Gun Haters Versus the Big Bang Theory
By Ron Marr
CNSNews.com Commentary
May 08, 2003

Some folks just hate guns. They hate them worse than they
hate red meat, bluegrass music and tubs of yogurt which
refuse to sport a “fat free” label.” They hate them worse
than they hate neighborhoods that aren’t gated and
patrolled, those anachronistic wastelands free of zoning
laws and aesthetic committees.

They rail against the right to keep and bear arms because
they long ago lost the desire or ability to care for
themselves. After all, one afflicted by an anxiety attack
at the sight of a full recycling bin or a leaking faucet can
hardly be expected to understand self-reliance.

The vast majority of gun-haters reside on the far left side
of the ideological fence. Most are snobby elitists who feel
it is the government’s duty to wipe their noses, spray
Bactine on their scraped knees and protect them from life
itself. They can’t tell you why they hate guns, except to
say “guns are violent.”

I suggest these people heed the advice of their own role
models. As espoused by a plethora of enlightened gurus who
aim to heal the national psyche, irrational hatred is based
upon fear and ignorance. Oprah, Dr. Phil, Deepak Chopra
and the like all provide such insights. By their
philosophy, irrational hatred revolves around a refusal to
learn about that which is outside one’s realm of experience.
It is a terror of the unknown, akin to a small child being
scared of the boogieman under the bed.

Syndicated columnist Anna Quindlen should study these fonts
of wisdom. Judging by her recent column in Newsweek
magazine (“Tort Reform At Gunpoint,” May 5th, 2003), Anna,
the poor soul, is quaking in her Birkenstocks. Her latest
tirade against the Second Amendment described her disgust at
the passage of “Reckless Lawsuit Pre-emption Legislation” by
the House of Representatives.

Now headed to the Senate, this necessary bill is intended to
halt frivolous lawsuits, many of which have been aimed
directly at the gun industry. It is a response to Clinton
era attempts by some city governments and anti-gun
organizations to bankrupt firearms manufacturers by making
them responsible for the misuse of their product by the
lawless.

Quindlen wrote, “If a hospital leaves a sponge in your
mid-section, you can sue. If a car dealer sells you a
clunker it hadn’t properly inspected, you can sue.” That’s
true, but the examples she cites involve work performed
incorrectly or products which fail to live up to reasonable
standards of operation.

You can’t hold a surgeon liable if you take it upon yourself
to yank the stitches and poke around your small intestine
with a butter knife. You can’t sue a car manufacturer
because your overly-hormonal son got Cindy Lou pregnant in
the back seat of a defect-free vehicle. You can’t sue
Titlelist because you were beaned in the head with an errant
golf ball. You can’t sue K-Mart because people laughed at
your ugly clothes. If a product works as promised, and if
it is sold legally, neither the company that built it nor
the firm that sold it should be held accountable for its
abuse by the purchaser.

But that’s not how Quindlen thinks. She appears to assume
that ALL guns are faulty and dangerous, simply because they
are guns. By her logic, if a criminal uses a gun in the
commission of a crime it is the fault of the manufacturer
and the seller. By her logic, individuals are never
responsible for their own behavior.

Then again, isn’t this the liberal credo? Isn’t everything
someone else’s fault? The fast food outlet is responsible
because you ate too much. The casino is responsible because
you blew your paycheck at the blackjack table. And of
course, guns are responsible for crime.

Quindlen’s column — brimming with insecurity, anger,
half-truths and unfounded assumptions — was a stereotypical
excuse to attack the National Rifle Association. “It’s easy
to find NRA members who say they have no problem with gun
licensing or registration,” she claims, implying that such
is the “sensible attitude” of the average gun owner.

That’s just a lie. Most gun owners are vehemently against
licensing and registration. True, you probably can find an
NRA member here and there (“here and there” being defined as
San Francisco and New York) in favor of more government
control. But the percentage of the total NRA membership who
support such illegal actions are too small to be
statistically measurable.

It’s also easy to find a Democrat who supports George Bush,
but they are hardly a driving force within the liberal
cadre. They are certainly not representative of the
Democratic Party.

So Quindlen rants and raves against guns, her argument not
really against proposed legislation but in fact against the
very existence of the Second Amendment. Her transparent
motives are evident from the start.

“The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that
made a single industry largely immune from lawsuits,” she
writes. “That industry is the one that makes and sells
guns.”

Funny how Anna didn’t complain when the gun industry was the
only one singled out for attack.

(Ron Marr is the founder of The Trout Wrapper, the official
magazine of Montana’s Tobacco Root Mountains. The
publication believes in “big guns, big dogs and big bar
tabs.” Founded in 1994, The Trout Wrapper says it is
“dedicated to hunting down and publicly tormenting the humor
impaired,” and it espouses the “wholesale abuse of all
things politically correct.”)