and be all “kissy” with their southern brothers once it was clear that South Korea no longer respected the US, it became apparent that blaming the US for everything (as US Mayors do guns) wasn’t working.  So the new South Korean administration has tried to reverse things and work more closely with the US.  A tiny step was to be the resumption of the import of US beef into South Korea long after an isolated incident of tainted beef was discovered.  The big anti-American riots over US beef (really any increased US cooperation) are a testimony to the acrimony that has been established by 10 years of making the US a scapegoat for Korean political problems.

 

We must remember all this not only as we work to preserve our gun rights but also as we confront the propaganda and proposals of the environmental and animal rights movements.  Scapegoats and false assumptions are everywhere:

 

The only solution to warmth (or cold or wetness or dryness) in the atmosphere is federal programs.

The only way to “save” land is for the federal government to control and close it.

The only way to restore a healthy (i.e. “native”) ecosystem is to empower federal agencies.

The only way to quell violence is to outlaw hunting and propagandize the young.

Animals “can’t” be owned; we are but “guardians” of (formerly identified as ‘dumb’) animals.

Apes and whales are just like us (conversely we are “just like them”?).

What we eat, where we live, and how we live should be determined by those smarter than us.

Oil and gas should not be developed and refineries should not be expanded to “force us to “change”.

“Wilderness” and “Sanctuary” closed areas are their “highest and best use”.

Retired federal Park bureaucrats publicly arguing to deny Constitutional 2^nd Amendment rights on federal lands indicates a “healthy” situation.

 

I could go on here but you get the point.  Just as we allow Mayors to hold power by scapegoating guns and just as South Korean politicians hold power by scapegoating the US: so too are the environmentalists and animal rights movements and their allies (politicians, bureaucrats both federal and state, academics, and ideologues of all stripes) stripping us of our rights as they propagate false assumptions like controlling world weather and the equivalency of humans and animals in rhetoric strewn with scapegoats like hunters and trappers and ranchers et al.  If only we can get rid of them all like guns, what a wonderful world it would be.

 

By the way, my handy dictionary defines “scapegoat” as “one who is made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place”.  I do not intend to let anyone “make” me “bear blame for others or to suffer in their place”.  Just as I intend to expose the lie inherent in blaming guns for urban violence in order to protect MY 2^nd Amendment rights: so too do I deny the false assumptions and scapegoating inherent in the environmental and animal rights propaganda of the past 40 years. 

 

For my money, the big city Mayors need to start prosecuting criminals and protecting the rights of all citizens to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”: if they want to practice taking away rights I suggest they request a transfer to Russia or Zimbabwe.  Regarding the South Koreans, they are like our environmental and animal rights friends: they seem to be committed to having their own way so I say let them have their own way and leave mine alone!  US beef is high quality and a better buy than oil these days so in a free market you are free to make your own decisions.  As to our environmental and animal rights friends, this is a free country so practice your beliefs yourself on your own property and leave the rest of us and our property (both public and private) alone, in free country you are free to be yourself; NOT to oppress others.

 

Jim Beers

6 July 2008

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- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow.  He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC.  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands.  He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC.  He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.