* Original: FROM: Gary Steinweg
* Original: TO:   All
* Original: AREA: CIVIL LIBERTIES
* Forwarded by Linda Thompson
* Forwarded Using QuickBBS 2.76 Ovr
* Forwarded at 17:59 on 07-May-95 
                     THE ATROCITY ENGINEERS
                     Speech by L. Neil Smith
                Denver, Colorado, April 18, 1993
                          Part 2 of 2
Down the line, from power-hungry federal "czars" to publicity-
hungry county sheriffs, the ATROCITY ENGINEERS are out of control,
justifying their latest crimes against the Bill of Rights with a
phony "War on Drugs" which the mass media -- no more socially
responsible than in the days of William Randolph Hearst -- WHIPPED
UP FOR THEM in the first place. The plain, inconvenient truth is
that a century ago, when today's illegal drugs were as easily and
cheaply available as aspirin, there wasn't any "drug problem". Not
until the atrocity engineers CREATED one.
Thus an educated and reflective individual, better aware of history
and the world around him than the average mass media reporter,
refuses to surrender his "assault weapon" because he never wants to
be MURDERED IN HIS OWN HOME in a hailstorm of gunfire and grenades
because the vice squad got the wrong address -- or simply because
he told a cop he wanted to be LEFT ALONE. That's happened more than
once in Colorado. As I speak, it's happening in Waco, Texas.
Sewhere in America it happens every day.
And now, with their slanted coverage of "assault weapons" and other
Sond Amendment issues, the mass media have handed the atrocity
engineers another opportunity -- though they may not realize it
yet, and by the time they do, it'll be too late. When the day comes
that they're covering a story which authorities don't WANT covered,
and a tiny, palm-sized .25 caliber "assault weapon" is conveniently
"discovered" in some reporter's camera bag or glove box, I hope
they remember that I warned them it could happen. I doubt they
will. Neither their memory nor their attention-span seems that
long.
The maintenance of civil order and social democracy is in our
hands. It has been there all along. It was never anywhere else. In
a nationwide study, Don Kates at the St. Louis University School of
Law found that the police succeed in wounding or driving off
criminals only 81% as often as armed civilians do -- and are 15%
more likely to be wounded or killed themselves. FIVE TIMES as many
cops shoot some innocent individual in the process as civilians do.
The maintenance of civil order and social democracy is in our
hands. It has been there all along. It was never anywhere else. "We
the people" were naive and lazy to believe that anything important
can safely be entrusted to "authorities" and "experts" through
elections, or any other process. Self-defense against individual
criminals -- or criminals sanctioned by the state -- can no more be
delegated to somebody else than eating can, or sleeping, or any
other bodily function. History warns us that delegated
responsibility becomes POWER and that power is inevitably abused.
The maintenance of civil order and social democracy is in our
hands. It has been there all along. It was never anywhere else. If
civil order and social democracy are to be restored to America, the
emphasis must be on enforcing the Bill of Rights -- on Bill of
Rights ENFORCEMENT. We must take that power out of the hands that
have abused it and break it down, BREAK IT DOWN, into units so
small it can no longer be called "power", but simply
"responsibility" -- which, unlike power, comes not from the barrel
of a gun, but from the mind and heart of the individual behind it.
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