Signatures of the Gun Culture

NewsMax.com / CommentMax ^ | June 1, 2002 | Dr. Michael S. Brown

[George Frm Br00klyn Park]

NewsMax.com / CommentMax

Signatures of the Gun Culture
Dr. Michael S. Brown
June 1, 2002

Anthropologists study a culture by interviewing individuals and observing group meetings. Now that communications are mostly electronic, an easier way to gather data is to monitor e-mail lists and bulletin boards.

Many Internet correspondents set their e-mail program to automatically add a quote or slogan at the end of each e-mail to support their beliefs. These are called signatures or ".sig files" and in no other American subculture are they more popular or seen in greater variety than in the gun rights movement.

Anyone who wishes to understand this segment of society would be well advised to scan these brief sub-messages. They reveal a depth of knowledge that belies the image of the ignorant redneck gun owner. Let's read a few and you'll see what I mean.

Invoking the words of respected historical figures highlights the concept that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Many signatures have included this popular Benjamin Franklin truism:

Those that give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.

A popular quote from Thomas Jefferson is actually his quotation of brilliant criminologist Cesare Beccaria:

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

Famous authors are often quoted in e-mail signatures, especially Robert Heinlein, whose science fiction novels influenced a generation of baby boomers. The most famousHeinlein aphorism is:

An armed society is a polite society.

Even before the groundbreaking work of Prof. John Lott, this statement was a powerful reminder of the positive effect of guns on human behavior.

Author William S. Burroughs contributed this gem:

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.

Some gun rights activists use their signature messages to change the terms of the gun control debate. Rejecting the anti-gun concept that guns are useless and dangerous, they include slogans like these:

Guns protect moms and kids.

Save a life, teach a woman to shoot.

Self-defense is a basic human right.

When did they revoke innocent until proven guilty?

expresses the feelings of many gun owners who believe they are being treated like criminals.

Another popular theme is to highlight the stupidity of the opposition. An activist named Sam Cohen came up with this one:
<B>

The philosophy of gun control: Teenagers are roaring through town at 90 MPH, where the speed limit is 25. Your solution is to lower the speed limit to 20.</B>

A speaker at the Million Mom March uttered this infamous malaprop:

If someone comes at you with a knife or gun, say, "I know you're upset." We all want to be valued as human beings.

This rather crude apothegm has been popular for years:

Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.

A new group called "Pink Pistols" promotes the firearms rights of sexual minorities; some members have modified the previous statement to read like this:

Gun Control: The theory that Matthew Shepard hanging from a fence post in Wyoming is morally superior to Matthew Shepard explaining to the local sheriff how his attackers got those fatal bullet wounds.

Famous firearms instructors also contribute their share of quotes. Col. Jeff Cooper, considered the father of modern pistolcraft, said:

Owning a handgun doesn't make you armed any more than owning a guitar makes you a musician.

Massad Ayoob, the most famous currently active instructor, stated:

The irony is, if you're willing to kill a perpetrator, you probably won't have to.

I believe the most popular and significant signature of the gun rights subculture is an ancient challenge issued by King Leonidas of Sparta. In 480 B.C., he and 300 of his Spartan warriors occupied the narrow pass at Thermopylae to delay the onslaught of the gigantic Persian army. Historians put the size of the Persian forces between 150,000 and 2 million men.

When ordered by the Persian commander to give up their weapons, Leonidas shouted back, "Molon labe!" or "Come take them!" The valiant Greeks fought to the last man and bought precious time for their countrymen to prepare.

If the leaders of the anti-gun lobby had been aware that Molon labe! is a highly popular rallying cry among their enemies, they might have realized that their plan to force their views on American society was doomed to failure. Unfortunately for them, they were not comfortable monitoring the communications of their foes. They probably feared exposure to contagious ideas.

Dr. Michael S. Brown is a member of Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws (www.dsgl.org). He may be e-mailed at: rkba2000@yahoo.com
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[pa_dweller]

Nice post.

I didn't see it so I'll add this one, which I believe  can be attributed to Col. Cooper.

Anything which goes bang is better than fingernails.

