Review by Marshall J. Brown
SELF CONTROL NOT GUN CONTROL by J. Neil Schulman, Synapse-Centurion, 225 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 1204, Dept. GWK, Santa Monica, CA 90401. 308 pages, $24.95
J. Neil Schulman has a wonderful way of attacking gun laws and the people who push them. In fact, he writes in black and white for all to see that which many of us utter only in private -- after casting a glance over our shoulders.
One example: ". . . Finally, gun controllers don't want us to have guns because they have been working hard for the last century to create a cradle-to-grave socialist utopia -- and now that they have vast bureaucratic mechanisms running our lives, they're terrified that we might come to our senses and shoot the bastards who have enslaved us. They are right to b afraid. That's what the guns are for . . ."
You don't hear that argument in legislative debates over gun control, even though anyone who has studied the Second Amendment knows that its primary purpose is to ensure that the populace at large will be able to overthrow a tyrannical government, should one arise. The Founding Fathers said it, J. Neil Schulman shouts it ... and the rest of us whisper it in politically-correct company.
WORK PEACEFULLY
Schulman makes clear that he is not a wild-eyed revolutionary y who favors bullets over ballots: "Not that arrogant tyrants don't deserve being shot for subverting the American Dream, but it's a damn sight less messy to overthrow statism in the voting booth than it is in urban guerrilla warfare. So Congressman Charles Schumer won't have the opportunity to accuse me of encouraging armed rebellion: I advocate working peacefully within the system so long as we have free speech, free elections, and occasional redress of grievances . . ."
Schulman promises, however, that he'll keep his guns handy should government remove those freedoms. "Under those circumstances, Congressman Schumer," he writes, "the circumstances of King George III's America, Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, Castro's Cuba -- I would not hesitate to use my guns to overthrow the government by force . . ."
You've got to love this guy! Or, at least admire and respect his courage in this era when our President equates patriotism with terrorism. In Old America, you'd be considered a patriot if you vowed to overthrow a government that degenerated into a tyranny. Today, Schulman's statement to that effect probably has earned him a slot in a government "dangerous persons" file.
ABUSING POWER
About a third of his new book deals with the absurdity of gun control but the main theme revolves around the use and abuse of power (including gun control). He explains how government has come to treat us like little children: "If you can not, may not, or do not exercise the power to control your own life, someone else must and will."
I was sorry to see Schulman veer from the gun issue and explore religion, the existence of God, economics, literary techniques and a host of way-out topics and discussions which left me in, well, left field -- probably because this guy's mind is a quantum leap ahead of mine.
But he warns in the introduction that only a third of the book would deal directly with the gun issue. "So if that's what you're looking for, I'll direct your attention to my last book (Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns)." Charlton Heston called Stopping Power "the most cogent explanation of the gun issue I have yet read."
Even though Schulman's latest book isn't solely devoted to the gun issue, readers will treasure the slings and arrows he does deliver at those who would disarm decent Americans. And some bright free-thinkers just might relish, more than I did, the rest of Schulman's mental range in the remainder of the book.