oberkommando
New member
We want everyone to feel all warm and fuzzy.
Kinda long sorry.
AMBUSHING THE GUN INDUSTRY
[other]
-----------------------------------------------------------
No one can say we live in humorless times. The Clinton
administration's threat to use the power of the federal
government to blackjack concessions from the gun industry or
hit it with a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the
Department of Housing and Urban Development's 3,200 housing
authorities comes hard on the heels of new evidence
supporting the claims of the National Rifle Association and
other gun-rights organizations that the Second Amendment
confers upon individuals, not only militias, the right to
keep and bear arms.
A Nov. 22 article in the Wall Street Journal dealt
devastating body blows to the gun-control lobby's efforts to
strip the Second Amendment of its meaning. The article cites
that in 1789 James Madison, the father of the Constitution,
made "the right of the people" the first clause in early
drafts of the amendment, indicating his belief that it is
the right of the people to keep and bear arms that makes a
well-regulated militia possible.
It is clear that the administration's efforts to play a role
in class-action lawsuits against gun manufacturers are not
grounded in any legal or moral principle but in bullying
tactics and "feel-good" wishful thinking. These same tactics
and misguided idealism pervaded its role in the October
debate over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The
continuing attacks on the gun industry and the debate over
the CTBT showcase a common error: the belief that domestic
tranquility and international peace can be secured without
the deterrent value of weapons.
The importance of the gun industry throughout American
history cannot be overstated. American gun makers have
served the national interest honorably by manufacturing
high-quality firearms for both the military and civilian
markets. Eli Whitney's first use of interchangeable parts on
an assembly line to produce military muskets was a major
advance in methods of industrial production. The large base
of knowledgeable civilian customers in the new nation
spurred innovation and competition among the many small arms
manufacturers. Samuel Colt developed the first practical
revolver in 1836, and in 1911 John Browning invented one of
the earliest semi-automatic pistols, as they are now called.
Because innovation in gun manufacture required precision and
strength in machine tooling, the gun industry's expertise in
machining lay the foundation for American excellence in
industrial development across the board.
In the current climate, however, hounded by a fiercely
anti-gun administration and media, gun manufacturers may
fall victim to unscrupulous trial lawyers intent on making
the manufacturers responsible for the careless or criminal
use of their product. American gun makers are particularly
vulnerable to frivolous lawsuits because they are relatively
small and have survived by competing with each other. If the
American public allows the anti-gun lobby to continue using
the courts to defy common sense and seek to impose
bankruptcy on the gun industry, we will have disgraced our
history and jeopardized our future.
The Senate's legitimate defeat of the CTBT highlights the
international side of the equation. America's initial
monopoly over nuclear weapons, combined with the Democratic
Party's policy of containment, enabled us to maintain a
genuine deterrent relatively cheaply for a brief time. After
the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons, various
administrations promoted the mutually-assured-destruction
strategy, the idea that the United States and the Soviet
Union would hold each other hostage to an unacceptable
nuclear strike. Since we had renounced first-use of nuclear
weapons, we had to convince the Soviets that we could
withstand an initial first strike and also retaliate. Such a
strategy necessitated maintaining a clear technical and/or
numerical edge over the Soviet Union.
In the post-Vietnam War era, the Democratic Party, exhausted
internationally, became accommodationist and adopted the
"nuclear freeze" strategy, thus advocating moving to a rough
parity of power between us and our adversaries. They sold
the new strategy by indicting our nuclear weapons as
unequivocally evil, as if they had no value in deterring a
nuclear holocaust.
In contrast, Ronald Reagan believed in negotiating
disarmament not from a position of parity but of clear and
overwhelming superiority. In defiance of the political and
media elites and of conventional wisdom itself, he proceeded
to rebuild the defense of this country, introduced cruise
and Pershing missiles into Europe, and sought to develop an
anti-missile technology that would buttress a treaty
structure based on mutual assurance of verification. These
actions helped consign the Soviet Union to the dustbin of
history.
Mr. Reagan was crucial in our winning the Cold War because
he realized that being well-intentioned but not well-armed
before your enemy was stupid and would not be rewarded by
either victory or the blessing of history. The Clinton
administration, however, has ignored this valuable lesson in
its approach to both personal and international arms
control: Its policies place the full burden of that control
on law-abiding citizens and nations.