[archy]

Kewl. I'm adding them to the next revision of the doc right now. One I missed, I believe, and certainly bears inclusion- and is worth repeating if I did include it with the others:

"If the stars and stripes become the standard of a tyrannical majority, the ensign of a violated league, it will no longer command our love or respect but will command our best efforts to drive it from the State."

-- General Patrick Cleburne

I'll have one for you from T.E. Lawrence [*of Arabia*] worth adding in a couple of days, as well, but I want to check my references for his exact words first. He was precise enough in the way he used language as to deserve getting it spot-on.

-archy-/-

[in the Arena]

Here's a few I didn't see on your list...

"Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the people's liberty's teeth." - George Washington

"When firearms go, all goes. We need them every hour. " - George Washington

"Citizens have the natural right and the common sense duty to protect themselves, their families, their communities, and their property...guns are the equalizing tools of self-protection, utopian lamentations notwithstanding." - Dr. Edgar A. Suter

"The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? " - P. J. O'Rourke

Will you ever forget this next one ?

"I do not believe in people owning guns. Guns should be owned only by [the] police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state." - Michael Dukakis

[lavaroise]

Remember, Clinton said he could look with socialism in our private bedrooms, yet we could not look in our public bedroom of the whitehouse.

Those who believe in the sinlessness of government and the sinfulness of people are socialist hypocritical pigs. And, frankly, the gun is not for consumption but for God's jurisdiction in the end (as per the sin caveat), hence due process better be instituted either way.

However, the instituted sinfulness of individuals will not go through me, because my enemy needs to learn about its own sins for its own sake, and I will dare it sin and continue its hypocrisy.

[Washington_minuteman]

"Glad to see I'm not the only person who thinks this way."

Wow! A thread where the Constitution actually matters. What a relief. I'll add a couple of my favroites to it.

4/19!
minuteman

---

"[I]t is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

--Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering

---

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."

-- Julius Caesar

[Aim small miss small]

"If someone is so fearful that they are going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have weapons at all." ~~Henry Waxman

Does this apply to the terrorized in Israel?

[Washington_minuteman]

"If someone is so fearful that they are going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have weapons at all." ~~Henry Waxman"

Gosh, that quote makes it look like Waxman almost understands the purpose of the Second Amendment.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

King Leonidas' rejoinder to the ancient Persians, loosely translated into 21st century American idiom, would be: "Up Yours!!!"

Or as was stated at the Battle of the Bulge, "NUTS".

[Centurion2000]

BUMPED and bookmarked.

[Joe Brower]

Good stuff, and I've added these to the applicable docs. The "liberty teeth" quote by Washington, though, is untrue, as much as I like it personally.
Check out this info on guncite.com.

[in the Arena]

Bummer...the article on guncite.com discredits it quite nicely...

Fabricated with good intentions but does more harm than good when disproven...Glad I didn't try to use that one in a debate...

[Joe Brower]

Yep. Travis McGee pointed out a few bogus ones that I had included in my "Quotes from the Enemy" doc. We are engaged in a struggle with demagogues who buy ink by the barrelfull, so we have to be utterly careful. We can have a hundred truths at hand and one falsehood, and that one mistake will be all that's repeated to the unwashed, blissfully ignorant masses.

[in the Arena]

Unfortunately we have to be above suspicion, I'm glad you're checking references...

[vannrox]

Index and Archive.

[stands2reason]

What is BLOAT?

[MileHi]

What is BLOAT?

It is Travis' admonition to

Buy
Lots
Of
Ammo
Today

[Looking4Truth]

For the record, yours truly coined BLOAT.

FReepers never cease to amaze me. Good deal.

[Teacher317]

Gandhi quotes:

• Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I advise violence.
• I WOULD risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of a whole race.
• But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness adorns a soldier...But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature....
• The world is not entirely governed by logic. Life itself involves somekind of violence and we have to choose the path of least violence.
• My method of non-violence can never lead to loss of strength, but it alone will make it possible, if the nation wills it, to offer disciplined and concerted violence in time of danger.
• My non-violence does admit of people, who cannot or will not be non-violent, holding and making effective use of arms. Let me repeat for the thousandth time that non-violence is of the strongest, not of the weak.
• To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one's faith in man and God, even one's own self. It were better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith.
• I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully.

Re-bumping and old thread.