Furthermore, Mr. Clinton's rhetoric aimed at domestic
criminals and international brigands is hollow.
Domestically, the gun-control laws his administration has
pushed go largely unenforced, which shows the intent is not
to control the criminals who misuse firearms but the
firearms themselves. On the international scene, Mr. Clinton
backed away from his firm assertion that North Korea would
not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons because he was
afraid to seriously contemplate going to war to defend that
policy. He was oblivious to the probability that being
resolute would gain him both the avoidance of war and North
Korea's relinquishing of its nuclear-weapons capacity. Had
we gone to war in 1994, however, our victory would have been
bloody, but North Korea and other rogue states would know
that nonproliferation has teeth, American teeth, and that
the risks of using nuclear weapons outweigh the benefits.
Mr. Clinton has frittered away the international benefits
secured by George Bush's victory in the Persian Gulf war,
thereby making Iraq's Saddam Hussein another beneficiary of
his administration's tendency to shout and carry a small
stick. At the same time the administration was loudly
proclaiming that Saddam had better not try to interfere with
the work of the U.N. arms inspectors, it quietly acquiesced
in that interference so it would not have to follow through
on its threats.
The senators who voted against the CTBT were right to be
suspicious of Mr. Clinton's genuine commitment to arms
control and nonproliferation, based on their knowledge of
his past duplicitous behavior and his deliberate efforts,
e.g. the "agreed framework" with North Korea, to circumvent
their constitutionally mandated obligation to provide advice
and consent on treaties and other international commitments
made in the name of the people of the United States.
This nation now stands between a pinnacle and a precipice.
Whether we like it or not, we are the world's only
superpower, and the people of the world need us to lead them
to a more peaceable and prosperous future. The precipice
lurks, however, in the mistaken notion that good intentions
alone can guarantee domestic order or international peace.
Those who are tempted to see virtue in bringing a knife to a
gun fight sinfully repudiate the precept that God helps
those who help themselves.
William Goldcamp is a diplomatic historian and a former
intelligence analyst.
-----------------------------------------------------------
This article was mailed from The Washington Times.
Kinda long sorry.
AMBUSHING THE GUN INDUSTRY
[other]
-----------------------------------------------------------
No one can say we live in humorless times. The Clinton
administration's threat to use the power of the federal
government to blackjack concessions from the gun industry or
hit it with a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the
Department of Housing and Urban Development's 3,200 housing
authorities comes hard on the heels of new evidence
supporting the claims of the National Rifle Association and
other gun-rights organizations that the Second Amendment
confers upon individuals, not only militias, the right to
keep and bear arms.
A Nov. 22 article in the Wall Street Journal dealt
devastating body blows to the gun-control lobby's efforts to
strip the Second Amendment of its meaning. The article cites
that in 1789 James Madison, the father of the Constitution,
made "the right of the people" the first clause in early
drafts of the amendment, indicating his belief that it is
the right of the people to keep and bear arms that makes a
well-regulated militia possible.
It is clear that the administration's efforts to play a role
in class-action lawsuits against gun manufacturers are not
grounded in any legal or moral principle but in bullying
tactics and "feel-good" wishful thinking. These same tactics
and misguided idealism pervaded its role in the October
debate over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The
continuing attacks on the gun industry and the debate over
the CTBT showcase a common error: the belief that domestic
tranquility and international peace can be secured without
the deterrent value of weapons.
The importance of the gun industry throughout American
history cannot be overstated. American gun makers have
served the national interest honorably by manufacturing
high-quality firearms for both the military and civilian
markets. Eli Whitney's first use of interchangeable parts on
an assembly line to produce military muskets was a major
advance in methods of industrial production. The large base
of knowledgeable civilian customers in the new nation
spurred innovation and competition among the many small arms
manufacturers. Samuel Colt developed the first practical
revolver in 1836, and in 1911 John Browning invented one of
the earliest semi-automatic pistols, as they are now called.
Because innovation in gun manufacture required precision and
strength in machine tooling, the gun industry's expertise in
machining lay the foundation for American excellence in
industrial development across the board.
In the current climate, however, hounded by a fiercely
anti-gun administration and media, gun manufacturers may
fall victim to unscrupulous trial lawyers intent on making
the manufacturers responsible for the careless or criminal
use of their product. American gun makers are particularly
vulnerable to frivolous lawsuits because they are relatively
small and have survived by competing with each other. If the
American public allows the anti-gun lobby to continue using
the courts to defy common sense and seek to impose
bankruptcy on the gun industry, we will have disgraced our
history and jeopardized our future.
The Senate's legitimate defeat of the CTBT highlights the
international side of the equation. America's initial
monopoly over nuclear weapons, combined with the Democratic
Party's policy of containment, enabled us to maintain a
genuine deterrent relatively cheaply for a brief time. After
the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons, various
administrations promoted the mutually-assured-destruction
strategy, the idea that the United States and the Soviet
Union would hold each other hostage to an unacceptable
nuclear strike. Since we had renounced first-use of nuclear
weapons, we had to convince the Soviets that we could
withstand an initial first strike and also retaliate. Such a
strategy necessitated maintaining a clear technical and/or
numerical edge over the Soviet Union.
In the post-Vietnam War era, the Democratic Party, exhausted
internationally, became accommodationist and adopted the
"nuclear freeze" strategy, thus advocating moving to a rough
parity of power between us and our adversaries. They sold
the new strategy by indicting our nuclear weapons as
unequivocally evil, as if they had no value in deterring a
nuclear holocaust.
In contrast, Ronald Reagan believed in negotiating
disarmament not from a position of parity but of clear and
overwhelming superiority. In defiance of the political and
media elites and of conventional wisdom itself, he proceeded
to rebuild the defense of this country, introduced cruise
and Pershing missiles into Europe, and sought to develop an
anti-missile technology that would buttress a treaty
structure based on mutual assurance of verification. These
actions helped consign the Soviet Union to the dustbin of
history.
Mr. Reagan was crucial in our winning the Cold War because
he realized that being well-intentioned but not well-armed
before your enemy was stupid and would not be rewarded by
either victory or the blessing of history. The Clinton
administration, however, has ignored this valuable lesson in
its approach to both personal and international arms
control: Its policies place the full burden of that control
on law-abiding citizens and nations.
Furthermore, Mr. Clinton's rhetoric aimed at domestic
criminals and international brigands is hollow.
Domestically, the gun-control laws his administration has
pushed go largely unenforced, which shows the intent is not
to control the criminals who misuse firearms but the
firearms themselves. On the international scene, Mr. Clinton
backed away from his firm assertion that North Korea would
not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons because he was
afraid to seriously contemplate going to war to defend that
policy. He was oblivious to the probability that being
resolute would gain him both the avoidance of war and North
Korea's relinquishing of its nuclear-weapons capacity. Had
we gone to war in 1994, however, our victory would have been
bloody, but North Korea and other rogue states would know
that nonproliferation has teeth, American teeth, and that
the risks of using nuclear weapons outweigh the benefits.
Mr. Clinton has frittered away the international benefits
secured by George Bush's victory in the Persian Gulf war,
thereby making Iraq's Saddam Hussein another beneficiary of
his administration's tendency to shout and carry a small
stick. At the same time the administration was loudly
proclaiming that Saddam had better not try to interfere with
the work of the U.N. arms inspectors, it quietly acquiesced
in that interference so it would not have to follow through
on its threats.
The senators who voted against the CTBT were right to be
suspicious of Mr. Clinton's genuine commitment to arms
control and nonproliferation, based on their knowledge of
his past duplicitous behavior and his deliberate efforts,
e.g. the "agreed framework" with North Korea, to circumvent
their constitutionally mandated obligation to provide advice
and consent on treaties and other international commitments
made in the name of the people of the United States.
This nation now stands between a pinnacle and a precipice.
Whether we like it or not, we are the world's only
superpower, and the people of the world need us to lead them
to a more peaceable and prosperous future. The precipice
lurks, however, in the mistaken notion that good intentions
alone can guarantee domestic order or international peace.
Those who are tempted to see virtue in bringing a knife to a
gun fight sinfully repudiate the precept that God helps
those who help themselves.
William Goldcamp is a diplomatic historian and a former
intelligence analyst.
-----------------------------------------------------------
This article was mailed from The Washington Times.